THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Volume I
THEOLOGY OF THE ICON
Volume 1

by

LEONID OUSPENSKY

translated by
ANTHONY GYTHIEL

with selections translated by

ELIZABETH MEYENDORFF

ST. VLADIMIR’S SEMINARY PRESS

CRESTWOOD, NY 10707-1699
1992
The publication of this book has been underwritten by a generous contribution
by Dr. and Mrs: Demetre Nicoloff, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ouspensky, Léonide
[Essai sur la théologie de l’icone dans l’Eglise orthodoxe. English]
Theology of the icon / by Leonid Ouspensky; translated by Anthony Gythid with
selections translated by Elizabeth Meyendorff.
p. m.
Vol. 1 is a rev. translation of: Essai sur la théologie de l’icône dans l’Eglise or*
thodoxe; v. 2 is a translation of: La théologie de l’icône; both were translated originally
from Russian.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88141-122-1 (v. 1). — ISBN 0-88141-123-X (v. 2) — ISBN
0-88141-124-8 (set)
1. Icons—cult. 2. Orthodox Eastern Church—Doctrines. 3. Orthodox
Eastern Church and art. 4. Icon painting. I. Ouspensky, Léonide. Théologie de
l’icône. English. 1992. II. Tide.
BX378.5.09713 1992 92-12323
246’.53—dc20 CIP

THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Volume I

COPYRIGHT© 1978

by

ST VLADIMIR’S SEMINARY PRESS

All rights reserved

Vol. 1 ISBN 0-88141-122-1

Set (Vol. I & II) ISBN 0-88141-124-8

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 Contents

Introduction.......................................................................................... 7

1 The Symbolism of the Church ..................................................... 17

2 Origins of the Christian Image..................................................... 35

3 The First Icons of Christ and the Virgin....................................... 51

4 The Art of the First Centuries......................................................... 65

5 Sacred Art in the Constantinian Epoch....................................... 81

6 The Quinisext Council:

Its Teachings on the Sacred Image..............................................91

7 The Pre-Iconoclastic Period.......................................................... 101

8 The Iconoclastic Period: A Synopsis............................................ 107

9 The Teaching of the Iconoclasts and the

Orthodox Response............................................................. 119

10 The Meaning and Content of the Icon 151

 Introduction

A large number of works about Christian sacred art exist in various

1 languages. This art has been studied from the historical, aesthetic,
sociological and archaeological points of view. All of these aspects are
indeed components of sacred art. But they represent only its external side
and are not concerned with its very essence, that is, that which this an
conveys. At the same time, many works are dedicated to explaining the
external and explicit connection of the image to the Holy Scriptures and
to the other liturgical texts. Other works, finally, explain this art from a
theological and philosophical point of view. But what does the Church
itself think of the art which it has created? What are its teachings on this
subject? How was sacred art understood by the holy councils and the
Fathers who were concerned with it? All of this has not been the object of
special attention. Moreover, as we shall see, certain authors go so far as to
deny the Church’s participation in the creation of its art. But can one
imagine that the Church would neglect figurative art, at least as a strong
means of influencing man? Figurative art was abundantly used in the
paganism which surrounded the Church from the first centuries, and, later,
by the Christian state. It is certain that the Church could not have ignored
it. Its entire outlook on the image is a witness to this fact, and it is precisely
with this that we shall begin our study.
It is well known that the veneration of holy icons plays a very impor­
tant role in the Orthodox Church. The veneration of the icons of Christ,
of the Virgin, of angels and of the saints is a dogma of the Christian faith
formulated at the Seventh Ecumenical Council and proceeds from a basic
doctrine of the Church: its confession of the Son of God who became
man. His icon is a witness to the true and non-deceptive Incarnation of
God. In the course of its history, the Church triumphed over heresy many
times. But of all its victories, only the victory over iconoclasm, the victory
8 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

of the icon, was solemnly proclaimed as the “Triumph of Orthodoxy,” a

victory which we celebrate each year on the first Sunday of Lent. This
demonstrates the importance which the Church attributes to the image,
and not just to any image, but to the specific image which it wrought in
its fierce struggle against paganism, against iconoclasm and against other
heresies, to the image which was paid for with the blood of a large number
of martyrs and confessors.
Why does the Church attribute such a great importance to the icon?
The icon is not just a simple image, nor a decoration, nor even an
illustration of Holy Scripture. It is something greater. It is an object of
worship and an integral part of the liturgy. The Church sees in its holy
image not simply one of the aspects of Orthodox teaching, but the
expression of Orthodoxy in its totality, the expression of Orthodoxy as
such. The icon is one of the manifestations of the holy Tradition of the
Church, similar to the written and oral traditions. As we shall see in our
study, the “icon,” according to the teaching of the Church, corresponds
entirely to the “word” of Scripture. “That which the word communicates
by sound, the painting shows silently by representation, ” says St Basil the
Great.1 And the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council repeat these
words and specify that “through these two mediums which accompany
each other... we acquire the knowledge of the same realities.”2
It is absolutely impossible to imagine the smallest liturgical rite in the
Orthodox Church without icons. The liturgical and sacramental life of
the Church is inseparable from the image. Even before entering the
sanctuary to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, the priest recites a prayer of
purification before the Royal Doors (the central portal of the iconostasis)
and a declaration of faith before the “local” icons. The icon is an object of
worship embodying divine grace and forming an integral part of the
liturgy. Often, and with good reason, the icon is called “theology in
images.” It is understandable that the basis of sacred art, its meaning and
its content can only be a subject of theology similar to the study of the
Holy Scripture. Therefore, one can neither understand nor explain sacred
art outside of the Church and its life. Such an explanation would always
be partial and incomplete. In relation to sacred art itself, it would be false.

1 Hom. 19» On the 40Martyrs, PG 31: 509 A.

2 Mansi 13: 300 C.
Introduction 9

In fact, sacred art not only reflects the life of the Church in all its
complexity and in all its depth; it is an integral part of this life, just as a
branch is a part of a tree. An object of worship, the icon is not merely
provoked or inspired by the Liturgy: Together they form a homogeneous
whole. The icon completes the Liturgy and explains it, adding its influ­
ence on the souls of the faithful. The contents and the meaning of the
icon and of the Liturgy are the same, and this is why their form, their
language, is also the same. It is the same symbolism, the same sobriety, the
same depth in content. This is why, as everything in the Church, sacred
art has a double dimension: Its very essence is unchangeable and eternal
since it expresses the revealed truth, but at the same time it is infinitely
diverse in its forms and expressions, corresponding to different times and
places. Our study will therefore be, on the one hand and foremost, a
theological study. On the other hand, on the historical and archaeological
level, we will use the facts provided by secular archaeologists or historians
of art.
The content and the meaning of sacred art determines one’s attitude
towards it. To understand this point more clearly, let us compare the
attitudes of the Orthodox Church and of the Roman Catholic Church
towards sacred art. The Roman Catholic Church confesses, as does Or­
thodoxy, the dogma of the veneration of icons. But its attitude towards
sacred art differs considerably from the Orthodox attitude. Let us take as
an example the decision of the Council of Trent, which has until now
been the basis of all the regulations issued by the Vatican in the field of art.
All these regulations have a negative tone: They pronounce what sacred
art should not be. The following is the decision of the Council of Trent
(1563, the twenty-fifth and last session):
The Holy Council upholds that no image should be placed in the churches which
is inspired by a false dogma and which can mislead the simple people; it wills
that all impurity be avoided and that the images should not have any provocative
attributes. To assure the regard to these decisions, the Holy Council prohibits
any improper image from being placed anywhere, even in the churches which
are not subject to the visit of the ordinary, unless the bishop has first approved
it.3

This rule is repeated, some parts of it literally, in the new regulations

3 Quoted from E. Mâle, L *art religieux après le Concile de Trente (Paris, 1932), 1.
10 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

on the subject (June 30,1952). These are the orders of a 1947 encyclical
letter of Pius XII: “The field must be left absolutely open for the art of our
time when it shows the respect and honor due to the buildings and the
sacred rites. In such a way, it will enter into the wonderfill concert which
famous men have sung to the catholic faith in past centuries...”4 The Pope
adds that “everything which is not in accord with the holiness of the place”
must be removed from the sanctuaries. As we see, neither the decision of the
council, nor the papal encyclical letter of 1947, nor the other directives of
the Roman Church set any criterion or indicate any connection with
Tradition. They only indicate what should not be in sacred art, and this in
not very clear terms. What is an “improper image”? What traits can be
considered “provocative”? All of this remains unclear. Even in the West, this
vagueness stirs up sharp criticisms which underline the negative aspect of
rules pertaining to sacred art. Some have said concerning the regulations of
1952 that they preserve only a minimum of “tradition”: just enough to keep
the faithful from confusing a church steeple with a factory chimney. Other­
wise they sanction all the mistakes of the past and of the present and
proclaim that sacred art must search for a “new style.” To participate in “the
wonderful concert of famous men,” as it is put by Pius XII, the Roman
Church therefore appeals to the most famous of contemporary painters to
decorate its churches, without being in the least concerned with whether
they belong to the Church or not, or even if they are believers or atheists.
How can there even be a question of intercourse between the image and the
word of Scripture when the person who decorates a church or paints a
sacred image is an atheist or when he belongs to another religion? One
could in such a case speak only of a formal illustration of the letter of the
scriptural text or, what would be even worse, of a personal interpretation by
the painter, the application of his own ingenuity to a scriptural subject. This
is being done in the field of art This shows the extent to which the very
meaning of the sacred image has been lost in the Roman Catholic Church.

This vagueness in the directives communicates the chaotic state of

sacred art itself, which has now reached a critical point. In fact, the
Roman Catholic Church has been forced to accept secular art, which
often has a very doubtful spiritual content, or else to do without art
4 F. R Regamey, L’art sacré du XXe siècle (Paris, 1952), 432.
Introduction 11

altogether. For example, the following was written in an article which

appeared several years ago in a French magazine:
The Church [the Roman Catholic Church] finds itself today in the same
situation as any individual. It must accept the criteria of pure aesthetics...
Therefore the Church, unless it succumbs to sentimental bad taste, should either
come to terms with the solutions reached by artists outside itself or else refrain
from resorting to art.

The Orthodox Church, on the other hand, offers a positive teaching.

It stipulates that artists paint icons as they were painted by the ancient and
holy iconographers (see, for example, the Hundred Chapters Council in
1551). At first glance, this directive may appear to be very imprecise. But
its entire significance becomes clear if one remembers the masterly expres­
sion of St Paul, quite relevant in its sobriety and power: “Be imitators of
me,” he wrote, “as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). To paint icons as they
were painted by the ancient and holy iconographers means to follow
Tradition and denotes a particular attitude towards sacred art. “Use colors
according to Tradition,” says St Symeon of Thessalonica. “This is true
painting, as Scripture is its books...”5 It is not a matter of copying the
ancient iconographers. St Paul did not imitate Christ by copying His
gestures and His words, but by integrating himself into His life, by letting
Him live in him. Similarly, to paint icons as they were painted by the
ancient iconographers does not mean to copy the ancient forms, since
each historical period has its own forms. It means to follow the sacred
Tradition, to live in the Tradition. But the power of Tradition is the power
of the Holy Spirit and of continuity in the spiritual experience of the
Church, the power of communion with the spiritual life of all the preced­
ing generations back to the time of the aposdes. In Tradition, our experi­
ence and our understanding are the experience and understanding of the
Aposde Paul, of the holy iconographers and of the entire Church: We no
longer live separately, individually, but in the Body of Christ, in the same
total body as all of our brothers in Christ. This is in fact the case in all
areas of spiritual life, but it is particularly true in that of sacred art. The
contemporary iconographer must rediscover the internal oudook of the
iconographers of old and be guided by the same living inspiration. He will
then find true faithfullness to Tradition, which is not repetition but a

5 Dialogue against heresies, ch. 23, PG 155: 113 D.

12 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

new, contemporary revelation of the internal life of the Church. Indeed,

an Orthodox iconographer faithful to Tradition always speaks the lan­
guage of his time, expressing himself in his own manner, following his
own way. We see, therefore, how the decisions of the Roman Church are
vague in spite of their prolixity, and how the basic guidelines of the
Orthodox Church are precise and concrete in their laconism.
We spoke briefly of the icon in the life of the Church, and we
explained in a few words the importance which the Church ascribes to its
sacred art. But if we now turn to the practice of the Church, we will
frequently see a great discrepancy between the traditional teaching about
the image and the image itself. We often see in our churches a large
number of heteroclite, secular or semi-secular images which have little in
common with the icon. These are, in fact, usually images of a secular art
having merely a religious subject. Anything can be found, even Masonic
symbols such as an eye in a triangle, called the “all-seeing eye.” In most of
our churches, true icons are lost amidst a multitude of representations
foreign to Orthodoxy—these, so as not to be called simply Roman
Catholic, are euphemistically characterized as “paintings in the Italian
style” or icons “of the Italian genre.” On the other hand, icons which are
truly Orthodox are called “images of the Byzantine style,” “Novgorod-
ian,” etc. One can speak of style in scientific analyses, in historical or
archaeological studies, but to use this idea in the Church to characterize
its art is as absurd as discussing the “style” in which the Creed or the Great
Canon of St Andrew of Crete is written. It is clearly a meaningless
statement. In the Church there is only one criterion: Orthodoxy. Is an
image Orthodox or not? Does it correspond to the teaching of the Church
or not? Style as such is never an issue in worship.

Many faithful believe that one can pray before any image, Orthodox or
Roman Catholic, as long as there is an image, since it is only of secondary
importance. This is why they bring all kinds of images into churches.
Those who think in this way do not know that during the iconoclastic
period of the eighth and ninth centuries, it was precisely this struggle for
an authentic Orthodox image which called forth from the Church a large
number of martyrs and confessors. Of course, one can pray before any
image. One can also pray without any images at all, or even without a
church. One can and one must pray always and everywhere. But this
Introduction 13

certainly does not mean that one can dispense with the Church and the
image, or that the external appearance of the church and the images in it
are a matter of indifference. One must not forget that when one enters a
church, it is not only to pray in it. We also receive the teaching of
Orthodoxy, and this beneficial teaching is our guide throughout our
whole life, in addition to our prayers. It often happens in our churches
that the sacred word is our guide and teaches us in a certain way, while the
image, being heterodox, teaches us and guides us in a completely different
way. How is this possible? We have preserved the Orthodox veneration of
the image. But under the influence of Catholicism and Protestantism, we
have become indifferent to the very contents of the image. This is why we
can no longer distinguish the Roman Catholic image, which expresses, as
we shall see, the Roman teaching, from the authentic Orthodox image.
We accept everything and take a passive attitude toward the realm of
sacred art.

Let us give several examples. There exists an opinion according to

which nothing which has been used by the Church can be discarded.
Human error is normal, but a theory based on an error and the erroneous
practice which it produces are inadmissible in the Church. If this were not
the case, we would not, for example, have any reason to reject the synodal
regime in the Russian Church. Indeed, the regime lasted for many centu­
ries, and the period was illumined by great saints, such as St Seraphim of
Sarov, St Mitrofan of Voronezh, St Tikhon of Zadonsk and others. This
same reference to practice is invoked in preserving iconographie subjects
borrowed from heterodox art, based solely on the imagination of the
artist, and which not only did not correspond to the Gospel but, on the
contrary, contradicted it. These subjects are not rejected, since it is
believed that the mere fact of their existence in our Church for two or
three centuries is proof that they have become Orthodox. But time is not
a criterion of truth. If a falsehood has been accepted for two hundred
years, this does not mean that it has become a truth. And if it happens that
the ecclesiastical authorities have been mistaken, then the Church always,
in the end, corrects their error. Thus, a local council of Moscow in
1553-1554 accepted a representation borrowed from the West—the
image of God the Father—under the pretext that this image had already
been introduced into the practice of the Church. But in 1667, the Great
14 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Council of Moscow considered the question from a different angle, asking

whether or not this image corresponded to the Orthodox teaching. It
reached the conclusion that it did not. The decision of the previous
council was annulled, and this representation was forbidden.
On the other hand, even among the Orthodox there exist people who
are disturbed by the Orthodox icon, believing as do some archaeologists
and art historians that liturgical art is “medieval,” “outdated,” “idealistic,”
etc., and who are afraid of being left behind the times. But the opinion of
scholars and philosophers of aesthetics cannot, as such, be an authority for
the faithful. Often ignorant of the very basis of sacred art and applying
secular standards to it, their views can only be unilateral and partial. It is
amazing that those persons who are disturbed by the presence of icons are
not, however, disturbed by the fact that our Liturgy goes back to the same
times as does the icon and, to a great extent, even as far back as the Old
Testament. But in spite of its antiquity, the Liturgy retains its fundamen­
tal importance, and very few consider it to be “outdated.”
But the plague of our times is aestheticism. There is a dictatorship of
“taste.” Personal taste is usually accepted as the only criterion for the
appreciation of a sacred image. One speaks of “good taste” and “bad
taste.” But in the Church, taste can be neither good nor bad and should
not be used as a criterion. By what right should one person’s taste be
considered good and another’s bad? By its very definition, taste is some­
thing subjective and changeable. For a sacred image, just as for the sacred
writings, a relative and variable criterion cannot be valid. The notion of
taste may apply to the artistic value of the image, but not to its value as a
liturgical image. If one bases one’s understanding exclusively on individ­
ual, aesthetic, or some other kind of appreciation, one reaches the point
which St John of Damascus feared when he wrote: “If each person could
act according to his desire, little by little, the entire body of the Church
would be destroyed.”6 It is precisely in defending icons during the
iconoclastic period in the eighth century that St John of Damascus wrote
these words.
The Orthodox Church has always fought to defend its sacred art
against secularization. Through the voice of its councils, its hierarchy and
6 Third Treatise in the Defense ofHoly Icons, ch. 41, PG 94: 1356.
Introduction 15

its faithful, it fought to retain the purity of the sacred image against the
penetration of foreign elements characteristic of secular art. The Church
did not fight for the artistic quality of its art, but for its authenticity, not
for its beauty, but for its truth. It has retained unchanged the sacred
tradition in art, the understanding of its dogmatic contents and of the
spiritual significance of sacred art. We are constantly reminded of this in
the Liturgy. It is, in particular, the stichera and canons of the feasts of the
various icons (for example, that of the Holy Face on August 16, and
especially the Liturgy of the Triumph of Orthodoxy) which uncover the
meaning of the image in all its depth. But in times of spiritual decadence
like our own, the voice of the Church is a voice which is not heard.
Shamelessly, we listen without hearing the words which the Church
proclaims, and we look without seeing, just as those of whom Christ
speaks in His Gospel (Mt 13:13).

One must admit that the confusion existing in the Orthodox Church
concerning sacred art is, to a large extent, a consequence of the education
received by the clergy, which does not stress the priest’s responsibility for
the purity of the icon. Indeed, before his ordination, every priest promises
to “obey all the rules established by the councils.” But the learning which
he acquires in religious institutions does not prepare him to be able to
keep such a promise in the realm of sacred art. He is taught nothing about
the theology of the image, though at the same time a future priest is
taught archeology and art history. But these subjects cannot be useful
unless they are limited to ah auxiliary role. By themselves, without a
theological basis, they give the future priest a false idea of what an image
is in the Church. This is why, when a student becomes a priest, he is often
incapable of distinguishing an icon from a secular image, or even certain
icons from others, and of interpreting the representations of the principal
feasts. How can he, under these circumstances, distinguish in an image
the real from the false and explain to others the contents of the image?
One usually replies that art is a special field, that to understand it one
must be a specialized expert. Yes, certainly this is true when one is
concerned with the historical or artistic aspect of the image. But if one is
concerned with the contents, such a point of view is absolutely false. The
icon, in fact, is art, but it is above all liturgical art, a part of the Liturgy.
Thus, just as the celebrant should not be required to be a historian or a
16 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

lover of literature in order to understand sacred Scripture, so also the

understanding of the sacred image requires neither precise knowledge of
art history nor the refinement of an aesthete. A priest should simply know
how to “read” an icon as well as the Liturgy.
But whether priest or lay, we are all members of the Church. We are all
called to witness to its truth in a world which does not understand it. This
is why it is essential that each one of us be conscious of this truth in
whatever form it is expressed, verbally or in images. The Orthodox teaching
of the image was formulated several times, in response to errors and
misunderstandings. These errors and misunderstandings repeat themselves,
and our century has discovered nothing new in this field. The Orthodox
Church has retained intact an immense richness not only in the realm of
Liturgy and patristic thought, but also in that of sacred art, and we who
enjoy the riches of this treasure should know about it and be witnesses to it.
Those who confess Orthodoxy should be careful not to bring into the world
a truth mixed with falsehood. Let us not forget that, just as thought in the
realm of religion has not always reached the level of theology, so artistic
creation has not always reached the level of authentic iconography. This is
why one cannot consider every image, even one that is very old and very
beautiful, as an infallible authority, especially if it originated in a time of
decadence such as our own. Such an image may correspond to the teaching
of the Church or it may not. It can deceive rather than teach. In other
words, the teaching of the Church can be falsified by the image as much as
by word. In the conditions existing today, we are facing a painful situation
which leads to conflicts and polemics and often throws the faithful and
particularly the painters into total confusion. Each one of us should be able,
at every instant, to confess our faith by word and through the image.
The aim of this work, then, is to make known from a historical
perspective the evolution of the icon and its content. Volume One is a
revision of an earlier publication entitled Essai sur la théologie de Ticône
dans l'église orthodoxe (Paris, 1960; trans., Theology ofthe Icon [New York:
St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978]); Volume Two consists of various
chapters published, in Russian, in Messager de TExarchat du Patriarche
russe en Europe octidentale.
 1

The Symbolism of the Church

Ü efore we begin our discussion of the icon, it is necessary to consider

^briefly the whole of which it is a part: the church building and its
symbolic significance.
What is symbolism? Symbolism expresses indirectly, through images,
that which cannot be expressed directly in material or verbal forms. Being
a mysterious language, symbolism also hides truths which it reflects from
those who are not initiated and makes them understandable to those who
know how to approach them. Everyday language frequently confuses the
ideas of “sign” and “symbol,” as if they were identical. In fact, there is a
necessary spiritual distinction between them. A sign only portrays reality;
a symbol always qualifies it in a certain way, bringing forth a superior
reality. To understand a symbol is to participate in the presence; to
understand a sign is to translate an indication. Let us take the example of
the cross. In arithmetic, it is a sign of addition; as a road sign, it is a
symbol which expresses and communicates the inexhaustible contents of
Christianity.
In the Church, symbolism plays a very important role because the entire
Church is, in a way, both material and spiritual. That which is material is
directly accessible to us; that which is spiritual is indicated through symbols.
The symbolism of the Church cannot be effectively studied outside of the
Liturgy, because it is a liturgical symbolism and it is through the Liturgy
that the Fathers explained it. Separated from the divine services, symbolism
loses its meaning and becomes a series of sterile abstractions.
The word “Church” (in Greek èKKXTjata) means “convocation” or
“reunion.” The Church “is thus named because it convokes all men and
unites them with one another,” says St Cyril of Jerusalem.1 Other Fathers

1 Catechetical Orations, 18, 24 PG 33: 1044.

18 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

(for example, St Athanasius the Great, St John Chrysostom, St Augustine)

express this same thought The verb KaXéû) means “to summon;” èKKCLÀéü)
means “to convoke” from somewhere. Those who are called together are
the apostles and the disciples of Christ, the new Israel. In the Old
Testament, the people of Israel were distinct from the world so that they
could announce to it the divine Incarnation and prepare the world for the
coming of the Messiah. The new Israel—the Church—in turn brings the
presence and the promise of the Kingdom of God to the fallen world; it
prepares this world for Christ’s Second Coming.
The word “Church” also designates the Body of Christ, His Kingdom
made up of the communion of the faithful, and also the place of worship.
In our prayers for the consecration of churches, the place of worship is,
indeed, called the “house comparable to the heavens,” “the image of the
house of God.” It is consecrated “to the image of the most holy Church of
God, that is, of our very body which Thou deigneth to call Thy temple
and the members of Thy Christ by the mouth of Thy glorious Apostle
Paul,” that is, to the image of the Church, the Body of Christ, according
to the words of St Paul (Eph 1:23 and Col 1:18). Thus a church is an
image, an icon, of the Church, the Body of Christ. It expresses symboli­
cally that which cannot be expressed directly, because neither words nor
direct images can represent the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,
the object of our faith but invisible in its fullness.
The foundation of Christian life has always been the same, both in the
first centuries of our era and today. It is the birth of a new life, an intimate
union with God which is essentially fulfilled in the sacrament of the
Eucharist. A church, as the place where this sacrament is fulfilled and
where men, united and revived, are gathered together, is different from all
other places and buildings. It is characteristic that, among the various
names which the first Christians gave to their temple, such as “church” or
“the house of the Church,” the most frequent designation was “the house
of the Lord.”2 This name itself already underlies the difference between a
church and all other buildings and expresses its specifically Christian
meaning.
This meaning is connected with the heritage of the Old Testament.
2 H. Leclercq, Manuel d'archéologie chrétienne, vol. 1 (Paris, 1907), 361-2.
The Symbolism ofthe Church 19

The tabernacle of the Old Testament, a préfiguration of the New Testa­

ment churches, was built according to the image shown to Moses on
Mount Sinai. God Himself indicates both its general plan and its disposi­
tion in the smallest detail. The history of the Church shows us that the
first Christians had not broken with the past. On the contrary, they
believed themselves to be the direct heirs of the Old Testament. The
Christians were the new Israel, the fulfillment of the prophecies. The
Apostles and the Fathers constantly emphasized the traditional character
of the new faith. The Apostles and the first Christians generally went to
the synagogues and to the temple in Jerusalem and participated in Jewish
worship. It is only after they were forbidden access to these places that
they built Christian sanctuaries, and they did so in strict accord with the
revealed character of the place of worship, with the very principle accord­
ing to which the tabernacle and the Jerusalem temple had been built. But
they also gave this principle its true meaning, as expressed in the New
Testament and as the fulfillment of the prophecies. This is why one
cannot doubt that the essential significance of a church, so directly
connected with the very essence of Christianity, was understandable to
everyone in the first centuries of our era, even though it was not im­
mediately manifested in external or conceptual forms.
We learn from history and archaeology that the Christians of the first
centuries did not only have catacombs and places of prayer in private
homes, as we know from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles,3 but
that they also built churches above ground.4 These churches were de­
stroyed in the times of the persecutions; they were rebuilt. But in spite of
the existence of these churches, neither the Fathers of the first centuries,
nor writers in general, describe the Liturgy extensively or dwell upon its
meaning or the symbolism of the church. There are two reasons for this
silence: (1) There was no need to write about that which everyone
understood, that which everyone lived; (2) Christians did not want to
initiate the pagans into their sacraments, to lay bare their faith and their
hope. The truths of the faith were confessed by life itself and needed no
formulation.

3 Acts 12:12, 20:7-8; Rom 16:4; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15.

4 H. Leclercq, vol. 1, 378fF; Sisto Scaglia, Manuel d’archéologie chrétienne (Turin, 1916),
143-144.
20 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

There exist, nevertheless, some indications dating back to the first

centuries, showing how early Christians understood their place of wor­
ship. According to the Didascalia and the Apostolic Constitutions, a church
should remind the faithful of a boat. We know that the Fathers frequently
used the image of the boat and, particularly, that of Noah’s ark to
symbolize the Church. Noah’s ark was seen as a préfiguration of the
Church: Just as this ark was a refuge during the flood, so the Church,
guided by the Holy Spirit through the tides of life, is a salutary refuge for
Christians. Even today, we continue to call the central part of our
churches “the nave,” from the Latin navis, ship. Symbolic images of
Noah’s ark can be found in ancient monuments, in the form of a square
box,5 sometimes with a dove flying above it. Archaeological diggings show
that many churches in the first centuries were built in a square shape, that
is, in the image of the ark At first sight, this analogy may appear to be
artificial, but for the small Christian communities, surrounded by a more
or less hostile paganism, the Church was indeed an ark, where salvation
could be found in the sacraments.
From the fourth century on, Christian authors begin to explain the
symbolism of the church in more detail. Two particular circumstances
made such explanations necessary:
(1) In the fourth century, under St Constantine, the Church received the
right to legitimate existence in the Roman Empire. This historical event,
of capital, importance led to the triumph of the Church and had very
important consequences for its art. Construction and adornment of the
churches was developed to a point unknown until that time. The famous
church historian Eusebius of Caesarea speaks at length and very enthusi­
astically about these structures. A large multitude of recent converts filled
these new churches. Most of them needed spiritual guidance and direct
explanation of the Christian faith. One of the ways this instruction was
accomplished was through the symbolism of the churches and of worship,
which was now explained in detail.
(2) In the fourth century, Christian worship took more precise and
determined forms. The liturgies of both St John Chrysostom and St Basil
the Great date to this time. The rapid progress in the definition of rites
5 H. Leclercq, vol. 1, 395.
The Symbolism ofthe Church 21

and in the decoration of churches can be seen in a description by Eusebius

of the reign of St Constantine:
A clear and luminous day, without even the smallest cloud, illuminates with rays
of divine light the churches of Christ in the whole universe... Churches are again
rebuilt to a great height and have a much better appearance than the ancient,
destroyed churches... Feasts of renovation and consecration of new churches are
beginning to be celebrated in the town... The worship which is celebrated by the
priest and the sacred rites become more perfect, the customs of worship become
more beautiful.6

Certain ancient liturgies (for example, the Syriac text of the Liturgy of St
James) contained commentaries for the instruction and guidance of the
faithful. These commentaries were part of the liturgical text and were read
by the deacon during the celebration. It is believed that these commentar­
ies were introduced at the end of the third or in the beginning of the
fourth centuries, that is, at the time when they were made necessary by the
large number of new converts in the Church. This makes us think that
today, too, such commentaries would not be superfluous, at least during
a sermon.
What is the basis of the symbolism in churches? Christian life is based
on two essential realities. One is the redeeming sacrifice of Christ, the
need to participate in this sacrifice, to partake of communion in it in
order to be saved. The other essential truth is the goal and the result of
this sacrifice: the sanctification of man, and with him, of the whole visible
world, resulting in peace between God and the world. This second truth
is the main subject of Church symbolism, which points to the forthcom­
ing universal Kingdom of God. It is precisely this orientation toward the
future, this building up of the future, which distinguished Christian
worship from all others.
Worship can be celebrated in different languages and can take many
forms. Similarly, a church can be shaped like a cross, a basilica or a
rotunda. It can be built according to the tastes and the ideas of any epoch
or of any civilization, but its meaning was, is, and will always be the same.
Each people leaves its characteristic traits in the construction of churches.
But this diversity of forms only serves to emphasize the unity of meaning,
the confession of the same truth.
6 EcclesiasticalHistory^ 1 and 2, PG 20:845A, 845C and 848B.
22 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

In a homily on the consecration of a church in Tyre at the beginning of the

fourth century, Eusebius already devotes a rather detailed passage to the symbol­
ism of the building. His fundamental thought is that, in a church, what we see
is identical to what we hear. The building corresponds to the worship which we
celebrate in it It is the house of God, for God lives in it with the faithfol, the
receivers of His Spirit It is the heavens on earth, it is already the earth of the time
to come, when God will be all in all. The beauty of a church reveals, in a way,
the beauty of the celestial Jerusalem which God prepares for those who love
Him.7 But Eusebius does not limit himself to commenting on the church as a
whole. He already provides several explanations of its parts: the sanctuary,
separated by a barrier, the nave and the narthex.
It is particularly in the seventh and eighth centuries that the symbol­
ism of the churches acquires its most complete theoretical expression. The
most systematic commentaries can be found in the Mystagogy of St
Maximus the Confessor (seventh century), who also left us a remarkable
study of the Liturgy; in the writings of St Sophronius, Patriarch of
Jerusalem (seventh century); in those of St Germanus, Patriarch of Con­
stantinople (d. 740), an important confessor of Orthodoxy during the
iconoclastic period; and in the words of St Simeon, Archbishop of The-
ssalonica (fifteenth century). The seventh and eighth centuries, when
symbolism became so popular, are also the time of vigorous liturgical
creativity, the time of the great hymnographers, St Andrew of Crete, St
Cosmas of Maium and St John of Damascus.
When one studies these commentaries, one must never forget that
they do not express the subjective opinion of the authors. The symbolism
of the Church is objectively based on the essence of Christianity. It
expresses a well-defined reality, the liturgical life, i.e., one of the principal
aspects of Tradition. This is why St Simeon of Thessalonica begins his
Book on the Church with the words:
With love, we pass on to you that which we have taken from the Fathers. For
we offer nothing new, but only that which has been passed on to us, and we have
changed nothing but we have retained everything, like a creed, in the state in
which it has been given to us. We worship exacdy as Christ Himself did and as
did the apostles and the Fathers of the Church.8

7 Ecclesiastical History X, 4, PG 20: 873.

8 PG 155:701AB.
The Symbolism ofthe Church 23

This presents a striking parallel with theological thought, in which the

Fathers also tried to avoid all individual and subjective valuation. “I pray
God so as not to think or to pronounce on Him, as did Solomon,
anything which comes from me personally,” writes St Gregory
Nazianzen.9
St Maximus the Confessor and St Sophronius see in the church the
image of the spiritual and visible worlds, the image of that which we
perceive spiritually and that which we perceive with our senses. They
particularly emphasize the cosmic importance of a church, as an image of
the entire created but transfigured world.
St Germanus speaks of the Church as the Body of Christ and of the
church as a place of worship in the same terms and in the same sentence,
thus emphasizing that the latter is but an image of the former. He says:
“The Church is the heavens on earth, where God, who is higher than the
heavens, lives.” He continues: “It is reminiscent of the crucifixion, the
burial and the resurrection of Christ; it is more glorified than the taberna­
cle of the Covenant,” which obviously refers to the place of worship. “It
was prefigured in the patriarchs, based on the apostles...it was announced
by the prophets, adorned by the hierarchs, sanctified by the martyrs, and
its altar is founded on their holy relics.” Having clearly emphasized the
analogy between the Church, the Body of Christ, and a church as the
place of worship, St Germanus goes on to explain the meaning of the
place of worship:
The church is a divine housé'where the mysterious and vivifying sacrifice is
fulfilled; it contains the interior sanctuary, the holy cave, the sepulcher, the meal
which saves and vivifies the soul; it is the place where you will find the pearls of
the divine dogmas which the Lord taught unto His disciples.
St Simeon of Thessalonica also emphasizes this significance of the
church and specifies, among other things, that the most solemn rite of the
consecration of a church presents it to us as “a mysterious heaven and the
Church of the first-born.” It is obvious that the Church about which the
Fathers speak is not only the terrestrial Church in its present state, but it
is also the celestial Church which is intricately connected with it; in other
words, the Kingdom of God which will come in its power when God will
be “all in all” (Eph 1:23). This is what the church expresses. St Simeon of

9 Hom. 20t On the Trinity, PG 35: 1069C.

24 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Thessalonica calls a church “paradise,” and the “gifts of paradise,” for it

contains not the tree of life, but life itself, which acts in the sacraments
and is communicated to the faithful.
Thus, a church is a very complex reality, having a meaning rich in
content. It is a sacred place where the members of the Church commune
in the divine life through the sacraments. Being the first fruits of the
Kingdom to come, it is both a part of this Kingdom, as it already exists on
the earth, and an anticipation of its coming in glory. It is an image of the
divine Kingdom, toward which the Church leads the world.
But patristic commentaries do not limit themselves to explaining the
symbolism of the church building. They also clarify the meaning of each
of its parts. The patristic conception of a church and of its parts is well
summarized in a contemporary work, Archbishop Benjamins Novaia
Skrizhal' (“New Table of the Law”). The church can be divided into three
parts (the sanctuary, the nave and the narthex), according to the plan of
the tabernacle of Moses and the temple of Solomon. Just as the people of
Israel, the Church of the Old Testament, prefigured the Church of the
New Testament, so also the tabernacle and the temple prefigured the
sacred places of the New Covenant, which have preserved the same plan
(Fig. 1). St Simeon of Thessalonica is reminded of the Holy Trinity by this
tripartition of the three orders of the celestial hierarchs and of the Chris­
tian people themselves, who are divided into three categories: the clergy,
the faithful, and the penitents and catechumens.
The sanctuary is reserved for the clergy. It is the most important part
of the church, where the sacrament of the Eucharist is performed, and
corresponds to the holy of holies in the tabernacle. Symbolically, the
sanctuary represents the house of God, “the heaven of the heavens,”
according to St Simeon of Thessalonica. According to the words of St
Germanus, it is “the place where Christ, King of all things, rules with the
apostles.” The sanctuary is usually in the eastern part of the building, so
that the whole church faces east. This orientation also has a symbolic
significance. On the one hand, the lost paradise was “in the East.” On the
other hand, and more important, the coming of the Kingdom is often
identified with the sunrise: Christ is glorified as “the Orient from on
high.” This Kingdom of God to come is often seen, particularly in the
first centuries of Christianity, as “the eighth day” of creation. The coming
The Symbolism ofthe Church 25

1. Plan of an Orthodox Church

26 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

of this “day without end,” which we await and prepare for, its rising, as it
were, is symbolized by the sunrise in the east. This is why St Basil
stipulates, in his canon 90, that our prayers should always be oriented
towards the east, where the sun rises.
The central part of the church, the nave, corresponds to the “holy” of
the tabernacle, which was separated from the courtyard by a veil. Every
day, the Jewish priests would enter it to bring the sacrifices. In the Church
of the New Testament, it is the faithful laypeople, “the royal priesthood,
the holy people,” according to the expression of St Paul, who enter into
this part and pray to God. This part of the church is therefore for those
persons who are enlightened by the faith and who are preparing them­
selves to partake in the grace of the eucharistie sacrament. Having re­
ceived this grace, they are redeemed and sanctified; they are the Kingdom
of God. If the sanctuary represents that which goes beyond the created
world, the house of God Himself, then the nave of the church represents
the created world. But it is a world which is justified, sanctified and
deified; it is the Kingdom of God, the new earth and the new heavens.
This is how the Fathers describe this part of the church. St Maximus the
Confessor, for example, says the following:
Just as, in man, the carnal and spiritual principles are united, even though the
carnal principle does not absorb the spiritual, nor does the spiritual principle
absorb the carnal into itself, but rather spiritualizes it, so that the body itself
becomes an expression of the spirit, so also in a church, the sanctuary and the
nave communicate: the sanctuary enlightens and guides the nave, which becomes
its visible expression. Such a relationship restores the normal order of the
universe, which had been destroyed by the fall of man. Thus it reestablishes what
had been in paradise and what will be in the Kingdom of God.10

The narthex, finally, corresponds to the courtyard of the tabernacle,

the external part, which was reserved for the people. Today, the sanctified
people stand in the nave, and it is the catechumens and penitents who
remain in the narthex, that is, those who are only preparing themselves to
enter the Church and those whom the Church places in a special category
and who are not permitted to partake in the communion of the holy gifts.
This is why, once the sacrament is fulfilled, those who do not partake of
it are asked to leave, some because they are not yet members of the
10 Mystagogy, chs. 8-21, PG 91: 672.
The Symbolism ofthe Church 27

Church and others because they have fallen away or are considered
unworthy. Thus the very plan of a church makes a clear distinction
between those who participate in the Body of Christ and those who do
not. The latter are not driven out of the church and can remain until a
certain moment. But they cannot participate in the internal, sacramental
life of the Church. They are neither completely outside the church, nor a
part of it. They are, so to speak, on the periphery, at the limit between the
Church and the world. The narthex, according to the Fathers, symbolizes
the unredeemed part of the world, the world lying in sin, and even hell. It
is always at the end of the church opposite from the sanctuary, that is, at
the west end.
A “temporal” significance, which changes during the different moments of
worship, is added to the “spatial” and permanent significance of a church. The
Church also uses images in order to show that a church, a place of worship, is
an image of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, that it is the real first
fruits and the image of the Kingdom of God to come, and in order to make
this image more precise, by suggesting the presence of this Kingdom to come.
The iconographie subjects are distributed according to the meaning of each
part of a church and its role in worship. If the symbolism of the Liturgy was
explained by the Fathers during the pre-iconoclastic period, in contrast, it is
after the iconoclastic period that the relationship between the decoration of
the church and this symbolism was made more specific The decoration
acquired the forms of a clear and precise theological system.
We will speak here only in very general terms of the classical plan of
decoration which prevailed from the ninth century, that is, from the
post-iconoclastic period, when the system of decorating of churches was
definitely established, until the end of the seventeenth century. Obvi­
ously, this stability and uniformity exists only in the general shape of the
decoration, not in its details.
In the sanctuary, the first row of paintings, beginning from the bot­
tom, represents the Fathers, authors of liturgies, and with them the other
holy hierarchs and deacons in their rank of concélébrants. Above these,
the Eucharist itself is represented in the form of bread and wine. Above
the Eucharist, the image of the Mother of God is placed directly behind
the altar. Her place, close to the sacrament, corresponds to her place in the
eucharistie canon where, immediately after the epiclesis, she is mentioned
28 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

at the head of the entire Church. At the same time, the Mother of God
personifies the Church itself, because she contained in herself the Creator
of the world whom the whole world cannot contain. This is why, in this
part of the sanctuary, she is usually represented in the orante position, that
is, interceding before God for the sins of the world, which is simulta­
neously her role and the role of the Church. This representation of the
Virgin praying in the very place where the sacrifice is fulfilled reflects a
very special meaning. The uplifted hands are a gesture which completes
the sacrifice. This is why the priest also makes this same gesture during the
Liturgy. This position of uplifted hands is not a formal requirement, but
it has become deeply rooted in the Liturgy, as it is bound to the sacrifice
and is the image of prayer itself.
Because the sanctuary is the place where the unbloody sacrifice estab­
lished by Christ is offered, the image of Christ is placed above that of the
Virgin. It is He who is Himself the offered sacrifice and the Sanctifier who
offers, and His image has a uniquely eucharistie significance here. Finally,
Pentecost is represented in the vault. This image indicates the presence of
the Holy Spirit, through whom the sacrament of the Eucharist is fulfilled.
This very brief survey permits us to see the capital importance of the
sanctuary: It is the place which sanctifies the entire church. When the
Royal Doors are opened during the Liturgy, it is as if the heavens
themselves were opened a bit, permitting us to catch a glimpse of their
splendor.
The nave of the church, as we already know, symbolizes the transfig­
ured creation, the new earth and the new heavens, and at the same time,
the Church. This is why the leader of the Church, Christ the Pantocrator,
is painted in the dome. The Church had been announced by the prophets
and was established on the apostles; they are represented immediately
under the image of Christ. They are followed, in die four comers, by the
four evangelists, who announced the good news and preached the Gospel
in the four parts of the world. The columns which support the building
are decorated with the images of the pillars of the Church: the martyrs,
the hierarchs and the ascetics. The most important events of sacred
history are found everywhere on the walls, particularly those events which
the liturgical feasts celebrate, the “pearls of divine dogmas,” in the words
of St Germanus of Constantinople. Finally, on the western wall, the Last
The Symbolism ofthe Church 29

Judgment is presented: the end of church history and the beginning of the
age to come.
Thus, the decoration of Orthodox churches does not depend on the
individual conception of artists. The iconographie themes are distributed
according to the meaning of the church as a whole and the meaning of
each of its parts.

The Church of the Old Testament, as well as all other religions, used
symbols. This symbolism prefigured the coming of Christ. But Christ has
come, and, nevertheless, the symbolism inherited from Israel continues to
exist in the new Church, as an indispensable part of its worship, penetrat­
ing the entire Liturgy with its words, its gestures and its images. This
symbolism is an initiation into the mysteries which are fulfilled in the
Church and the revelation of a reality which is always present in it and
which cannot be expressed directly. This reality is the Kingdom of God,
whose authentic first-fruits are present as a spiritual, material and physical
reality in the Eucharist, the central sacrament of the Church. For “it is
impossible for us to raise ourselves to the contemplation of spiritual
objects without some kind of intermediary, and to lift ourselves, we need
something which is close and familiar to us,” says St John of Damascus.11
In other words, worship, and everything which is a part of it, is a path
toward our sanctification, toward our deification. Everything in a church
is oriented toward this goal. After the Fall, the Old Testament was the first
step, but it was not yet a direct preparation for the age to come; it was only
the preparation for the second stage, that of the New Testament. That
which was, in the Old Testament, the future, has now become the
present; and this present, in turn, prepares and leads us to that which is
still to come, the celestial Jerusalem. Here is how St John of Damascus
understands the Epistle to the Hebrews:
Notice that the law and everything that was established by the law, as well as the
whole worship which we now offer up, are sacred things made by man which,
through the intermediary of matter, we lift towards the immaterial God. The
law and everything that was established by the law [that is, the entire Old
Testament] was a préfiguration of our present worship. And the worship which
we presendy offer up is an image of the things to come. These things [that is,

11 First Treatise in the Defense ofHoly Icons, ch. 2 PG 94: 1233.

30 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

reality itself] are the celestial, immaterial Jerusalem which is not made by the
hand of man, according to the words of the Aposde, "for here we have no lasting
city, but we seek the city which is to come” [Heb 13:14], that is, the celestial
Jerusalem of which God is the "builder and maker” [Heb 11:10]. Indeed,
everything that was established both by the law and by our present worship only
exists in relation to the celestial Jerusalem.12

A church is, therefore, the préfiguration of the peace to come, of the

new heavens, and of the new earth where all creatures will gather around
their Creator. The construction and decoration of churches is based on
this image. The Fathers do not stipulate any style of architecture; they do
not indicate how the building should be decorated and how icons should
be painted. Everything flows from the general meaning of the church and
follows a rule of art which is analogous to the rule of liturgical creativity.
In other words, we have a very clear, albeit general, formula which guides
the architect and the artist, while leaving him the freedom of the Holy
Spirit. This formula is passed on from generation to generation by the
living Tradition of the Church, the Tradition which dates back not only
to the apostles but even to the Old Testament. If we live in this Tradition,
we can understand the Church as it was understood by our holy Fathers,
and we will decorate it accordingly. If we move away from this Tradition,
we can introduce into our churches elements which do not correspond to
the Church’s very nature, but which reflect only our everyday life. Thus,
we secularize the Church.
The very meaning of the church, its raison d'etre, requires it to be
different from all other buildings. According to the words of Jesus Christ
Himself, His Church is a Kingdom “which is not of this world.” How­
ever, the Church lives in the world and for the world, for its salvation.
This is the goal of its existence. Being the “Kingdom which is not of this
world,” it has its own nature which is distinct from the world. And it can
fulfill its goal only by remaining faithful to its specific nature, to itself. Its
way of life, its actions and methods, are different from those of the world.
Its art, in particular, does not resemble the art of the world. It expresses
different kinds of truths and has other goals. If it mingles with secular art,
it no longer corresponds to the goal which it must serve.
From the first centuries, the Christian Church established the interior
12 Second Treatise in the Defense ofHoly lams, ch. 23, PG 94: 1309.
The Symbolism ofthe Church 31

aspect of its temples, the character of the sacred images, the hymns, the
sacerdotal vestments, etc. All this forms a harmonious whole, a perfect
unity and a liturgical fullness in the Church and in the Liturgy. This
unity, this convergence toward the same goal, implies that each of the
elements which make up the divine service is subordinate to the general
meaning of the church and, consequently, no element has value in itself alone.
Images and hymns express, each in their own way, the same transfigured
universe and prefigure the same peace to come.
United by this common goal, these different elements which enter into
worship realize this “unity in diversity” and this “richness in unity” which
express, both as a whole and in every detail, the catholicity of the Ortho­
dox Church, its sobomost*. They create the beauty of the church which is
so different from the beauty of the world because it reflects the harmony
of the age to come. As an example, one can remember the Russian
chronicler’s account of the conversion of St Prince Vladimir. When his
messengers, whom he had sent to Constantinople as part of his program
of comparing the different religions, returned, they told of how, when
they were participating in a Liturgy at St Sophia, they no longer knew
whether they were on earth or in heaven. Even if this is only a legend, it
corresponds perfectly to the Orthodox understanding of beauty. The
imperial palace was also beautiful, but it did not leave the same impression
on the messengers of St Vladimir.

All of this of course is not new, but the obvious experience of one who
lives in the Church. The Church never loses this Tradition, and reminds
us of it constantly by the Liturgy, by the voice of its councils, by its
hierarchs and its faithful. Thus, in 1945, the Patriarch of Moscow, Alexis,
called us to Tradition by writing the following to the clergy of Moscow:
So as to indicate what true beauty is in the church, in worship, and, in particular,
in liturgical music, not according to my personal taste but in the very spirit of
the Church, I wish to give the following directions, which are indispensable for
all priests and for all churches.
In a church, everything is different from that which we constantly see around
us and in our homes. The images are not the same as those we have in our homes.
The walls are painted with sacred images; everything shines brighdy; everything
raises the spirit and removes it from the usual thoughts and impressions of this
world. And when we see in a church something which does not correspond to
its greatness and its meaning, we are shocked. The holy Fathers, who not only
32 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

established the rite and the worship, but also the external aspect and the internal
arrangement, thought of everything. They foresaw and ordered everything so as
to create in the faithful a special spiritual stete, so that nothing impedes their
flight toward the heavens, toward God, toward the celestial world whose
reflection a church should be. If in a hospital everything is directed toward
treating the maladies of the body, and conditions are created which correspond
to the needs of the sick person, so in a spiritual hospital, a church of God, one
should also provide all the things that are needed.1

In his message, the late patriarch particularly emphasized music,

which, just like the image, is one of the grave questions of our day. “To
sing liturgical hymns in the shrill manner of worldly songs or of the
passionate tunes of opera is to deprive the faithful of any possibility of
concentrating, as well as of grasping the contents and the meaning of the
hymns.” However beautiful these songs and these tunes may be in them­
selves, they do not fulfill the purpose of church singing. The same can be
said about images. Of course, each one of us has his habits and his tastes.
But in church we must learn to transcend them and to sacrifice them.
Moreover, the role of a church is not at all to satisfy the habits and tastes
of some individual; it consists in directing him or her on the saving path
of Christ.
The symbolism of the church shows us the foundation on which the
symbolic language of worship, and, in particular, of the icon, is based—
this language which we have unfortunately forgotten. All the testimonies
of the Fathers and of the ecclesiastical writers which we have mentioned
are only a few expressions of that by which the Church has lived from its
beginning and by which it will live until the Second Coming of Christ.
The direct image is a characteristic trait of the New Testament. This
New Testament image will not disappear until the coming of the reality
which it prefigures: the Kingdom of God. But as long as we are still on the
way, as long as the Church is still only building this Kingdom to come, we
will continue to live in the realm of the image. It is through the image that
the Church shows us the way toward our goal.
We could not participate in the building up of the Kingdom of God,
we could not ask in all good conscience, “Thy Kingdom come,” if we had
13 “Paschal Message to the Rectors of the Churches in Moscow,” Calendar ofthe Patriarchate of
Moscowfor 1947(in Russian).
The Symbolism ofthe Church 33

no idea of what this Kingdom will be. The symbolism of an Orthodox

church and, in particular, of an icon is an authentic reflection, though of
course a very weak one, of the glory of the age to come. In the words of St
Symeon the New Theologian:
God can be known to us in the same way as a man can see an endless ocean by
standing at the shore at night with a dimly lit candle. Do you think he can see
much? Not much, almost nothing. And nevertheless, he sees the water well. He
knows that there is an ocean in front of him, that this ocean is huge and that he
cannot see it all at once. The same is true of our knowledge of God.14

14 Oration 61, Works (Moscow, 1892—in Russian), 100.

 2

Origins of the Christian Image

^phe word “icon” derives from the Greek word eliaôv, meaning “image”
x or “portrait.” When the Christian image was being created in Byzan­
tium, this term was used for all representations of Christ, the Virgin, a
saint, an angel or an event from sacred history, whether this image was
painted or sculpted,1 mobile or monumental, and whatever the technique
used. Now this term is used by preference to designate portable works of
painting, sculpture, mosaic, and the like. This is the meaning given to the
icon in archaeology and history of art. In the Church, we also make a
distinction between a wall-painting and an icon. A wall-painting, whether
it is a fresco or a mosaic, is not an object by itself, but is a part of the
architecture, while an icon painted on a board is itself an object of art. But
in principle, their meaning is the same. They are distinguished not by their
significance but by their use and purpose. Thus, when we speak of icons,
we will have in mind all sacred images, whether they are paintings on
boards, frescoes, mosaics or sculptures. In any case, the English word
“image,” just as the Russian word obraz, embraces all these meanings.
We must first make a brief comment about the different points of view
concerning the origin of Christian art and attitude of the Church toward
it in the first centuries. Such points of view have indeed led to different
evaluations. There are, on the one hand, the scientific points of view
which are numerous, fluctuating and often contradictory. They are some­
times close to the attitude of the Church, and are sometimes opposed to
it. On the other hand, there is the attitude of the Church, which is unique
and has never changed from the beginning until now. The Orthodox
Church maintains and teaches that the sacred image has existed from the
beginning of Christianity. Far from being opposed to the latter, the image
1 One must note that, contrary to current opinion, the Orthodox Church never forbade the use
of statues; such a negative prescription would have no basis in the teaching of the Church.

35
36 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

is, on the contrary, its indispensable attribute. The Church declares that
the icon is an outcome of the Incarnation; that it is based upon this
Incarnation and therefore belongs to the very essence of Christianity, and
cannot be separated from it.
Points of view that contradict this statement of the Church became
widespread from the eighteenth century on. The English scholar Gibbon
(1737-1791), author of The History of the Decline and Fall ofthe Roman
Empire, maintained that the first Christians had an insurmountable aver­
sion to the use of images. According to him, this aversion was a conse­
quence of their Jewish origin. Gibbon believed that the first icons
appeared only in the beginning of the fourth century. This opinion was
accepted by many, and Gibbon’s ideas have unfortunately been upheld, in
one form or another, until the present day.
It cannot be doubted that certain Christians, especially those coming
from Judaism and relying on the Old Testament interdiction, denied the
very possibility of the image in Christianity; and this all the more since the
Christian communities were surrounded on all sides by a paganism whose
influence was still felt. These Christians, taking into account their ill-fated
experience of paganism, made an effort to keep their religion from being
contaminated by idolatry, which could encroach upon it by way of artistic
creation. Iconoclasm must have been as old as the cult of images. All this
is easily understood, but it could not have played a decisive role in the
Church, as we shall see.
According to modem scholarship, the aversion of the first Christians
toward images is based upon the texts of certain ancient authors2 directed
against art, such authors being qualified as “Fathers of the Church.” A
clarification is needed: since an ecclesiastical term (“Fathers of the Church”)
is used, it is important not to deviate from its proper meaning. Now, in spite
of the respect the Church has for some of these ancient authors who occupy
the central place in the scholarly argumentation (Tertullian, Origen and
Eusebius), it does not view them as being truly Orthodox.3 Thus, one

2 Especially Tertullian (160-240/250), Clement of Alexandria (150-216), Origen (185/186—

254/255), Eusebius of Caesarea (265-399/340) and others who are less well-known, such as
Minutius Felix (second or third centuries), Amobius (255/260-327), and Lactantius (240/250-?).
3 Despite all his greatness as an apologist and confessor, Tertullian ended his life in a Montanist
sect; his De Pudicitia^ in which he protests against certain images, was written after he had
Origins ofthe Christian Image 37

attributes to the Church an attitude which it does not recognize as being

its own. At the most, the writings of these authors can be acknowledged
as expressions of their personal convictions, and as reflecting certain
trends in the Church that were antagonistic toward images. But they
cannot be recognized as Church Fathers, and this is not merely a semantic
quarrel: by calling such writers “Fathers of the Church,” one identifies
their attitude with that of the Church, the spokesmen of which they
would have been, and one concludes that it is die Church itself that was
opposed to images for fear of idolatry.
“Christian art is bom outside the Church and, at least at the begin­
ning, developed almost against its will. Christianity, springing from Juda­
ism, was naturally, like the religion from which it arose, hostile to
idolatry.” The author concludes:
The Church did not create Christian art. In all probability, it did not retain an
indifferent and uninterested attitude towards it for long; in accepting it, the
Church most probably restricted it in certain ways, but it was created upon the
initiative of the faithful.4

The penetration of images into worship is viewed as a phenomenon that

escaped the control of the Church and is, in the best of cases, due to
indecision, to the vacillation of the hierarchy when confronted by this
“paganization” of Christianity. If art appeared in the Church, it is despite
the latter. “One will certainly not be wrong in dating the general reversal
of the Church on the question of images to between 350 and 400,” Th.
Klauser writes.5 Thus, according to modern scholarship, there is, on the
one hand, the Church, represented by the hierarchy and the clergy and,
on the other, the faithful, and it is precisely the faithful who would have
imposed the image upon the hierarchy. By identifying the Church only

already left the Church. Origen was condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council; Eusebius,
a semi-Arian, was also an Origenist.
4 L. Bréhier, LArt chrétien (Paris, 1928), 13,16. In the same order of ideas, see, for example, the
famous Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie by F. Cabrol (Paris, 1915); Ch.
Diehl, Manuel d'Art byzantin vol. 1 (1925), 1, 360; the official Encyclopedia of the Roman
Church entitled Ecclesia (Paris, 1927), 611; L. Réau, L'Art du Moyen âge, coll. “L’évolution de
l’humanité" (Paris, 1935), 2, 3; V. Lazarev, History of Byzantine Painting vol. 1 (in Russian)
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1947), 41; A. Grabar, Lïconoclasme byzantin (Paris, 1957), the chapter
entided “L’Eglise et les images." Among the most recent authors, let us mention Th. Klauser,
“Die Äusserungen der alten Kirche zur Kunst," Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgie-Geschichte
(Münster, 1974), 329-37.
5 Ibid., 334.
38 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

with the hierarchy, one contradicts the concept of the Church as it was in
the first Christian centuries, and as it always is in Orthodoxy. The body
of the Church is formed by the clergy and the faithful together.
This theory also contradicts the material data we possess. Indeed, the
existence of frescoes in the catacombs from the first century on is well
known, namely in places of assembly and worship, and where the clergy
were buried (for example, in the catacomb of Callistus). Such images were
therefore known not only to the faithful but also to the hierarchy. It is
hard to imagine that the clergy did not see them and that, if Christianity
was incompatible with art, it did not take any measures to put an end to
this error.6
The iconoclastic attitude of certain ancient authors and the prejudice
against images within certain trends among Christians of our time (Prot­
estantism, for example) have led to an identification of the Christian
image with the idol. This confusion has, with great thoughtlessness, been
attributed to the ancient Church for which, still according to these
modern authors, the Old Testament interdiction remained valid. But no
Orthodox believer could accept the confusion between icon and idol. We
know, indeed, that the Church during its long history has invariably
drawn a very clear line between the two. Proofs for this are found in the
works of ancient authors or in the first-century saints’ lives or later.
As to the ancient authors, even when one admits that their opposition
to images was real (as was the case with Eusebius), such opposition only
proves the existence and role of the image, for one does not fight against
that which does not exist or is of no importance. But most of them, while
protesting against images, clearly had in mind only pagan images. Thus,
Clement of Alexandria, among those who are viewed as the most unre­
lenting adversaries of Christian images, writes:
Art has another illusion with which to beguile; for it leads you on, though not
to be in love with the statues and paintings, yet to honor and worship them. The
painting, you say, is lifelike. Let the art be praised, but let it not beguile man by

6 It is true that modem scholarship tends not to follow the dating made by scholars in the past;
on the contrary, it redates the frescoes in the catacombs in terms of its own scientific
procedures. Thus, Th. Klauser believes that the dating should be modified so as to adapt it to
the observations he develops. This is what is actually done. See, for example, the journal Les
Dossiers de L'Archéologie, no 18 (1977), where the same frescoes are attributed either to the
second or to the fourth century, depending on the scientific method of the authors.
Origins ofthe Christian Image 39

pretending to be truth.7

Thus, Clement speaks only of images that “fascinate and deceive,” pre­
senting themselves as the truth; he is opposed merely to false, deceiving
art. Elsewhere he writes:
We are permitted to have a ring to make a seal. The images which are engraved
on it and which we use as a seal should preferably be a dove, a fish, or a ship with
unfurled and rapid sails; one can even represent a lyre as did Polycrates or an
anchor as did Seleucus; finally, one could represent a fisherman at the seashore,
the sight of which would remind us of the apostle and the children drawn out
from the waters [i.e., the newly baptized].8

AU of these images are Christian symbols. It is obvious that two very

different kinds of images are being spoken of—images that are desirable
and useful to Christians, and others which are false and inadmissible.
Besides, Clement himself specifies this by criticizing Christians who, on
their seals, engrave images of pagan gods, on their swords and arrows
images of the goddess of war, on their goblets images of Bacchus, etc.—all
representations which are incompatible with Christianity. All of this bears
witness to a prudent and vigilant attitude towards the image on the part
of Clement. It is true that he only speaks of its secular use, and says
nothing about the liturgical application of images; we do not know his
opinion on this subject.
But the scholarly world has never adopted an unchanging attitude
toward Christian art; aside from the opinions we have already mentioned,
there is another point of view. Thus an art historian, while basing himself
on the same ancient writers as well as on St Justin and St Athenagoras,
concludes; “The apologists say nothing about the Christians’ opposition
in principle to images; they only state that in their time there were very
few images.”9 Indeed, had the Christians not allowed representations, we
would not have discovered monuments of Christian art of the first
centuries precisely in places where Christians assembled. On the other
hand, the wide diffusion of images during the centuries that followed
would be incomprehensible and inexplicable had they not existed earlier.

7 Protrepticus Clement ofAlexandria, trans. G. Butterworth (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1953), 133.
8 Paedagogos, PG 8: 633.
9 N. Pokrovskii, “Monuments of Christian Iconography and Art* (in Russian), 2nd ed. (St
Petersburg, 1900), 16.
40 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

But there is another text which is invariably quoted to prove the

Church’s opposition to images. It must be admitted that it is more
convincing than Clement’s. This is canon 36 of the local council which
took place in Elvira, in Spain, around the year 306: “It seemed good to us
that paintings should not be found in churches and that that which is
venerated and adored not be painted on the walls (Placuit picturas in
ecclesia esse non debere, nequod colitur etadoratur in parietibus depingatur)”
However, the meaning of this text is not as indisputable as is sometimes
believed. Indeed, the reference is only to wall paintings, that is, to
monumental decoration of the church building; other types of images are
passed over in silence. We know that in Spain, at this time, there existed a
large number of images on sacred vessels, on sarcophagi, and so forth. If
the council does not mention them, this is because its decision may have
been determined by practical reasons and not because it denied the sacred
image on principle. Let us not forget that the Council of Elvira (the exact
date of which is not known) was contemporary with the persecution of
Diocletian. Should one not see in canon 36 rather an attempt to preserve
“what is venerated and adored” from profanation: On the other hand, the
aim of the Council of Elvira as a whole was to correct abuses in various
domains. Could there not have been any in the veneration of images also?
What is decisive for the Church is not the antiquity of a given passage
for or against the icon (the chronological factor), but the agreement or
disagreement of this testimony with the Christian revelation.
The rejection of images in certain circles during the first Christian
centuries may be explained by a certain confusion in the attitude toward
the image—a confusion which was undoubtedly due to the lack of an
adequate artistic and verbal language. To respond to all such ambiguities
and to this diversity of attitudes toward art, one would have to discover art
forms and verbal expressions that could not be misunderstood. In fact, the
situation in the domain of art was the same as in theology or in the liturgy.
Such lack of clarity and of unity is due to the creature’s difficulty in
accepting, assimilating and expressing that which transcends it. More­
over, the fact that Christ chose the Judaeo-Greco-Roman world for His
Incarnation should also be taken into account. In that world, the reality
of the Incarnation of God and the mysteiy of the cross were a scandal to
some, folly to others. Scandal and folly were therefore in the image which
Origins ofthe Christian Image 41

reflected these, the icon. But the Christian kerygma vns addressed pre­
cisely to this world. In order gradually to accustom the people to the
inconceivable reality of the Incarnation, the Church first spoke to them in
a language that was more readily accessible than a direct image. Therein,
it seems, lies one of the main reasons for the abundance of symbols in the
first Christian centuries. What was used, as St Paul says, was liquid
nourishment, fit for childhood. The iconic quality of the image pene­
trated only slowly and with difficulty into the awareness of the people,
and into their art. Only time and the needs of various historic epochs
evinced this sacred character of the image, brought about the disappear­
ance of the primitive symbols, and purified Christian art from all sorts of
alien elements that concealed its content.

Thus, in spite of the (act that certain tendencies antagonistic to images

existed within the Church, there was also, and above all, an essential trend
favorable to images, one which became increasingly dominant without
being formulated explicitly. It is this trend which is expressed by the
Tradition of the Church when it speaks of the existence of the icon of the
Lord when He lived on earth, and of icons of the Virgin made soon
afterwards, precisely after Pentecost. This Tradition attests that within the
Church there was from the beginning a clear understanding of the mean­
ing and scope of the image, and that the attitude of the Church towards
the image is invariably the same, since this attitude derives from its
teaching on the Incarnation of God. This image therefore belongs to the
very nature of Christianity, since it is not only the revelation of the Word
of God, but also of the Image of God, manifested by the God-Man. The
Church teaches that the image is based on the Incarnation of the second
person of the Trinity. This is not a break with nor even a contradiction of
the Old Testament, as the Protestants understand it; but, on the contrary,
it clearly fulfills it, for the existence of the image in the New Testament is
implied by its prohibition in the Old. Even though this may appear to be
strange, the sacred image for the Church proceeds precisely from the
absence of the image in the Old Testament. The forerunner of the Chris­
tian image is not the pagan idol, as is sometimes thought, but the absence
of direct iconography before the Incarnation, just as the forerunner of the
Church is not the pagan world, but the Israel of old, the people chosen by
God to witness His revelation. The prohibition of the image which
42 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

appears in Exodus (20:4) and in Deuteronomy (5:12-19) is a provisional,

pedagogic measure which concerns only the Old Testament, and is not a
prohibition in theory. “‘Moreover I gave them statues that were not good’
(Ez 20:25) because of their callousness,” says St John of Damascus,
explaining this prohibition10 by means of a biblical quotation. Indeed, the
prohibition of all direct and concrete images was accompanied by the
divine commandment to establish certain symbolic images, those préfigu­
rations which were the tabernacle and everything which it contained, and
the smallest details of which were, so to speak, dictated by God.
The teaching of the Church on this subject is clearly explained by St
John of Damascus (Fig. 2) in his three Treatises in the Defense ofHoly Icons,
written in response to the iconoclasts, who limited themselves to the
biblical prohibition and confused the Christian image with the idol.
Comparing the Old Testament texts and the Gospel, St John shows that
the Christian image, far from contradicting the prohibition of the Old
Testament, is, as we have said, its result and conclusion, since it arises
from the very essence of Christianity.

His reasoning can be summarized as follows: in the Old Testament,

God manifests Himself directly to His people only by sound, by word. He
does not show Himself, and remains invisible. Israel does not see any
image. In Deuteronomy (4:12), we read: “The Lord spoke to you out of
the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but saw no form;
there was only a voice.” And a bit further (4:15), we read: “Therefore take
good heed to yourselves. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord
spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire.” The prohibition
comes immediately afterwards (4:16-19).
Beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the
form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that
is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness
of any thing that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water
under the earth. And beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you
see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn
away and worship them and serve them...

10 De imaginibus oratio II, ch. 15, PG 94: 1301C. For an English translation, see Sr John of
Damascus. On the Divine Images, trans. David Anderson (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1980).
Origins ofthe Christian Image 43

2. StJohn ofDamascus
44 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Thus when God speaks of creatures, He forbids their representation. But

when He speaks of Himself, He also forbids the making of His image,
stressing the fact that He is invisible. Neither the people, nor even Moses
saw any image of Him. They only heard His words. Not having seen
God’s image, they could not represent it; they could only write down His
divine word, which is what Moses did. And how could they represent that
which is incorporeal and indescribable, that which has neither shape nor
limit? But in the very insistence of the biblical texts to emphasize that
Israel hears the word but does not see the image, St John of Damascus
discovers a mysterious sign of the future possibility of seeing and repre­
senting God coming in the flesh. “What is mysteriously indicated in these
passages of Scripture?,” he asks.
It is clearly a prohibition against representing the invisible God. But when you
see Him who has no body become man for you, then you will make represen­
tations of His human aspect. When the Invisible, having clothed Himself in the
flesh, becomes visible, then represent the likeness of Him who has appeared...
When He who, having been the consubstantial Image of the Father, emptied
Himself by taking the form of a servant [Phil 2:6-7], thus becoming bound in
quantity and quality, having taken on the carnal image, then paint and make
visible to everyone Him who desired to become visible. Paint His birth from the
Virgin, His baptism in the Jordan, His transfiguration on Mount Tabor... Paint
everything with words and with colors, in books and on boards.11

Thus the very prohibition against representing the invisible God implies
the necessity of representing God once the prophecies have been fulfilled.
The words of the Lord, “You have seen no images; hence do not create
any,” mean “create no images of God as long as you have not seen Him? An
image of an invisible God is impossible, “for how can that which is
inaccessible to the eye be represented?”12 If such an image were made, it
would be based on imagination and would therefore be a falsehood and a
lie.
One can therefore say that the scriptural prohibition against represent­
ing God is connected with the overall destiny of the Israelites. The
purpose of the chosen people was to serve the true God. Theirs was a
mission consisting in preparing and prefiguring that which was to be
revealed in the New Testament. This is why there could only be symbolic

11 Oratio I, ch. 8, PG 94:1237D-1240A, and Oratio III, ch. 8, PG 94:1328D.

12 Oratio III, ch. 4, PG 94: 1321.
Origins ofthe Christian Image 45

préfigurations, revelations of the future. “The law was not an image,” says
St John of Damascus, “but it was like a wall which hid the image.” The
Apostle Paul says: “The law was but a shadow of the good things to come
instead of the true form of these realities” (Heb 10: l).13 In other words, it
is the New Testament which is the true image of reality.
But what about the prohibition against images of creatures given by
God to Moses? This principle clearly has only one purpose: to forbid the
chosen people to worship creatures in place of the Creator. “You shall not
bow down to them or serve them” (Ex 20:5 and Dt 5:9). Indeed, given
the leanings of the people towards idolatry, creatures and all images of
creatures could easily be deified and worshiped. After the fall of Adam,
man, together with the entire terrestrial world, became subject to corrup­
tion. This is why the image of man corrupted by sin or the image of
terrestrial beings could not bring man closer to the only true God and
could only lead him in the opposite direction, that is, to idolatry. This
image was fundamentally impure.
In other words, the image of a creature cannot be a substitute for the
image of God, which the people had not seen when the Lord spoke on
Horeb. In the face of God, the creation of a substitute is always an
iniquity. Hence these words: “Beware lest you act corruptly by making a
graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of any
beast that is on the earth” (Dt 4:16).
But this prohibition is clearly a step to protect the specific ministry of
the chosen people from corrupt practices. This clearly emerges from
God’s command to Moses to build, according to the image shown to him
on the mountain, the tabernacle and all that it was to contain, including
the gilded cherubim cast in metal (Ex 25:18; 26:1, 31). This command­
ment first of all signifies the possibility of expressing spiritual reality
through art. Furthermore, it was not just a matter of representing cheru­
bim in general or anywhere, since the Jews would have been able to come
to idolize these images as easily as those of all other creatures. Cherubim
could be represented only as servants of the true God in the tabernacle, in
a place and posture appropriate to this honor.
This exception to the general rule shows that the prohibition of images

13 Oratio I, di. 15, PG 94: 1244.

46 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

was not absolute. “Solomon, who received the gift of wisdom, when he
made representations of the sky, made images of cherubim, lions and
bulls,” says St John of Damascus.14 The fact that such creatures were
represented near the temple, that is, where the only true God was wor­
shiped, excluded any possibility of adoring them.15
To build the tabernacle according to the model shown on the moun­
tain, God chose special men. It was not simply a matter of natural gifts
and of the ability to follow Moses’ instructions: “I have filled him
[Bez’alel] with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with
knowledge and all craftsmanship”; and further, speaking of all those who
would work with Bez’alel: “I have given to all men ability, that they may
make all that I have commanded you” (Ex 31:3 and 6). It is clearly shown
here that art which serves God is not like any other art. It is based not only
on the talent and wisdom of men, but also on the wisdom of the Spirit of
God, on an intelligence granted by God Himself. In other words, divine
inspiration is the very principle of liturgical art. Here the Scripture draws
a line between liturgical art and art in general. This specific character and
this divine inspiration are not only characteristic of the Old Testament,
but also belong to the very principle of sacred art. This principle certainly
remains valid in the New Testament.

But let us return to the explanations of St John of Damascus. If, in the

Old Testament, the direct revelation of God was made manifest only by
word, in the New Testament it is made manifest both by word and by
image. The Invisible became visible, the Nonrepresentable became repre­
sentable. Now God does not address man only by word and through the
prophets. He shows Himself in the person of the incarnate Word. He
“lives among men.” In the Gospel according to St Matthew (13:16-17),
says St John of Damascus, the Lord, the same Lord who spoke in the Old
Testament, utters words honoring His disciples and all those who lived in
their image and followed their footsteps:
Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly, I say to

14 OnafcW, ch. 20, PG 94: 1252.

15 It is interesting to note that if the ancient Hebrews did not forego (sculptured) images in the
tabernacle and in Solomon's Temple, present-day Jews, by contrast, rigorously uphold the
letter of the law and abstain from any sculptured image (see E. Namenyi, L'esprit de l'artjuif
[1957], 27).
Origins ofthe Christian Image 47

you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not
see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.16
It is obvious that when Christ says to His disciples that their eyes are
fortunate to see what they see and their ears to hear what they hear, He is
referring to that which has never been seen or heard, since men always had
eyes to see and ears to hear. These words of Christ also did not apply to
His miracles, since the prophets of the Old Testament also performed
miracles (Moses, Elijah, who resurrected a dead person, stopped the rain
from falling, etc.). These words mean that the disciples directly saw and
heard Him whose coming had been foretold by the prophets: the incar­
nate God. “No one has ever seen God,” says St John the Evangelist, “the
only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known”
(Jn 1:18).
Thus the distinctive trait of the New Testament is the direct connec­
tion between the word and the image. This is why the Fathers and the
councils, when speaking of the image, never forgot to stress: “That which
we have heard, we have seen. That which we have heard, we have seen in
the city of the all-powerful God, in the city of our God.”17 Henceforth,
what is seen cannot be separated from what is heard. What David heard
were prophetic words only, préfigurations of what has been realized in the
New Testament. At this moment, in the New Testament, man receives the
revelation of the Kingdom of God to come, and this revelation is given to
him by the word and the image—by the Son of God who became
incarnate Himself.
The apostles saw with their bodily eyes that which, in the Old Testa­
ment, was only foreshadowed by symbols: “God, who has neither body
nor form, was never represented in days of old. But now that He has come
in the flesh and has lived among men, I represent the visible appearance
of God.”18 Here lies the heart of the difference with the visions of the Old
Testament.
I gaze upon the image of God, as Jacob did, but in a different way. For he only
saw with spiritual sight what was promised to come in the future, while the
memory of Him who became visible in the flesh is burned into my soul.19

16 Oratio II, ch. 20, PG 94: 1305-1308. Cf Oratio III, ch. 12, ibid., 1333.
17 Hebrew Bible, Ps 48:9.
18 Oratio I, ch. 16, PG 94: 1245.
19 Oratio I, ch. 22, PG 94: 1256A-B, trans. D. Anderson, On the Divine Images, 30-1.
48 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

At that time, the prophets saw with their spiritual eyes préfigurations revealing
the future (Ezekiel, Jacob, Isaiah...). At present, man sees with his bodily eyes
the realization of their revelations: the incarnate God. St John the Evangelist
expresses this powerfully in the first words of his first Epistle “That which was
from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon and touched with our hands.”
St John of Damascus continues:
Thus the apostles saw with their carnal eyes God who became man, Christ. They
saw His passion, His miracles, and heard His words. And we too, following the
steps of the apostles, ardently desire to see and to hear. The apostles saw Christ
face to face because He was present corporeally. But we who do not see Him
direcdy nor hear His words nevertheless listen to these words which are written
in books and thus sanctify our hearing and, thereby, our soul. We consider
ourselves fortunate, and we venerate the books through which we hear these
sacred words and are sanctified. Similarly, through His image, we contemplate
the physical appearance of Christ, His miracles and His passion. This contem­
plation sanctifies our sight and, thereby, our soul. We consider ourselves
fortunate and we venerate this image by lifting ourselves, as far as possible,
beyond this physical appearance to the contemplation of divine glory.
Therefore, if we comprehend the spiritual through the words which we
hear with our carnal ears, contemplation with our carnal eyes likewise
leads us to spiritual contemplation.
This commentary of St John of Damascus does not express his per­
sonal opinion, or even a teaching that the Church has added, as it were,
to its early doctrine. This teaching is an integral part of Christian doctrine
itself. It is part of the very essence of Christianity, just as is the teaching
about the two natures of Christ or the veneration of the Virgin. St John of
Damascus only systematized and formulated in the eighth century that
which existed from the beginning. He did so in response to a situation
which demanded more clarity, just as he also systematized and formulated
the general teaching of the Church in his work On the Orthodox Faith.
All of the préfigurations of the Old Testament announced the salva­
tion to come, this salvation which is now realized and which the Fathers
summarized in a particularly pregnant statement: “God became man so
that man could become God.” This redeeming act is therefore centered
20 Oratio HI, ch. 12, PG 94:1333,1336.
Origins ofthe Christian Image 49

on the person of Christ, God who became man, and, next to Him, on the
first deified human being, the Virgin. On these two central figures
converge all the writings of the Old Testament, expressed through human
history, animals, or objects. Thus Isaac’s sacrifice, the lamb, and the iron
serpent prefigured Christ, and Esther, mediator of the people of God, the
golden vase containing the divine bread, Aaron s staff, etc., prefigured the
Virgin. The realization of these prophetic symbols is accomplished in the
New Testament by the two essential images: that of our Lord, God who
became man, and that of the Most Holy Mother of God, the first human
being to attain deification. This is why the first icons, appearing simulta­
neously with Christianity, represent Christ and the Virgin. And the
Church, asserting this by its Tradition, bases on these two images—the
two poles of its belief—all its iconography.
The realization of this divine promise made to man also sanctifies and
illumines creatures of the past, humanity of the Old Testament, by
uniting it with redeemed humanity. Now, after the Incarnation, we can
also speak of the prophets and the patriarchs of the Old Testament as
witnesses of the humanity redeemed by the blood of the incarnate God.
The images of these men, like those of the New Testament saints, can no
longer lead us to idolatry, since we now perceive the image of God in
man. According to St John of Damascus:
We received from God the capability of judgment, and we know what can be
represented and what cannot be expressed by representation. “So that the law
was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But
now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian” [Gal 3:24-25; see
also Gal 4:3].21

This means that we do not represent the vices of men; we do not make
images to glorify demons. We make representations to glorify God and
His saints, to encourage goodness, to avoid sin, and to save our souls.
The fundamental link between the image and Christianity is the source of
the tradition according to which the Church, from the beginning, preached
Christianity to the world in both word and image. This is precisely why the
Fathers of die Seventh Ecumenical Council were able to say: “The tradition of
making icons has existed from the time of the apostolic preaching.”22 This

21 Oratio III, ch. 8, PG 94:1378.

22 Mansi XIII, 252B.
50 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

essential link between the image and Christianity explains why it appears
in the Church and why silently, as a self-evident reality, it occupies the
place that belongs to it, in spite of the Old Testament prohibition and
some sporadic opposition.
 3

The First Icons of Christ and the Virgin

T^he Tradition of the Church declares that the first icon of Christ
x appeared during His life on earth. This is the image which is called “the
Holy Face” in the West; in the Orthodox Church it is called “the icon not
made by human hands” (dxcipoiTotT|TOs). The history of the provenance
of this first image of Christ has been transmitted by texts of the liturgical
service in its honor (August 16). Here, for example, is a sticheron in tone
8 from Vespers: “After making an image of Your most pure image, You
sent it to the faithful Abgar, who desired to see You, who in Your divinity
are invisible to the cherubim.”1 Another sticheron from Matins in tone 4
says: “You sent letters traced by Your divine hand to Abgar, who asked for
salvation and health which come from the image of Your divine face.” In
general, and especially in the churches dedicated to the Holy Face, there
are frequent allusions to the history ofAbgar in the liturgical service of the
feast. But they only mention the fact itself, without entering into detail.2

1 Abgar V Ukhama, Prince of Osroehe, a small country between the Tigris and Euphrates, had
as his capital the city of Edessa (now called Orfu or Rogaïs). Let us note in passing that the
Chronicle of this city mentions the existence of a Christian church which was considered
ancient in 1201, when it was destroyed by a flood. The kingdom of Edessa was the first state
in the world to become a Christian state (between 170 and 214, under the rule of Abgar IX).
2 A more detailed version is found in the Menaion for the month of August. It is summarized as
follows: King Abgar, a leper, had sent to Christ his archivist Hannan (Ananias) with a letter in
which he asked Christ to come to Edessa to heal him. Hannan was a painter; and in case Christ
refused to come, Abgar had advised Hannan to make a portrait of the Lord and bring it to
him. Hannan found Christ surrounded by a large crowd; he climbed a rock from which he
could see Him better. He tried to make His portrait but did not succeed “because of the
indescribable glory of His face which was changing through grace.” Seeing that Hannan
wanted to make His portrait, Christ asked for some water, washed Himself, and wiped His
face with a piece of linen on which His features remained fixed. He gave the linen to Hannan
to carry it with a letter to the one who had sent him. In His letter, Christ refused to go to
Edessa Himself, but promised Abgar to send him one of His disciples, once His mission had
ended. Upon receiving the portrait, Abgar was cured of the most serious symptoms of his
disease, though several marks remained on his face. After Pentecost, the apostle Thaddeus, one

51
52 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Before the fifth century, ancient authors make no reference to the image
of the Holy Face. The first time we hear it mentioned is in the fifth century,
in a document called The Doctrine ofAddai. Addai was a bishop of Edessa (d.
541) who, in his work (if it is authentic), undoubtedly used either a local
tradition or documents about which we do not know. The most ancient
undisputed author who mentions the icon sent to Abgar is Evagrius (sixth
century); in his Ecclesiastical History* he calls the portrait “the icon made by
God,” Ocôtcvktoç cIkcûv.
The original icon, i.e., the linen on which the face of the Lord is
imprinted, was preserved in Edessa for a long time as the most precious
treasure of the town. It was widely known and honored in the entire East;
in the eighth century, Christians, following the example of the church of
Edessa,4 celebrated its feast in numerous places.
During the iconoclastic period, St John of Damascus mentions the
miraculous image, and in 787 the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical
Council refer to it many times. Leo, a reader of the Cathedral of St Sophia
in Constantinople who was present at the Seventh Ecumenical Council,
recounts how he himself venerated the Holy Face during his stay in
Edessa.5 In 944, the Byzantine emperors Constantine Porphyrogenitus
and Romanus I bought the holy icon in Edessa. It was transported to
Constantinople with great solemnity and placed in the church of the
Virgin of Pharos. Emperor Constantine praised it in a sermon as the
safeguard (palladium) of the empire. The liturgical service for the feast of

of the seventy, came to Edessa. He completely healed the king and convened him. Abgar had
an idol removed from above one of the town gates and the holy image was placed there. But
his great-grandson reverted to paganism and wanted to destroy it. The bishop of the town had
it walled in, after having placed a burning lamp inside the niche. As time passed, the hiding
place was forgotten, but it was rediscovered when Cosroes, king of the Persians, besieged the
city in 544 or 545. The lamp was still burning. Not only was the image intact, but it had also
been imprinted on the inner side of the tile which concealed it. In memory of this event, we
now have two types of icons of the Holy Face: one where the face of the Savior is represented
on a piece of linen, another where there is no linen, but where there is the Holy Face as it was
imprinted on the tile, K€pdp.iov, in Russian chrepie. The only thing that is known about this
icon on the tile is that it was found in Hierapolis (Mabbug), in Syria. Emperor Nicephorus
Phocas (963-969) is said to have brought it to Constantinople in 965 or 968.
3 Historia ecclesiasüca IV, 27, PG 86: 2745-2748.
4 Later on, in Edessa, beginning with the year 843, this feast coincided with that of the Triumph
of Orthodoxy.
5 Mansi XIII, 169, 190fF. A. Grabar, “The Holy Face of the Cathedral of Laon” (in Russian),
Seminarium Kondakovianum (Prague, 1930), 24.
The First Icons of Christ and the Virgin 53

the Transfer of the Holy Face to Constantinople, celebrated on August 16,

probably dates back to this time, at least in part. After the sack of
Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, all traces of this icon were lost.6
In France, there exists a famous icon of the Holy Face which is now
preserved in the sacristy of the cathedral of Laon. Of Balkan, perhaps
Serbian, origin, and dating back to the twelfth century, this icon was sent
from Rome to France in 1249 by Jacobus Pantaleo Tricassinus, the future
Pope Urban IV, to his sister, the abbess of the Cistercian Sisters of
Monasteriolum (Montreuil-les-Dames, in the diocese of Laon).7
In its lituigical service, the feast of the Holy Face is called “The transfer
from Edessa to the city of Constantine of the image of our Lord ‘not made by
human hands/ the image which is called the holy linen.” The present-day
Liturgy, however, does not limit itself to the mere remembrance of the
transfer of the image from one place to the other. The essential point of this
service is the dogmatic foundation of the image and its purpose.
The meaning of the expression “image not made by the hand of man”
is to be understood in the light of Mk 14:38; this image is above all the
Incarnate Word Himself who became visible in “the temple of his body”
(Jn 2:21). From this moment on, the mosaic law that forbade images had
no more meaning, and the icons of Christ became so many irrefutable
witnesses to the Incarnation of God.8 It is not an image created according
to a human concept: it represents the true face of the Son of God who
became man. According to the tradition of the Church, it derives from a

6 Here we are speaking only of the icons that are actually celebrated liturgically by the Church.
But the historical sources mention several icons of the Holy Face which played an important
role in the sixth and seventh centuries, especially during the Byzantine-Persian war. Some of
them had replaced the labarum (see A. Grabar, L’iconoclasmebyzantin [Paris, 1957], 30ff). In
Georgia there is an icon of the Holy Face painted in wax that dates back to the sixth or seventh
century (see Amiranachvili, Istoriiagruzinskogo iskusstva [Moscow, 1950], 126).
7 The fifteenth century saw the appearance of the legend of St Veronica, who is represented as
holding a linen on which the Holy Face is imprinted. There arc several versions of the story of
St Veronica. The best known is the one usually seen in the “Stations of the Cross,” introduced
by the Franciscans (the Fourth Station): when Christ was being led to Golgotha, a woman
named Veronica wiped His sweat with a piece of linen on which His image remained
imprinted (on this subject, see the article by Paul Pcrdrizet in Seminarium Kondakovianum, 5
[Prague, 1932], 1-15).
8 See V. Lossky, “The Savior Achciropoietos,” in L Ouspensky and V. Lossky, The Meaning of
Icons, trans. G. E H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1982), 69.
54 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

3. Holy Face. Wall-painting, Paris.

Icon painted by the monk Gregory Kroug
Holy Trinity Church. Vanves, Paris.
The First Icons of Christ and the Virgin 55

direct contact with His Face. It is this first image of God who became man
which the Church venerates on the day of the Holy Face (Fig. 3).
As we have seen, the stichera quoted above, together with the other
liturgical texts, emphasize the historical origin of the image. As always, the
Church brings us back to the historical reality, just as in the Creed the
Church speaks of the crucifixion “under Pontius Pilate.” Christianity is
not concerned with a “universal Christ,” a personification of the internal
spiritual life, nor with an abstract Christ, a symbol of some grand idea. It
is essentially concerned with a historical person who lived in a definite
place, at a precise time: “Having saved Adam,” we hear in a sticheron of
the feast, “the Savior, indescribable in His essence, lived on earth among
men, visible and distinguishable” (second sticheron in tone 1 during
Little Vespers).
The scriptural readings of the day are of particular importance for our
study. All of these readings reveal the meaning of the event which is being
celebrated. They begin by bringing out the biblical préfigurations. By
exalting the realization of the event in the New Testament, they empha­
size its eschatological dimension. The choice of texts reveals precisely
what we have already learned from the works of St John of Damascus, i.e.,
how the Church understands the Old Testament’s prohibition of images
and the meaning and purpose of the New Testament image.
First of all, we have the three Old Testament readings (paroimiai) of
Vespers: two are taken from Deuteronomy (4:6-7, 9-15; and 5:1-7,
9-10, 23-26, 28; 6:1-5, 13, 18) and the last is an excerpt from 3 Kings
(1 Kings in the Hebrew Bible) 8:22-23 and 27-30.9
The first two readings speak of the revelation of the law to the people
of Israel on Mount Horeb just before the entry of the Chosen People into
the Promised Land. The meaning of the readings can thus be summarized
by the fact that, in order to enter into this Promised Land and to own it,
it is essential for the people to observe the revealed law and to adore the
only true God with undivided adoration, without any confusion with the
cult of other “gods.” One is also reminded that it is impossible to
represent the invisible God: “You heard the sound of words, but saw no
9 We take the readings directly from the Bible and not from the Menaion where they are
abridged, and some passages important for the meaning of the image are omitted.
56 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

form; there was only a voice,” and “take good heed to yourselves, since
you saw no form,” etc. Therefore the law in its totality, and in particular
the prohibition against adoring other “gods” and against making images,
is an indispensable condition of entry into the Promised Land. And, of
course, the Promised Land is a préfiguration: It is an image of the Church,
of the Kingdom of God.
The third reading is also a préfiguration of the New Testament revela­
tion. It includes the prayer of Solomon at the consecration of the temple
which he had built: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?,” asks
Solomon. “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Thee;
how much less this house which I have built!” All this alludes to the future
coming of God on earth, to His participation in the course of human
history, to the presence in a terrestrial temple, built by man, of the One
for whom “the highest heaven does not suffice.”
The meaning of these Old Testament readings is more fully revealed in
the Epistle reading at the Liturgy (Col 1:12-17):
Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of
the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and
transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the first-bom of all
creation.
Thus the entire development of the Old Testament, which defended the
purity of the Chosen People, the entire sacred history of Israel, appears as
a providential and messianic process, as a preparation for the appearance
of the Body of Christ on earth, the New Testament Church. And in this
preparatory process, the prohibition of images leads to the appearance of
the One who was invisible, to “the image of the invisible God” revealed
by the God-Man Jesus Christ. As we hear in the Vigil of the feast: “In
former times, Moses could obscurely contemplate the divine glory from
behind; but the new Israel now sees Thee clearly face to face” (second
troparion of the fourth ode of the canon).
Let us finally examine the Gospel readings for the day of the Holy
Face, both at Matins and at the Liturgy (Lk 9:51-56; and 10:22-24):
When the days drew near for Him to be received up, He set his face to go to
Jerusalem. And He sent messengers ahead of Him, who went and entered a
village of the Samaritans, to make ready for Him; but the people would not
receive Him, because His face was set toward Jerusalem. And when His disciples
The First Icons of Christ and the Virgin 57

James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to bid fire come down
from heaven and consume them?” But He turned and rebuked them. And they
went on to another village. And Christ turned to His disciples saying, “All things
have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except
the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son
chooses to reveal Him.” Then turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed
are the eyes which see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings
desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and
did not hear it.”

As far as the image is concerned, we see that the meaning of the Epistle
and of the Gospel is the opposite of that found in the first two readings.
The Old Testament texts say: “You saw no divine form.” In the Gospel we
read: “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see,” that is, “the image of
the invisible God,” Christ. This is why the last words of the Gospel
readings are only addressed to the apostles. In fact, not only the disciples
but all those who surrounded Him saw the man Jesus. But only the
apostles discerned in this son of man, under His “form of a servant,” the
Son of God, “the brightness of the glory of the Father.” As we have seen,
St John of Damascus understands these last words of the Gospel as the
repeal of the biblical prohibition, the repeal which for us is the visible
aspect of the image of Christ whom we worship. “Formerly Thou wast
seen by men,” we hear in a troparion, “and now Thou appearest in Thy
image not made by human hand” (second troparion of the first ode of the
canon).

The first Gospel passage (Lk 9:55-56) draws a sharp distinction

between the apostles and the world. In fact, it shows what makes the
Church different from the world : the spirit and the ways which are the
Church’s alone and which are not the world’s. (Remember that it is this
difference which determines the Church’s modes of action and, in partic­
ular, its art.) On the one hand, the Old Testament readings explain why
images were prohibited. The Gospel, on the other hand, reveals the
purpose of the image. Note also that this difference of the spirit and the
ways of the apostles from those of the world is noted by Christ just before
His entrance into Jerusalem. Starting with the Old Testament readings
and moving to the New Testament readings, we see a developing revela­
tion through symbolic images: The Old Testament is a preparation for the
New Testament; the Promised Land is an image of the Church. The New
58 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Testament is the realization of these preparatory préfigurations. But the

New Testament itself is not yet the final end: It is only another step
toward the Kingdom of God. Thus in the Old Testament the confession
of the true God and the absence of His image were essential conditions for
the people to be able to enter the Promised Land and to possess it. In turn,
in the New Testament the confession of Christ and of His image, the
declaration of our faith in this image, plays an analogous role: It is also an
essential condition to enter the Church and, through the Church, the
Kingdom of God, that celestial Jerusalem toward which the Church is
leading us. This is why this passage of the Gospel is read precisely on the
day when the Church celebrates the icon of the Holy Face. It is Christ
Himself who leads His apostles into Jerusalem. As for us, it is His image
which leads us into the celestial Jerusalem. A hymn of the feast proclaims:
“We praise Thee, the lover of man, by gazing upon the image of Thy
physical form. Through it, grant unto Thy servants, O Savior, to enter
into Eden without hindrance” (sticheron in tone 6).
Thus, by its choice of liturgical readings, the Church unfolds an
immense picture before us, showing the slow and laborious progress of
the fallen world towards the promised redemption.
Thus, the Church maintains that authentic images of Christ have
existed from the very beginning. We also have historical evidence for this.
This attestation is all the more valuable since it comes from the only
ancient writer who was incontestably iconoclastic, the church historian
Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea. Not only does he confirm the existence of
Christian images, “He even holds that in his time there still existed true
images of Christ and of the apostles; he says that he has seen these
himself.”10 Indeed, after describing the famous statue erected by the
woman with an issue of blood whose story we know from the Gospel (Mt
9:20-23; Mk 5:25—34; Lk 8:43-48), Eusebius continues:
This statue, they said, bore the likeness of Jesus. And it is in existence even to
our day, so that we saw it with our own eyes when we stayed in the city. And
there is nothing surprising in the feet that those heathen, who long ago had good
deeds done to them by our Savior, should have made these objects, since we saw
(toTopf|CTap.ev) the likeness ofHis apostles also, ofPaul and Peter, and indeed of
ChristHimself, preserved in pictures painted in colors. And this is what we should

10 Ch. von Schönborn, L'Icône du Christ. Fondements théologiques (Freiburg, 1976), 75.
The First Icons of Christ and the Virgin 59

4. VladimirMotherofGod. XVIth century.

(Eleousa type)
Photo: Temple Gallery, London
60 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

expect, for the ancients were wont, according to their pagan habit, to honor them
as saviors, without reservation, in this fashion.11
Let us repeat that Eusebius can hardly be suspected of exaggerating, since
the theological trend to which he belonged was not about to approve the
facts which he states here.
If the icon of Christ, the basis for all Christian iconography, repro­
duces the traits of God who became man, the icon of the Mother of God,
on the other hand, represents the first human being who realized the goal
of the Incarnation: the deification of man. The Orthodox Church de­
clares that the Virgin is linked to fallen mankind which bears the conse­
quences of original sin; the Church did not exclude her from Adam’s
lineage. At the same time, her preeminent dignity as the Mother of God,
her personal perfection, and the ultimate degree of holiness which she
acquired, explain this entirely exceptional veneration: the Virgin is the
first of all humanity to have attained, through the complete transfigura­
tion of her being, that to which every creature is summoned. She has
already transcended the boundary between time and eternity and now
finds herself in the Kingdom which the Church awaits with the second
coming of Christ. She who “contained the uncontainable God,” “the true
Mother of God” ( Theotokos), according to the solemn proclamation of the
Fourth Ecumenical Council (Ephesus 431), presides with Christ over the
destiny of the world. Her image therefore occupies the first place after that
of Christ, and matches it. It differs from the icons of other saints and
angels both by the variety of iconographie types as by their quantity and
the intensity of their veneration.12
Orthodox tradition attributes the first icon of the Virgin to St Luke
the Evangelist who, it is said, painted three of them after Pentecost. One
of these belongs to the type called “Umilenie” (’EXeowa) (Fig. 4), “Our
Lady of Tenderness.” It represents the mutual caress of Mother and Child,
and emphasizes the natural human feeling, the tenderness of motherly
love. It is the image of a Mother who suffers deeply for the anguish which

11 Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Bk VII, chap. 18, trans. J. E. L Oulton (Cam­
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 177.
12 Let us note that the calendar of the Russian church, where the iconography of the Virgin is
highly developed, mentions 260 of her icons noted for miracles and celebrated liturgically. As
for the overall number of designations of icons of the Virgin, the Menaion of Sergius mentions
700 of them (Annus ecclesiasticus graeco-slavicus, 2nd ed. [1901], vol. 1).
The First Icons of Christ and the Virgin 61

5. Smolensk Mother ofGod, XVIth century.

(Hodigitria type)
Photo: Castle De Wijenburgh, Echteld
62 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

awaits her Son in silent consciousness of His inevitable sufferings. An­

other image is of the type called “Hodigitria” (f| ‘O&qyiYrpia) (Fig. 5),
“She who leads the way.” Both the Virgin and the Child are represented
full face, turned toward the viewer. This hieratic, majestic image particu­
larly emphasizes the divinity of the child. As for the third icon, it repre­
sented, they say, the Virgin without the Child. The facts about it are
confused. It is probable that this icon resembled the one of the Virgin in
the Deisis, praying to Christ. Actually, a score of icons attributed to St
Luke are found in the Russian church alone. Besides these, there are
twenty-one on Mount Athos and in the West, of which eight are in Rome.
Obviously, it cannot be maintained that these icons are themselves made
by the hand of the Evangelist, since nothing which he painted has
survived.13 But the so-called “St Luke icons” have their place in a tradition
for which he furnished the prototype. They were painted according to
reproductions of St Luke’s originals. Here the apostolic tradition should
be understood as it is understood when one speaks of the “apostolic
liturgy” or of the “apostolic canons.” These date back to the apostles not
because they were written by their hand, but because they have an
apostolic character and are covered by apostolic authority. The same is
true for the so-called “St Luke icons.”
The tradition which attributes the first icons of the Virgin to St Luke
is transmitted by liturgical texts, particularly those of the feasts conse­
crated to the Virgin, such as the feast of Our Lady of Vladimir, an icon of
the Umilenie type (May 21, June 23, August 26). During Vespers, the
following sticheron in tone 6 is sung during the Ute:
When for the first time your icon was painted by the announcer of evangelical
mysteries and was brought to you so that you could identify it and confer on it
the power of saving those who venerate you, you rejoiced. You who are merciful
and who have blessed us became, as it were, the mouth and the voice of the icon.
Just as when you conceived God, you sang the hymn: "Now all the generations
will call me blessed,” so also, looking at the icon, you say with force: “My grace
and my power are with this image.” And we truly believe that you have said this,

13 Thus, among the ancient reproductions of the Virgin of the Umilenie type, we do not know of
any that is older than the tenth century (in the royal church Kiiissa—963-969; see V. N.
Lazarev, Istoria. vizantiiskoi zhivopisi vol. 1 [Moscow-Leningrad, 1947], 125). As for the
Hodigitria type, those of its prototypes we know date back to the sixth century ( The Gospel of
Rabula. SeeN. P. Kondakov, Ikonografiia Bogomateri vol. 1 [Petrograd, 1915], 191-2).
The First Icons of Christ and the Virgin 63

our Sovereign Lady, and that you are with us through this image...
During Matins, the first hymn of the canon in praise of the Virgin, tone 4,
is: “Painting your all-honorable image, the divine Luke, author of the
Gospel of Christ, inspired by the divine voice, represented the Creator of all
things in your arms.” If this second text simply sûtes that the first icon of
the Virgin was made by St Luke, the first adds that the Virgin herself
approved her image, and conferred on it her power and her grace. Now, the
Church uses this same text for the feasts of different icons of the Virgin, all
of which go back to the prototypes formerly made by St Luke. By this, the
Church emphasizes that the power and grace of the Virgin are transmitted
to all the images which reproduce (together with the symbols which are her
own) the authentic traits of the Mother of God painted by St Luke.
The oldest historical evidence we have about the icons painted by St
Luke dates back to the sixth century. It is attributed to Theodore, called
“the Lector,” a Byzantine historian in the first half of the century (around
530) and a reader in the church of St Sophia in Constantinople. Theo­
dore speaks of an icon of the Virgin Hodigitria sent to Constantinople in
the year 450, which was attributed to St Luke. It was sent from Jerusalem
by the Empress Eudoxia, wife of Emperor Theodosius II, to her sister,
Pulcheria.14 St Andrew of Crete and St Germanus, Patriarch of Constan­
tinople (715-730), also speak of an icon of the Virgin painted by St Luke,
but which was found in Rome. St Germanus adds that the image was
painted during the life of the Mother of God, and that it was sent to
Rome to Theophilus, the same “excellent” Theophilus who is mentioned
in the prologue of the Gospel of St Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles.
Another tradition tells of an icon of the Virgin which, after having been
painted by St Luke and blessed by the Mother of God, was sent to the
same Theophilus, but to Antioch.
In any case, from the fourth century on, when Christianity became the
religion of the state and there was no longer any danger in exposing sacred
14 N. P. Kondakov, Ikonografiia Bogomateri vol. 2 (Petrograd, 1915)» 154. The well-known
writing in defense of icons, addressed to Emperor Constantine Copronymus and often
attributed to St John of Damascus, also speaks of an image of the Virgin painted by St Luke.
According to modern scholarship, this writing is by an anonymous author and is composed of
prayers by St John of Damascus, as well as those of St George of Cyprus and St John of
Jerusalem (see G. Ostrogprsky, Seminarium Kondakovianum I [Prague, 1927], 46, and
Histoire de VEtat byzantin [Paris, 1956], 179, by the same author).
64 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

objects, the icon of Theophilus, which until then had remained hidden in
Rome, became known to an ever-growing number of Christians. The
icon itself, or a reproduction, was moved from a private house to a church.
And, in 540, St Gregory I (590-604) carried the venerable icon of the
Mother of God, “which is said to be the work of St Luke” (quam dicunt a
sancto Luca factanî), to the basilica of St Peter in a solemn procession and
with the singing of litanies.
Other than the images painted by St Luke, tradition also tells us of an
icon of the Virgin made in a miraculous way and not by the hand of man.
This image is called “Our Lady of Lidda” and is celebrated on March
12.15 The miraculous nature of its origin was undoubtedly the reason
which led people to see in this image a type of image analogous to that of
Christ àxeipoiTotT)TOÇ, and which caused the story of its appearance to
be integrated into the Liturgy of various icons of the Virgin, namely that
of the Kazan Mother of God (celebrated on July 8 and October 22). In
the eighth century, St Germanus, the future patriarch of Constantinople,
passing through Lidda, had a reproduction made of it which he sent to
Rome during the time of the iconoclastic controversy. After the defeat of
iconoclasm, it was returned to Constantinople. From this time on the
image of “Our Lady of Lidda” was also called “Our Lady of Rome”
(celebrated on June 26).

15 Sec N. P. Kondakov, Ikonografiia Bogomaim, vol. 1 (Petrograd, 1915), 176-79. The oldest
written evidence we have on this subject dates back to the eighth and ninth centuries: it
consists of a passage attributed to St Andrew of Crete written about the year 726, of the
synodal letter written by the three patriarchs of the East to Emperor Theophilus, an iconoclast,
in 839, and of a work by George, called “the Monk," written in 886-887. Nothing definite is
known about the fate of this image, except that it still existed in the ninth century (V.
Dobschiitz, Christusbilder[Leipzig, 1899-1909], 79-80).
 4

The Art of the First Centuries

A/f ost of the monuments of the sacred art of the first centuries, especially
^those in the eastern part of Christendom, were destroyed by the
iconoclasts, and later by the Crusaders, or simply by time. What remains
especially are the frescoes, particularly in Rome.1 We therefore do not
know what the first icons of Christ and of the Virgin were like. But the
little that remains of primitive art leads us to surmise that the first images
were not purely naturalistic portraits, but rather images of a completely
new and specific Christian reality. V. N. Lazarev2 writes:
Linked to antiquty, primarily to its late, spiritualized forms, this art, from the
first centuries of its existence, is charged with a whole series of new tasks.
Christian art is far from being an art of antiquty, as is thought by certain writers
(especially Siebel). The new subject matter of primitive Christian art was not a
purely external fact. It reflected a new oudook, a new religion, a fundamentally
different understanding of reality. Such subject matter could not adapt itself to
the old forms of antiquty. It required a style which could best incarnate the
Christian ideals and, thus, all the efforts of the Christian painters were directed
towards elaborating this style.
And Lazarev, relying on the research of other scholars, emphasizes that, in
the paintings of the catacombs, this new style has already developed its
basic characteristics. With the help of this art, the Christians attempted to
convey not only that which is visible to the human eyes, but also that
which is invisible, i.e., the spiritual content of that which was being
represented. To express its teaching, the primitive Church also used pagan
1 Though we must constantly refer to the Roman catacombs, this does not mean that there were
no Christians, or Christian art, elsewhere. On the contrary, Christianity spread much faster in
the East than in the West, so much so, that when St Constantine came to the throne, the
Christians already formed more than fifty percent of the population in parts of the East, in
contrast to twenty percent in Rome. But it is in the Roman catacombs that most of the
Christian monuments of the first centuries were preserved. Outside of Rome, catacombs also
existed in Naples, Egypt and Palestine.
2 History ofByzantine PaintingyoX. 1 (in Russian) (Moscow, 1947), 38.

65
66 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

symbols and certain subjects from Greek and Roman mythology. It also
employed art forms of Greek and Roman antiquty, but it gave them a new
content, thus changing the very forms which express it.
To say this differently: as is true for human creation as a whole, the
formation of the Christian image is now determined by the transvaluation
Christianity has brought to the world. With the appearance of the new
humanity appears a new image corresponding to it. Christianity creates its
own life style, its own world vision, its own “style” in art. In opposition to
the conception of the world in antiquty and the pictorial art which
conveyed it, another conception of art appeared, a new artistic vision that
broke with the world vision upon which the art of antiquty had been
founded. This decisive break was caused by life itself, by the need to
assimilate the accepted revelation and to set it against the heresies which
truncated this revelation in its fulness.
The art of the catacombs is above all an art that teaches the faith. Most
of its subjects, symbolic as well as direct, correspond to sacred texts: those
of the Old Testament and of the New, as well as liturgical and patristic
texts.
Side by side with the fairly numerous direct representations,3 the
language of symbols was very widespread and played an important role in
the Church during the first centuries. This symbolic language can be
explained, first of all, by the necessity of expressing through art a reality
which could not be expressed direcdy. Furthermore, the main Christian
sacraments remained hidden from the catechumens until a certain point,
according to a rule established by the Fathers and based on the Holy
Scripture. St Cyril of Jerusalem (fourth century) mentions the symbolic
expressions which must be used in teaching Christians, “since all are
permitted to hear the Gospel, but the glory of the Good News belongs
only to those who are close to Christ.” This is why the Lord spoke in
3 Thus, beginning with the first and second centuries, a whole series of themes from the Old
and New Testaments appears in the catacombs. In the first century, these consist of: the Good
Shepherd, Noah in the Ark, Daniel in the lions' den, and the banquet scene. From the second
century, we have many images from the New Testament: the Annunciation, the Nativity of
Christ, His Baptism, and many other subjects. Paintings in the catacombs frequently deal with
themes inspired by the Gospel of St John: The Resurrection of Lazarus (fifty-three times), the
healing of the paralytic (twenty times), and so forth. Some date back to the second half of the
second century (see Irénikon, no. 2 [1961], 244-6; review of F. M. Braun, Jean le Théologien
et son évangile dans TEglise ancienne [Paris, 1959]).
The Art ofthe First Centuries 67

parables to those who were not capable of hearing, and then explained these
parables to His disciples when they were alone. “Indeed,” St Cyril continues,
that which for the initiated is a splendor of glory is blinding for those who do
not believe... One does not explain the mysterious teaching of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit to a pagan, and even to the catechumens we do not speak clearly
of the mysteries, but we express many things in a veiled way, for example, by
parables, so that the faithful who know can understand, and those who do not
know will not suffer harm.4

Thus the meaning of the Christian symbols was revealed progressively

to the catechumens as they were prepared for baptism. On the other
hand, relations between the Christians and the outside world also re­
quired some type of coded language. It was not in the interest of Chris­
tians to divulge the sacred mysteries to the outside world, which was
pagan and hostile.
The early Christians primarily used biblical symbols—the lamb, the ark,
etc. But once pagans began entering the Church, these symbols were no
longer sufficient since pagans frequently did not understand them. And so
the Church adopted some pagan symbols capable of conveying certain
aspects of its teaching. The Church gave these symbols a new meaning,
purifying them so that they would recapture their primitive meaning. They
were then used to express the salvation accomplished in the Incarnation.
Thus, to allow for a better understanding of its teaching by pagan
converts, the Church used certain myths of antiquty which, to a certain
extent, paralleled the Christian faith.
We will give only a few examples which will help us to understand the
purpose of such art, its meaning and content, and thereby the purpose
and meaning of church an in general.
Beside the rare direct images of Christ, we find a large number of
symbolic representations, either painted in the catacombs (Fig. 6) or
carved in low or high reliefs on sarcophagi. First among such representa­
tions in human form, we find the type of the good shepherd, which
appeared already in the first century. We find several such representations
of it in the Roman catacombs of Domitilla. This image is closely linked to
that of the lamb. This is based on biblical texts: for example, the prophet
Ezekiel (ch 34) and David (Ps 22) represent the world as a sheep pen, the
4 Or. 6, par. 29, PG 33: 589.
 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON
68

6. Christ and the Samaritan woman.

Fresco from the Roman Praetextatus catacomb (2nd century).
The Art ofthe First Centuries 69

shepherd of which is God. Speaking of Himself, Christ summarizes this

biblical image, “I am the good shepherd,” He says (Jn 10:14), or “I have
been sent...to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 15:24). Christian­
ity adopted this iconographie type and gave it a precise, dogmatic mean­
ing: the Good Shepherd—God incarnate—takes upon Himself the lost
sheep, that is, fallen human nature, humanity which He unites to His
divine glory. It is the deeds of Christ and not His historical form which
are explained in this scene. In no way can this image be likened to that of
the adolescent Christ, called Emmanuel.
Another symbolic representation of Christ is borrowed from ancient
mythology: the rather infrequent representation of Christ as Orpheus,
with a lyre in His hand and surrounded by animals. This symbol is
frequently found in the writings of Christian antiquty, starting with
Clement of Alexandria. Just as Orpheus subdued the wild beasts with his
lyre and charmed the mountains and trees, so did Christ attract men with
His divine word and subdue the forces of nature. Even those subjects
which at first appear to be mere decorations often have a hidden meaning,
such as the vine which is often seen in the art of the first centuries. This is
obviously a visible transposition of the words of Christ:
As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can
you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides
in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do
nothing. (Jn 15:4-5)
These words and this image have both an ecclesiological and a sacramen­
tal significance. The vine and the branches represent Christ and the
Church: “I am the vine, you are the branches.”5
But the image of the vine is most frequently completed by that of the
harvest or by that of the birds feeding on the grapes. In this case, the vine
reminds Christians of the central sacrament, the Eucharist. “The vine
gives the wine as the Word gave His blood,” says Clement of Alexandria.6
The grape-gatherers and the birds who eat the grapes represent the
Christian souls feeding on the body and blood of Christ.
5 This is most obvious when the image is found on the dome of a church (for example, the
chapel of El Baouit, fifth century): The vine is in the center, while the branches completely
cover the dome. This follows the same principle as the classic decoration in our churches,
which depicts Christ in the dome and the apostles surrounding Him.
6 Paedag Bk. 1, ch. 5, PG 8: 634.
70 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

In the Old Testament, the vine was also a symbol of the Promised
Land, as was shown by the bunch of grapes brought to Moses by those
whom he had sent to Canaan. Hence in the New Testament it is also a
symbol of paradise, the land promised to those who commune in the
body and blood of Christ, i.e., to the members of the Church. The
decorative vine continues to exist today in the sacred art of the Orthodox
Church and has the same symbolic meaning.
One of the most widespread symbols in the first Christian centuries
was the fish.7 The very important role played by the fish in the accounts
of the Gospel certainly contributed to the fact that this symbol was
adopted by the Christians. Christ Himself used it. The lake, the boat, the
fishermen, the net heavy with fish do not form the framework for so many
biblical scenes simply by chance. Speaking to fishermen, He naturally
used images that were familiar and understandable to them; summoning
them to the apostolate, He called them “fishers of men” (“Follow me, and
I will make you fishers of people,” Mt 4:19; Mk 1:17). He compares the
heavenly kingdom to a net filled with many different kinds of fish. The
image of the fish is also used as a symbol of the heavenly good things (Mt
7:9-11, 13, 47-48; Lk 5:10). The images of the fisherman and the fish,
representing the teacher and the convert, are fully understandable. But
there were other reasons for the wide dissemination of this symbol in
Christianity. The most important of these is the mysterious meaning of
the five letters which make up the word IxOfc.8 This image is found
everywhere: in mural paintings, on sarcophagi, in funeral inscriptions, on
various objects. Christians wore little fishes around their neck made of metal,
stone or mother-of-pearl, with the inscription “May You save” or “Save.”9
To the extraordinary prevalence of the graphic image of the fish
corresponds an equally striking literary use of it in funeral inscriptions and
among many Christian writers.10 However, the value of this symbol
7 This symbol has also been borrowed from paganism. Among primitive peoples, the fish symbolized
fertility. Among the Romans at the beginning of the present era, it became an erotic symbol.
8 The Greek word meaning “fish,” 1x06$*, contains five letters which arc the initials of five words
direcdy corresponding to Christ:’ I Tyrons' XptOTÔç ÔeoD Tlôs* SûiTl^p, “Jesus Christ, Son of
God, the Savior.” As we have seen, diese words express the faith in the divinity ofJesus Christ, and
in His redeeming mission. Therefore, we have in the symbol of the fish a kind of ancient credal
formula, condensed into one word.
9 Dom H. Leclercq, Manueld'Archéologiechrétienne, vol. 2 (Paris, 1907), 467—8.
10 Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, St Augustine (430 AD), St Jerome (420 AD), Origen,
The Art ofthe First Centuries 71

7. Eucharistic symbol

seemed so great to Christians of the first centuries, that they tried to hide
its meaning for a longer time than for the other symbols, to such an extent
that no writer gives a complete explanation of it until the fourth century,
as far as we can judge from the available documents.
The first and essential meaning of the fish is therefore Jesus Christ
himself. Some ancient authors occasionally call our Lord “the heavenly
fish” (Ixöte oùpdvioç). We find the image of a boat, symbol of the
Church, carried by a fish: the Church rests on Christ, its founder. To
represent Christ in the midst of Christians united to Him by baptism,
little fishes surrounding a large one were portrayed. “We are little fish,”
Tertullian writes, “we are born in the water like our fish (IxQfc) Jesus
Christ, and we can only be saved by staying in the water.”11 Thus the
symbolism of the fish leads back to that of water, that is, to baptism.

What is particularly emphasized in the representations and writings

which use the symbol of the fish is the eucharistie significance of this
symbol (Fig. 7). Indeed, each time the Eucharist is represented, whether
Melito of Sardis, Optatus of Mileve (around 370 AD), St Zeno of Verona (around 375 AD),
St Peter Chrysologus (450 AD), St Prosper of Aquitaine (463 AD) and many others used the
symbolism of the fish.
11 See Sixte Scaglia, Manuel d'Archéologie chrétienne (Turin, 1916), 226.
72 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

as a banquet, a consecration scene or a simple symbol, the fish invariably

appears. This is a fact. And yet, the fish has never been used as a
eucharistie species. It only clarifies the meaning of the bread and wine. Of
particular significance are two funeral inscriptions found at two different
ends of the Christian world, in Phrygia and in Gaul, both dating back to
the second century. The first is of St Abercius, Bishop of Hieropolis, who
is venerated by the Church as “equal to the Apostles.” This inscription
reproduces a text written by the saint himself. A frequent traveler, he lived
in Rome and throughout the East. “The faith led me everywhere,” he
writes. “Everywhere it fed me fresh, pure fish, caught by a holy virgin; it
constantly fed this fish to friends; it has a delicious wine which it serves, mixed
in water, with bread.”12 This fish, caught by the virgin, is Christ. The bread
and the wine mixed with water already shows our eucharistie practice.
The other funeral inscription, found in France, is that of Pectorius of
Autun. This is an acrostic poem in Greek in which the initial letters form
the words IX0Y2 EATTIS, that is, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior,
Hope.” In “the eternal waves of wisdom given by the treasures,” in “the
divine waters” which renew the soul, the “divine race of heavenly fish
oùpdvtos) receives...immortal life.” Then the poem invites the
reader to take soft nourishment, such as the honey of the Savior of the
saints, and to eat the IxOfc “which you hold in the palm of your hand.”13

Thus St Abercius saw everywhere, from Rome to the Euphrates, not

only the same doctrine and the same sacrament, but also the same image,
the same symbol in which rite and doctrine converge, that of the fish. The
inscription of Pectorius speaks of the same reality at the other end of the
Christian world, in Gaul. Thus, these two documents show us that the
symbol of the fish was widespread and characteristic of the entire Church.

Another very widespread symbol of Christ in the catacombs is that of the

lamb, which appears in the first century. We will have to return to this image
when we discuss its suppression in the seventh century. It must only be
mentioned that the lamb, like the fish, though primarily a symbol of Christ,
could also represent the Christian in general, and the aposdes in particular.
12 7£û£, 248.
13 The custom of the first Christians was for the faithful to receive the consecrated bread in the
palm of the right hand which was crossed over the left. This is how the Orthodox clergy
receive Communion even today.
The Art ofthe First Centuries 73

Lambs drinking from the streams represented the Christians drinking the
water of life of the evangelical teaching. When there were two lambs, they
represented the Church of the Jews and the Church of the Gentiles.
As the main symbol of Christ, the lamb appeared in place of the direct
image of our Lord for a long time, even in historical scenes such as the
transfiguration or baptism, in which not only Christ himself, but also the
apostles or John the Baptist, were represented as lambs.

The Virgin is represented in the catacombs at least as often as Christ.

But while Christ is primarily represented in symbols, the Virgin is always
represented directly. As far as we can tell from what has been discovered
up to now, she appears as early as the second century in various icono­
graphie subjects, for example, the Annunciation (the catacomb of Pris­
cilla) and the Nativity (the catacomb of St Sebastian, fourth century). She
is also often represented alone, as an Orans, i.e., with arms lifted in prayer.
This latter image emphasizes her role as the mediator before God for the
Church and for the world. And it is usually in this pose that she is
represented on the bottoms of many sacred vases (Fig. 8) in the cata­
combs. She also sometimes appears surrounded by the Apostles Peter and
Paul and by others, or else with her mother, St Ann. One of the scenes in
which she plays an important role is the Adoration of the Magi. Very
frequently represented in the first Christian centuries, the Adoration of
the Magi was a separate feast in the liturgical year, as is still the case in the
Western confessions. In the Orthodox Church, it is included in the feast
of the Nativity. In the Roman catacombs, ten or twelve images of the
adoration of the Wise Men can be found, dating from the second to the
fourth centuries. The Virgin is always represented sitting down, holding
the Child on her lap and receiving with Him the adoration of the Wise
Men, which particularly emphasizes her dignity as the Mother of God.
This iconographie theme dealt with a very pressing question of that time,
that of the role of the Gentiles, i.e., of the non-Jewish people in the
Church. This no longer poses any problem for us, but in the first
centuries, the problem of the Gentiles, of the pagans who entered the
Church, the house of Israel for which Christ had come, was very acute. It
was the source of a controversy among the Apostles (Acts 11:1—4) and was
discussed at the apostolic council (Acts 15). It played an important role in
the life of the first Christians (for example, Acts 6:1). Images frequently
74 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

and in different ways reflected this problem. The Wise Men coming to
adore Christ were the forerunners of the nations, the first-fruits of the
Church of the Gentiles, i.e., of the non-Jewish Church. This is why the
Christians of the first centuries, through the representation of the worship
of the Wise Men, emphasized the place of the non-Jewish Christians in
the Church, the legitimacy of their ministry parallel to that of the Chris­
tians of Israel.14
The images of Christ, direct or indirect, and those of the Virgin were
followed by images of the apostles, prophets, martyrs, angels and so forth;
in short, by the entire variety of Christian iconography.
Avery distinctive example, which will help us understand the develop­
ment of sacred art, is that of the oldest known representation of the Virgin
and Child. It is a fresco in the catacomb of Priscilla (Fig. 9), a painting
that is still entirely Hellenistic in style. To show that this woman with a
child is the Virgin, one had to have recourse to external signs. These
external indications include the representation of a biblical prophet beside
her and of a star above her head. Here we see the same principle as in the
images of the Eucharist already mentioned. Such a detail shifted the
meaning of the image to an entirely different level: it illumined it with a
salvific content. Similarly, to show that the woman represented with a
child is not just any woman, but the Mother of God, the external
signs—the prophet and the star—were necessary. Here, the prophet is
holding a scroll or a little book containing the prophecy in his left hand,
and is pointing to the star above the Virgin with his right hand. Is this
Isaiah saying: “The Lord will be your everlasting light” (60:19)—indeed,
the star is the symbol of the heavens and the celestial light—or is it
Balaam who proclaimed: “A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a
scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Num 24:17)? The Virgin wears a veil on
her head, the sign of a married woman. Her civil state was, indeed, that of
a married woman, and this veil is a very important characteristic of
historical realism which has remained a part of the Orthodox icono­
graphie tradition. The picture is both a symbolic and a historical image.
14 Even in the sixth century, mosaics in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna represent the
adoration of the Wise Men embroidered on the robe of the Empress Theodora, in that famous
scene which shows her with Emperor Justinian, carrying gifts to the Church. Thus, the
imperial couple reenacts the action of the kings of the Orient, carrying gifts to Christ in the
name of their people.
The Art ofthe First Centuries 75

8. Bottom of a vase from the catacomb of St Agnes representing

the Virgin in an orans position according to Garucci.

9. Virgin and Child with a prophet.

Fresco from the Priscilla catacomb (2nd century).
76 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

This union of historical truth and symbolism forms the basis of Christian
sacred art. At this time, the artistic language of the Church, like its
dogmatic language, did not as of yet have the accuracy, clarity and
precision of the following centuries, which now permit us to recognize the
Mother of God without a prophet pointing her out. The artistic language
was in the process of being formed, and the frescoes in the catacombs
illustrate well the first steps of this genesis.
In the art of the catacombs we find not only the very principle of sacred
art, but also, its external character, at least in its general traits. As we have
already said, secular, unprejudiced scholarship maintains that a new style,
distinctive of Christianity, appeared already in the catacombs of the first
centuries, a style which already possessed the essential traits that would
henceforth characterize the art of the Church. Such art, we repeat, ex­
presses above all the teaching of the Church and corresponds to sacred
texts. Its aim, therefore, is not to reflect everyday life, but to throw the
new light of the Gospel upon it. No traces can be found in the catacombs
of images with a documentary, anecdotal or psychological character. It
would be impossible, through this art, to provide a description of the
everyday life of the early Christians. Thus, no trace of the frequent
persecutions and the numerous martyrs of this time can be found in the
liturgical art of the catacombs. The Christian artists who lived in the times
of Nero or Diocletian undoubtedly saw the atrocious scenes in the amphi­
theaters, and these episodes were a matter of glory and consolation for all
the brothers. One would expect to see recollections of these days when the
struggle of the Christians against the pagan gods reached its climax. But
not one scene of martyrdom can be found in the catacombs. The same
holds true in the writings of the great saints of the time. St Paul, for
example, teaches, denounces fallacies and vices, etc., but he mentions only
in passing, without any allusion to his spiritual state and without any
description, the tortures which he endured (2 Cor 11:23-27). It is
therefore not surprising that we also find no evidence of these in art. It is
only much later, when the persecutions had ceased and the anguish of the
Christians had become history, that they were sometimes represented.

At the same time, such art was not cut off from life. It not only speaks
the artistic language of its time, but is intimately connected with real life.
This connection does not consist of episodic images like those in secular
The Art ofthe First Centuries 77

10. Daniel in the lions den.

Fresco from the Cimetero dei Giordani (4th century).

painting, but in the answer which it brings to the everyday problems of a

Christian. The essential part of this answer is the state of prayer which this art
communicates to the spectator. Seen face on or from the side, these persons
are most often in the orans position, i.e., in the ancient position of prayer.
Particularly widespread in the first centuries of Christianity, it gained a
symbolic value. Thus many figures, appearing in this position and personify­
ing either prayer or the Church, are seen in the Roman catacombs.15 This

15 This position of uplifted hands is not an exclusively Christian pose; it was known in the world
of antiquty and in the Old Testament, where the psalms refer to it many times.
78 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

state of prayer becomes the leitmotif of a wide variety of often dramatic

situations, such as the sacrifice of Abraham, or Daniel in the lions’ den (Fig.
10). The drama of the represented situation is not so much the very
moment of sacrifice as the internal, spiritual state of the persons, i.e., the
state of prayer. The Christian, who always had to be prepared to confess his
faith through suffering, was therefore provided with an internal attitude
which he had to preserve at all times. That which could calm, strengthen
and teach was portrayed, and not that which could possibly repel or
frighten. What these images also conveyed was the teaching of salvation.
The sacrificed Isaac was saved, as were Noah and Daniel, and this portrayed
our salvation. In addition to prayer, toil was also represented in order to
demonstrate its purifying character and to remind Christians that all human
toil should be to the glory of God. It was not some episode of human
activity that was represented, but rather activity as such—occupations, for
example. Thus we see a woman selling herbs at her stall, a ferryman loading
or unloading a cargo of amphoras, dockhands unloading a ship, a baker, a
wine-grower, a coachman, or coopers at work
Another characteristic trait of Christian art, which can be seen already
in the first centuries, is that the image is reduced to a minimum of details
and to a maximum of expression. Such laconism, such frugality in meth­
ods, corresponds to the laconic and subdued character of Scripture. The
Gospel dedicates only several lines to those events which decide the
history of humanity. Similarly, the sacred image portrays only the essen­
tial. Details are tolerated only when they have some significance. All of
these traits lead us directly to the classical style of the Orthodox icon.
From this time on, the painter had to give great simplicity to his works, in
which the profound meaning was understandable only to the eye initiated
by the spirit. The artist had to purify his art of all individual elements; he
remained anonymous (the works were never signed), and his first concern
was to pass on tradition. Simultaneously, he had to renounce aesthetic joy
for its own sake and use all the signs of the visible world in order to
suggest spiritual reality. Indeed, to represent the invisible to the eyes of the
flesh, a confused haze is unnecessary. On the contrary, one must be very
clear and precise, just as the Fathers, who use particularly clear and
vigorous expressions when they speak of the spiritual world.

The Christian painter renounces the naturalistic representation of

The Art ofthe First Centuries 79

space, so noticeable in the Roman art of this time. The Christian painter
depicts neither depth nor shadows in his work. Instead of representing a
scene which the viewer can only look at, but cannot participate in, he
draws figures mutually bound to the general meaning of the image, and,
above all, to the faithful who contemplate them. They are almost always
represented face on, as we have already said. They address the viewer and
communicate their inner state to him, a state of prayer. What is important
is not so much the action that is represented, but this communion with
the viewer.
As can be seen, the symbolism of this epoch is therefore not a more or
less abstract, fanciful game of words. In it we discover a coherent and
profound system of expression, penetrated in its entirety and in eveiy
detail by a unique message of mystery and of salvation. And this language
fulfilled its task well, for it taught Christianity to thousands, educating
and guiding them in the faith. It is precisely with the help of this now
incomprehensible language that the saints of that time received their
religious instruction, at each stage, from conversion to the crowning of
their witness through martyrdom.
As we see in the first centuries of Christianity, the subjects represented
were primarily either pure symbols, such as the fish or the vine, or
historical images which also served as symbols—for example, the resurrec­
tion of Lazarus, an image of the general resurrection to come. As forms of
expression, all symbols of this kind, once found and adopted by the entire
Church, were no longer modified and were used in the whole Christian
world. They became part of a common symbolic language, accessible and
understandable to every Christian, irrespective of nationality or culture.
From the great number of monuments of early Christian art, we have
taken only a few examples. They show us extremely well-developed meth­
ods of preaching and of religious initiation. The art of the first Christians
was a doctrinal and a liturgical art It embodied a true spiritual direction,
and the claim of certain scholars who maintain that sacred art was born
outside the Church, or that it had no importance until the third or fourth
centuries, cannot be taken seriously.16 Quite the opposite is true. This art
16 See, for example, M. Ochse, La nouvelle querelle des images (Paris, 1952), 41; or also Th.
Kiauser, “Die Äusserungen der alten Kirche zur Kunst," Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgie-
Geschichte (Münster, 1974), 336-7.
80 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

reflects a general ecclesiastical guidance and a tight control over the artists’
work Nothing was left to chance or to the whim of the artist. Everything
is concentrated on the expression of the Church’s teaching. From its first
steps, the Church begins to develop an artistic language which expresses
the same truth as the sacred word. We shall see later that this language,
just like the theological expression of the Christian teaching, will become
more and more specific throughout the Church’s history, and will become
a most perfect and exact instrument of teaching.
The beauty of this art of the first Christian centuries consists above all
in the possibilities it conceals: its full meaning is not yet realized, but it
promises an endless development.
However, the art of the Roman catacombs should not make us forget that
what we deal with is only one branch of early Christian art, the Greco-
Roman, which has been better preserved. The typical trait of the Greco-
Roman art of this epoch is its naturalism, that is, its tendency to duplicate
exactly nature or visible objects. The examples we have used demonstrate to
what extent Christian art was breaking away from the principles of Greco-
Roman art. The technique used in Greco-Roman art was very developed and
highly perfected, and Christian art inherited this perfection. This is why the
Christian art of the first and second centuries is characterized by the same
freshness and spontaneity which distinguish the art of antiquty.
Besides this Greco-Roman branch of Christian art, there were others.
Thus, the third-century frescoes in a Christian Church at Dura-Europos
have a clearly Oriental character, the essential traits of which are deline­
ated by Grabar in his description of a pagan temple in this same town:
We find flattened figures with strongly marked oudines, isocephaly [all heads
on a level], bodies without weight or substance, space reduced to a minimum,
figures turning their heads towards the spectator as they move past—in a word,
an expressive art that does not seek to imitate what the eye sees or give the illusion
of material reality.17

These traits of Oriental art were frequently used by Christianity. Several

other monuments and certain indicators lead us to the conclusion that
sacred art was no less developed in the eastern part of the Empire than in
the western. In any case, when Constantinople was founded in 330,
Christian art in Rome and in the East already had a long history.
17 A. Grabar, Byzantine Painting trans. Stuart Gilbert (Lausanne: Skira, 1953), 38.
 5

Sacred Art in the Constantinian Epoch

T n the fourth century, with the advent of the Constantinian era, a new period
begins for the Church. The Church leaves its forced confinement and opens
its doors wide to the world of antiquity. The influx of new converts requires
larger places of worship and a new kind of teaching, one that is more direct
and more explicit The symbols used in the first centuries, intended for a small
number of initiates, were incomprehensible to the new converts. This is the
obvious reason why large historical cycles of monumental paintings portraying
the events of the Old and NewTestaments appeared in churches in the fourth
and fifth centuries. St Constantine built churches in Palestine on the very sites
where the biblical events had occurred. It is also in this period that the dates
of most of the major feasts were set, along with the iconographie schemes for
them, which are still followed in the Orthodox Church today. In any case, the
series was complete in the sixth century, as it can be found on the famous phials
of Monza (not far from Milan) (Fig. 11) and of Bobbio. These silver phials,
decorated with scenes from the Gospels, were offered to Theodelinda, Queen
of the Lombards (d. 625)» around the year 600. They are for us a very precious
document. Some scholars today agree in recognizing on these phials reproduc­
tions ofmosaics ofPalestinian churches built by Constantine and Helen. Other
experts are more prudent “It is more reasonable to say,” A. Grabar states, “that
their more remote models escape us at this time.”1
Dating to the period between the fourth and sixth centuries, these
phials are of considerable importance, because they offer us representa­
tions of several feasts, thereby confirming the antiquity of our iconogra­
phy of these feasts. Indeed, some of them show a fully-developed
iconography, the very same used today in Orthodox icons.2
1 A. Grabar, Les Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Paris, 1958), 49.
2 One of these phials even carries seven representations: those of the Annunciation, of the
Visitation, the Nativity of Christ, His Baptism, the Crucifixion, the myrrh-bearing women at
the tomb, and the Ascension.

81
82 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

11. A phial of Monza.

The change which occurred in the fourth century was not only exter­
nal; this triumphant epoch was also one of great temptations and ordeals.
The world which entered the Church brought with it all its resdessness
and all its doubts, which the Church had to appease and to solve. The
new contact between the Church and the world is characterized both by a
flare-up of heresies and by a new vigor in Christian life. If, until this time,
it had been the martyrs who were the pillars of the Church, now it was
above all the theologians and the ascetic saints. This is a time of great
saints, including St Basil the Great, St Gregory the Theologian, St John
Chrysostom, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Anthony the Great, St Macarius of
Egypt, St Mark, St Isaiah and many others. The empire became Christian,
the world was gradually sacralized. But it is precisely this world on its way
to sacralization, the Christian empire, which was to go to the desert. The
people were attracted to the desert not because it was easier to live there,
not because they wanted to flee from the difficulties of the world, but, on
the contrary, because they wanted to escape the well-being of the worid,
the glamour of a society which only pretended to be Christian. By the end
Sacred An in the Constantinian Epoch 83

of the fourth century, all of Egypt is covered with monasteries, where the
monks can be counted in the thousands. Pilgrims flock from eveiywhere,
both from Asia and from the West. The experience of the ascetic Fathers
and their writings spreads throughout the Christian world. From this
time on, the theory and practice (praxis) of theology, that is, the teaching
of the Church and the living experience of the ascetics, become the
sources that feed sacred art, guide and inspire it. This art finds it neces­
sary, on the one hand, to transmit truths that are formulated dogmati­
cally, and on the other hand to communicate the living experience of
these truths—the spiritual experience of the saints, the living Christianity
in which dogma and life are one. All this has to be transmitted no longer
to limited groups, but to the mass of believers. This is why the Fathers of
this time attach great importance to the pedagogic role of art. In the
fourth century, a golden age of theology, a great number of first-rate
Christian authors make reference to the image3 in their argumentation—
as to a very important reality, the function of which is considerable. Thus,
St Basil considers that painting possesses a greater power of conviction
than his own words. After having uttered an entire oration in memory of
the martyr St Barlaam, he finishes by saying that he does not want to
humiliate the great martyr by his words, but that he yields his place to a
higher language, to the “resounding trumpets of the masters.” “Rise now
before me,” he says,
you, painters of the saints* merits. Complete with your art this incomplete image
of a great leader [i.e., the martyr Barlaam], Illuminate with the flowers of your
wisdom the indistinct image which I have drawn of the crowned martyr. Let my
words be surpassed by your painting of the heroic deeds of the martyr. I will be
glad to acknowledge such a victory over myself... I will look at this fighter
represented in a more living way on your paintings. Let the demons cry, defeated
once again by the courage of the martyr. Let them be shown once more the
burned, victorious hand. And let the initiator of combats, Christ, also be
represented in this painting.4

In his Oration on the feast of St Theodore, St Gregory of Nyssa

explains that
3 Sc Basil the Great, St Gregory the Theologian (Second Oration on the Son), St John Chrysos­
tom (Third Oration on the Epistle to the Colossians), St Gregory of Nyssa (Oration on the
Divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit; Oration on the Martyr St Theodore), St Cyril of
Alexandria (Oration to Emperor Theodosius), and others.
4 Homilia 17, PG 31: 489AC.
84 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the painter... having represented the great deeds of the martyr on this icon... and
the image of the initiator of combats, Christ, has clearly recorded through the
colors of art, the struggles of the martyr, as in a book.. For the silent painting
speaks on the walls, and does much good?

Among western authors, St Paulinus, Bishop of Nola (353?-431?),

wrote particularly detailed accounts of images. He built many churches
and decorated them with sacred images which he describes at length in his
letters and poems. A very experienced pastor, St Paulinus saw that images
attracted the attention of Christians, and particularly of neophytes and
catechumens, much more than did books. This is why he strove to have
many images in his churches.6
In the fifth century, we have a similar characteristic indicated in the
works of one of the greatest ascetic writers of antiquity, St Nilus of Sinai
(d. 430 or 450), disciple of St John Chrysostom. A certain prefect,
Olympiodorus, after having built a church, wanted to represent on the
walls of one side of the large nave the earth with hunting scenes and a
multitude of animals, and on the other wall fishing scenes. His primary
concern, as he expressed it, was to preserve a full aesthetic quality.
Olympiodorus asked St Nilus for his advice, and St Nilus writes:
My answer to your letter is that it is infantile and dangerous to seduce the eye
of the faithful with such things... Let the hand of the best painter cover both
sides of the church with images from the Old and New Testaments, so that those
who do not know the alphabet and cannot read the Holy Scriptures will
remember, while looking at the painted representations, the courageous deeds
of those who served God without malice. Thus, they will be encouraged to
emulate the ever-memorable virtues of these servants of God who preferred the
heavens to the earth, and the invisible to the visible.7

Thus, the Church endeavored to lead all the senses, including sight, to
a knowledge and a glorification of God. Indeed, sight has always been of
great importance in the preaching of the Christian revelation. “Among
our senses, sight is the one that has the most efficient power to perceive
sensible reality,” said St Basil the Great.8 The concept of the priority of
sight is shown very clearly in patristic writings (for example, those of St
Athanasius the Great, St Gregory of Nyssa, and others). “The contempla-
5 De S. Theodore martyre, PG 46:737.
6 Epistola 32, ad Severum, PG 61: 339.
7 PG 79: 577.
8 St Basil the Great, Comment, in Isaiamprophetam, ch. 1, PG 30: 132A.
Sacred Art in the Constantinian Epoch 85

tion of the visible Word,” a contemporary author writes, “does not lead to
passivity precisely because it is contemplation of the Word» and not an
aesthetic emotion or the contemplation of an idea.”9 During this age, as
later, faith was professed by demonstration.
I ask you, man, if a gentile were to come to you and ask, “show me your faith,
that I may believe,” what would you show him? Would you not lead him from
sensory realities to the invisible?... You lead him to a church...; you show him
the holy icons.10

Much later, in Russia, the saintly prince Andrew of Bogolubov did not act
any differently. When heterodox strangers had arrived, he said to his
servants, “Have them enter the church and the gallery, so that they may
see true Christianity and be baptized.”11

Thus, at all times, the Church assigned great importance to the image.
But it is not its artistic or aesthetic value which is praised, but its teaching
value. The image is a true confession of the Christian faith. This dogmatic
character is an essential trait of Orthodox sacred art throughout history.
Beginning with the fourth century, however, we also have examples of the
Church using the image, not only to teach, but also to fight heresy. In its
struggle for the purity of its life and teaching, the Church, at the Council
of Laodicea (around 343), confirmed Apostolic Canon 85, which deals
with the sacred books, and put an end to improvisation in worship
(canons 59 and 60), through which errors had crept into the liturgy. It is
understandable that the Church also became more exacting in the field of
art. To errors and heresies, it responded not only with the teaching of the
Fathers, not only with the experience of the saints, but also with the
liturgy and with images. In the image, it is sometimes the details, some­
times whole cycles of wall paintings or mosaics, which define the sound
doctrine of the Church in opposition to heresies. It is particularly in
response to the teaching of Axius, who saw Christ not as God but as a
creature, a teaching which was condemned by the First Ecumenical
Council (325), that the letters alpha and omega (A, Q) are placed at the
two sides of the image of Christ—an allusion to the words of the Apoca­
lypse: “I am alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the
9 J. Ph. Ramseyer, La Parole et Limage (Neuchâtel, 1963), 18.
10 Advenus Constantinum Cabalinum» par. 10, PG 95: 325.
11 Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles (in Russian), 591. Cited in particular by N. N.
Voronin, The Architecture ofNortheast Russia» vol. 1 (in Russian) (Moscow, 1961), 228.
86 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

end” (22:13)—in order more strongly to emphasize the divinity of the

Son consubstantial to God the Father, according to the dogma of the
Council of Nicaea.12 In 431, the Council of Ephesus condemned the
doctrine of Nestorius, who had rejected the hypostatic union of the divine
and human natures in Christ, and who, consequently, had denied the
divine motherhood of the Virgin, calling her Mother of Jesus or the
Mother of Christ. The Council proclaimed the divine motherhood of the
Virgin, solemnly attributing to Her the name of Mother of God ( Theo-
tokos}, From then on, particularly solemn representations of the Virgin,
sitting on a throne with the divine Child on her lap and with angels at her
side, appeared everywhere.13
The task of developing the most appropriate forms of sacred art, its
most precise pictorial language, fell on the Church of Constantinople.
The geographical location of the new capital was particularly favorable:
situated at the junction of Europe and Asia, it formed a bridge between
them, and received a rich heritage from the one and from the other. In the
realm of art, it adopted an already existing iconography of both the Old
and the New Testaments, a perfected technique of fresco, of the mosaic
and of the encaustic, a rich ornamentation, refined colors and a developed
system of monumental decoration.14
To develop its language, the Church used, as we have seen, forms,
symbols and even myths of antiquity, i.e., pagan forms of expression. But
it did not use these forms without purifying them and adapting them to
its own goals. Christianity absorbs everything that can serve as a form of
expression from the world around it. Thus the Fathers of the Church used
all the apparatus of ancient philosophy for the benefit of theology. Simi­
larly, Christian art inherits the best traditions of antiquity. It absorbs
elements of Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, Roman and other arts, sacralizing
this complex heritage, guiding it in expressing the fullness of its own
meaning and transforming it in accordance with the requirements of
Christian teaching.15 Christianity selects from pagan culture all that is its
12 L. Bréhier, L’Art chrétien (Paris, 1928), 67.
13 V. N. Lazarev, History ofByzantine Painting (in Russian) (Moscow, 1947), 51.
14 Recent archaeological discoveries have shown that Constantinople, from the beginning of its
existence, was a very important center of artistic culture (sec D. Talbot Rice, “Les mosaïques
du grand palais des empereurs byzantins à Constantinople,” in Revue des Arts, no 3 [Paris,
1955], 166).
15 The origins of Christian art are complex and no single factor can provide an exhaustive
Sacred Art in the Constantinian Epoch 87

own, all that was “Christian before Christ,” all the truth which was
expressed in it, and integrates this into the fullness of revelation.
According to the Fathers, the very name “Church” (ÉKKXqata) signi­
fies a calling together, an assembly of all people in communion with God.
Thus the people who are called from the world into the Church bring
with them their culture, their characteristic national traits and their
creative abilities. The Church then chooses from this contribution all that
is purest, truest and most expressive and creates its sacred language. The
first Christians had a eucharistie prayer which was very characteristic of
this process: “As this bread, which at one time was scattered over the hills,
has now become one, let Thy Church similarly be gathered from all the
corners of the world into Thy Kingdom.” This process of integration by
the Church of those elements of the pagan world which are able to be
Christianized is not a penetration of pagan customs into Christianity, but
their sacralization. In the realm of art, this is not a paganization of
Christian art and, therefore, of Christianity itself, as is often thought; but
on the contrary, it is the Christianization of pagan art.
In this formative period of sacred art, there were two essential artistic
trends, the roles of which were decisive. There was Hellenistic art, which
represented the Greek spirit in Christian art, and the art of Jerusalem and
of the Syrian regions. The use of these two highly contrasting trends
illustrates well the selection process by which the Church elaborated the
most adequate forms of its art. The Hellenistic trend was that of the
Greek cities, particularly Alexandria. It had inherited the beauty of antiq­
uity with its harmony, moderation, grace, rhythm and elegance. On the
other hand, the art of Jerusalem and Syria represented historical realism,
sometimes even a bit naturalistic and brutal (as, for example, in the
Gospel of Rabula). The Church adopted from each of these art forms that
which was most authentic. It discarded the sometimes coarse naturalism
of Syrian art, but retained its truthful iconography, faithfully preserved in
explanation. For example, the icon is sometimes connected with the Egyptian funeral portrait
because of the obvious resemblance between the two. Like the icon, the portrait presents the
characteristic fixity of the face, but does not go beyond the life on earth. It aims at a kind of
preservation which is reminiscent of Egyptian mummification. It tries to represent man as he
was, as if he were still alive, and to preserve this image of life on earth for eternity. In an icon,
on the contrary, the face is transfigured, and this very transfiguration reveals another world to
us, a fullness incomparable to the fallen life. The Egyptian funeral portrait strives to prolong
terrestrial life indefinitely, while the icon strives to deify it.
88 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the very places where the biblical stories took place. From Hellenistic art,
on the other hand, it rejected the somewhat idealistic aspects of iconogra­
phy, but retained the harmonious beauty, the rhythmic feeling and
certain other artistic elements, such as, for example, the “reverse” perspec­
tive. It rejects the Hellenistic iconography which portrays Christ as a
young, god-like Apollo, beardless and elegant. It adopted the Palestinian
iconography of a man with a dark beard, long hair, with realistic traits and
great majesty. The same holds true for the Virgin. Hellenistic art gave the
Virgin a tunic, a head-dress, sometimes even earrings like those worn by
the grand ladies of Alexandria and Rome. The art of Jerusalem enveloped
her in the long veil of Syrian women, a cloak which hid her hair and fell
to her knees, just as we continue to represent her on our icons. The
Church also uses the rhythmic and frequently symmetrical embellish­
ments coming from the East, and other elements of different cultures
which converged in Constantinople. With this laige variety of elements,
the Church of Constantinople created an art form which, already from
the time of Justinian in the sixth century, was a well-developed artistic
language.
The Church’s acceptance of a variety of cultural elements and their
integration into the fullness of revelation does not respond to a need of
the Church but to a need of the world. The final goal of the world’s
existence is to become God’s Kingdom. And, conversely, the purpose of
the Church is to make the world participate in the fullness of revelation.
This is why the process of selecting and assembling, which began in the
first centuries of Christianity, corresponds to the normal saving task
entrusted to the Church. This process is not limited to a specific historical
period. It is a general trait of the role of the Church in the history of the
world. The Church continues and will continue, until the consummation
of the ages, to collect all authentic realities outside of itself, even those
which are incomplete and imperfect, in order to integrate them into the
fullness of the revelation, and to allow them to participate in divine life.

This does not mean that the Church suppresses the specific character
of the cultural elements which it adopts. It excludes nothing which is a
part of the nature created by God, not one human trait, not one indica­
tion of time and place, not one national or personal characteristic. It
sanctifies all the diversity of the universe, revealing to it its true meaning,
Sacred Art in the Constantinian Epoch 89

orienting it towards its true end: the building up of the Kingdom of God.
Cultural diversity does not violate the unity of the Church, but offers it
new forms of expression. Thus the catholicity of the Church is confirmed
both in cultural wholeness and in the individual details. In the realm of
art, just as in other areas, catholicity does not mean uniformity, but rather
the expression of the one truth in a variety of forms, characteristic of every
people, of every epoch, of every human being.
The art which was being developed was a manifestation of the new life
which had been brought by Christianity, a life which was no longer
subject to the law. According to the Christian apologist who wrote to
Diognetus, Christians live “in the flesh,” but they do not live “after the
flesh.”16 Such words vividly express the very principle of the Christian life,
and they do so in almost the same words used by St Paul in his letter to
the Romans: “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live
after the flesh” (8:12). But the world around the Church lived precisely
according to the flesh, according to a principle directly opposed to Chris­
tian salvation. This idea of a triumphant flesh was expressed with great
perfection in pagan art, this art of antiquity whose beauty retains its
enticing charm even today. Christian art, meanwhile, had to reflect the
principles of the specifically Christian life and to set them against the
pagan life-style and its principles. The very meaning of Christianity
demanded it
The official art of the Roman empire was a state art which had to educate
the citizens in a certain way. But this art of the Roman empire was a demonic
art The state was pagan and every official act was simultaneously a ritual act,
a confession of paganism. When the Roman empire became Christian, the
state was “depaganized,” and its official art ceased to be idolatrous. Nonethe­
less, it remained a programmatic, pedagogical art Whether Roman or Byzan­
tine, this art was very different from secular art as we understand it today.
Life as it was, or rather as it was seen by the artist, was hardly
represented. Even less could such art be called “free art” or “art for art’s
sake.” It was not arbitrary: it was an educational art, expressing civic
concepts, and educating the citizens in a clearly defined way.17 To achieve
16 The Epistle to Diognetus, V, 8, trans. K. Lake, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1959),
361.
17 Furthermore, it is to this end that the artist often appealed to Christian elements. Thus, in
90 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

this, art was not limited to the representation of certain subjects; it did
this in a clear and concise manner, calculated to make the subject-matter
as accessible to the viewer and as readily digestible as possible. Each of its
subjects had its own intention, its “function,” so to speak18
For the Church in its own domain, the spiritual, it was a question of
possessing an art that would educate the Christian people in the same way
the liturgy did, that would convey to them dogmatic teaching, and
sanctify them with the presence of the grace of the Holy Spirit. In a word,
what was needed was an art that would reflect the Kingdom of God on
earth and accompany the faithful throughout their life, like a parcel of the
Church in the world. What was essential was an image that would bring
to the world the same kerygma as the word and the real presence of
sanctification. By the sixth century, this artistic language already exists in
its essential traits. This is the beginning of the art which will later
improperly be called “Byzantine,” or “in the Byzantine style,” a term that
would be arbitrarily extended to the art of all Orthodox populations.

order to show that imperial power was given by God, the emperor and empress were
represented as crowned by Christ.
18 Thus the portrait of the emperor presented by a state official meant that this official was acting
in the name of and with the power of the emperor; the image of the emperor trampling down
a barbarian signified the invincibility of the empire, etc.
 6

The Quinisext Council:

Its Teachings on the Sacred Image
As is true for the image itself, the teaching of the Church concerning
xicons is not an afterthought, a mere appendix to Christianity; it derives
from the Christian teaching on salvation. The image was not at a given
time put side by side to the Christian vision of the world: it has always
been rooted at its very heart. From the beginning, it existed with an implicit
fullness. As it did for other aspects of its teaching, the Church limited itself
to making it more explicit in response to attacks and confusions that arose
during the course of history. This is also true, for example, for the dogma
of the two natures of Christ, the divine and the human. This truth was
lived by the first Christians rather than explicitly formulated. The dogma’s
closely reasoned expression was created by the Church only in response to
the demands of its history, to refute heresies and errors. It is at the
Quinisext Council that the Church for the first time formulated a basic
principle concerning the content and the very character of sacred art. It
did so in response to a practical need. The canons of this council are not
“a concession of the Church to the demands of the faithful,” as modern
scholarship maintains. The council was not limited to one particular
subject, and not without reason.1 As we shall see, what was given conciliar
expression was the attitude of the Fathers toward sacred art, which
constitutes the very tradition of the Church.
The Quinisext Council opened on September 1, 692. It is called
“Quinisext” because it completes the two ecumenical councils which
preceded it, the fifth in the year 554 and the sixth in the year 681, both
held in Constantinople. Like the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the
Quinisext was held in a “chamber” (in Trullo) of the imperial palace,
whence the name sometimes given to it: “Synod in Trullo.” The Fifth
Council, which condemned Monophysitism, and the Sixth, which pro-
1 See A. Grabar, L 'Iconoclasme bycantin (Paris, 1957), 79.

91
92 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

scribed Monothelecism, were concerned only with dogmatic questions. A

whole series of disciplinary questions was waiting for a solution; it was to
this end that the council was called. The Orthodox Church, therefore,
considers it to be complementary to the two preceding councils, and it is
even frequently referred to as the Sixth Ecumenical Council. The ques­
tions examined by the council concerned various aspects of ecclesiastical
life. These included sacred art. “Some remains of the pagan and Jewish
hesitancy have become mixed with the wheat ripe with truth.” These
words from a letter written by the Fathers of the council to Emperor
Justinian II directly concern our subject, as we shall see.
Three canons of the Quinisext Council are concerned with sacred art.
Canon 73 mentions the image of the cross:
Given that the vivifying cross brought us salvation, we must strive in every
possible way to show it the honor it deserves, since it saved us from the ancient
fall. This is why, venerating it in thought, word and feeling, we order that all
those images of the cross made on the ground by certain individuals be destroyed,
so that this sign of our victory may not be trampled upon by the feet of those
who walk. We order that those who trace the representation of the cross on the
ground be henceforth excluded from communion.2

This is a simple order which needs no explanations: It is wrong to trace

the image of the holy cross on the ground, since it risks being trampled on
by the feet of passers-by.
Canon 82 is for us the most interesting. It is of critical importance
because it shows us the content of the sacred image as the Church
understands it. This canon specifies how this image developed. Following
is the text:
In certain reproductions of venerable images (ypa<^aîç), the Forerunner is
pictured pointing to the Lamb with his finger. This representation was adopted
as a symbol of grace. It was a hidden figure of that true Lamb who is Christ our
God, shown to us according to the Law. Having thus welcomed these ancient
figures (tvttovs) and shadows as symbols of the truth transmitted to the Church,
today we prefer (npoTipopev) grace and truth themselves, as a fulfillment of
the Law. Therefore, in order to expose to the sight of all, at least with the help
of painting, that which is perfect, we decree that henceforth Christ our God bi
represented in His human form (dvOpcimvov xaPcucn<iP<1) and not in the
ancient form of the lamb. We understand this to be the elevation of the humility
of God the Word, and we are led to remembering His life in the flesh, His
2 Rhalles and Potles, Syntagma, vol. 2 (Athens, 1852), 474.
The Quinisext Council 93

passion. His saving death and, thus, deliverance (dwoXvTpcôaetüç) which took
place for the world?

The first sentence of the canon explains the situation existing at that
time. It speaks of St John the Baptist’s (the “Forerunner’’) pointing out
Christ, who is represented as a lamb. We know that the realistic image of
Christ, His true portrait, existed from the beginning, and it is this portrait
which is the true witness of His Incarnation. In addition, there were also
larger cycles representing subjects from the Old and New Testaments,
particularly those of our major feasts, where Christ was represented in His
human form. And yet symbolic representations replacing the human
image of Christ still existed in the seventh century. This belated attach­
ment to biblical préfigurations, in particular to the image of the lamb, was
particularly widespread in the West.4 It was necessary, however, to guide
the faithful toward the position adopted by the Church, and this is the
purpose of Canon 82 of the Quinisext Council.
As we know, the lamb is an Old Testament symbol which played a very
important role in the art of the first Christians. In the Old Testament, the
paschal sacrifice of the lamb was the center of worship, just as the
eucharistie sacrifice in the New Testament is the heart of the life of the
Church, and Easter—the Feast of the Resurrection—is the center of the
liturgical year. The unblemished lamb of Israel is the preeminent préfigu­
ration of Christ. In the first centuries, when the direct image of the Savior
was frequently hidden out of necessity, the image of the Iamb was very
widespread. Like the fish, it signified not only Christ, but also the
Christian who imitated and followed Him.
The image of which the Quinisext Council speaks—Christ in the
form of a lamb pointed out by St John the Baptist—was a very important
dogmatic and liturgical image. It is based on a well-known passage of St
John’s Gospel (ch 1). The Gospel writer conveys the witness of St John
the Baptist regarding the imminent coming of the Savior. The high priests
and Levites had come to ask him whether he was Elijah or a prophet. But
St John the Baptist, who was precisely the last of the Old Testament
prophets, replies that he is the Forerunner of Him who comes directly
3 Rhalles and Potles, ibid.t 492.
4 “We do not know of a single representation of Byzantine origin where a lamb is pointed out
by the Forerunner," writes N. Porkovsky, Monuments of Christian Iconography and Art (in
Russian) (St Petersburg, 1900), 29.
94 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

after him. And, indeed, the very next day Christ appears before the
people, asking St John to baptize Him, and the Forerunner points Him
out saying: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world!” (Jn 1:29). The image which represents St John the Baptist desig­
nating the Lamb in this manner literally translates these words and fixes
them in our memory. In forbidding this symbol, Canon 82 is inspired by
the very same passage of the Gospel of St John. It interprets this text,
however, not in isolation or literally, but in the context which precedes it,
emphasizing not the words of St John the Baptist but Him at whom John
was pointing. Indeed, the description of the appearance of Christ is
preceded in the Gospel according to St John by a prologue which prepares
for the manifestation of the Lord:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we
have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father...And from His
fullness have we all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through
Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (1:14,16-17)

Because it is the truth which came through Jesus Christ, it is no longer a

matter of translating a word into images, but of showing the truth itself, the
fulfillment of the words. Indeed, when he was speaking of “the Lamb who
takes away the sin of the world,” it was not a lamb at which St John the
Baptist was pointing but rather Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God, who
became Man and came to the world to fulfill the law and to offer Himself
in sacrifice. It is He who was prefigured by the lamb of the Old Testament.
It is this fulfillment, this reality, this truth which had to be shown to
everyone. Thus, the truth had to be revealed not only in word but also in
image: it had to be shown. Therein lies the most radical refusal of all
abstractions, of every metaphysical view of religion. The truth has its own
image, for it is not an idea or an abstract formula; it is a person, The Person
“crucified under Pontius Pilate.” When Pilate asks Christ, “What is truth?”
(Jn 18:38), Christ only answers by remaining silent before him. Pilate
leaves, without even awaiting an answer, knowing that a whole multitude of
answers can be given to this question without one of them being valid. For
it is the Church alone which possesses the answer to Pilate’s question. Christ
says to His apostles: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).
The correct question is not “ What is truth?” but rather "Who is the truth?”
Truth is a person, and it has an image. This is why the Church not only
speaks of the truth, but also rAotarthe truth: the image of Jesus Christ.
The Quinisext Council 95

The Fathers of the council continue: “Having thus welcomed these

ancient figures and shadows as symbols of the truth transmitted to the
Church, today we prefer grace and truth themselves, as a fulfillment of the
law.” Thus the Quinisext Council speaks of symbolic figures as of a stage
already transcended in the life of the Church. If, at the beginning, the
reference was to one symbolic figure only, the lamb, here, by contrast, the
council mentions “figures and shadows” in general, undoubtedly seeing in
the lamb not just one symbol among others, but the main symbol, the
unveiling of which must naturally convey the unveiling of all the other
symbolic figures.
The council orders that the symbols from the Old Testament, used in
the first centuries of Christianity, be replaced by direct representations of
the truth they prefigured. It calls for the unveiling of their meaning. The
image contained in the symbols of the Old Testament becomes reality in
the Incarnation. Since the Word became flesh and lived among us, the
image must show directly that which happened in time and became
visible, representable and describable.
Thus the ancient symbols are suppressed because a direct image now
exists, and these symbols are belated manifestations of “Jewish hesitancy”
toward direct images. As long as the wheat was not ripe, their existence was
justified, even indispensable, since they contributed to its maturation. But
in “the wheat ripe with truth,” their role was no longer constructive. They
even became a negative force, because they reduced the principal import­
ance and role of the direct image. As soon as a direct image is replaced by a
symbol, it loses the absolute importance it embodies.
After having prescribed the use of the direct image, Canon 82 formu­
lates the dogmatic basis for this usage, and this is precisely where the
essential value of this canon lies. For the first time, a conciliar decision
formulates the link between the icon and the dogma of the Incarnation,
the “life of Christ in the flesh.” This christological basis of the icon will
later be greatly developed by the defenders of icons during the iconoclastic
period.
But Canon 82 does not limit itself to suppressing symbols and formu­
lating the dogmatic principle which is the basis of the direct image. It also
indicates, though indirectly, what this image should be. This image
portrays the face of the incarnate God, the historical person of Jesus
96 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Christ, who lived in a precise time and place. But the direct image of our
Lord cannot be only an ordinaiy representation which recalls only His
life, His suffering and His death. The contents of a sacred image cannot
be limited to this, because the person represented is distinct from other
men. He is not simply a man: He is the God-Man. An ordinary image can
remind us of His life but cannot show us His glory, “the glorification of
God the Word,” according to the Fathers of the council. As a result, the
representation simply of a historical event is not sufficient for an image to
be an “icon.” Using all the means available to figurative art, the image
must show that He who is represented is the “Lamb who takes away the
sins of the world, Christ our God.” If the historical traits of Jesus, His
portrait, are a witness to His coming in the flesh, to the abasement and the
humiliation of the divinity, then the way in which this “Son of man” is
represented must also reflect the glory of God. In other words, the
humility of God the Word must be represented in such a way that, when
looking at the image, we contemplate also His divine glory, the human
image of God the Word and that, in this way, we come to understand the
saving nature of His death and the “resulting deliverance of the world.”
The last part of Canon 82 indicates wherein the symbolism of sacred
art lies: it must not be in the iconographie subject, in what is represented,
but in how it is represented, in the means of representation. Thus the
teaching of the Church is expressed not only by the subject of the image,
but also by the manner in which such a subject is treated. In the realm of
figurative art, the Church developed an artistic language that corre­
sponded to its experience and to its knowledge of the divine revelation. It
thereby puts us in direct contact with this revelation. All of the figurative
possibilities of art converge toward the same goal: to convey faithfully a
concrete, true image, a historical reality, and to reveal through it another
reality, which is spiritual and eschatological.

Thus, on the one hand, the Quinisext Council required a direct image
and discarded the symbols which did not represent Christ in His concrete
humanity. It is impossible to refute a christological heresy with the image
of a fish or of a lamb. Several years later, St Germanus, Patriarch of
Constantinople, wrote to the iconoclast bishop Thomas: “The represen­
tation on icons of the image of the Lord in His human appearance
confounds the heretics who claim that He became man only fictitiously,
The Quinisext Council 97

and not in reality.”5

On the other hand, Canon 82 expresses for the first time the teaching
of the Church on the icon, and simultaneously points out the possibility
of conveying by artistic means a reflection of the divine glory, with the
help of a certain symbolism. It emphasizes the great importance and
ramifications of historical reality by recognizing that only the realistic
image—represented in a certain way, by means of a symbolic language
revealing a spiritual reality—is able to transmit Orthodox teaching. It
holds that symbols, “figures and shadows,” cannot express the fullness of
grace, although they are worthy of respect, having corresponded to the
needs of a given epoch. The iconographie symbol is, for all that, not
completely excluded. But its importance is seen as secondary. Our own
contemporary iconography still retains several of these symbols—for ex­
ample, the three stars on the robe of the Virgin, which denote her
virginity before, during and after the nativity, or else a hand descending
from the sky to designate the divine presence. But this iconographie
symbolism is relegated to a secondary place and never replaces the direct
image.
Canon 82 expresses, for the first time, what we call the “iconographie
canon,” i.e., a set criterion for the liturgical quality of an image, just as the
“canon of Scripture” establishes the liturgical quality of a text. The
iconographie canon is a principle allowing us to judge whether or not an
image is an icon. It establishes the conformity of the icon to Holy
Scripture and defines in what this conformity consists: the authenticity of
the transmission of the divine revelation in historical reality, by means of
what we call symbolic realism, and in a way that truly reflects the
Kingdom of God.
While Canon 82 was directed primarily against “Jewish hesitancy” by
abolishing the Old Testament “figures and shadows,” Canon 100 of the
Quinisext Council is directed against “pagan immaturity.” Its text reads as
follows:
Let your eyes look directly forward; keep your heart with all vigilance! [Prov
4:23, 25]. Wisdom demands it, for the bodily sensations easily enter the soul.
We therefore ordain that misleading paintings which corrupt the intelligence
(voüv) by arousing shameful pleasures, whether these are paintings (lîlvaKCç)
5 Epùtolae, PG 98:173B.
98 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

or any other similar objects, not be fashioned in any way, and that anyone who
undertakes to make such an object be excommunicated (dÿopi(éaOü)).

It is hard to imagine that representations “arousing shameful plea­

sures” might have been used in the churches. But at the time of the
Quinisext Council, in addition to the liturgical feasts, there still existed
pagan feasts which the council prohibited in Canon 62—in particular the
Bromalia, revels honoring Dionysus (Bacchus), dances honoring the an­
cient gods, and so forth. Such pagan feasts were naturally reflected in art,
sometimes in the coarse form of shameless images. It is natural that the
Church deemed it necessary to protect its members from the corrupting
influence of such representations, all the more since certain elements from
this art had infiltrated sacred art and had clouded its content. Canon 100
shows that the Church required that its members retain a certain asceti­
cism not only in life, but also in an art which, on the one hand, reflects
this life and, on the other, influences it. This concern for the moral aspect
of art shows how seriously the Church took its mission. This canon
reflects the fundamental principle that shows through clearly in all the
patristic writings and in all sacred art, as we shall see.

The Quinisext Council marks the end of the dogmatic struggle of the
Church in defense of the Orthodox confession of the two natures in Christ,
His humanity and His Divinity. This is the moment when, according to the
expression of the council Fathers, “piety is already proclaimed by us dis­
tinctly.” These are the opening words of Canon 1 of the council. The
Fathers and the councils had found clear and precise dogmatic formulations
to express the teaching of the Church on the Incarnation of God, as much
as it is possible to do this in words. The truth was proclaimed loudly and
clearly. But this was not enough. The truth still had to be defended against
those who did not accept it, despite the great clarity of the conciliar and
patristic formulations. It was necessary not only to speak the truth, but also
to show it. In the realm of the image, it was also necessary to make a
rigorous confession which would stand up against the obscure and con­
fused doctrines which everyone could accept equivocally, but which were
not true. It was not a matter of finding a compromise to satisfy everyone,
but of clearly confessing the truth, so “that this fulfillment might be seen
by all,” according to the words of Canon 82.
6 Rhallcs and Potlcs, Syntagma, 545.
The Quinisext Council 99

Through Canon 82, the Church responded to the attacks of the Jews
of that time upon the Christian image; and through Canon 100 it
discarded every vestige of Hellenistic art. Its answer to the needs of the
moment carried a positive instruction: that the image can show “the glory
of the Divinity becoming also that of the body,” as St John of Damascus
would say somewhat later.7 For it is obvious that, at a time when christo-
logy was the main concern, it was precisely the human image of Christ,
the basis of all Christian iconography, which demanded a dogmatic
formulation against “the Jewish and pagan hesitancy.”

The decisions of the Quinisext Council were signed by the emperor,

and a place was left for the signature of the Pope of Rome; then appear the
signatures of Patriarchs Paul of Constantinople, Peter of Alexandria,
Anastasius of Jerusalem and George of Antioch. These were followed by
the signatures of 213 bishops or their representatives. Among the signa­
tures was that of Basil, Archbishop of Gortyna (in Crete), who had been
entrusted by the Church of Rome to put its signature on the decisions of
the council, and also those of the other western bishops.8

As soon as the council ended, the acts were sent to Rome requesting
Pope Sergius’ signature. He refused, even rejecting his copy of the acts. He
declared that the decisions of the council had no value and asserted that
he preferred death to accepting error. The “error” consisted undoubtedly
in some teachings and practices concerning which there was a disagree­
ment between the eastern churches and Rome, such as the mandatory
celibacy of the clergy, the Saturday fast (already forbidden by the First
Ecumenical Council), the representation of Christ in the form of a lamb,
and others. Yet the Roman church eventually accepted the Seventh Ecu­
menical Council, which refers to Canon 82 of the Quinisext Council.
Therefore, it can be said that the Roman Church implicitly also recog­
nizes this canon. Pope St Gregory II refers to Canon 82 in his letter to the
Patriarch of Constantinople, St Germanus.9 Pope Hadrian I, for example,
7 Hamilia in transfigurationem Domini, par. 23, PG 96: 564B.
8 Their power has been contested, even denied, by western scholars. Thus, in Héftlé-Leclercq,
Histoire des Conciles, vol. 3 (Paris, 1909), 577, we read: “It is true that the Vita Sergii in the
Liber Pontificalis reports that the legates of Pope Sergius, having been deceived by the emperor,
signed their names. But these legates of the pope were simply pontifical apocrisiaries living in
Constantinople and not legates who had been sent expressly to take part in the council."
9 Cited by G. Ostrogorsky, Seminarium Kondakovianum, 1 (Prague, 1927), 43.
100 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

solemnly declares his adherence to the Quinisext Council in his letter to

Patriarch St Tarasius; he does the same in a letter to the Frankish bishops
in defense of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Pope John VIII spoke of
the decisions of the Quinisext Council without voicing any objection.
Later, Pope Innocent III, quoting Canon 82, calls the Quinisext Council
the Sixth Ecumenical Council. But all this is only the agreement of some
popes, whereas there were others who were of the opposite opinion. In
any case, the West never formannly accepted the decisions of the
Quinisext Council.
Thus, the teaching of the Church about the christological basis of the
icon has remained foreign to the Church of Rome. This teaching was
unable to enrich western sacred art, which even today remains attached to
certain purely symbolic representations, such as the lamb. The Church of
Rome excluded itself from the process of developing an artistic and
spiritual language, a process in which all the rest of the Church took an
active part, with the Church of Constantinople providentially becoming
the leader. The West remained outside of this development.
On the contrary, the Orthodox Church, in accordance with the
Quinisext Council, continued to refine its art in form and in content, an art
which conveys, through images and material forms, the revelation of the
divine reality, giving us a key to approach, contemplate and understand it.
It seems to us that it is particularly necessary for present-day Ortho­
doxy in the West to be well aware of the importance of Canon 82 of the
Quinisext Council. Indeed, this canon establishes a theoretical founda­
tion for liturgical art. Whatever direction Orthodox art in the West might
take in the future, it will not be able to bypass the fundamental instruc­
tion which was first formulated in this canon: the transmittal of the
historical reality and of the revealed truth, expressed in certain forms that
correspond to the spiritual experience of the Church.
 7

The Pre-Iconoclastic Period

'T’he ancient world entered the Church slowly and with great difficulty.
With its very sophisticated culture, it was like the rich man of whom
Christ speaks: It would be more difficult for him to enter the Kingdom of
God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. The Church
constantly borrowed from the heritage of antiquity in order to sacralize
those elements which could be used to express the Christian revelation. It
is natural that in this elaborate process of adaptation, certain elements of
ancient art penetrated into the Church, elements which did not actually
correspond to the meaning of sacred art, or even contradicted it. Their
influence persisted, leaving behind carnal and sensual traits which re­
mained in some monuments of sacred art, together with the illusory
naturalism of antiquity, characteristic of paganism but foreign to the
Christian faith. The Church never ceased to fight against these remnants
of pagan art, and this struggle in the realm of art was simply the reflection
of the struggle of the Church for its truth. In the realm of theology, heresy
is the result of the human inability to accept divine revelation in its fullness,
of the natural tendency to try to make this revelation more accessible, to
lower the heavens down to earth. The same is true in the realm of sacred
art. Secular art brought elements into the Church which “lowered” the
revelation, which tried to make it more “accessible,” more familiar, and
thus corrupted the teaching of the Gospel, diverting it from its aim. As we
shall see later, these same carnal and “illusory” elements, from the Italian
Renaissance until today, will penetrate sacred art in the form of naturalism,
idealism, etc. They will blur its purity and overwhelm it with elements of
secular art.
In other words, the Church brings the image of Christ to the world,
the image of man and of the world revived through the Incarnation, the
saving image. The world, in turn, tries to introduce its own image into the

101
102 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Church, the image of the fallen world, the image of sin, corruption and
death. The words of the late Patriarch Sergius of Moscow are applicable
here: “The world, hostile to Christ, will not only try to extinguish the
light of Christ with persecutions and other external methods. The world
will be able to penetrate into the very Manger of Christ.”1 In other words,
it will try to destroy the Church from within. One of the ways that the
world penetrates the Church is precisely through art. In this realm, the
prince of this world always begins in the same way. He suggests to the
faithful that art is art and nothing else, that it carries its own worth and
that it can, in its own way, express the sacred in a secular and more
accessible fashion, that it does not require a spiritual effort. And it is
obviously much simpler to represent God in an image resembling fallen
man than to try to do the opposite—to convey in the representation the
image of God and the divine resemblance of man.
In Byzantium, the influence which the art of antiquity had on the
Christian image was so important that it has led some scholars to speak of
a “renaissance” of antiquity. Moreover, in the period that we are studying,
the attitude of the faithful themselves towards the image, an attitude
which frequently lacked true understanding, was a powerfill weapon in
the hands of those who were opposed to the veneration of images.
Furthermore, attacks were made against the image from outside the
Church, and this contributed to the development and consolidation of
iconoclastic trends within the Church.
The christological controversies ended in the seventh century. During
the first seven centuries of its life, the Church had defended its essential
truth, which is the basis of our salvation: the truth of the divine Incarna­
tion. It defended it point by point, formulating the various aspects of its
teaching on the person of Jesus Christ, God and Man, giving the world
the most exact definitions possible, which cut short all false interpreta­
tions. But once the partial attacks related to different aspects of christolog­
ical doctrine were over, once the Church had triumphed over each heresy
separately, a general offensive against the Orthodox teaching as a whole
took place. Studying Canon 82 of the Quinisext Council, we saw its
doctrinal significance and its historical necessity, for it presupposed that
the image was a means of confessing Orthodoxy, just as it had been
1 Patriarch Sergius and his Spiritual Heritage (in Russian) (Moscow, 1947), 65.
The Pre-Iconoclastic Period 103

confessed doctrinally during the preceding centuries. An open struggle

against the icon came immediately afterwards, that is, a struggle against
the confession of the Orthodox teaching of the image. One of the most
terrible of heresies, undermining the very basis of Christianity, ap­
peared—the iconoclasm of the eighth and ninth centuries.
There were many reasons for the spread of iconoclasm, which in­
cluded, first of all, the misunderstandings, incomprehensions and abuses
which distorted the veneration of icons. Some Christians zealously deco­
rated churches and considered this to be sufficient for their salvation. St
Amphilochius of Iconium denounced them already in the fourth century.
Furthermore, there were ways of venerating sacred images which could be
mistaken for blasphemy. Asterius of Amasea recounts in the seventh
century that embroidered images of saints decorated the ceremonial robes
of members of the Byzantine aristocracy.2 In Alexandria, men and women
walked on the streets dressed in clothing decorated with sacred images. An
excessive veneration of icons was apparent in the practice admitted by the
Church. Thus, icons sometimes served as godfathers or godmothers in
baptism and at monastic tonsure. There were even stranger cases. Some
priests scraped the colors off icons, mixed them with the Holy Gifts and
distributed this mixture to the faithful as if the divine Body and Blood still
had to be perfected with something sacred. Other priests celebrated the
liturgy on an icon instead of an altar. The faithful, in turn, sometimes
understood the veneration of icons too literally. They would venerate not
so much the person represented on the image as the image itself. This
practice clearly began to resemble magic or the decadent forms of pagan­
ism. All these facts created a great scandal for many believers who were
not firm in Orthodoxy, and caused some of them to reject icons alto­
gether.

But besides these erroneous attitudes towards icons, the images them­
selves were sometimes cause for scandal. The historical truth was often
falsified. For example, St Augustine3 informs us that during his time some
artists arbitrarily represented Christ according to their own imagination,
just as it often happens today. Some images scandalized the faithful by
their subtle sensuality, which did not conform to the holiness of the
2 M. A. Vassiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, vol. 1 (Madison, 1964), 256.
3 De Trinitate, VIII, ch. 14, par. 7, PL 42:951-952.
104 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

person represented. Such images made the holiness of the icon—and

indeed its very necessity for the Church—doubtful. Even worse, they
provided the iconoclasts with a powerful weapon against sacred art in
general. In their eyes, sacred art was not capable of reflecting the glory of
God, the saints and the spiritual world. Its presence in the churches was a
concession to paganism, as some of our contemporaries also believe.
“How could one dare,” they said, “represent by means of a vile Greek art
the most glorious Mother of God, who received in her bosom the fullness
of divinity, she who is higher than the heavens and more glorious than the
cherubim?” Or else: “How can it not be shameful to represent, with the
help of a pagan art, those who reign with Christ, who share His throne,
judge the universe and resemble the image of His glory, when Scripture
tells us that the whole world was not worthy of them?”4

Iconoclastic trends within the Church were strongly supported from

outside the Church. We see in the acts of the Seventh Ecumenical
Council that Anastasius the Sinaite had to defend icons, in the sixth
century, against enemies unknown to us who had attacked them. Simi­
larly, in the sixth century, St Simeon the Stylite, in his epistle to Emperor
Justin II, speaks of Samaritans who insulted the icons of Christ and the
Virgin. In the seventh century, Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis (Cyprus),
wrote a work against iconoclasts who accused the Orthodox of idolatry on
the basis of the Old Testament prohibition.5 This same accusation was
again refuted in the seventh century by John, Bishop of Thessalonica.
Again in the eighth century, Bishop Stephen of Bostra in Arabia, a
Moslem land, refuted the arguments of the Jews against icons in his work
against the Jews.6

Among these different iconoclastic manifestations, it is the interven­

tion of Islam which played the most important role. In the seventh
century, the Moslem Arabs conquered Syria and Palestine and, after
crossing Asia Minor, besieged Constantinople in 717. Emperor Leo III
the Isaurian drove them back in 718. In the beginning of their rule over
the territories they occupied, the Arabs were in general fairly tolerant
toward Christian images. But the Jews, at the moment of the birth of
4 Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Sixth Session, Mansi XIII, 276, 277D.
5 PG 93: 597-1609, and Mansi XIII, 45.
6 See John of Damascus, De imagimbus Oratio IIIt PG 94(1): 1376BD.
The Pre-Iconoclastic Period 105

Islam, again began to believe very firmly in the prohibition of the image
by the Law of the Old Testament; they not only ceased decorating their
synagogues with images, as they had done during the first centuries of
Christianity, but, on the contrary, they destroyed the images which were
found in them. The synagogues of Ain-Douq and Beth Alfa still show
marks of this destruction.
In 723, Khalif Yezid abruptly gave an order to remove icons from all
Christian churches in his territory. The Moslems, therefore, sought out
icons, though it must be said that their persecutions were probably
neither consistent nor systematic.
Besides Islam and Judaism, the iconoclastic camp also contained vari­
ous Christian sects of a docetic tendency,7 that is accepting the teaching
that the Incarnation was illusory and unreal. These included, for example,
the Paulicians and certain Monophysite groups.8 At the Seventh Ecumen­
ical Council, the Patriarch of Constantinople, St Tarasius, says that the
iconoclasts were inspired by Jews, Saracens, Samaritans, Manichaeans and
two Monophysite sects, the Phantasiasts and the Theopaschites.9
However one must not think that iconoclasm was only an Eastern
heresy. It also appeared only in the West. But the West occupied only a
“provincial” position in the Church in this period, and it was in the
Eastern part of the Empire that the destiny of the Church was decided. It
is therefore in the East that the heresy was the most violent and that the
answer of the Church was also the most elaborate and effective. Icono­
clasm did not become a systematic and organized heresy in the West, and
7 The best contemporary studies on iconoclasm are: M. G. Ostrogorsky, Studien zur Geschichte
des byzantinischen Bilderstreites (Breslau, 1929); ch. 3 of his Histoire de l'Empire byzantin; and
A. Grabar, Lïconodasmebyzantin (Paris, 1957).
8 The large majority of the Monophysites were not hostile to icons, and continue to have them
even today. The Arians venerated neither saints, nor relics, nor icons. The great majority of the
Nestorians venerated icons. The advocates of this heresy which exists even today (in the
fourteenth century, as a result of the wars of Tamerlane, it experienced a great decline from
which it never recovered) lost the veneration of icons but continue to venerate the cross. The
Paulicians were a Manichaean dualistic sect. For them, matter had been created by an inferior
and evil god, and was therefore contemptible. Christ had not assumed a real, material body,
which is why He is absolutely unrepresentable. In the tenth century, Emperor John Tzimisces
deported them to the European confines of the empire. Their dualistic and fanatically
iconoclast doctrine spread in southern Europe. This led to a mass movement called, depend*
ing on the country, the movement of the Bogomils, of the Patarini, of the Cathars or
Albigensians.
9 Fifth Session, Mansi XIII, 157D.
106 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

it appeared only in isolated cases both before and after Byzantine icono­
clasm. One of the most characteristic episodes occurred at the end of the
sixth century. In 598 or 599, the Bishop of Marseille, Serenus, threw all
the icons out of the churches and had them destroyed under the pretext
that they were improperly worshipped by the people. Pope St Gregory the
Great praised the zeal with which the bishop opposed the worship of
images but criticized him for destroying them. “It was unnecessary,” he
wrote, “to destroy the icons. They are exposed in the churches so that the
illiterate, looking at the walls, can read what they cannot read in books.
Brother, you should have preserved the icons, but not allowed the people
to worship them.”10 Having received the papal letter, Serenus tried to
question its authenticity. Therefore, in the year 600, St Gregory the Great
wrote to him again, demanding that he put an end to the trouble which
his act had provoked and that he place the icons back into the churches
and explain to the people how they should be venerated. St Gregory adds:
We greatly praise the fact that you prohibited the worship of icons, but we forbid
you to destroy them. It is necessary to distinguish between the worship of an
icon and the process of learning through the icon that which must be worshipped
in history. What the Scripture is for the man who knows how to read, the icon
is for the illiterate. Through it, even uneducated men can see what they must
follow. It is the book of those who do not know the alphabet. It follows that it
is used instead of reading, especially for foreigners.11
But such iconoclastic manifestations in the West were only isolated cases;
they did not have the deep roots of Eastern iconoclasm, and therefore
could not have similar consequences.

10 Epistolarum Liber IX, epist. cv, PL 77: 1027C-1028A.

11 Epostolarum Uber XI, epist. xiii, PL 77:1128A-1130A.
 8

The Iconoclastic Period: A Synopsis

Tn the West, interest in Byzantine iconoclasm began at the time of the

x Reformation in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, when a bitter strug­
gle took place concerning images. Since that time, numerous works have
been devoted to iconoclasm, which is studied from the most varied
perspectives.1 Some scholars consider both religious and political factors,
while others see the religious aspects as a mere pretext and seriously
consider only political, social, and economic factors.
For the modem researchers, the problems proper to iconoclasm... have turned
out to be most obscure; the very fact that cultic religious questions were the
object of a life and death struggle during an entire century seemed so incompre­
hensible that, contrary to all evidence from the sources, iconoclasm has been
explained as a social reform movement. Where the data contradicted this
interpretation, they were dismissed with supreme disdain; where documents
were lacking for this scheme, they were invented.2

In other words, all such theories are only so many learned hypotheses,
conditioned partially by doctrinal or ideological presuppositions,3 or by
1 See M. Suzumov, “The Historiography of Iconoclasm* (in Russian), Vizantiiskii Vremennik
XXII (1963), 199-226.
2 G. Ostrogorsky, “Über die vermeindiche Reformätigkeit der Isaurer,* Byzantinische Zeitschrift W
(1929-1930), 394-5. According to certain historians, Leo III decided to abolish icon-veneration to
remove one of the chief obstades to a closer relationship between Christians, Jews, and Moslems,
and to facilitate their subjugation to the empire; it is also said that he wanted to free the people from
the influence of the Church, and hence attacked the icons, its main instrument. Others maintain
that “it was the intention of the iconoclastic emperors to take public education out of the hands of
the clergy* (A. A. Vasiliev, History ofthe Byzantine Empire, vol. 1 [Madison, 1964], 252), or that the
large number of monasteries was detrimental to the state. The many men who became monks
reduced the number of agricultural workers, of soldiers for the army, and of civil servants (Ch.
Diehl, History ofthe Byzantine Empire [New York, 1969], 58). We may recall that the estimated
number of monks in the Byzantine empire at that time was about 100,000. By way of comparison,
let us note that in Russia, at the beginning of this century, there were only 40,000 monks and nuns
for a much larger population (A. A Vasiliev, cii.t 256-7).
3 What is typical, in this sense, is the presentation of iconoclasm as being preeminently a
struggle against monasticism. As strange as it may seem, such statements are made even today.

107
108 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the personal sympathy of the authors for one or the other of the warring
parties. In Byzantium, certainly, the doctrinal movements were linked in one
way or another to political and social questions, and these played a more or
less important role in the conflict.4 Some of these questions could be closely
linked to iconoclasm, others could coincide with it chronologically; still others
could have influenced it to some degree, direcdy or indirecdy. But all this was
not the root of the problem. When, in evaluating the iconoclastic period, we
leave the realm of speculation and turn to the documents and the facts, we see
that they have an exclusively doctrinal character. These are the apologetic
writings of the two factions, the acts of the councils and their decisions.
Iconoclasm existed before the state openly took a position in its favor;
it continued to exist when this power not only renounced this ecclesiastic
reform but took a hostile attitude toward it. Moreover, iconoclasm has
repeated itself several times in the history of various countries, and with
the same ideological presuppositions; it continues to exist in our day,
without its being linked in the least to any political power.
In the Orthodox world, open iconoclasm began at the initiative of the
state. In 726, Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, influenced by bishops from
Asia Minor who were hostile to the worship of images and who had just
been in Constantinople, openly took a position against the veneration of
icons. Until today, scholarship has considered that he proclaimed two
decrees to this effect: the first in 726, accepted unanimously by the
Senate, the second in 730. The texts of both decrees are lost and certain
modem scholars, for example G. Ostrogorsky,5 assert that there was only
Thus, “one of the most important means in the struggle of the imperial government for
absolute power was iconoclasm, directed against the monasteries" (G. Dombrovskii, The
Frescoes of Medieval Crimea [in Russian] [Kiev, 1966], 14). However, we know from the
documents that there were only a few personal attacks against monks who defended monaster­
ies (see F. Dvornik, The Photian Schism [Cambridge, 1970], 69, note 1). Had monasteries
been the main problem and the icon only a pretext, the weight of the polemic would have been
on the issue of monasticism. However, we do not see anything like this in the writings of the
iconoclastic period: not only the historic documents but also the specifically theological
writings contain nothing either for or against monasticism as such. We do not sec anything
that could be compared to what is there about icons and their veneration.
4 G. Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the V-V1II Centuries (in Russian) (Paris, 1933), and
“Origen, Eusebius, and the Iconoclastic Controversy," Church History 19 (1950), 77. Thus,
“even Monotheism itself was ‘a political problem/ and ‘the Caesaro-papalism’ of the
Iconoclastic emperors was itself a kind of theological doctrine" (ibid., 79).
5 “Les débuts de la querelle des images," Mélanges Ch. Diehl, vol. 1 (Paris, 1930), 235-55, and
Histoire de l'Etat byzantin, 191'2.
The Iconoclastic Period: A Synopsis 109

one decree in 730, and that the years 726-730 were filled with futile
attempts by the emperor to persuade Patriarch St Germanus (715-730)
and Pope St Gregory II to adhere to iconoclasm. In any case, St Germanus
categorically refused to sign the imperial decree. He announced to the
emperor that he would not tolerate any change in the teaching of the faith
without an ecumenical council. This is why St Germanus had to suffer
humiliation and be deposed, deported and replaced by an iconoclast,
Patriarch Anastasius (730-753). Thus, the iconoclastic decree which
appeared in 730 was not only signed by the emperor, but also by the
patriarch. In other words, it was proclaimed not only by the state, but also
by the hierarchy of the Church of Constantinople. After the decree of
730, icons began to be destroyed everywhere.
The first iconoclastic act, by order of the emperor, was to destroy an icon
of Christ above one of the entrances to the imperial palace. The destruction of
this icon provoked a popular uprising; the civil servant sent by the emperor to
smash it was killed and the murderer was harshly punished by the emperor. A
fierce struggle began, marked by the blood of martyrs and confessors. Ortho­
dox bishops were exiled, the faithful laity were persecuted by torture and
death. This struggle lasted just over one hundred years and can be divided into
two periods. The first stretches from 730 to 787, the date of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council, which, under the rule of the Empress Irene, reestab­
lished the worship of icons and formulated the dogma of their veneration.
The second lasted from 814 to 843.
In reality, the attack against the veneration of icons represented an
illegitimate intervention of civil power in the realm of the Church, in its
liturgical life and in its teaching. Emperor Leo III was a despotic and brutal
man. For example, he compelled Jews and Montanists to be baptized; they
sometimes preferred suicide. For the iconoclasts, caesaropapism, the power
of the state in Church affairs, was a normal principle. “I am an emperor and
priest” (ßaotXcus Kal lepeùç dpi), Leo II wrote to Pope Gregory II.6
In response to this principle, St John of Damascus, in his second apology
On the Divine Images» expressed the point of view of the Church:
We will obey you, O emperor, in those matters which pertain to our daily lives:
payments, taxes, tributes; these are your due and we will gjve them to you. But as far
as the government of the Church is concerned, we have our pastors, and they have
6 Mansi XXI, 975.
110 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

preached the word to us; we have those who interpret the ordinances of the
Church.7
The Orthodox position was very dear and uncompromising from the
beginning. Thus, Patriarch St Germanus, who wrote three dogmatic episdes
to the iconodastic bishops even before the explicit manifestations of icono-
dasm, preferred humiliation and exile to heresy. Immediately after the imper­
ial decree, St John of Damascus responded with the first of his three treatises
In the Drfense of Holy Icons. This treatise, like the other two, not only
represents a response to the iconodastic theory, but also a very complete and
systematic theological exposition of the Orthodox teaching on the image.
At the beginning of iconoclasm, the Pope of Rome was St Gregory IL
Like Patriarch St Germanus, he refused to submit to the emperor, and, in
ITJy he called together a council which confirmed the veneration of
icons, referring to the tabernacle of the Old Testament and to the image
of the cherubim in it. Most of Italy revolted against the emperor, and the
insurgents declared that they would place another emperor on the throne
of Constantinople. St Gregory II wrote letters to the emperor and the
patriarch which were later read at the Seventh Ecumenical Council. In
731 his successor, Gregory III, a Greek from Syria, called together a new
council in Rome, where it was decided that:
In the future, whoever removes, destroys, dishonors or insults the images of the
Savior, His Holy Mother ( Virginis immaadataeaùfltegtoriosac), or the aposdes...will
not receive the Body and Blood of the Savior and will be excluded from the Church.8

Gregory III zealously decorated the churches and ordered icons to be

painted. Honoring the insulted saints, he instituted in the chapel of St
Peter in Rome the Feast of All Saints, until now only a local celebration.
The struggle for and against icons which raged in the East and in the West
was primarily concentrated in the Church of Constantinople. The other
patriarchs of the East were, at the time, under Moslem rule and did not suffer
from the systematic persecution which raged in the Byzantine Empire.
The first period of iconoclasm reached its paroxysm during the reign
of Constantine Copronymus, the son of Leo III (741-755).9 He was an
7 De imaginibus oratio II, ch. 12, PG 94(1): 1297; On the Divine Images, trans. D. Anderson
(New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 60.
8 Héfélé, Histoire des Conciles, vol. 3 (Paris, 1910), paît 2, 677.
9 At the beginning of his reign, there was a short interval of 16 months when the veneration of
icons was restored by the usurper Artavasdus.
The Iconoclastic Period: A Synopsis 111

even more fanatical iconoclast than his father, and the three patriarchs
who succeeded each other in the see of Constantinople during his reign
were completely dependent on him. The first ten years of Constantine ’s
reign were relatively quiet, for he was engaged in political struggles to
maintain his rule. But then, persecution of the Orthodox broke loose with
a violence which was comparable to that under Diocletian. Constantine
wrote a treatise in which he summarized the iconoclastic doctrine, and he
called together a council. Neither the treatise of the emperor nor the acts
of the council were preserved, for they were later burned; but we know the
contents of both. The treatise of Constantine is frequently quoted in a
polemical work by Patriarch St Nicephorus, and the decisions of the
iconoclastic council of 754 were recorded in the polemical section of the
acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. The emperor’s treatise is very
violent in tone and expresses an extreme position, suppressing the cult of
the Virgin and of the saints. Moreover, Constantine Copronymus later
published a decree suppressing the name “Mother of God” and forbid­
ding the use of the word “saint.” Overly frequent visits to churches were
forbidden, and so was celibacy. The emperor’s treatise was written on the
eve of the iconoclastic council, which had been cleverly prepared. Pre­
sided over by the Bishop of Ephesus, Theodosius,10 it began on February
10, 754, in Hieria, and ended August 8 in the church of Blachemae in
Constantinople. Three hundred thirty-eight bishops participated, an im­
pressive number. These were the iconoclasts who had replaced the de­
posed Orthodox bishops. For some of them, new episcopal sees had been
created by the emperor.11 It was decided at the council that whoever
painted or possessed icons would be deprived of his priesthood if he were
a priest, and excommunicated if he were a monk or a layman. The guilty
were delivered to a civil tribunal, and questions of faith were thus made
subject to the jurisdiction of public power.12 At the close of the council,
the confessors of Orthodoxy, St Germanus, St John of Damascus and St

10 Patriarch Anastasius died in 753» and his successor, Constantine, was named by the emperor
and presented to the council only at its last session. See G. Ostrogorsky, History, 201-2.
11 To understand the composition of the council to be an active minority (the iconoclasts) on the
one hand, and a passive majority (the Orthodox) on the other, as is done by A. Schmemann
(The Historical Road ofEastern Orthodoxy, [New York, 1963], 205), does not correspond to
the historical situation. In fact, the venerators of icons were not represented at the council at
all (Cf. G. Ostrogorsky, History, 200).
12 See A. A. Vasilev, History, vol. 1, 260.
112 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

George of Cyprus, were excommunicated.13 The faithfill were required to

make an iconoclastic confession of faith, and the persecutions became
particularly crud.
In spite of all this, the faithful populace did not allow themselves to be
fooled and did not renounce the veneration of icons. The leaders of
Orthodoxy were the monks, those “idolaters and worshippers of the
shadows,” as Constantine Copronymus called them. They were fiercely
persecuted. Their heads were shattered against icons, they were sewn into
sacks and drowned, they were forced to break their monastic vows, and
the hands of iconographers were burned. Monks emigrated in groups,
particularly to Italy, Cyprus, Syria and Palestine.14 According to some
historians, Italy alone received 50,000 of these monks during the time of
Leo III and Constantine Copronymus. Many of them were iconogra­
phers, which is why the city of Rome never produced more works of
sacred art than during the iconoclastic epoch. All the popes who suc­
ceeded one another during the reign of Constantine Copronymus
(Zacharias, Stephen II, Paul I, Stephen III and Hadrian I) remained firm
in the Orthodox faith and continued the work of their predecessors in
decorating churches with icons, with the help of monk-iconographers
who had emigrated from the Eastern part of the Empire.15

With the death ofConstantine Copronymus, the persecutions became less

violent. His son, Leo IV, was a moderate and rather indifferent iconoclast At
his death in 780, his wife Irene came to the throne with her underage son,
Constantine. Bring an Orthodox who had never ceased venerating icons,
Irene immediately began restoring Orthodoxy. The Orthodox candidate to
the patriarchal throne was Tarasius (784-806). Under his influence, the
empress began to prepare for the Seventh Ecumenical Council. However, as
soon as this council began its work in Constantinople, the troops revolted,
urged to do so by the iconoclastic bishops, and did not allow the council to
continue. But soon after, when these troops were replaced by others, Irene
resumed her attempt, and the council was convened in Nicaea in 787 (Fig.
13 Mansi XIII, 356C-D.
14 Andreev, Germanus and Tarasius, Patriarchs of Constantinople (in Russian) (Sergiev Posad,
1907), 70.
15 It is during this period that Santa Maria Antiqua was decorated in Rome. During the second
iconoclastic period, the cathedral of St Mark was rebuilt and the churches of Santa Maria in
Domnica, St Praxeda, and St Cecilia were built and decorated.
The Iconoclastic Period: A Synopsis 113

12. The Seventh Ecumenical Council

114 THEOLOGY OF THE KON

12). Three hundred fifty bishops and many monks participated. An

imperial decree and an address of Patriarch Tarasius guaranteed freedom
of speech, and the heretics were invited to put forth their doctrine. In
response, on the Orthodox side, a deacon read refutations point by point.
The council reestablished the veneration of icons and relics and took a
series of steps to reestablish normal life in the Church.
However, the Orthodox teaching on the sacred image was not ac­
cepted by its adversaries. As has often happened in the history of the
Church, both before and after iconoclasm, all did not want to accept the
truth which had been solemnly proclaimed. Peace only lasted for twenty­
seven years. Then the second iconoclastic period began.
Nicephorus I, a rather lukewarm Orthodox who did not take a stand
either for or against icons, ruled after Empress Irene. But his successor.
Leo V the Armenian (813-820), discovered that iconoclastic emperors
had had better political and military luck than Orthodox emperors. This
is why he decided to return to iconoclasm. He asked John the Grammar­
ian, “the brain of the iconoclastic ‘renaissance’,’16 to compose a treatise
based on the decisions of the earlier iconoclastic council. Thus these
decisions, which had already received a complete Orthodox answer, were
artificially resurrected to serve the political aims of the emperor. The
second wave of iconoclasm, like the first, was a violation of the sover­
eignty of the Church in its internal realm by the power of the state. But
the emperor did not find the support in the episcopate which Constantine
Copronymus had enjoyed. When, in 814, John the Grammarian had
finished his work, the emperor began a discussion with Patriarch St
Nicephorus I (810-815) in an attempt to reach a compromise which
would forbid the veneration of icons without suppressing them com­
pletely. The emperor did not use threats; he earnestly asked, in the name
of the peace of the Church, that concessions be made to iconoclasm. But
the holy patriarch refused to make any compromises. St Theodore the
Studite, who with 270 other monks took part in the discussion, told the
emperor that he had no right to meddle in the internal life of the Church.
The negotiations were never completed and persecutions began. The
patriarch first saw his powers limited, and then, in 815. he was dismissed,
exiled and replaced by an iconoclast, Theodoros I (815-821). The same
16 G. Ostrogorsky, 231.
The Iconoclastic Period: A Synopsis 115

year, a new iconoclastic council, presided over by Patriarch Theodorus,

was called together in Constantinople, at the cathedral of Hagia Sophia.
It was neither as significant nor as large as the first. In general, iconoclasm
lost much of its doctrinal vitality during this second period. The icono­
clasts could say nothing new and were therefore limited to continuously
repeating the old arguments, already refuted by the Orthodox.17 This
time, the council emphasized that it did not consider icons to be idols,18
but this in no way lessened their destruction; and even though there was
nothing new or valid in the iconoclastic doctrine, the persecutions only
became more violent, reaching the magnitude of those under Constantine
Copronymus. Monks were again persecuted, and icons, books and sacred
vases with images were destroyed. Iconoclasm was taught in schools and
appeared in manuals.19
Another turnabout occurred when Emperor Michael II came to the
throne in 821. Though an iconoclast, he recalled the Orthodox from exile
and from prison. His reign was a calm one. But the situation changed
again during the reign of Michael’s son, Emperor Theophilus. When
John the Grammarian came to the patriarchal throne in 837, a new wave
of persecutions began.20
When Emperor Theophilus died in January, 842, his widow Theodora
became the regent for his son Michael III, who was underage. She was
Orthodox, and the worship of icons was decidedly reestablished by a council
held in Constantinople in 843 under Patriarch St Methodius (842-846). The
council confirmed die dogma of the veneration of icons which had been
17 The doctrine promulgated at this second iconoclastic council is known through a letter of Emperor
Michael to Louis the Pious (Mansi 14:417-422) and by the RifioationsciSt Theodore the Studite,
but particularly by the response of Patriarch St Nicephoros, who quoted it freely.
18 G. Ostrogorsky, Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen Bilderstreites (Breslau, 1929), 51,
and History 232.
19 Thus the great defender of icons, St Theodore the Studite, was dragged from one prison to
another and was beaten so unmercifully that his bruised flesh rotted alive; and his faithful
disciple, St Nicholas the Studite, who never left him, was compelled to remove this rotten
flesh with a knife.
20 It was at this time that the monk-iconographer, St Lazarus, suffered martyrdom. Having been
cruelly beaten, with this hands burned, he dragged himself directly from the execution place
to the church of St John the Baptist and started to paint his icon. The learned Theodore and
Theophanes, who at the request of the Patriarch of Jerusalem raised their voices against
iconoclasm, were cruelly beaten several times. Moreover, an insulting inscription was marked
on their faces with a red hot iron. This is why the Church venerates them as Theodore and
Theophanes the “marked" (graptoi).
116 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

established by the Seventh Ecumenical Council, excommunicated the icon­

oclasts and established, in March, 843, the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy
on the first Sunday of Lent, with the exaltation of icons in all churches.
It is important to note that iconoclasm did not renounce art as such.
Iconoclasts were not enemies of art. On the contrary, they promoted it.
They persecuted only the representations of Christ, of the Virgin and of
the saints. Thus the iconoclasm of the eighth and ninth centuries can be
likened to Western Protestantism, with the difference that the iconoclasts
did not leave the walls of the churches bare. On the contrary, they took
great pleasure in decorating them with secular subjects, landscapes, repre­
sentations of animals, etc. Purely decorative shapes also played a large role.
Iconoclastic art was both a return to Hellenistic origins and a borrowing
from the Moslem East. Emperor Theophilus, in particular, was a pomp­
ous prince and a great builder, who strongly encouraged monumental art.
He had a palace built in the style of those of Baghdad, its walls covered
with incrustations, mosaics and paintings of shields, weapons, all kinds of
animals, trees, and flowers. He decorated churches in this same style.21
When sacred images were removed everywhere, they were replaced with
animals and birds. Constantine Copronymus had earlier served as a
remarkable example: In the church of Blachemae, for example, he de­
stroyed a series of biblical images and replaced them with “flowers,
different birds and other animals, surrounded by plants, among which
cranes, crows and peacocks stirred.” The emperor was reproached for
having transformed the church, with such images, into “an orchard and
an aviary.” 22 He also replaced a fresco representing the Sixth Ecumenical
Council with a portrait of his favorite coachman.

In the West, during the second iconoclastic period, Pope Pascal I and
Pope Gregory IV continued to defend and propagate sacred images. In
835, i.e., during the persecution of Theophilus, Pope Gregory IV decreed
that the Feast of All Saints, which had been instituted by Gregory III, was
to be celebrated by all of Christianity on November 1. In general in the
West, both in Rome and in other areas, the iconoclastic persecutions
encouraged the worship of saints and of their relics. It is during the
iconoclastic period that the relics of many saints were brought to France
21 A. Grabar, Llconoclasme byzantin (Paris, 1957), 169-70, 171.
22 Ch. Diehl, Manueld'Art byzantin, vol. 1 (Paris, 1925), 365-6.
The Iconoclastic Period: A Synopsis 117

(for example, those of St Guy in 751, of St Sebastian in 826 to the church

of St Medard in Soissons, and of St Helen in 840 to Hautevilliers, near
Reims).23
As we can see, the Church of Rome did not succumb to the tempta­
tion of iconoclasm. On the contrary, it remained firm in its belief in the
veneration of icons, saints and their relics, in contrast to the iconoclasm
of the Church of Byzantium.

23 Iconoclasm also had other consequences in the West. When the Lombards were threatening Rome,
the Pope, rather than ask an iconoclastic emperor for help, turned to Pepin the Short, who, having
saved Rome from the barbarians, in effect created the papal state in 756, thus making the Pope a
temporal sovereign.
 9
The Teaching of the Iconoclasts
and the Orthodox Response
*T*he scope of the iconoclastic ideology extends beyond the limits of the
x heresy fought during the eighth and ninth centuries. There is, in
different forms, a permanency to iconoclasm. Suffice it to think of the
Albigensians in medieval France, the Judaizers in fifteenth-century Russia,
and finally, of the Protestant Reformation. This is why the theological
answer of the Church to the iconoclastic heresy of the eighth and ninth
centuries continues to be valid even today.
From the doctrinal point of view, the only one to be decisive, icono­
clasm is a complex phenomenon which has not sufficiendy been studied
as a heresy. It has been observed many times1 that Christology formed the
common core of the questions that divided the two parties, the Orthodox
and the heterodox, during the dogmatic struggle of the eighth and ninth
centuries. However, iconoclasm has appeared in numerous forms.
At the beginning, the positions of the iconoclasts were very unsophis­
ticated. To the Orthodox, they made more or less the same reproaches as
certain Protestants make today: they accused them of idolizing stones,
boards, and walls. Soon, two trends developed within iconoclasm.
Partisans of the first trend demanded the complete destruction of
sacred images, starting with the icon of Christ. Some also rejected the
veneration of relics, while the most intolerant of them went so far as to
suppress the cult of the Virgin and of the saints. This trend is interesting
because, in its very violence, it is the most consequential and logical, and
clearly shows where the denial of icons, with the web of errors attached to
it, is to lead.
Alongside this trend, there was another that was more tolerant, and
which itself included many shadings. Its advocates allowed holy images in
1 To mention only one work among the most recent, Chr. von Schönborn, O.P., L'icône du
Christ. Fondements théologiques (Freiburg, 1976).

119
120 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the Church, but disagreed about the attitude to be taken towards them.
Some said that the icon did not have to be venerated at all; others
acknowledged the icon of Christ, but not those of the Virgin and of the
saints; still others maintained that Christ Himself should be represented
only before His resurrection, and that He was no longer representable
afterwards.
From the very beginning of the catastrophe, the apologists of Ortho­
doxy took a very clear dogmatic position; they insisted on arguments of a
christological nature to support the existence of icons. However, Os-
trogorsky notes,
a scholarly opinion became widespread, how this happened is not known,
according to which proofs of a christological order were not used by the
venerators of icons before the iconoclastic council of 754. Only this council's
recourse to arguments of that type in favor of the iconoclastic thesis would have
forced the Orthodox also to resort to them. If this were really the case, that is,
if the christological arguments were really put forth by the Orthodox only in
response to similar methods used by their adversaries, the whole issue would
have been a dialectical, scholastic exerdse at the most, and there would have been
no question of the crucial importance of Christology in the struggle for the icon.
But this was not the case. We maintain that the question of icons was, from the
beginning, linked by the Orthodox to christological teaching, whereas their
opponents gave them no pretext for this.2

After citing proofc taken from the surviving writings of Orthodox apolo­
gists of this period (Patriarch St Germanus, St John of Damascus, Pope St
Gregory II, and St George of Cyprus), G. Ostrogorsky continues:
Furthermore, there is no evidence from the historical documents that during the
first period of the struggle the iconodasts had accused the icon venerators of
anything except idolatry. Thus, it would certainly be more legitimate to state
that the christological arguments of the iconodastic council were nothing but a
forced reply to the arguments of the Orthodox party, rather than the opposite.
Such an assertion would, in any case, not contradict the historical data as does
the contrary assertion, which is so often expressed.3

The teaching of the Church and the christological basis of the icon had
already been exposed by the Quinisext Council, even before the start of
iconoclasm. It is also before its beginning, at the end of the seventh
century, that Bishop John of Thessalonika appealed to the christological
2 G. Ostrogorsky, “The Works of the Orthodox Apologists* (in Russian), Seminarium
KbndakovianumX (Prague, 1927), 36.
3 Ibid., 44, note.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 121

basis of the icon in his polemics against the pagans and the Jews. Simi­
larly, in his three epistles to the iconoclastic bishops Thomas of
Claudiopolis, John of Sinada and Constantine of Nacolea, St Germanus
uses the Incarnation to justify the existence of icons.4 These epistles were
written before the open attack against the veneration of icons launched by
Emperor Leo III. Canon 82 of the Quinisext Council is the basis for the
Orthodox line of thinking, and the holy Patriarch Germanus repeats the
christological section almost verbatim in his work On Heresies and Coun­
cils?
From the beginning of iconoclasm, the Orthodox understood the
danger it presented to the fundamental dogma of Christianity. Indeed, if
the very existence of the icon is based on the Incarnation of the second
person of the Holy Trinity, this Incarnation, in turn, is confirmed and
proven by the image. In other words, the icon is a proof that the divine
Incarnation was not an illusion. This is why, in the eyes of the Church,
the attack against the icon of Christ is an attack on His Incarnation and
on the whole economy of our salvation. This is why, in defending sacred
images, the Church was not only defending their didactic role or their
aesthetic aspect, but the very basis of the Christian faith. This explains the
resolution of the Orthodox in defense of the icon, their intransigence, and
their willingness to suffer greatly.

The iconoclastic argumentation—the accusation of idolatry and the

appeal to the Old Testament—^clashed with a well-articulated and clearly
formulated theology, and turned out to be insufficient. Faced with the
strong and unwavering position of the Orthodox, a theological basis for
iconoclasm had to be found, and the heresy found its theoretician in the
person of Emperor Constantine V Copronymus. Taking into account the
Orthodox argumentation and responding to it, Constantine composed a
treatise, the content of which reveals the deep split that separated Ortho­
doxy from iconoclasm. All the iconoclastic trends, pushed to the extreme,
are gathered there. This work of the emperor, containing his point of view
about the very concept of the icon, was presented to the iconoclastic
council in 754. The council could not accept everything in this treatise
and had to moderate some of its points. Thus it did not condemn the
4 Epistotae, PG 98:164-193,156-161,161-164.
5 De haeresibus et synodic PG 98: 80A.
122 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

veneration of the Virgin and of the saints; however, Constantine later

succeeded in imposing these doctrines also. The imperial treatise also
contained expressions so grossly monophysitic that the council felt
obliged to modify them, and, in order to justify iconoclasm, it directed
the accusation of monophysitism against the Orthodox, as we shall see.
Neither the Patriarchs of the East nor the Pope of Rome were represented
at the council. Its last meeting concluded with a solemn procession of all
the participants in the public square, and with the reading of the
iconoclastic profession of faith before the crowd, with the excommunica­
tion of the leading confessors of Orthodoxy. After a short introduction,
this profession of faith begins by listing the six ecumenical councils and
the heresies they condemned; then it states that the council of 754 is in
line with the ecumenical councils and is perfecdy orthodox. Next, the
veneration of icons is declared to have its origin in idolatry inspired by the
devil, and opposed by both the Old and New Testaments. The text then
moves on to the argumentation; first, it enumerates the theological argu­
ments, then the biblical and patristic ones.
We will deal briefly with the general aspects of this argumentation, and
especially with the very concept of the icon as understood in iconoclastic
thought. What was an icon for an iconoclast? What was its nature? What
does it have in common with the person represented, and how is it
differentiated from this person? Indeed, the essential difference between
the two sides lay in the very definition of “icon”: the term “icon” was
understood differently by the iconoclasts and by the Orthodox.
The iconoclastic notion of the icon is clearly and precisely expressed in
Emperor Constantine’s treatise, which conveys the point of view shared
by all the leaders of iconoclasm. According to him, a true icon must be of
the same nature as the person it represents; it must be consubstantial with
its model (ôpooûaiov). Basing themselves on this principle, the icono­
clasts came to the inevitable conclusion that the only icon of Christ is the
Eucharist. Christ, they said, chose bread as the image of His Incarnation
because bread has no human likeness, and thus idolatry can be avoided.
The very idea of an “image,” of an “icon,” meant something entirely
different in iconoclastic thought than it did in Orthodox thought; be­
cause for the iconoclasts, only something identical to its prototype could
be considered to be a real icon, only the Holy Gifts could be confessed as
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 123

an icon of Christ. But for the Orthodox, the Holy Gifts are not an icon
precisely because they are identical to their prototype.6
In fact, the “change” of the Holy Gifts does not make them into an
image, but into “the most pure Body and the most precious Blood” of
Christ. This is why the very act of calling the Eucharist an “image” was
foreign and incomprehensible to the Orthodox. The Fathers of the Sev­
enth Ecumenical Council responded to this reasoning by stating that
“neither the Lord, nor the Apostles, nor the Fathers, ever used the term
"image’ to speak of the unbloody sacrifice offered by the priest, but always
called it the very Body and Blood.”7
For the Orthodox, not only was the icon not consubstantial with (&p.oo6oiov)
or identical to (tqvtÔ) its prototype, as it was for the iconoclasts, but on the
contrary, according to the Orthodox apologists, the very idea corresponding to
the word 'icon’ (cIkcôv) implies an essential difference between the image and
its prototype.8

...because the representation is something different from that which is repre­

sented.9

This is why the holy Patriarch Nicephorus finds this theory that the image
has the same nature as its prototype “senseless and ridiculous.”10 He
explains that
the icon bears a resemblance to the prototype...or it is an imitation of the
prototype and its reflection, but by its nature (tq ototq Kal tQ fnroKeip.évq)),
it is distinguishable from its prototype. An icon resembles its prototype because
of the perfection of imitating art, but it is distinguishable from its prototype by
its nature. And if it were not distinguishable from its prototype, it would not be
an icon, but it would be the prototype itself.11

St Theodore the Studite expresses himself more bluntly: “No one could
be so foolish as to think that reality and its shadow...the prototype and its
representation, the cause and the consequence are by nature (kqt’
ovotav) identical.”12
Patriarch Nicephorus certainly grasped the very essence of the question when,
6 G. Ostrogorsky, “The Foundations of the Controversy About the Holy Icons* (in Russian),
Seminarium Korulakovianum II (Prague, 1928).
7 Sixth Session, Mansi XXXI, 274.
8 G. Ostrogorsky, Seminarium Korulakovianum II, 48.
9 St John of Damascus, De imaginibus oratio III, ch. 16, PG 94(1 ): 1337, passim.
10 Antirrheticus., PG 100:225ff.
11 ZfoZ, PG 100: 277A.
12 Ibid., PG 99: 341B.
124 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

having indicated the difference between an image and its prototype, he asserts
that those who do not accept this difference, who do not understand it, can
rightly be called idolaters.13
In fact, if the icon were identified with the person it represents, it would
be impossible for an even slightly developed religious conscience to
venerate icons. Everyone agrees on this. And the person who was unable
to understand a relationship other than that of essential identity obviously
had to repudiate all veneration of icons. On the other hand, the question
of idolatry could not even come up for the person who saw, in the very
notion of the image, “the essential difference between the image and the
person being represented and with whom the icon was only connected in
a certain way.”14
Thus, iconoclastic thought could accept an image only when this
image was identical to that which it represented. Without identity, no
image was possible. Therefore an image made by a painter could not be an
icon of Christ. In general, figurative art was a rejection of the dogma of
the divine Incarnation. “What then does the ignorant painter do when he
gives a form to that which can only be believed in the heart and confessed
with words?,” asked the iconoclasts. “The name of Jesus Christ is the
name of the God-Man. Therefore,” they said, “you commit a double
blasphemy when you represent Him. First of all, you attempt to represent
the unrepresentable divinity. Second, if you try to represent the divine
and human natures of Christ on the icon, you risk confusing them, which
is monophysitism. You answer that you only represent the visible and
tangible flesh of Christ. But this flesh is human and, therefore, you
represent only the humanity of Christ, only His human nature. But, in
this case, you separate it from the divinity which is united with it, and this
is Nestorianism. In fact, the flesh of Jesus Christ is the flesh of God the
Word; it had been completely assumed and deified by Him. How, then,
do these godless persons,” asserts the decision of the iconoclastic council,
“dare to separate the divinity from the flesh of Christ and represent this
flesh alone, as the flesh of an ordinary man? The Church believes in
Christ who inseparably and purely united in Himself divinity and hu­
manity. If you only represent the humanity of Christ, you separate His
two natures, His divinity and His humanity, by giving this humanity its
13 7W, PG 100: 277B.
14 G. Ostrogorsky, SeminariumKondakovianum II, 50>l.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 125

own existence, an independent life, seeing in it a separate person and thus

introducing a fourth person into the Holy Trinity.”15 In other words, the
iconoclasts believe that an icon cannot express the relationship which
exists between the two natures of Christ. It is therefore impossible to
make His icon, that is, to represent with human means the God-Man.
This is why the Eucharist is the only possible icon of the Lord. G.
Ostrogorsky writes that “it is characteristic that certain modern scholars,
and particularly Protestant theologians, consider such reasoning not only
to be well-founded, but also irrefutable, not seeing that it is simply
missing the point.”16
As can be seen, the iconoclasts, in their argumentation, wished to place
themselves in the realm of the dogma of Chalcedon. But the flaw in their
reasoning, which those who defended icons did not fail to point out,
consisted precisely in their basic understanding of the dogma of the
God-Man. Chalcedon makes a very clear distinction between nature on
the one hand, and person or hypostasis on the other. It is precisely this
clarity which is lacking in iconoclastic thought. The iconoclasts see only
two possibilities in the image of the incarnate God the Word: Either, in
representing Christ, we represent His divine nature, or, in representing
the man Jesus, we represent His human nature distinct from His divinity.
Both possibilities are heretical. There is no third option.
But the Orthodox, fully aware of the distinction between nature and
person, maintain precisely this third possibility, which abolishes the
iconoclastic dilemma. The icon does not represent the nature, but the person:
IlepiypaTrràç dpa b XpiaTÔç KaO’ inrôaTaaiv käu tQ 0e6rr|Ti
dKcptypanTOS*, “Christ is describable according to His hypostasis, re­
maining indescribable in His Divinity,” explains St Theodore the Studite
(Fig. 13).17 When we represent our Lord, we do not represent His divinity
or His humanity, but His Person, which inconceivably unites in itself
these two natures without confusion and without division, as the
Chalcedonian dogma defines it.
The Monothelites of old had attributed to the person that which was
part of the nature. Christ is a person, they said, and therefore He has only
15 Abridged from the iconoclastic boros. See Héfélé, Histoire des Conciles (Paris, 1910), 697-703.
16 G. Ostrogorsky, Seminarium Kondakovianum II, 50, note 1.
17 Antirrheücus IV, ch. 34, PG 99: 4O5B.
126 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

13. St Theodore the Studite

Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 127

one will, one action. In contrast, the iconoclasts attributed to the nature
that which belongs to the person. From here stems the confusion in
iconoclastic thought. If will and action are characteristic of both natures
of Jesus Christ, so that He has two wills and two actions which corre­
spond to His two natures, then His image is not characteristic of either of
His natures, but of His person, of His hypostasis. The icon is not an
image of the divine nature. It is an image of a divine person incarnate; it
conveys the features of the Son of God who came in the flesh, who
became visible and could therefore be represented with human means.
The Orthodox did not even ask the question of nature. Aware of the
primordial difference between nature and person, they clearly understood
that an icon, like an ordinary portrait, could only be a personal image,
because “nature does not exist alone, but appears in persons,” as St John
of Damascus explains.18 In other words, nature exists only in persons, and
each person fully possesses his own nature. Each Person of the Trinity
possesses the fullness of the divine nature; each human being possesses the
fullness of human nature. Nature is the same in all people, but there are many
persons, and each of them is unique and irreplaceable. When representing
persons, we represent not a multitude of variants of one and the same nature,
or aspects of this nature; we represent concrete persons. Each one of them has
a unique way of possessing the common human nature, which gives distinc­
tive features to each: Peter, John, Paul.19 The icon is linked to its prototype
not because it is identical to that which it represents, which would be patently
absurd. The icon is joined to its prototype because it portrays the person and
carries his name. This is precisely what makes communion with the repre­
sented person possible, what makes him known. It is because of this connec­
tion that “the honor rendered to the image belongs to its prototype,”
according to the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council,20 quoting the
words of St Basil the Great (On the Holy Spirit, ch. 18). In their explanations,
the Fathers often appeal to the comparison between the icon and the secular

18 Defide orthodoxa, IV, “De numéro natura rum," PG 94: 1004A.

19 In Orthodoxy, the term “person” ({nrôaraaiç) has an entirely different meaning from that
used in contemporary language» where “person* is synonymous with “individual.* For those
interested in the Orthodox teaching on nature» person and grace» we recommend V. Lossky,
The Mystical Theology ofthe Eastern Church (New York: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1976),
and In the Image and Likeness of God, John H. Erickson and T. Bird, eds. (New York: St
Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1985).
20 Mansi XIII, 324.
128 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

portrait- the emperor’s portrait is the emperor, likewise, “the representa­

tion of Christ is Christ,’’ and that of a saint is the saint “If power is not
divided or glory separated, then the honor given an image is given to the
one portrayed in the image.”21
To say this differently: if the iconoclasts saw only two possibilities—
the identity of the two objects or the difference between them—for the
Orthodox, on the other hand, even when there is a difference in nature,
there is a certain link between the two objects, which can be simulta­
neously distinct and identical. The Persons of the Holy Trinity are distinct
from one another, but they are con substantial, that is, identical in nature.
On the icon, on the other hand, there is a difference in nature and an
identity of person. St Theodore the Studite expresses this as follows: “[In
the Trinity], just as Christ differs from the Either by His person, so is
Christ distinguished from His representation by nature.”22
Having rejected the basis of Christian iconography, the image of
Christ, the iconoclasts also naturally rejected all other icons. Once the
icon of Christ has been rejected, they said, it is wrong to accept others,
that is, icons of the Virgin and of the saints.
As we have already mentioned, the declaration of faith of the
iconoclastic council, having modified Constantine Copronymus’ point of
view, speaks of the Virgin and of the saints with the greatest respect:
“How dare one represent by means of pagan art,” the council asks, “the
Mother of God who is higher than the heavens and the saints” and
“offend the saints who shine like the stars, with dead and gross material?”
Even though iconoclasm began with such a declaration of deep veneration,
in its normal, “organic” development, so to speak, it succeeded in denying
the veneration of the Mother of God and of the saints. The Byzantine
chronicler Theophanes asserts that Emperor Leo III already refused to
venerate the Virgin and the saints, but this assertion is not confirmed by
other sources. In any case, St John of Damascus, immediately responding to
the imperial iconoclastic edict with his first apology On the Divine Images,
foresaw very clearly where the rejection of icons would eventually lead.
Responding to the rather moderate iconoclastic trend of this time, he
21 St John of Damascus, Deimapnibus oratio I, PG 94: 1256A; On the DivineImages, trans. D.
Anderson (New York: St Vladimir s Seminary Press, 1980), 36.
22 Antirrheticus III, ch. 3, par. 7, PG 99:424A.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 129

writes:
If you make an image of Christ, and not of the saints, it is evident that you do
not forbid images, but refuse to honor the saints... You are not waging war
against images, but against the saints themselves.23

St John very clearly sees the intimate link that exists between the venera­
tion of icons and that of the saints. The iconoclasts’ refusal to venerate the
saints naturally led to a denial of the veneration of their relics and, more
generally, of all types of matter. For the Orthodox, by contrast, salvation
is connected precisely with matter, since it is actualized in the hypostatic
union of God with human flesh. Replying to the iconoclasts, St John of
Damascus wrote: “I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of
matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in
matter; who worked out my salvation through matter.”24
As we see, iconoclastic ideology was opposed to some of the most
essential points of the teaching of the Orthodox Church. The very
understanding that iconoclasts had of icons was diametrically opposed to
the Orthodox understanding. This is why the two sides could not reach
any agreement: They were speaking two different languages. As for the
iconoclastic argument concerning the impossibility of representing
Christ, it presents a pathetic attachment to “the ineffable” falsely under­
stood, a dichotomy between “the spiritual” and “the sensory,” an insuffi­
cient awareness of the reality of the Gospel story.25
In addition to the arguments of which we spoke, the iconoclasts
formulated a whole series of other reasons against the veneration of icons.
“There are no prayers,” they said, “consecrating icons, making them into
sacred objects. Thus, icons are not sacred objects: they are ordinary
objects, having only the value conferred on them by the painter,”26 that is,
aesthetic, psychological, historical, and so forth.
The Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council replied:
Many objects we consider to be sacred are not sanctified by special prayers because
they are full of holiness and grace in themselves. This is why we consider objects
23 De imaginibus oratio /, ch. 19, PG 94: 1249, On the Divine Images, trans. D. Anderson (New
York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 26-7.
24 Ibid., ch. 16, PG 94:1245, trans., 23.
25 G. Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the V-VIII Centuries (in Russian) (Paris, 1933)» The
Defense ofHoly Icons (in Russian).
26 Sixth Session, Mansi XIII, 268fF.
130 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

of this kind to be worthy of veneration and why we kiss them. Thus, the vivifying
cross itself, even though it is not sanctified by a special prayer, is considered to
be worthy of veneration and is used as a means to gain sanctification. Therefore,
the iconoclasts must either acknowledge the cross itself as an ordinary object,
not worthy of veneration because it is not sanctified by a special prayer, or dse
they must also acknowledge the icon to be sacred and worthy of veneration.
But the iconoclasts never ceased venerating the cross, which is quite an
inconsistency, given their attitude towards icons.
Thus, according to the council Fathers, icons are full of grace because
they are called sacred objects—“holy icons”—and because they contain
grace. “Divinity is equally present in an image of the cross and in other
divine objects,” St Theodore the Studite says, “not by virtue of identity of
nature, for these objects are not the flesh of God, but by virtue of their
relative participation in divinity, for they participate in the grace and in
the honor.”28 An icon is sanctified by the name of God and by the names
of the friends of God, that is, of the saints, explains St John of Damas­
cus,29 and this is the reason why the icon receives the grace of the divine
Spirit.30

In addition to their theological arguments, the iconoclasts also em­

ployed biblical and patristic argumentations. The most important, to
which they returned ceaselessly, was the Old Testament prohibition. We
have already seen how the Church understood the meaning of this
proscription; there is no need to return to this now. The iconoclasts also
said that nothing in the New Testament indicates that icons should be
made or venerated. “The custom of making icons of Christ has no
foundation either in the tradition of Christ, or in that of the apostles or
the Fathers,” they maintained.31 “But,” St Theodore the Studite replied,
nowhere did Christ order any word to be put down; and yet His image has been
27 TW, 296D.
28 Antirrheticus /, ch. 10, PG 99: 340.
29 De imagimbus oratio II, ch. 14, PG 94(1 ): 1300.
30 The iconoclastic accusation, like the Orthodox response, proves that at the time of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council the rite of the blessing of icons did not exist. This is very interesting for
us, given our practice of blessing icons. In fact, the benediction rite is not always well
understood by the Orthodox faithful. Frequently, they bring to church a painting with a
religious theme, which in no way can be called an icon, and think that if the priest blesses it,
it will become an icon. However, the benediction rite of an icon is not a magical formula. An
image which is not an icon does not become an icon because it is blessed.
31 Sixth Session, Mansi XIII, 268B-C.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 131

traced by the apostles and been preserved up to now. What is written down on
paper and with ink, is put on the icon through various colors or another
material.32

Ignoring the canons of the Quinisext Council, the iconoclasts asserted

that the ecumenical councils had not given any instruction on this sub­
ject. In support of their position, they brought allegedly patristic texts. It
must be said that in their argumentation, the iconoclasts frequently used
dishonest methods. Thus, after the iconoclastic council of 754, they hid
the texts which mentioned the story of the Holy Face, as we learn from
the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. For the fifth session of this
council, the Acts mention books which had been hidden by the icono­
clasts and were produced at the council.33
In addition to the “Acts of the Apostles,” a second-century gnostic
apocryphon, the iconoclasts widely used the writings of Eusebius of
Caesarea and St Epiphanius, a fourth-century bishop of Cyprus. The
council Fathers viewed the first of these references as being well-founded;
Eusebius, however, should not be considered as an authority in the
Church on account of his leanings toward Arianism.
Regarding St Epiphanius, the Fathers of the council did not enter into
his theology, but based themselves exclusively on the facts: on the one
hand, there were texts written allegedly by St Epiphanius that supported
his iconoclasm; there was, on the other hand, the undeniable fact that in
Cyprus, where he was bishop, there were churches that had been deco­
rated by paintings while he was still alive. Consequently, the Fathers
viewed the writings attributed to St Epiphanius as spurious.34
32 Antirrheticus I, ch. 10, PG 99: 340D.
33 Mansi XIII, 169.
34 The question of the iconoclasm of St Epiphanius has always caused controversy. Thus, St
Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople, studied the writing? in a work entided Against the
Epiphanides, and also in his refutations of the second iconoclastic council (Advenus
Epiphanidem, ed. J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense IV, 292ff). He arrives at the conclusion
that they were falsified by the iconoclasts. St John of Damascus is less categorical: according to
him, the work ascribed to St Epiphanius could have been written by someone else, other than
the one whose name it carries, “which many people are in the habit of doing.” Perhaps also, St
John of Damascus continues, it was a matter not of iconoclasm, but of correcting abuses (De
imaginibus oratio Z, ch. 15, PG 94: 1257B-C). Modern scholarship is not unanimous on this
question. Thus, K. Holl, in Die Schriften gegen die Bilderverehrung (1928), concludes that
Epiphanius was an iconoclast. G. Ostrogorsky, in ch. 3 of Studien zur Geschichte des by-
zantinischen Bilderstreites, is ofthe opposite opinion. G. Florovsky, in The Eastern Fathers ofthe
Fourth Century (in Russian) (New York, 1972), is almost certain that it is a matter of
132 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

In addition, the iconoclasts attributed to St Theodotus of Ancyra (fifth

century) a text that was totally hostile to images but which he had in fact
not written, something the Fathers also noticed. By dint of searching for
texts, the iconoclasts managed to find an iconoclastic tendency even in St
Basil the Great, whose veneration of images we have seen. “The lives of
blessed men,” St Basil wrote, “are in a certain way images of a life pleasing
to God.” From these words, the iconoclasts deduced that painted images
were useless since there existed written images.35
The Seventh Ecumenical Council, which closes the first iconoclastic
period, was held at Nicaea and opened on September 24. The acts of the
council contain 307 signatures. The Pope of Rome, Hadrian I, sent two
legates; the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch also sent their represen­
tatives, who brought a message from the Patriarch ofJerusalem expressing
his approval of the restoration of the veneration of icons.
The council began with the acceptance, after public penitence, of
eleven iconoclastic bishops into the Church. At the second meeting, two
messages from Pope Hadrian I were read, one to the Patriarch of Constan­
tinople, St Tarasius, the other to Emperor Constantine and his mother,
the Empress Irene. The pope expressed his support for the veneration of
icons and insisted on their necessity, but his confession of Orthodoxy
amounted to a refutation of the accusation of idolatry. For the Eastern
Church, then, this was a subject which had been left behind long ago,
almost an anachronism. Quoting Scripture, the Pope referred to the
tabernacle with the image of the cherubim. He then quoted a series of
texts by Greek and Roman Fathers who, in his opinion, were in favor of
icons, especially the one by Pope St Gregory I, which we already know,
about the unlettered who should read on church walls what they cannot
iconoclastic interpolations, even for the story attributed to Epiphanius himself, which was
later inserted into his writing?. Florovsky is of the opinion that the writings of Epiphanius
contained an implicit iconoclastic position, which he explains in terms of the fourth-century
situation. For Epiphanius, “the transition from symbolism to realism in iconography could
have seemed disturbing" (203). J. MeyendorfF, in Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (New
York, 1975), 135, believes that the authenticity of the incriminating fragments of Epiphanius
is dubious. On the other hand, Th. Klauser, in Die Äusserungen der alten Kirche zur Kunst,
Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgie-Geschichte (Münster, 1974), 329-37, maintains their authen­
ticity with certainty. On his part, Ch. Schönborn sees the same link between christology and
iconoclasm in Eusebius and Epiphanius, “although less systematically justified in the latter*
(L’icâne du Christ [Freiburg, 1976], 77).
35 Sixth Session of the Sixth Council, Mansi XIII, 300A-B.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 133

read in books. All this, for want of the christological arguments so

important for the Church, could not have sounded very convincing either
to the Orthodox or to the iconoclasts. But the opinion of the Pope of
Rome, first in honor among the bishops, played an important role. It was
respected; if not sufficiently founded, however, it jeopardized the Ortho­
dox position or at least did not add effectively to the argumentation of the
council. To give the message of the Pope more weight, the Greeks com­
pleted the quotation of St Gregory the Great—“The illiterate must read
on church walls what they cannot read in books”— with the following
precision: “and in this way, through the intermediary of images, those
who gaze upon them ascend to faith, and to the recollection of salvation
through the Incarnation of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” Thus, they gave a
christological basis to the reasoning of the Pope, and raised it to the level
of the Byzantine theological discussions.36 The text of the pontifical
messages was also completed in passages that dealt with other questions
raised by the Pope. Nonetheless, the two legates did not react against such
rectifications, and declared at the council that the modified messages were
indeed the ones they had brought.37
The Fathers then established the true doctrine of the veneration of
icons. Their decisions are based primarily on Scripture. From the Old
Testament they quoted Exodus 15:1 and 17-22, where Yahweh orders
that the cherubim be placed in the tabernacle, and Numbers 7:88-9,
where Yahweh speaks to Moses from among the cherubim. They also
quoted the section from the vision of Ezekiel concerning the temple with
the cherubim (Ez 3:16-20). From the New Testament, the Fathers cited
Heb 9:1-5, a New Testament text on the tabernacle. Then followed the
patristic declarations by St John Chrysostom, St Gregory of Nyssa, St
Basil the Great, St Nilus of Sinai, and others we already know, as well as
Canon 82 of the Quinisext Council.
Then the council was faced with the question of how icons should be
venerated. Opinions were divided on this question. Some, such as the
Patriarch of Constantinople, St Tarasius, believed that icons should be
36 It must be noted that, among the western writers, only Pope St Gregory II resorts to the
dogma of the Incarnation in his apology for the image. Of Roman origin, he was gready
influenced by the East.
37 See G. Ostrogorsky, “Rom und Byzanz im Kampfe um die Bildererehrung,” Seminanum
KondakovianumW (Prague, 1933), 73-87.
134 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

venerated on the same level as sacred vessels. Others, such as the represen­
tatives of the Eastern patriarchs, maintained that images had the same
importance as the cross, and that they should therefore be venerated
equally with it. The council supported the latter.
Next, iconoclasm was condemned as a heresy. The Fathers concluded
that iconoclasm, both in its theory and practice, recapitulated all the
errors and heresies of the past: it was the sum total of a great number of
heresies and errors. The iconoclasts were anathematized, and their works
were confiscated. At the initiative of the legates of the Pope, an icon was
placed in the middle of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia where the council
had taken place; it was solemnly venerated by everyone.
It was declared that the iconoclastic council called together by Con­
stantine Copronymus was not ecumenical, since the other local churches
had not accepted it. Nor could it be called the “Seventh Council,” since it
was in disagreement with the six others, especially with the Quinisext
Council, which the Fathers called the “Sixth Ecumenical Council.” Sa­
cred art, on the other hand, agreed with Christian dogmas; God Himself
had sanctified it, since in the Old Testament he had designated men
endowed by Him with special wisdom and knowledge to decorate the
tabernacle.
Then followed a theological discussion which can be found in the Acts
of the Council (sixth session). Here, the iconoclastic doctrine is explained
point by point; as it is explained, the responses of the Church are given.
We have already spoken of this in part.
The last two meetings were devoted to clarifying the final decisions,
which are called the Oros of the council, and formulating the dogma of
the veneration of icons. Here is the text:
We retain, without introducing anything new, all the ecclesiastical traditions,
written or not written, which have been established for us. One of these is the
representation of painted images (elKOVtidfc àvaCœypa^/jaetoç), being in
accord with the story of the biblical preaching, because of the belief in the true
and non-illusory Incarnation of God the Word, for our benefit. For things which
presuppose each other are mutually revelatory.
Since this is the case, following the royal path and the teaching divinely
inspired by our holy Fathers and the Tradition of the catholic Church—for we
know that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit who lives in it—we decide in all
correctness and after a thorough examination that, just as the holy and vivifying
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 135

cross, similarly the holy and precious icons painted with colors, made with little
stones or with any other matter serving this purpose (emTT)8etü)S‘), should be
placed in the holy churches of God, on vases and sacred vestments, on walls and
boards, in houses and on roads, whether these are icons of our Lord God and
Savior, Jesus Christ, or of our spodess Sovereign Lady, the holy Mother of God,
or of the holy angels and of holy and venerable men. For each time that we see
their representation in an image, each time, while gazing upon them, we are
made to remember the prototypes, we grow to love them more, and we are even
more induced to worship them by kissing them and by witnessing our veneration
(irpoCTKÛvr|<nv), not the true adoration (XaTpetav) which, according to our
faith, is proper only to the one divine nature, but in the same way as we venerate
the image of the precious and vivifying cross, the holy Gospel and other sacred
objects which we honor with incense and candles according to the pious custom
of our forefathers. For the honor rendered to the image goes to its prototype,
and the person who venerates an icon venerates the person represented on it.
Indeed, such is the teaching of our holy Fathers and the Tradition of the holy
catholic Church which propagated the Gospel from one end of the earth to the
other. Thus we follow Paul, who spoke in Christ, and the entire divine circle of
apostles and all the holy Fathers who upheld the traditions which we follow.
Thus, we prophetically sing the hymns of the victory of the Church: “Sing aloud,
O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O
daughter ofJerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, He
has cast out your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you
shall fear evil no more” (Zeph 3:14-15).
Thus, we decide that those who dare to think or teach differently, following
the example of the evil heretics; those who dare to scorn the ecclesiastical
traditions, to make innovations or to repudiate something which has been
sanctified by the Church, whether it be the Gospel or the representation of the
cross, or the painting of icons, or the sacred relics of martyrs, or who have evil,
pernicious and subversive feelings towards the traditions of the catholic Church;
those, finally, who dare give sacred vases or venerable monasteries to ordinary
uses: we decide that, if they are bishops or priests, they be defrocked; if they are
monks or laymen, they be excommunicated.38
On several occasions in the conciliar decision, the Fathers refer to the
Tradition or traditions of the Church. Thus, “retaining the established
ecclesiastical traditions,” the council made its decision according to the
“teaching divinely inspired by the Fathers and the Tradition of the catho­
lic Church.” As we see, the Fathers of the council used the word “tradi­
tion” both in the plural (“the traditions of the catholic Church”) and in

38 Mansi XIII, 377-80.

136 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the singular (“the Tradition of the catholic Church”). This plural and
singular correspond to the meaning given to the word “tradition” in each
case.
Ecclesiastical traditions are the rules of faith passed on by the holy
Fathers and retained by the Church. These are the various forms which
externally convey the divine revelation, forms which are connected with
the natural faculties and peculiarities of men—word, image, movement,
custom. This includes the liturgical, iconographie, or other traditions.
In the latter case, the word “tradition,” used in the singular, has a
different meaning: it is the sacred Tradition of the Church, free from
everything, not subordinate either to human faculties or idiosyncrasies.
“The true and holy Tradition,” says Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, “is
not simply the visible and verbal tradition of the teachings, canons,
ceremonies, and rituals, but it is also the invisible and actual instruction
by grace and sanctification.”39 The concept of Tradition can, in this case,
be defined as the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, giving every
member of the Body of Christ the ability to learn, see and recognize the
truth in its own light, and not in the light of human intelligence. It is the
true knowledge created in man by the divine light which “has shone in
our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God’s glory” (2 Cor
4:6). In other words, Tradition is the ability to know the truth in the Holy
Spirit, the communication of “the Spirit of Truth” who actualizes the
fundamental power of the Church: its awareness of the revealed truth, its
ability, in the light of the Holy Spirit, to discern and determine what is
true and what is false. Only by living in the Tradition can we say: “It has
been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves” (Acts 15:38).40 This
Tradition lives and is communicated in the different forms of ecclesiastic
traditions, one of which is precisely iconography, as the Fathers of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council said.
By referring to the Tradition of the Church, the council showed that
the basis for the existence of icons is not Holy Scripture (the lack of
indications in it about icons had been evoked by the iconoclasts), but
39 As quoted by G. Florovsky, Ways ofRussian Theology, Part One, trans. R. L Nichols (Belmont,
Mass., 1979), 214.
40 On this subject, see the article entitled “Tradition and Traditions,* by V. Lossky in L.
Ouspensky and V. Lossky, The Meaning ofIcons (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1982), 11-22.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 137

Holy Tradition. Scripture itself was written according to Tradition; dur­

ing the first decades of its existence, the Church did not yet have Scrip­
ture, and lived according to Tradition. As is known, modern
Protestantism sees in Scripture the only expression of revelation. But, as
the decision of the council states, the revealed truths communicated by
the Holy Spirit in the Tradition of the Church are not limited to the
written tradition. Even those things which had been accomplished by
Christ during His life on earth are not limited to what we know from
Scripture: “There was much else Jesus did; if it were written down in
detail, I do not suppose the world itself would hold all the books that
would be written” (Jn 2:25). St John of Damascus adds:
The apostles passed on many things without having them written down. The Apostle
ofthe Gentiles is a witness to this: “Stand firm, then, brothers, and keep the traditions
that we taught you, whether by mouth or by letter” (2 Thess 2:15). And to the
Corinthians, he writes: “I congratulate you for remembering me so consistently and
for maintaining the traditions as I passed them on to you” (1 Cor 11:2).41

Thus, iconography is part of the Tradition of the Church. By preserving

it, “We follow Paul...and the whole divine circle of Apostles,” because the
tradition of making painted images existed already in the time of apostolic
preaching, in the same way as we see it in the teachings of the holy Fathers
and historians who witness to this fact in the writings which have been
preserved.42
In other words, iconography is a means that has existed from the begin­
ning of Christianity to express the Tradition, a way of conveying divine
revelation. By renouncing one of the traditions (iconography), icono­
clasm distorted the sacred Tradition of the Church.

Authentic, sacred Tradition is possible only in the Church, which is

the perpetuation of Pentecost; that is, it is possible only in the Church in
which the grace of the Holy Spirit, who reveals the truth and strengthens
41 Defide orthodoxy IV, ch. 16, PG 94:1173,1176. To this reference John of Damascus makes
to St Paul could be added that, if Christianity were limited to Scripture only, one would have
to arrive at the dearly absurd conclusion that most of the apostles did not fulfill the highest
commandment of the Lotd to proclaim the good news throughout the world, to all of
creation. Indeed, in addition to the twelve apostles, Christ had sixty-six others. All that
remains in written form is four Gospels, a few Epistles, and the Acts of the Apostles. But what
has not been put down in Scripture continues to live in the Church Tradition, especially in the
liturgy and in iconography.
42 Sixth Session, Mansi XIII, 252.
138 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

us in it, flows uninterruptedly. Instructed by the Holy Spirit who lives in

the Church, the council proclaimed the dogma of the veneration of icons.
The icon must be an object of our veneration, not of the true adoration
(XaTpcta) which belongs only to God, but precisely the veneration
(irpoaKÙuqaiç) which we show to the Cross and the Gospel; in other
words, we must venerate the visible image in the same way as we do the
verbal image and other objects.
The veneration of the Gospel and of the Cross has never been formu­
lated dogmatically because it was never questioned either in the Church
or among the heretics. But as far as the image is concerned, the Church
had to substantiate dogmatically the well-foundedness of the very exis­
tence of the image and of its veneration.
The council, therefore, maintained that the icon, like Scripture, helps
to “prove the true and non-imaginary Incarnation of God the Word.”
Here we find, expressed and confirmed, a fact we already know from
Canon 82 of the Quinisext Council: that the icon is based on the
Incarnation. It is used to refute all kinds of abstract ideas about the
Incarnation, together with the errors and heresies engendered by such
ideas.
The council states that Holy Scripture and the holy image are “mutu­
ally revelatory.” One single content is witnessed in two different ways—
with words or with images—conveying the same revelation in the light of
the same sacred and living Tradition of the Church. We read in the
council’s canons:
The Fathers neither transmitted to us that it was necessary to read the Gospel
nor did they convey to us that it was necessary to make icons. But if they conveyed
the one, they also conveyed the other, because a representation is inseparable
from the biblical account, and, vice versa, the biblical account is inseparable from
a representation. Both are right and worthy of veneration because they explain
one another and, indisputably, substantiate one another.43

Thus, the visible image is equivalent to the verbal image. Just as the word
of Scripture is an image, so is the painted image a word. “That which the
word communicates by sound, a painting demonstrates silently by repre­
sentation,” the Fathers of the council said, referring to St Basil the Great.
Elsewhere they write, “By means of these two ways which complement
43 Ibid, 296K.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 139

one another, that is, by reading and by the visible image, we gain knowl­
edge of the same thing.”44 In other words, the icon contains and pro­
claims the same truth as the Gospel. Like the Gospel and the Cross, it is
one of the aspects of divine revelation and of our communion with God,
a form in which the union of divine and human activity, synergy, is
accomplished. Aside from their direct meaning, the sacred image as well
as the Gospel are reflections of the heavenly world; the one and the other
are symbols of the Spirit they contain. Thus, both the one and other
transmit concrete, specific realities, not human ideas. In other words,
what was asked was “How can the icon correspond to the Gospel and
explain it, and vice versa ?”
In the eyes of the Church, therefore, the icon is not art illustrating
Holy Scripture; it is a language that corresponds to it and is equivalent to
it, corresponding not to the letter of Scripture or to the book itself as an
object, but to the evangelical kerygma, that is, to the content of the
Scripture itself, to its meaning, as is true also for liturgical texts. This is
why the icon plays the same role as Scripture does in the Church; it has
the same liturgical, dogmatic, and educational meaning.45
The content of holy Scripture is conveyed by the icon not in the form
of a theoretical instruction, but in a liturgical manner, that is, in a living
way, appealing to all the human (acuities. In it, the truth contained in
Scripture is conveyed in light of the entire spiritual experience of the
Church, of its Tradition. It therefore corresponds to Scripture in the same
way as the liturgical texts correspond to it, as we have said. Indeed, these
texts do not merely reproduce Scripture as such: they are interwoven with
it. By alternating and juxtaposing passages, they reveal their meaning and
show us how to live the biblical preaching. By representing various
moments of sacred history, the icon visibly conveys their meaning, their
vital significance. Thus, Scripture lives in the Church and in each of its
members both through the liturgy and through the icon. This is why the
unity of the liturgical image and of the liturgical word is of crucial
importance, because the two modes of expression control one another.
44 7W,300C.
45 It should be noted that the image has certain possibilities which the word does not have: it is
a more direct form of expression, it has a better capacity for conveying general ideas than the
word. Thus, an icon portrays directly and concisely that which is expressed in the entire liturgy
of a feast.
140 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

They live the same life; in worship, they share a common, constructive
action. The denial of one of these modes of expression leads to the
downfall of the other. What happened among the iconoclasts of the
eighth and ninth centuries—a total decline of the liturgical and therefore
of the spiritual life—was the result of a repudiation of the sacred image.
To replace icons, the iconoclasts intensified preaching, religious po­
etry, and they introduced all types of music. On this subject, Pope St
Gregory II wrote to Emperor Leo III: “You have entertained the people
with vain discourses, futile words, citharas, castanets, flutes, with inane­
ness; instead of doxologies and thanksgivings, you have led the people
into fables.”46 This is how the liturgical tradition was broken, with
everything it entailed. Indeed, the divine revelation penetrates into the
believing people through the liturgy and the icon, sanctifying life, giving
things their true meaning, and thus becomes the fundamental task to be
fulfilled by the faithful.
Quoting the words of St Basil the Great, the Seventh Ecumenical
Council asserts that “the honor rendered to the image passes to its
prototype, for the person who venerates an icon venerates the person
represented on it.” Thus, icons are intermediaries between the repre­
sented persons and the praying faithful, causing them to commune in
grace. In church during the liturgy, the faithful, through the intermediary
of icons and liturgical prayers, enter into communion with the heavenly
Church, forming with it a single whole. In its liturgy, the Church is one.
It includes in its fullness the angels and men, the living and the dead, and
finally, all of creation. And when the priest incenses the church, he
embraces in his movement both the saints represented on icons and the
faithful gathered in the church, thus expressing the unity of the earthly
and heavenly Church.
Thus, sacred art is liturgical by its very nature, not only because it
serves as a framework for the liturgy and makes it complete, but because
it corresponds to it perfectly. Being therefore an art of worship, the icon
has never “served” religion in the sense in which art historians sometimes
understand it,47 that is, as an auxiliary element borrowed from outside
46 Second message, Mansi XII, 978B.
47 “Icons are in no way an integral part, especially not an essential part, of Orthodox worship"
(H. G. Beck, Von der Fragwürdigkeit der Ikonen, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 141

and used by the Church. The icon, like the word, is an integral part of
religion: it is a way of knowing God, one of the means of contacting Him.
Just like the image of the precious and lifegiving Cross, which is the
distinctive sign of Christianity, its standard, so to speak, the icon is a
confession of the truth, a profession of faith.
The decisions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council were signed by
representatives of the entire Church, including the Roman Church. Hav­
ing received the canons of the council, Pope Hadrian I had them trans­
lated into Latin. This translation was so inaccurate and crude that
Anastasius the Librarian, a ninth-century Roman scholar, declared that it
was absolutely unreadable, and wrote another one. But the first transla­
tion had unfortunate consequences and caused many misunderstandings,
particularly the moderate iconoclasm of Charlemagne. One of the main
blunders in this translation concerns the dogma of the veneration of icons
itself, the prpoer attitude toward the sacred image. Wherever the Greek
had used the word irpooKiivqaiç, the Latin used the word adoratio. But
îrpoaKÛi/T|aiç means “veneration” and not “adoration,” and the council
specified and especially emphasized that the correct attitude toward the
image should be one of honor and veneration, not that of true adoration
(Xcrrpeta), which befits God alone.48 What is really tragic is not just this
translation, but the fact that it was taken seriously in the West, and that
no one was aware of its absurdity.
Charlemagne, to whom the Pope had sent the canons of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council (in their Latin translation), was outraged by what he
saw. He made a stormy protest to Hadrian I, and, in response to what he
believed to be the canons of the council, sent to the Pope a document
called the Libri Caroling which had been written by his Frankish theolo­
gians. Let us give a few examples of the way in which these theologians
“understood” the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council.
To the iconoclasts who claimed that only the Eucharist was the true
Sitzungsberichte [1975], No. 7 [München, 1975], 33).
48 “The distinction was never well understood in the West,” John Meyendorff notes in Christin
Eastern Christian Thought (New York: St Vladimir s Seminary Press, 1975); he adds that “St
Thomas Aquinas himself admitted a 'relative adoration' (latria) of the images, and this
provoked accusations against the Latin Church by certain Orthodox [the Council of St
Sophia, in 1450] (Mansi XXXII, 103), and later by the Reformers of the Sixteenth Century*
(141).
142 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

image of Christ, the council had answered that neither Christ nor the
Apostles nor the Fathers had ever called the eucharistie gifts images, but
had called them the true Body and Blood of Christ. Not understanding
either the iconoclastic assertion or the Orthodox response, the Frankish
theologians wrote in response to the Seventh Ecumenical Council:
It is absurd and rash to place icons and the Eucharist on the same level and to
say that just as the fruits of the earth [that is, bread and wine] are transformed
into a mystery worthy of our veneration, similarly images are transformed into
the veneration shown to the person represented on these images.
As can be seen, this is sheer nonsense. Héfélé, the church historian,
comments on this in his Histoire des Conciles : “The Council of Nicaea did
not say this, nor anything like it.”49 Pope Hadrian I had to explain in his
answer that it was not the Fathers of the council, but the iconoclasts who
had confused the Eucharist with the image.
But what was most important was not this bad translation: it was the
fundamental difference in attitude toward the icon that existed between
the Greek and the Frankish theologians, their different way of under­
standing the meaning and aim of the sacred image. Thus we read in the
Libri Carolini: “They [that is, the Greeks] place almost all their hope in
icons, while we venerate the saints in their body, or, rather, in their relics
or clothing, following the tradition of the ancient Fathers.” But the
Greeks did not show any preference to icons over relics; they only placed
each in its place. “The icon cannot be placed on the same level as the
cross, the sacred vases, or the Holy Scriptures,” the Libri Carolini con­
tinue, since in the mind of their creators, “images are only the product of
the artists’ imagination.”50
The misunderstandings between the Fathers of the council and the
Frankish theologians were not limited to the examples we have men­
tioned. It can be said that at the moment when the Seventh Ecumenical
Council developed the theology of the sacred image, “at that very mo­
ment, the Libri Carolini poisoned Western art at its source.”51 Not only
did the Libri deprive the sacred image of its dogmatic basis, but, by
handing it over to the imagination of the artists, they deviated even from
the attitude of St Gregory the Great, which was already an anachronism
49 Héfélé, Histoire des Conciles, vol. 3, Part 2, 1073.
50 Bk 2, ch. 26, Héfélé, ibid,, 1073.
51 Paul Evdokimov, L'art sacré, nos 9-10 (Paris, 1953), 20.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 143

at the time of iconoclasm. Their attitude, which was also that of Charle­
magne, may be summarized as follows: Icons should not be destroyed, nor
should they be venerated. In justifying the existence of the icon against
the iconoclasts, the West did not even understand the essence of the
debate that was raging in Byzantium. What was, for the Byzantines, a
matter of life and death, passed unnoticed in the West. This is why
Charlemagne won the discussion with Hadrian I: the Pope had to give in.
In 794 Charlemagne called together a council in Frankfurt. Consisting
of more than 300 bishops, this council did not go as far as the Libri
Carolini and did not proscribe the veneration of icons in favor of relics.
But it rejected both the iconoclastic council of 754 and the Seventh
Ecumenical Council, saying that
neither one nor the other deserves the title of “seventh.” Believing in the
Orthodox doctrine which sûtes that images should only be used to decorate
churches, and in memory of past canons according to which we should adore
only God and venerate the saints, we do not want to prohibit images as does one
of these councils or to adore them as does the other, and we reject the writing?
of this ridiculous council.52

The absurdity of the whole situation is clean the Seventh Ecumenical

Council forbids the adoration of icons, and the Council of Frankfurt is
indignant because it decrees such adoration. But what is most absurd is
that the legates of the same Pope Hadrian I, who had signed the decisions
of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, also signed the decisions of the
Council of Frankfurt.
After the Council of Frankfurt, another council was held in Paris in
825. This council also condemned the Seventh Ecumenical Council.
Soon after the Council of Paris, both Bishops Claudius of Turin and
Agobard of Lyons attacked images. Iconoclasm reached its peak in the
West when Bishop Claudius also began attacking the veneration of the
cross, which even the most impassioned iconoclasts in Byzantium had
been afraid to do.53
Thus, though the Council of Frankfurt approved of the use of icons, it
did not see any dogmatic or liturgical importance in them. It considered
them to be “decorations in churches” and, furthermore, as “a memory of
52 Héfélé, op. cit.t 1068.
53 L. Bréhier, Cart chrétien (Paris, 1928), 196.
144 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

past canons.” It is significant that the Roman Church, even though it

recognizes the Seventh Ecumenical Council, has in effect remained in the
same position as the Council of Frankfurt, and this is why the image,
which for the Orthodox is a language of the Church, an expression of the
divine revelation and an integral part of its worship, never played this role
in the Church of Rome. It is true that, at the time of Charlemagne, it still
remained faithful to Orthodoxy. For more than thirty years (at least
between the Council of Frankfurt in 794 and that of Paris in 825), the
local churches of Charlemagne’s empire and of his successor Louis the
Pious were, on the question of icons, openly opposed to the catholic
doctrine and to the mother church in Rome. This opposition disappeared
only gradually:54 eventually, the Church of Rome was obliged to accept
the principle advocated in the Libri Carolini and by the Council of
Frankfurt, and it ended up following the road of innovation by distancing
itself from the decisions of the Seventh Council.
If we view the present situation, in a world which calls itself Christian,
in the light of the closing words of the oros of this council—“those who
dare...to make innovations, or to repudiate something which has been
sanctified by the Church, whether it be the Gospel or the representation
of the cross, or the painting of icons, or the sacred relics of martyrs...” we
will see that only the Orthodox Church has remained faithful to this
decision. As to the non-Orthodox world, some have repudiated what has
been sanctified by the Church, such as the Protestants who refuse to
venerate icons or saints’ relics; others, like the Roman Catholics, have
followed the road of innovations.

The final toll of iconoclasm was heavy. During that period, everything
that could be destroyed was destroyed, and this is why we have so few icons
from the early centuries. “Wherever there were images,” a contemporary
says, “they were destroyed by fire or thrown to the ground, or effaced with
a coating.” “Those that were in mosaic,” another one states, “were ripped
down; those that had been painted with colored wax were scraped off. All
beauty disappeared from the churches.”55 State servants were sent to the
most remote provinces to find and destroy works of sacred art. A great
54 See Bolotov, History ofthe Church During the Period ofthe Ecumenical Councils» III (in Russian)
(Petrograd, 1918), 586.
55 Quoted by Ch. Diehl, Manuel d'art byzantin» vol. 1 (Paris, 1926), 365.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 145

number of Orthodox were executed, imprisoned and tortured, and their

properties were confiscated. Others were banished or exiled to faraway
provinces. In short, it was a real catastrophe. Before iconoclasm, the
Orthodox often had no clear awareness of the importance of sacred art. But
the violence of the persecution and the steadfastness of the confessors in
venerating icons emphasized once and for all the importance of the sacred
image. In spite of all persecutions and cruelties, despite the iconoclastic
imperial decrees signed by the patriarchs, despite the number of iconoclast
bishops (338 at the council of 754), despite the anathemas they pro­
nounced against those who venerated, painted or possessed icons—the
believing people never renounced their veneration. Neither the monks, who
comprised the vanguard of the Church, nor the simple believers accepted
blindly what could have seemed like censorship by the Church, for they
knew what the Church can accept and what it cannot. “[Our] aim,” John
of Damascus wrote, “is to raise a hand which fights for the truth.”56 In the
heat of battle, the Church found words capable of expressing the richness
and depth of its teaching. Its profession constitutes a treasure we have
inherited, one which is of particular importance to our time.
The catastrophe of iconoclasm demanded a supreme effort, a gather­
ing of the energies of the Church, the blood of its martyrs and confessors,
the spiritual experience and wisdom of the apologist Fathers, the stead­
fastness and audacity of the bishops who remained faithful to Orthodoxy.
This was truly a collective effort of the Church.

What was at stake in this struggle was neither art nor the didactic and
decorative function of the icon, nor was it a matter of some theological
“superstructure” or a discussion about ritual, about a mere Christian
usage.57 What was at stake was the true profession of the dogma of the
Incarnation, and therefore of Christian anthropology. “It was a specifi­
cally dogmatic debate, and theological depths were revealed by it.”58

The dogma of the divine Incarnation has two essential aspects: “God
became man so that man might become God.” On the one hand, God
comes into the world and participates in its history, “dwells among us”;
56 Deimapnibus oratio I, ch. 3» PG 94:1233, trans. D. Anderson, On the Divine Images, 14.
57 H. G. Beck sees in this only “eine Frage chrisdicher Praxis* (a question of Christian practice),
Von der Fragwürdigkeit der Ikone, op. cit., 44.
58 G. Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers (in Russian), op. cit., 247.
146 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

on the other hand, there is the purpose and meaning of this Incarnation:
the divinization of man and, through this, the transformation of all creation,
the building up of the Kingdom of God. In this world, the Church is the
incipient “Kingdom to come”: such is the reason for its existence. This is why
everything in the Church converges toward this goal—all of life, all activity,
every manifestation of human creativity, including artistic creation.

But iconoclasm, both in its teaching and in its practices, undermined the
saving mission of the Church at its foundation. In theory, it did not deny the
dogma of the Incarnation. On the contrary, the iconoclasts justified their
hatred of the icon by claiming to be profoundly faithful to this dogma. But in
reality, the opposite happened: by denying the human image of God, they
consequendy denied the sanctification of matter in general. They disavowed
all human holiness and even denied the very possibility of sanctification, the
deification of man. In other words, by refusing to accept the consequences of
the Incarnation—the sanctification of the visible, material world—icono­
clasm undermined the entire economy of salvation. “The one who thinks as
you do,” St George of Cyprus said in a discussion with an iconoclast bishop,
“blasphemes against the Son of God and does not confess His economy
accomplished in the flesh.”59 Through the denial of the image, Christianity
became an abstract theory; it became disincamate, so to speak; it was led back
to the ancient heresy of Docetism, which had been refuted a long time before.
It is therefore not surprising that iconoclasm was linked to a general secular­
ization of the Church, a de-sacralization of all aspects of its life. The Church’s
own domain, its inner structure, was invaded by a secularized power.
Churches were assaulted with secular images, worship was deformed by
mundane music and poetry. This is why the Church, in defending the icon,
defended not only the foundation of the Christian faith, the divine Incarna­
tion, but, at the same time, the very meaning of its existence. It fought against
its disintegration in the elements of this world. “Not only the destiny of
Christian art was at stake, but ‘Orthodoxy’ itself.”60
59 Quoted by G. Ostrogorsky, “The Works of the Orthodox Apologists" (in Russian), Seminar-
turn Kondakavianumy I (Prague, 1927), 46.
60 G. Florovsky, “Origen, Eusebius, and the Iconoclastic Controversy," Church History 19
(1950) 79. See also, G. Ladner, “Der Bilderstreit und die Kunstlehren der byzantinischen und
abendländischen Theologie," Zeitschriftfiir Kirchengeschichte 50 (1931); “Origin and Signifi­
cance of the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy," Medieval Studies II (1940); P. Lukas Koch,
“Zur Theologie der Christus-Ikone," Benediktinische Monatschrift Beuron 19 (1937) 11-12;
20 (1938) 1-2, 5-6,7-8.
Ml Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 147

14. Christ Pantocrator (All-powerful/almighty)

Russian icon of the 16th century
Photo: Temple Gallery, London
148 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The dogmatic foundations of the content of the icon were developed

by generations of Fathers fighting against the heterodox christology and
anthropology of the preceding centuries. We can only make Chr. von
Schönbom’s conclusion our own:
The christological debates lasted for centuries. During all these years, the Church
never ceased to confess the mystery revealed and sealed in the Holy Face of Jesus
Christ, the oonsubstantial image of the Father [Nicaea I], the Word become flesh
without change [Ephesus], true God and true Man [Chalcedon], One of the Trinity
who came to suffer for us [Constantinople II], the Word of God whose human will
and activity, in perfect harmony with the divine plan, consented to suffer until death
[Constantinople III]. After viewing these turbulent centuries, these terrible, distres­
sing struggles around the true confession of Christ, our gaze stops and settles on an
image that is silent and serene: the icon of Christ [Fig. 14] 61

What lay at the basis of the iconoclastic attitude towards the icon and
everything related to it was not the Old Testament proscription, despite
the importance this argument had at the beginning of the conflict.
Certainly, iconoclasm was born in the East and has often been character­
ized as being marked by a Semitic mentality, by an Eastern, magical
conception of the image.62 All this may have played its role in certain
iconoclastic circles. However, the heresy itself has much deeper roots, as
the most pertinent studies have shown, namely those of G. Florovsky. As
an Orthodox theologian, having studied the origins of iconoclasm, this
author concludes that the current interpretation, all too often repeated,
must be reversed. The main inspiration of iconoclastic thought was
hellenistic, and this heresy was actually a return to pre-Christian Hellen­
ism.63 Florovsky views the entire conflict as a new phase in an age-long
process: In the eighth-ninth century conflict, the iconoclasts represented
an unreformed and uncompromising position, of an Origenistic and
Platonic trend.64 At this time, Origenism, condemned by the Fifth Ecu­
menical Council, was far from being a settled question. It was a trend of
61 Christoph von Schönborn, L'icône du Christ. Fondements théologiques (Freiburg, 1976), 134.
This is where one has to see the true and profound meaning of the statement, so often and so
differently commented upon, of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, according to
which sacred art depended on the holy Fathers, and the artistic aspect depended only on the
artist (Mansi XIII, 252C).
62 See G. Ostrogorsky, “The Works of the Orthodox Apologists,” op. cit., 36.
63 “We should not forget,” the same author adds, “that...the iconoclastic cause was popular in the
hellenized quarters, in the court circles, and in the army, whereas in the lower classes it never had
flourished,” “Origen, Eusebius,” op. cit., 83.
64 Ibid, %.
Teaching ofthe Iconoclasts & the Orthodox Response 149

thought that was still very much alive, and the symbolic-allegorical
method of its reasoning could not have been more favorable to the
argumentation of iconoclastic theology. Actually, it marked a return to
the ancient dichotomy between matter and spirit. In such a system, an
image can only be an obstacle to spirituality: not only is it made of matter,
but it also represents the body, which is matter. Origen’s christology was
the backdrop and the premise for the argumentation of his zealous
disciple Eusebius of Caesarea, as it is found in his letter to Constantia, the
sister of Emperor Constantine. When she wanted to obtain an icon of
Christ, Eusebius explained that an image representing His historical
aspect would be a regression, since the body of the Lord was transformed,
at present, into an unutterable glory. Only in spirit could one contem­
plate the glory in which Christ finds Himself after his Ascension; only
pagans try to represent the unrepresentable.
Indeed, here we find the difficulty the ancient world had in accepting
and assimilating the Christian revelation in its fullness—a difficulty
which lay at the root of all the heresies and which has never been removed,
nor could it be. Indeed, did not St Irenaeus, well before Origenistic
intellectualism, already struggle to safeguard the integrity of the Christian
revelation in its bodily manifestation? Chr. von Schönbom is right in
showing the evolution of a christology infected by the hellenistic heritage,
beginning with Arius, which had to lead inevitably to this conflict be­
tween Origenistic symbolism and the historicity of the Gospel. This is
why “wherever a polemic against the Christian image starts, it is all too
often based on a questionable theological vision (Eusebius, Epiphanius,
Asterius of Amasea, the Montanist Tertullian of De Pudicitid)” as
Schönbom notes.65 Let us repeat that on the eve of the conflict, the
Quinisext Council, which eliminated symbols, had in mind symbolism as
a principle, “the pagan immaturity” represented by “Origen, Didymus
and Evagrius who restored Greek fables” (Canon 1 of the council).
Iconoclasm closes the series of great heresies of the christological period.
Every one of them struck a blow at one or another aspect of the divine
economy, at the salvation resulting from the Incarnation of God. Icono­
clasm, however, no longer attacked a particular aspect, but the economy of
salvation as a whole. Just as this very complex heresy represented a general
65 Von Schönborn, L'icône Ju Christ, op. cit., 84, note.
150 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

assault on Orthodox teaching, so was the reestablishment of the venera­

tion of icons not merely a single victory, but the victory of Orthodoxy as
such. The Church triumphed, and will continue to triumph over a
multitude of heresies. But one of its victories, that over iconoclasm, has
been solemnly proclaimed as the Triumph of Orthodoxy as such.
 10

The Meaning and Content of the Icon

meaning and the content of the icon arise from the teaching the
Church formulated in answering iconoclasm.
The dogmatic foundation of the veneration of icons and the meaning
and content of the liturgical image are particularly revealed by the liturgy
of two feast days: that of the Holy Face, which we have already men­
tioned, and that of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, which is the feast of the
victory of the icon and of the ultimate triumph of the dogma of the divine
Incarnation.
The basis for our study will be the kontakion of the Triumph of
Orthodoxy, which is a true verbal icon of the feast. This text, which is of
an extraordinary richness and depth, expresses all of the Church’s teaching
about images. It is believed that the text dates to no earlier than the tenth
century, but it is possible that it is contemporary with the canon of the
feast. If this is the case, it dates to the ninth century, that is, to the very
moment of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The canon was, in fact, written
by St Theophanes the Marked, a confessor of Orthodoxy during the
second iconoclastic period. St Theophanes eventually became Metropoli­
tan of Nicaea and died ca. 847. This canon is therefore written by a man
who personally participated in the struggle to preserve the icon. It repre­
sents the totality of the Church’s experience, a concrete and real experi­
ence of divine revelation, an experience defended with blood. On the
occasion of the triumph of the icon, it expresses in a concise, exact form,
in a few sentences, the entire economy of salvation, and thereby the
teaching on the image and its content.
No one could describe the Word of the Father;
But when He took flesh from you, O Theotokos,
He consented to be described,
And restored the fallen image to its former state by uniting it to divine beauty.
We confess and proclaim our salvation in word and images.

151
152 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The first part of the kontakion tells of the abasement of the second
person of the Holy Trinity, and thus, of the christological basis of the
icon. The words which follow reveal the meaning of the Incarnation, the
accomplishment of the divine plan for man and consequently for the
universe. It can be said that these two phrases illustrate the patristic
formula: “God became man so that man might become God.” The end of
the kontakion expresses man’s answer to God, his confession of the saving
truth of the Incarnation, his acceptance of the divine economy and his
participation in the work of God and, therefore, the achievement of his
salvation: “We confess and proclaim our salvation in word and images.”

The first part of the kontakion (“No one could describe the Word of
the Father; but when He took flesh from you, O Theotokos...”) can be
summarized in the following way: The second person of the Holy Trinity
becomes man and yet remains what He is, that is, fully God, possessing
the fullness of divine nature, hence uncircumscribable in His divinity, for
“no one could describe the Word of the Father.” God assumes the human
nature which He created; He borrows the human nature in its totality
from the Mother of God; and, without changing His divinity, without
confusing it with humanity, He becomes God and Man at the same time.
“The Word became flesh so that the flesh could become word,” according
to St Mark the Ascetic.1 This is the humiliation, the kenosis of God; He
who is absolutely inaccessible to man, who is indescribable and un­
representable, becomes describable and representable by assuming human
flesh. The icon of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, is an expression of the
dogma of Chalcedon in image; indeed, it represents the person of the Son
of God who became man, who by His divine nature is consubstantial with
the Father and by His human nature is consubstantial with us, “similar to
us in everything except sin,” in the expression of Chalcedon. During His
life on earth, Christ reunited in Himself the image of God and the image
of the servant about whom St Paul speaks (Phil 2:6-7). The men who
surrounded Christ saw Him only as a man, albeit often as a prophet. For
the unbelievers, His divinity is hidden by His form of a servant. For them,
the Savior of the world is only a historical figure, the man Jesus. Even His
most beloved disciples saw Christ only once in His glorified, deified
humanity, and not in the form of a servant; this was before the passion, at
1 “Epistle to the Monk Nicholas,* Russian Philokalia, vol. 1,420.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 153

the moment of His transfiguration on Mount Tabor. But the Church has
“eyes to see” just as it has “ears to hear.” This is why it hears the word of
God in the Gospel, which is written in human words. Similarly, it always
considers Christ through the eyes of the unshakeable faith in His divinity.
This is why the Church depicts Him in icons not as an ordinary man, but
as the God-Man in His glory, even at the moment of His supreme
humiliation. We shall examine later how the Church does this. Here it is
only necessary to note that this is precisely the reason why, in its icons, the
Orthodox Church never represents Christ simply as a man who suffers
physically, as is the case in western religious art.
The image of the God-Man was precisely what the iconoclasts could
not understand. They asked how the two natures of Christ could be
represented. But the Orthodox did not even think of representing either
the divine nature or the human nature of Christ. They represented His
person, the person of the God-Man who unites in Himself the two
natures without confusion or division.
It is characteristic that the kontakion of the Triumph of Orthodoxy is
addressed not to one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, but to the Mother
of God. This shows the unity in the Church’s teaching about Christ and
the Mother of God. The Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity
is the fundamental dogma of Christianity, but the confession of this
dogma is possible only by confessing the Virgin Mary to be the true
Mother of God. Indeed, if the negation of the human image of God
logically leads to the negation of the very meaning of our salvation, the
opposite is also true: the existence and the veneration of the icon of Christ
implies the importance of the Mother of God, whose consent, “let it be to
me according to Thy word” (Lk 1:38), was the indispensable condition
for the Incarnation, and who alone permitted God to become visible and
therefore representable. According to the Fathers, the representation of
the God-Man is based precisely on the representable humanity of His
Mother. “Since Christ was born of the indescribable Father,” explains St
Theodore the Studite,
He cannot have an image. Indeed, what image could correspond to the divinity
whose representation is absolutely forbidden by Holy Scripture? But from the
moment Christ is born ofa describable mother, He naturally has an image which
corresponds to that of His mother. If He could not be represented by art, this
would mean that He was not bom of a representable mother, but that He was
154 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

born only of the Father, and that He was not incarnate. But this contradicts the
whole divine economy of our salvation.2
This possibility of representing the God-Man in the flesh which He
borrowed from His mother is contrasted by the Seventh Ecumenical
Council with the absolute impossibility of representing God the Father.
The Fathers of the council repeat the authoritative aigument of Pope St
Gregory II, contained in his letter to the Emperor Leo III the Isaurian:
Why do we neither describe nor represent the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Because we do not know what He is...And if we had seen and known Him as
we have seen and known His Son, we would have tried to describe Him and to
represent Him in art.
The reasoning of this council, as well as the words of St Theodore the
Studite, touch upon a subject that is very relevant and of great dogmatic
importance, that is, the representation of God the Father in church
practice. Human thought has not always measured up to real theology, as
artistic creation has not always been equal to authentic iconography.
Among other errors, we often find the image of God the Father. This
image has been particularly widespread in the Orthodox Church since the
seventeenth century. It will be necessary to return to this question later
and to analyze it in more detail, in respect to the prohibition of the image
of God the Father by the Great Council of Moscow in 1666-67. There­
fore, we will limit ourselves here simply to several general considerations
regarding the texts which we have quoted.
As we see, the Seventh Ecumenical Council speaks of the absence of
the image of God the Father, who is not incarnate and is consequently
invisible and non-representable. The council thus emphasizes the differ­
ence between the representability of the Son, because He is incarnate, and
the absolute impossibility of representing the Father. We have every right
to conclude from this that, from the doctrinal point of view, the council
confirms this impossibility of representing God the Father. Obviously,
anything can be represented, since the human imagination has no limit.
But the fact is that everything is not representable. Many things concern­
ing God are not only not representable in image and not describable by
words, but are even positively inconceivable to man. It is precisely because
of this inconceivable, unknowable character of God the Father that the
2 AntirrheticusI, ch. 2, PG 99:417C.
3 Mansi XII, 963E.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 155

council proclaims the impossibility of making His image. We have only

one way of knowing the Holy Trinity. We know the Father by the Son
(“He who sees Me, sees Him who sent Me,” we read in Jn 12:45, and “He
who has seen Me has seen the Father,” in Jn 14:9) and the Son by the
Holy Spirit (“No man can say ‘Jesus is the Lord’ except by the Holy
Spirit,” 1 Cor 12:3). Consequently, we only represent what has been
revealed to us; the incarnate person of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The
Holy Spirit is represented as It manifested Itself: in the shape of a dove at
the baptism of Christ, in the form of tongues of fire at Pentecost, and so
on.
If the beginning of the kontakion of the Sunday of Orthodoxy speaks
of the divine Incarnation as the basis for the icon, the second part
expresses the meaning of the Incarnation and thus the meaning and
contents of the New Testament image: “and restored the fallen image to
its former state by uniting it to divine beauty.”
These words signify that the Son of God, in His Incarnation, recreates
and renews in man the divine image soiled by the fall of Adam.4 Christ,
the New Adam, the first-fruits of the new creation, of the celestial man,
leads man to the goal for which the original Adam was created. To attain
this goal, it was necessary to return to the beginning, to Adam’s point of
departure. In the Bible we read: “God said: Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26). Therefore, according to the plan of
the Holy Trinity, man must not only be the image of his Creator, but he
must also be a like-image and resemble God. But the description in
Genesis of the accomplished creative act no longer mentions the likeness.
“So God created man, He made him in the image of God”—kclt’ cIkövcl
Ocoö (Gen 5:l).5 One could say that the text insists on the word “image”
by repeating it, and the absence of the word “likeness” could not be more
evident.6
The meaning of the biblical account of the plan of the Holy Spirit to
create man “in the image and likeness” of God and the account of the
creation “in the image” is understood by the Fathers in the sense that
4 On this subject, see, for example, St Athanasius the Great, Oratio de incamatione Verbi, PG
25:120CD.
5 References are to the Septuagint.
6 On this topic, see V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology ofthe Eastern Church, ch. 6, “Image and
Likeness” (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 114fF.
156 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

man, created in the image of God, is consequently called to realize his

likeness to God. To be in the image of God is to have the possibility of
acquiring the divine likeness. In other words, this likeness to God is
assigned to man as a dynamic task to accomplish.
By baptism, grace restores the image of God to man; as for the divine
likeness, grace outlines it later, with the efforts of man to acquire the
virtues of which love is the highest, the supreme trait of the likeness to
God.
Just as painters dearly establish the resemblance of the portrait to the model by
first tradng the outline in one color, then filling it in little by little with different
colors...so also at baptism, the grace of God begins to remake the image to what
it was when man came into existence. Then, when we begin to strive with all
our will power towards the beauty of the likeness...divine grace makes virtue
flourish upon virtue, elevating the beauty of the soul from glory to glory,
bestowing upon it the mark of likeness.7

Man is a microcosm, a little world. He is the center of created life; and

therefore, being in the image of God, he is the means by which God acts
in creation. It is precisely in this divine image that the cosmic meaning of
man is revealed, according to the commentary of St Gregory of Nyssa.
Creation participates in spiritual life through man. Placed by God at the
head of all visible creatures, man must realize in himself the union and
harmony of everything and unite all the universe to God, in order to make
of it a homogeneous organism where God can be “all in all”—for the final
goal of creation is its transfiguration.

But man did not accomplish his calling. He turned away from God;
his will power weakened, and the inertia in his nature prevailed over his
impetus toward God. This led to the disintegration of man, the micro­
cosm, which consequently led to a cosmic disintegration, a catastrophe in
all creation. The whole visible world fell into disorder, strife, suffering,
death and corruption. This world ceased faithfully to reflect divine
beauty, because the divine image, man, inscribed at the center of the
universe, was obscured. This was the exact opposite of man’s vocation.
God’s plan, however, did not change. Because man by himself was
incapable of reestablishing his nature in its primitive purity, the task
which fallen man could no longer fulfill was accomplished by the New
7 Diadochus of Photice, Oeuvres spirituelles, ch. 89 (Paris, 1955), 149.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 157

Adam, Christ. St Symeon the New Theologian says the following on this
subject:
Man, such as God had created him, ceased to exist in the world; it was no longer
possible for anyone to be like Adam was before his fall. But it was indispensable
that such a man exist. God, therefore, wishing there to be a man such as he had
created with Adam, sent His only Son to earth, who, having come, became
incarnate, assuming perfect humanity in order to be a perfect God and a perfect
Man, and in order that the divinity could have a man worthy of Him. This is
the Man. There has never been and never will be one like Him. But why was
Christ like this? To keep the law and the commandments of God, and to fight
and conquer the devil.

To save man from the ascendancy of original sin, it was therefore neces­
sary to have a man such as God had created in the beginning, that is, a
sinless man, because sin is an external thing, superimposed on human
nature. It is a contrivance of the created will, according to St Gregory of
Nyssa, a voluntary denial by creation of the fullness of life.

The Incarnation of the Son of God is not only the re-creation of man
in his primitive purity. It is also the realization of that which the first
Adam did not know how to achieve. In the words of the Fathers of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council: “God re-created man in immortality, thus
bestowing upon him a gift which could no longer be taken away from
him. This re-creation was more God-like and better than the first cre­
ation; it is an eternal gift.”9 This gift of immortality is the possibility of
attaining beauty and divine glory—“By uniting it to divine beauty,” says
the kontakion. By assuming human nature, Christ impregnated it with
grace, making it participate in divine life, and cleared the way to the
Kingdom of God for man, the way of deification and transfiguration. The
divine image was reinstated in man in the perfect life of Christ. He
destroyed the power of original sin by His freely-accepted passion and led
man to realize the task for which he was created: to achieve divine
likeness. In Christ, this likeness is realized to a total, perfect degree by the
deification of human nature. Indeed, the deification represents a perfect
harmony, a complete union of humanity and divinity, of human will and
divine will. The divine likeness, therefore, is only possible for a renewed
8 Homily attributed to St Symeon the New Theologian, Homilies, First Oration, 3rd Russian
edition (Moscow, 1892), 23.
9 Fifth Session, Mansi XIII, 216A.
158 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

man, in whom the image of God is purified and restored. This possibility
is realized in certain properties of human nature and particularly in its
freedom. The attainment of divine likeness is not possible without free­
dom, because it is realized in a living contact between God and man. Man
consciously and freely enters into the plan of the Holy Trinity and creates
in himself the likeness to God to the extent of his possibilities and with
the help of the Holy Spirit. Thus the Slavonic word prepodobnyi, which
literally means “very similar,” is applied to the monastic type of holiness.10
The rebirth of man consists in changing “the present humiliated state” of
his nature, making it participate in the divine life, because, according to
the classical phrase of St Gregory the Theologian, who echoes St Basil the
Great, “Man is a creature, but he is commanded to become God.”
Henceforth, by following Christ, by integrating himself to His body, man
can reestablish in himself the divine likeness and make it shine forth in the
universe. In the words of St Paul, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding
the glory of the Lord, are being changed into His likeness from one degree
of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). When the human person attains this
goal, he participates in divine life and transforms his very nature. Man
becomes the son of God, a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). By
increasing the gifts of grace, he surpasses himself and elevates himself
higher than Adam was before his fall, for not only does he return to man’s
primitive purity, but he is deified, transfigured, “united to divine beauty”;
he becomes God by grace.
This ascension of man reverses the process of the fall and begins to
deliver the universe from disorder and corruption, since the deification
attained by the saint constitutes the beginning of the cosmic transfigura­
tion to come.

10 This word, created at the time of St Cyril and St Methodius to translate the Greek word
ÔOLOÇ, indicates the attainment of divine likeness by man. A corresponding expression does
not exist in other languages. The opposite term (‘‘dissimilar’), however, can be traced to a very
distant epoch. Plato uses this term in a philosophical sense (dvop.otÔTTp’OS* TTÔVTOV où
TÔirov) in his Politics to express the “noncorrespondence” of the world to its idea. St
Athanasius the Great already uses it in a Christian sense: “He who created the world, seeing it
succumb to the storm and in danger of being swallowed up in the place of dissimilitude, seized
the helm of the soul and came to its aid by correcting all of its transgressions.** St Augustine in
his confessions says, *et inveni me longe esse a Te in regione dissimilitudiniP (PL 32:742), “and
I found that I was far distant from you, in a region of total unlikeness,” trans Rex Warner
(New York, 1983), 149.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 159

The image of God is ineffaceable in man. Baptism only reestablishes

and purifies it. The likeness to God, however, can increase or decrease.
Being (fee, man can assert himself in God or against God. He can, if he
wants, become “a child of perdition.” Then the image of God grows
obscure in him, and in his nature he can achieve an abject dissimilarity, a
“caricature” of God.
The future transfiguration of the entire human nature, including that
of the body, is revealed to us in the transfiguration of the Lord on Mount
Tabor: “He was transfigured before them and His face shone like the sun,
and His garments became white as light” (Mt 17:2; Mk 9:1-8; Lk 9:27-
36). The Lord no longer appeared to His disciples in His “form of a
servant,” but as God. The whole body of Christ was transfigured, becom­
ing, so to speak, the luminous clothing of His divinity. In His transfigu­
ration “on Mount Tabor, not only divinity appeared to men, but
humanity also appeared in divine glory.”11 And the Fathers of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council explain: “Speaking of the nature of the transfigura­
tion, it took place not in such a way that the Word left the human image,
but rather in the illumination of this human image by His glory.”12 In the
words of St Gregory Palamas: “Thus Christ assumes nothing foreign, nor
does He take on a new state, but He simply reveals to His disciples what
He is.”13 The transfiguration is a manifestation, perceptible by the whole
human being, of the divine glory of the second person of the Holy Trinity,
who, in His Incarnation, is inseparable from His divine nature, common
to both the Father and the Holy Spirit. United hypostatically, the two
natures of Christ remain distinct one from the other (“without mixture or
confusion,” according to the formulation of Chalcedon), but the divine
energies penetrate the humanity of Christ and make His human nature
becoming resplendent by transfiguring it in a flash of uncreated light. It is
“the Kingdom of God which has come with power” (Mk 9:1). According
to the Fathers, Christ showed to His disciples the deified state to which all
men are called. Just as the body of our Lord was glorified and transfig­
ured, becoming resplendent with divine glory and infinite light, so also
the bodies of the saints are glorified and become luminous, being transfig­
ured by the force of divine grace. St Seraphim of Sarov not only explained,
11 Metropolitan Philarct, Complete Works (in Russian), “Homily 12* (Moscow, 1873), 99.
12 Sixth Session, Mansi XII, 321CD.
13 Hagioriticus tomus, PG 150:12320.
160 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

but directly and visibly revealed this likeness between man and God to
Motovilov, by transfiguring himself before his very eyes.14 Another saint,
Symeon the New Theologian, describes his own experience of this divine
illumination in the following way: “The man whose soul is all on fire also
transmits the glory attained internally to his body, just as a fire transfers
its heat to iron.”15

Just as the iron when it is united with the fire becomes hot and yet
remains iron, though it is purified, so also human nature when it comes
into contact with grace remains what it is, remains whole: Nothing is lost.
On the contrary, it is purified just as the iron is purified when in contact
with fire. Grace penetrates this nature, is united with it, and from this
point on man begins to live the life of the world to come. This is why one
can say that a saint is more fully man than the sinner is. He is free from
sin, which is essentially foreign to human nature; he realizes the primor­
dial meaning of his existence; he puts on the incorruptible beauty of the
Kingdom of God, in the construction of which he participates with his
own life. For this reason beauty, as it is understood by the Orthodox
Church, is not the characteristic beauty of a creature. It is a part of the life
to come, when God will be all in all: “The Lord reigns, He is clothed with
majesty,” we hear in the prokeimenon at vespers (Ps 92) on Saturday
evening: this is an image of the eternal life to come. St Dionysius the
Areopagite calls God “beauty” because, on the one hand, God bestows on
every creature a unique beauty, and, on the other hand, He adorns him
with another beauty, with the true “divine beauty.” Every creature is, so
to speak, marked with a seal of its Creator. But this seal is not yet the
divine likeness, but only the beauty characteristic of the creature.16 For
man, it can be a path or a means of bringing him closer to God. Indeed,
according to St Paul, “ever since the creation of the world, His invisible
nature, namely His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in
the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20). For the Church, however,
the value and the beauty of the visible world lie not in the temporary
splendor of its present state, but in its potential transfiguration, realized
by man. In other words, true beauty is the radiance of the Holy Spirit, the
14 I. Gorainoff, Sérafin de Sarov (Bellefontaine, 1973), 208-14.
15 "Catechesis 83," Eth. VI, Traités théologiques et éthiques, Introduction, Critical Text and Notes
by J. Darrouzès (Paris, 1967), 128-9.
16 St Dionysius the Areopagite, De divinis nominibus, ch. 4, PG 3:701C.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 161

holiness of and the participation in the life of the world to come.

Thus, the second part of the kontakion leads us to the patristic
understanding of the icon and allows us to grasp the profound meaning
of Canon 82 of the Quinisext Council. “We represent on icons the holy
flesh of the Lord.”17 The Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council
explain this in the following words:
Although the catholic Church represents Christ in His human form (p.op<M)
through painting, it does not separate His flesh from the Divinity which is joined
to it....When we make the icon of the Lord, we confess His deified flesh, and we
recognize in the icon nothing except an image representing a resemblance to the
prototype. It is for this reason that it receives its name; it participates only in this,
and is therefore venerable and holy.18

St Theodore the Studite explains this even more clearly. “The repre­
sentation of Christ,” he says,
is not in the likeness ofa corruptible man, which is disapproved ofby the apostles,
but as He Himself had said earlier, it is in the likeness of the incorruptible man,
but incorruptible precisely because He is not simply a man, but God who became
man.19
These words of St Theodore explaining the contents of the icon, and
the words of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, reflect the
christological teaching of St Gregory the Theologian: “Let us not be
deprived of our integral salvation by attributing only bones, veins and the
human exterior to the Savior. Let us keep man in his entirety and add the
divinity.”20
By comparing these texts, we see that the task of the New Testament
image, as die Fathers understood it, consists precisely in portraying as
faithfully and completely as possible the truth of the divine Incarnation,
insofar as this can be done by art. The image of the man Jesus is the image
of God; this is why the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council,
having His icon in mind, say: “In the same Christ, we contemplate both
the inexpressible and the represented.”21
As we see, therefore, the icon is an image not only of a living but also
of a deified prototype. It does not represent the corruptible flesh, destined
17 EpistolaeW, PG 98:157BD.
18 Sixth Session, Mansi XIII, 344.
19 Advenus iconomachos capita. VII, ch. 1, PG 99:488.
20 Ad Cledonium contra ApolUnarium epistola /, PG 37:184AB.
21 Sixth Session, Mansi XIII, 244B.
162 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

for decomposition, but transfigured flesh, illuminated by grace, the flesh

of the world to come (cf. 1 Cor 15:35-46). It portrays the divine beauty
and glory in material ways which are visible to physical eyes. The icon is
venerable and holy precisely because it portrays this deified state of its
prototype and bears His name. This is why grace, characteristic of the
prototype, is present in the icon. In other words, it is the grace of the Holy
Spirit which sustains the holiness both of the represented person and of
his icon, and it is in this grace that the relationship between the faithful
and the saint is brought about through the intermediary of the icon of the
saint. The icon participates in the holiness of its prototype and, through
the icon, we in turn participate in this holiness in our prayers.
The Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council therefore had to distin­
guish carefully between an icon and a portrait. The latter represents an
ordinary human being, the former a man united to God. The icon is
distinguishable from the portrait by its very content, and this content calls
for specific forms of expression which are characteristic of the icon alone,
and which distinguish it from all other images. The icon indicates holiness
in such a way that it need not be inferred by our thought but is visible to our
physical eyes. As the image of the sanctification of man, the icon represents
the reality which was revealed in the transfiguration on Mount Tabor, to the
extent that the disciples were able to understand it. This is why the liturgical
texts, particularly for the feast of the Holy Face (August 16), set up a parallel
between the content of the icon and the transfiguration:
Falling to the ground on the holy mountain, the greatest of the apostles
prostrated themselves upon seeing the Lord reveal the dawn ofdivine brightness,
and now we prostrate ourselves before the Holy Face, which shines forth brighter
than the sun...
Or yet again:
Having illuminated the human image which had grown dark, O Creator, Thou
didst reveal it on Mount Tabor to Peter and to the Sons of Thunder: and now
bless and sanctify us, O Lord who lovest mankind, by the brightness ofThy most
pure image.22

This parallel, which can also be illustrated by other texts, is certainly not
the fruit of simple, poetic imagination, but it is rather an indication of the
spiritual content of the icon. The icon of the Lord shows us that which
22 Second and third stichera, tone 4.
The Meaning and Content of the Icon 163

15. Tranfiguration of Christ.

Russian icon, 16th century.
164 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

was revealed to the apostles on Mount Tabor (Fig. 15). We contemplate

not only the face of Jesus Christ, but also His glory, the light of divine
Truth made visible to our eyes by the symbolic language of the icon, “the
accomplishment made clear to everyone by paintings,” as was stated at the
Quinisext Council.
This spiritual reality of the icon assumes all its practical teaching value
in the last phrase of the kontakion of the Triumph of Orthodoxy: “We
confess and proclaim our salvation in word and images.” Thus the
kontakion ends with man’s answer to God, with the acceptance and
confession of the divine economy of salvation.
It is easy to understand how to confess salvation in words. The
confession by deed can be understood as the accomplishment of the
commandments of Christ. But there is something more here. We find the
clearest explanation of these words in the Synodicon of the Triumph of
Orthodoxy, about which we spoke earlier. This Synodicon23 contains a
series of anathemas against the heretical iconoclasts and a series of procla­
mations of eternal memory for the confessors of Orthodoxy. Among
others, paragraph three proclaims eternal memory “to those who believe
and who substantiate their words with writings and their deeds with
representations, for the propagation and affirmation of the truth by word
and images.” The representations imply, therefore, that there are deeds
which should be represented. But the act of creating images is also a
“deed.” This word takes on a double meaning in the kontakion: that of
internal and external deeds. In other words, it expresses the living experi­
ence of the Church, the experience which is expressed in words or in
images by the men who attained holiness. On the one hand, man can
23 The oldest text of this Synodicon to have come down to us is a copy made in the sixteenth
century of an eleventh-century text. This text, called the Madrid text, was published by Th.
Ouspensky in 1891, in Russian (Otcherki vizantiiskoi obrazovannosti, 89). The seven para­
graphs of this text summarize the entire dogmatic teaching on the icon, concluding with a
proclamation of “Memory eternal” to those of the Orthodox faith. In counterpoint, five other
paragraphs note the confessional errors and anathematize those who distort true doctrine. In
the Russian church during the seventeenth century, this Synodicon was modified to such a
degree that its entire dogmatic content about the icon disappeared and its meaning was
completely changed. The expression of Orthodox teaching was replaced by a series of general
statements, for example, support for the Seventh Ecumenical Council, and so forth. This text
contains one single passage on the icon which is of little interest, since it is limited to a
rejection of the accusation of idolatry. The passage closely resembles a paraphrase of one of the
canons of the Council of Trent (1563).
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 165

reestablish in and through the grace of the Holy Spirit his likeness to God.
He can transform himself by an internal effort (the spiritual praxis) and
make of himself a living icon of Christ. This is what the Fathers call “an
active life,” an internal deed. On the other hand, man can also, for the
good of others, translate his inner sanctification into images, either visible
or verbal: “We proclaim our salvation in word and images,” says the
kontakion. Man can therefore also create an external icon, making use of
matter which surrounds him and which has been sanctified by the coming
of God on earth. Certainly, one can express the inner spiritual state by
words alone, but such a state is made apparent, visibly confirmed, shown
by representation. Word and image “point to one another,” according to
the oros of the council.
Everything we have said about the content of the icon can be com­
pared to a text of the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians. This will
help us to understand the significance of the icon, for we all see that this
text and the icon express the same teaching and the same experience.
“How are the dead raised?,” asks St Paul. And he answers, “You foolish
men! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you
sow is not the body which is to be...” (1 Cor 15:35-38). He compares our
mortal body to the grain thrown to the ground. In the course of this
present life, the grain must germinate, that is, it must to some extent enter
the life to come. Similarly, we must enter the life of the age to come in
order to open ourselves to the general resurrection in that form which it
pleases God to give us. “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is
imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in
weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised a
spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:42-44). Christ, the new Adam, renewed and
recreated our human nature in immortality.
The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving
spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the
spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is
from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we
have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man
of heaven. I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom
of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. (1 Cor 15:45-50)
And a little further, the apostle says, “for this perishable nature must put
on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality”
166 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

(1 Cor 15:53). The light of the transfiguration on Mount Tabor is already

the glory of the world to come. For the power which resurrects the saints
after their death is the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who, during the
terrestrial life of the saints, vivifies not only their souls but also their
bodies. This is why we say that the icon transmits not the everyday, banal
face of man, but his glorious and eternal face. For the veiy meaning of the
icon is precisely to depict the heirs of incorruptibility, the heirs of the
Kingdom of God, of which they are the first-fruits from the time of their
life here on earth. The icon is the image of the man in whom the grace
which consumes passions and which sanctifies everything is truly present.
This is why his flesh is represented completely differently from ordinary
corruptible flesh. The icon is a peaceful transmission, absolutely devoid of
all emotional explanation, of a certain spiritual reality. If grace enlightens
the entire man, so that his entire spiritual and physical being is filled by
prayer and exists in the divine light, the icon visibly captures this man
who has become a living icon, a true likeness of God. The icon does not
represent the divinity. Rather, it indicates mans participation in the divine
Uft*
There is, therefore, an organic link between the veneration of saints
and that of the icons. This is why in a theology that has removed the
veneration of saints (Protestantism), the sacred image no longer exists;
and where the concept of holiness differs from that of Orthodoxy, the
image moves away from Tradition.

The analysis of the kontakion of the Triumph of Orthodoxy gives us a

clearer understanding of the double realism of the New Testament sacred
image, a realism about which we have already spoken. Just as the God-
Man, Jesus Christ, “in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead
24 One sometimes hears non-Orthodox, and occasionally even certain Orthodox, say that if the
Christian art of the West, that of the Roman Church, leans towards Nestorianism, the
Orthodox icon has nuances of Monophysitism. What we have already said about the content
of the icon permits us to see the absurdity of this statement. Though one can say that western
art is really Nestorian because it represents only the human aspect of the sacred, that is, the
terrestrial reality alone, the Orthodox icon has nothing to do with monophysitism because it
represents neither the divinity nor man absorbed by it. Rather, it represents man in the fullness
of his terrestrial nature, purified from sin and united with the divine life. To accuse Orthodox
art of Monophysitism is to completely misunderstand its content. For the very same reasons,
one could accuse the Holy Scripture or the Orthodox liturgy of Monophysitism, because like
the icon they express a double reality: that of the creature and that of divine grace.
The Meaning and Content ofdye Icon 167

bodily” (Col 2:9), so also the Church, the body of Christ, is both a divine
and human system. It unites two realities in itself: the historical, earthly
reality and the grace of the Holy Spirit, the reality of the world and that
of God. The purpose of sacred art is precisely to bear witness visibly to
these two realities. It is realistic in these two meanings, and thus the icon
is distinguishable from all other things, just as the Holy Scripture is
distinguishable from all other literary works.
The Church piously preserves historical reality in the representation of
Christ, the saints and the events of the Bible. Only a surrender to the most
concrete history can turn an icon into a possible, personal encounter with
the person represented, in the grace of the Holy Spirit. “It is appropriate,”
Patriarch Tarasius wrote to the emperor and the empress, “to accept the
precious icons ofJesus Christ, since He became the perfect man, provided
such icons are painted with historic exactness, in conformity with the
Gospel story.”25 The characteristic traits of the saints will therefore be
carefully preserved, and only such fidelity to the historical truth allows the
iconography of the saints to be so subie (Fig. 16 and Fig. 17). Actually, it
is not only a matter of transmitting an image consecrated by tradition, but
above all of preserving a direct and living link with the person whom the
icon represents. This is why it is essential to abide by an image reproduc­
ing, to the greatest degree possible, the traits of the person. Obviously,
this is not always possible. Like the biographies of the saints, the physical
traits of the saints are often more or less forgotten, and it is difficult to
reconstruct them. The likeness therefore risks being imperfect. The un­
skillfullness of the painter can also lessen it. However, it can never
disappear completely. An irreducible minimum always remains which
provides a link with the prototype of the icon. As St Theodore the Studite
writes,
Even if we grant that the image does not have the same form as the prototype
because of insufficient artistic skill, still our argument would not be invalid. For
veneration is given to the image not insofar as it falls short of similarity, but
insofar as it resembles its prototype.26

In other words, what is essential in this case is not what an icon lacks in
resemblance to its prototype, but what it has in common with it. The
25 Mansi XIII, 404D.
26 Antirrheticus III, ch. 5, PG 99: 421; On the Holy Icons, trans. Catharine P. Roth (New York:
St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981), 104.
168 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

16. St Peter.
Fresco from the Roman catacomb of Domitilla (4th century).
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 169

17. St Peter.
Russian icon, 20th century.
Icon painted by Gregory Kroug.
170 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

iconographer can limit himself to a few characteristic traits. In the major­

ity of cases, however, the faithfullness to the original is such that a faithful
Orthodox can easily recognize the icons of his most revered saints, not to
mention those of Christ and the Virgin. And even if some saint is
unknown to him, he can always say to which order of sainthood the saint
belongs, i.e., whether he is a martyr, a bishop, a monk, etc.
The Orthodox Church has never accepted the painting of icons ac­
cording to the imagination of the painter or from a living model, which
would signify a conscious and total break from the prototype. The name
which the icon bears would no longer correspond to the person repre­
sented, and this would be a flagrant lie which the Church could not
tolerate. (This general rule has frequently been broken or abused in the
past few centuries.) In order to avoid falsehood and a break between the
image and its prototype, iconographers use old icons and manuals as
models. The ancient iconographers knew the faces of the saints as well as
they knew those of their close relatives. They painted them either from
memory or by using a sketch or a portrait. Indeed, once a person had
acquired a reputation for holiness, an image was made of him to distribute
among the faithful immediately after his death, before his official canon­
ization and the discovery of his relics.27 Thus, all kinds of accounts were
preserved on icons, and particularly sketches and the evidence of contem­
poraries.28

However, the historical reality alone, even when it is very precise, does
27 While speaking of the portraitist basis of the icon, N. P. Kondakov notes a characteristic case
of the use of the portrait as a documentary basis for the icon. In 1558, when the relics of St
Nicetas, Archbishop of Novgorod, were discovered intact, a posthumous portrait of the saint
was made and sent to the ecclesiastical authorities with the following letter: “By the grace of
the saint, lord, we have sent you on paper an image of St Nicetas, bishop...; following this
model, lord, order that an icon of the saint be made.” This was followed by details describing
the outward appearance of St Nicetas, his vestments, and so forth, to complete the portrait
drawn on paper (The Russian Icon [in Russian], 3, Part One, 18-9).
28 When the living tradition began to disappear, or more exacdy, when people began to deviate
from it, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the documentation which the iconographers
used was systematized. It was then that the manuals appeared with what arc called
“podlinniki,” with and without illustrations. These establish the standard iconography of the
saints and the feast days and indicate the principal colors. When they are not illustrated, they
contain brief descriptions which characterize the saints and also mention the colors. As
documentation, these “podlinniki” arc indispensable to iconographers. But in no way can one
attribute to them the same significance as to iconographie canons or the holy Tradition, as
certain Western authors do.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 171

not constitute an icon. Since the person depicted is a bearer of divine

grace, the icon must portray his holiness to us. Otherwise, the icon would
have no meaning. If, in representing the human aspect of the incarnate
God, the icon portrays only the historical reality, as does, for example, a
photograph, this would mean that the Church sees Christ with the eyes of
the non-believing crowd which surrounded Him. But according to the
commentary of St Symeon the New Theologian, the words of Christ, “he
who has seen Me has seen the Father” 0n 14:9), were addressed only to
those who, while looking at Jesus the man, simultaneously contemplated
His divinity.
Indeed, if we were to conceive this vision as it relates to the body, then those
who crucified Him and spat upon Him would also have seen the Father; thus,
there would be no difference or preference between believers and unbelievers,
since all have equally reached, and, evidently, will reach the desired beati­
tude....29

The “historical Christ,” “Jesus of Nazareth,” as He appears to the eyes of alien

witnesses; this image of Christ, external to the Church, is always surpassed in
the fullness of the revelation given to the true witnesses, to the sons of the
Church, enlightened by the Holy Spirit. The cult of the humanity of Christ is
foreign to eastern tradition; or, rather, this deified humanity always assumes for
the Orthodox Christian that same glorious form under which it appeared to the
disciples on Mount Tabor: the humanity of the Son, manifesting forth that deity
which is common to the Father and the Spirit.30

The contemplation of the Church is different from secular vision pre­

cisely by the fact that, in the visible, the Church contemplates the
invisible; and in the temporal, the eternal, which is revealed to us in
worship. Like worship itself, the icon is a revelation of eternity in time.
This is why in sacred art the naturalistic portrait of a person can only be a
historical document: in no way can it reflect the liturgical image, the icon.
We have said that the icon expresses the spiritual experience of holi­
ness, and there we also see the same authenticity as in the transmittal of
the historical reality; we “are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,”
in the words of St Paul (Heb 12:1), witnesses who communicate this
experience of sanctification to us. “One should call these words a narra­
tion of things seen, while the term concept (vÔT|p.a) is to be applied to an
29 Symeon the New Theologian, Traités théologiques et éthique^ Introduction, Critical Text and
Notes by J. Darrouzès (Paris, 1967), vol. 2, 86-7.
30 V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology ofthe Eastern Church (New York: 1976), 243.
172 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

idea bom in the mind.”31 Indeed, only a living, personal experience can
bring forth the words, forms, colors or lines which truly correspond to
what they express. St Symeon continues:
Anyone who wants to tell something about, say, a house, a town or a place...,
even a play..., must have seen and learned its content thoroughly; only then can
he speak with plausibility. For, if he has not seen it beforehand, what could he
say of his own devising?...Thus, if no one can speak of or give a description of
visible, earthly things without having seen them with his own eyes, how then
would anyone have the power to speak...about God, things divine and even the
saints and servants of God, and about the vision of God which appears ineffably
in them? It is the latter which produces in their heart an ineffable strength.
Human words do not allow us to say more about it, unless one is illuminated
first by the light of knowledge...32

The transfiguration of Christ occurred before only three witnesses, the

three apostles “capable of receiving” this revelation; and even they only
saw this “dawn of divine light” to the extent that they were able (that is,
to the extent of their inner participation in this revelation). We can draw
an analogy from the lives of the saints. For example, when St Seraphim of
Sarov was transfigured before Motovilov, to whom he wished to show the
aim of Christian life, he explained to him that he would be able to see this
transfiguration only because he participated in it himself to a certain
extent. He would not have been able to see the light of grace if he himself
had not been enlightened. This also explains why Tradition asserts that
the evangelist Luke painted the icons of the Virgin after Pentecost.
Without this “light of knowledge” about which St Symeon the New
Theologian speaks, without a direct participation in the sanctification and
concrete evidence, no science, no technical perfection, no talent can be of
much help. Until the Holy Spirit descended upon them, the apostles
themselves (who, however, had constantly seen Christ and believed in
Him) had no direct experience of sanctification by the Holy Spirit, and
consequently they were not able to convey it by word or image. This is
why neither Holy Scripture nor a holy image could appear before Pente­
cost. In the creation of an icon, nothing can replace the personal, concrete
experience of grace. Without such personal experience, one can paint
icons only by transmitting the experience of those who had it. This is why
the Church, through the voice of its councils and its hierarchs, ordains
31 St Symeon, of. at, 94-5.
32 Ibid, 96-9.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 173

that icons be painted as they were formerly painted by the holy iconogra-
phers. “To represent with colors which conform to Tradition,” says St
Symeon of Thessalonica, “is true painting; it is analogous to a faithful
copy of the Scriptures; and divine grace rests upon it, since what is
represented is holy.”33 It is necessary to “represent with colors which
conform to Tradition,” because in Tradition we participate in the experi­
ence of the holy iconographers, in the living experience of the Church.
These words, like those of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, emphasize
the participation of the image in the holiness and glory of its prototype. The
grace of God rests on the image, says St John of Damascus, because
the saints were filled with the Holy Spirit during their lives. Even after their
death the grace of the Holy Spirit lives on inexhaustibly in their souls, in their
bodies which are in their tombs, in their writings and in their holy images, not
because of their nature, but as a result of grace and divine action.
The grace of the Holy Spirit lives in the image, which “sanctifies the eyes
of the faithful,” according to the Synodicon of the Triumph of Ortho­
doxy (par. 4), and which heals both spiritual and corporal illnesses: “We
venerate Thy most pure image, by which Thou hast saved us from the
servitude of the enemy,” we sing at matins on the Feast of the Holy Face,
“by representation, Thou healest our illnesses.”35
The means used by the icon to convey this spiritual quality corre­
sponds perfectly to the state which is to be communicated, and which has
been described in words by the holy ascetic Fathers. It is obvious that
grace cannot be expressed by any human means. In real life, if we happen
to meet a saint, we do not actually see his holiness. “The world does not
see the saints, just as a blind man does not see light.”36 Consequently, we
cannot represent this holiness, which we do not see; it cannot be por­
trayed by word, by image, or by any human means. In the icon, it can
only be portrayed with the help of forms, colors, and symbolical lines, by
an artistic language established by the Church and characterized by strict
historical realism. This is why an icon is more than an image representing
a certain religious subject, because this same subject can be represented in
33 Dialogus contra haereses, ch. 13, PG 155:113D.
34 De imaginibus oratio 1,19, PG 94(1):1249CD.
35 Feast of the Holy Face (August 16), Magnification and Ode 7 of the canon.
36 Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, Sermons (in Russian), vol. 3, “Sermon 57, for the Annun­
ciation” (Moscow, 1874).
174 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

different ways. The specific character of an icon consists more particularly

in the how of the representation, that is, in the means by which the
sanctified state of the represented person is portrayed.
The liturgy tells us that in the icon of the Holy Face we prostrate
ourselves before the face of the Savior which “shines more brighdy than
the sun,” that we ask to be “enlightened” by the image of Christ (see the
stichera for August 16). We must remember that when Scripture or the
liturgy make comparisons with the perceptible world to teach us about
the spiritual realm, these are only images and not adequate descriptions.
Therefore, speaking of the evangelists’ account of the Transfiguration of
Christ, St John of Damascus justifies the inevitably insufficient compari­
son between divine grace and the light of the sun, emphasizing that it is
impossible to represent the uncreated by means of the created.37 In other
words, the material light of the sun can only be an image of the divine,
uncreated light, and nothing more.
On the other hand, however, the icon must correspond to sacred texts
which are absolutely explicit, when it is not a matter of poetic imagery or
of an allegory, but of translating concrete reality. But how is spiritual
illumination to be depicted in the icon, a light “which shines brighter
than the sun,” surpassing, therefore, all the means of representation? By
colors? But they are not sufficient to portray the natural light of the sun.
How then could they represent the light which surpasses that of the sun?
In the writings of the Fathers, as well as in the lives of the saints, we
often find evidence of a certain light which made the faces of the saints
shine internally at the moment of their supreme glorification, just as the
face of Moses glowed when he descended from the mountain, so much so
that he had to cover it because the people could not stand the glare (Ex
34:30; 2 Cor 3:7-8). The icon conveys this phenomenon of light by a
halo, which is a precise sign, in an image, of a well-defined event in the
spiritual world. The light which shines from the glorified faces of the
saints and which surrounds their heads, as well as the upper part of their
bodies, naturally has a spherical shape. As Motovilov says, when speaking
of the transfiguration of St Seraphim: “Imagine, in the very center of the
37 Homilia in Transfiguratione, PG 94(III):545-546; see, B. Krivochéine, “L’enseignement
ascétique et théologique de saint Grégoire Palamas,” Seminarium Kondakovianum VIII
(Prague, 1936), 135.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 175

18. Sketches of halos.

sun, in the most brilliant burst of its rays, the face of the man who speaks
to you.”38 Since it is obviously impossible to represent this light as such,
the only way to convey it in painting is to depict a disk, like a pattern, so
to speak, of this luminous sphere. It is not a matter of placing a crown
above the head of the saint, as is sometimes done in western images, where
this crown somehow remains external, but rather of portraying the radi­
ance of the face. The halo is not an allegory, but the symbolical expression
of an authentic and concrete reality (Fig. 18). It is an indispensable part of
the icon—indispensable yet insufficient. Indeed, it expresses other things
besides Christian holiness. The pagans also frequently represented their
gods with halos, as well as their emperors, undoubtedly to emphasize the
divine nature of the latter.39 It is not, therefore, this halo alone which

38 I. GorainofF, Sérafin de Sarov (Bellefontaine, 1973), 209.

39 We cannot say what this light symbolizes for the pagans. On the one hand, the Church
recognizes a partial revelation outside of itself, and one may then conclude that the mystery of
uncreated light could have been revealed to the pagans to a certain extent. In any case, they
knew that divinity was connected with light. On the other hand, the writings of the Fathers
reveal to us that the phenomenon of light can have a demonic origin as well, because the devil
176 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

distinguishes an icon from other images: It is only an iconographie device,

an outward expression of holiness, a witness of the light.40 For even if the
halo should be effaced and no longer be visible, an icon still remains an
icon, and is clearly distinguishable from all other images. By its forms and
by all its colors, it shows us, in a symbolical manner of course, the inner
state of the man whose face “shines brighter than the sun.” This state of
inner perfection is so inexpressible that the Fathers and ascetic writers
characterize it only as an absolute silence. The effect of this illumination
on human nature and particularly on the body can, however, be described
to a certain extent and indirectly represented. St Symeon the New Theo­
logian referred to the image of the fire united with iron. Other ascetics left
us more concrete descriptions.
When prayer is sanctified by divine grace,...the entire soul is drawn towards God
by an unknowable force, which pulls the body with it...In the man bom to the
new life, it is not only the soul, nor the heart alone, but also the flesh which is
filled with spiritual consolation and bliss, with the joy of the living God...41

And also:
Incessant prayer and the teaching of the divine Scripture open the spiritual eyes
of the heart which see the King of powers, and there is great joy, and the desire
of God bums strongly in the soul: then the flesh is also carried away by the effect
of the Spirit and the whole man becomes spiritual...42

In other words, when the usual state of dissipation, “the thoughts and
sensations of the fallen nature, ” are replaced in man by silent prayer, and
man is illuminated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the entire human being
flows like molten lava in a single burst toward God. The entire human
nature is spiritually exalted; and then, according to St Dionysius the
Areopagite, “the disorderly is set in order, the formless takes on form, and
the man is radiant with a life full of light.”43 Thus “the peace of God,
which passes all understanding ” (Phil 4:7) lives in man, this peace which
characterizes the presence of the Lord Himself. “In the time of Moses and
Elias,” says St Macarius the Great,
himself sometimes takes on the features of an angd of light.
40 It is something completely different from the square halo which can be seen on certain images.
Formerly, this was a way to indicate that the person was painted when still alive.
41 Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, Ascetic Essay, vol. 1 (in Russian).
42 “A Most Useful Account of Abba Philemon,* 3, (in Russian), Philokalia (1888), 397.
43 The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, ch. 2, 3, 8, trans. Thomas L. Gimpbell (New York: University
Press of America, 1983), 32.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 177

when God appeared to them, a multitude of trumpets and powers preceded Him
and served the majesty of the Lord; but the coming of the Lord Himself was
different, manifested by peace, silence and calm. For it is said: “and after the
earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small
voice* [1 Kings 19:12]. This shows that the presence of the Lord is made manifest
by peace and harmony.44

While remaining a creature, man becomes God according to grace. The

body of man, as well as his soul, participates in the divine life. This
participation does not change him physically: “What we see does not
change,” says St Gregory of Nyssa. “An old man does not become an
adolescent, wrinkles do not disappear. What is renewed is the inner being,
soiled by sin and grown old in bad habits. This being returns to its
childlike innocence.”45 In other words, the body retains its structure, its
biological properties and the characteristic traits of the outward appear­
ance of man. Nothing is lost. Rather, everything is changed, and the
body, entirely united with grace, is illuminated by its union with God.
“The [Holy] Spirit, uniting with the intellect,” says St Anthony the Great,
...teaches it to keep the entire body, from head to toe, in order—the eyes, so that
they can see purely, the ears so that they can hear in peace..., the tongue, so that
it can speak only good, the hands, so that they are put into movement only to
be lifted in prayer or to perform works of charity..., the stomach, so that it may
keep eating and drinking within appropriate limits..., the feet, so that they may
walk aright in the will of God....Thus, the entire body becomes accustomed to
goodness and is transformed, by submitting itself to the power of the Holy Spirit,
so that it finishes by participating to a certain extent in the characteristics of the
spiritual body that it will receive at the resurrection of the just.46

The patristic passages just quoted are like so many verbal icons, even
to the details which the teaching of St Anthony makes us understand.
This is why they are of utmost importance to our subject. The effect of
the divine grace on the human body, and in particular on the senses, as
described in words by St Anthony, is shown to us in the icon. The analogy
between the verbal description and the image is so obvious that it leads us
to a very clear conclusion: There is an ontological unity between the
ascetic experience of Orthodoxy and the Orthodox icon. It is precisely
this experience and its outcome which is described by the Orthodox
44 Russian Philokalia, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1877), 192.
45 As quoted by G. Florovsky, The Fathers of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries (in Russian)
(Westmead, 1972), 171.
46 Russian Philokalia, vol. 1,21.
178 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

ascetics who are shown to us in the icons and conveyed by them. With the
help of colors, forms and lines, with the help of symbolical realism, an
artistic language unique in its genre, the spiritual world of the man who
has become a temple of God is revealed to us. The order and inner peace
to which the Holy Fathers testify are conveyed in the icon by outward
peace and harmony: The entire body of the saint, in every detail, even the
hair and the wrinkles, even the garments and all that surrounds him, is
unified and restored to a supreme harmony. It is a visible expression of the
victory over the inner division and chaos in man and, as we shall see, a
victory by man over the division and chaos in humanity and in the world.
The unusual details of appearance which we see in the icon—in
particular in the sense organs: the eyes without brilliance, the ears which
are sometimes strangely shaped—are represented in a non-naturalistic
manner, not because the iconographer is unable to do otherwise, but
because their natural state is not what he wants to represent. The icon s
role is not to bring us closer to what we see in nature, but to show us a
body which perceives what usually escapes man’s perception, i.e., the
perception of the spiritual world. The questions which St Seraphim of
Sarov insistently asked Motovilov as he was transfigured before him
illustrate this well: “What do you see?,” “What do you feel?,” etc. For the
light which Motovilov saw, the scent which he smelled, the heat which he
felt, were not of the physical order. At that moment, his senses were
perceiving the effect that grace has on the physical world which sur­
rounded him. This non-naturalistic manner of representing in the icon
the organs of sense conveys the deafness, the absence of reaction to the
business of the world, impassiveness, detachment from all excitement
and, conversely, the acceptance of the spiritual world by those who have
reached holiness. The Orthodox icon is the expression in an image of the
following hymn of Holy Saturday: “Let all mortal flesh keep silent...pon-
dering nothing earthly-minded.” Everything here is subordinate to the
general harmony which expresses peace, order and inner harmony. For
there is no disorder in the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit. God is “the God
of peace and order,” St Symeon the New Theologian says.47

Thus, the icon shows us the saint’s glorified state, his transfigured,
47 Catechetical Instruction attributed to St Symeon the New Theologian (in Russian), Prayer, 15
(Moscow, 1892), 143.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 179

19. The head ofSt George the Martyr (detail).

Novgorod School, about 1400.
Coll. Dr. Amberg, Kölliken, Switzerland.
180 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

eternal face (Fig. 19). But it is made for us; given everything that has been
said, it should therefore be clear to us that in its coded language the icon
speaks to us, in the same way as the patristic passages that were quoted are
not concerned only with the ascetic practices of the monks, but of all
believers; for the acquisition of grace is a task assigned to all members of
the Church. As a manifestation of the ascetic experience of Orthodoxy,
the icon has a crucial educational function, and therein lies the essential
goal of sacred art. Its constructive role lies not only in the teaching of the
truths of the Christian life, but in the education of the whole person.
The content of the icon forms a true spiritual guide for the Christian
life and, in particular, for prayer. Prayer is a conversation with God; this
is why it requires the absence of passions, deafness to and the non-accep­
tance of external, worldly excitement. “And thus, brothers,” St Gregory
the Theologian says,
let us not perform what is holy in an impure manner, what is sublime in a lowly
fashion, what is worthy of honor in a disgraceful way, and, in short, what is holy
in a terrestrial manner....With us all things are somehow holy: activity, move­
ment, desire, speaking, as well as our manner of walking and our garments, even
our gestures, because reason (Xôyoç) extends to everything and guides man
according to God; this is how our celebration is spiritual and solemn.48

This is precisely what is shown by the icon. A reasonable guide for our
senses is indispensable, for through them evil enters the human soul: “The
purity of man’s heart is disturbed by the disordered movement of images
which enter and leave by the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and
smell, as well as the spoken word,” says St Anthony the Great.49 This is
why the Fathers speak of the five senses as the “doors” of the soul: “Close
all the doors of your soul, that is, your senses,” St Isaiah teaches, “and
guard them carefully, so that your soul does not accidentally go wander­
ing through them, or so that neither the cares nor the words of the world
drown out the soul.” Praying before an icon or simply looking at it, we are
constantly reminded of what St Isaiah speaks: “He who believes that his
body will be resurrected on the judgment day must keep it without sin
and free from all stain and vice.”50 We must do this so that, in our prayer
at least, we close the doors of our soul and strive to teach our body (as the
48 St Grcgoiy the Theologian, Oratio XI, PG 35:840A.
49 Russian Philokalia, vol., 1, 122.
50 Abba Isaiah, Homily 15, Russian Philokalia, vol. 1, 33.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 181

saint in the icon taught his body) to keep itself aright in and by the grace
of the Holy Spirit, so that our eyes may “see with purity,” so that “our ears
may hear in peace,” and so that our “heart does not nurture evil
thoughts. ” In other words, by the image, the Church endeavors to help us
redeem our nature which has been tainted by sin.
In the ascetic domain, that of prayer, the Fathers describe the Ortho­
dox spiritual experience by using the image of “the narrow gate...that
leads to life” (Mt 7:14). It is as if man were standing at the opening of a
road which, instead of leading into space, opens up into infinite fullness.
A door that opens into the divine life is opened for the Christian. This is
how St Macarius, like many other ascetic authors, speaks of spiritual
progress: “Doors are opened...and man enters the interior of many
abodes; and as he enters, still other doors are opened before him, and he
is enriched; and to the degree that he is enriched, new marvels are shown
to him...”51 Once embarked on the path to which leads the narrow gate,
man sees endless possibilities and perspectives opening before him, and
his path, far from becoming narrow, becomes wider. But in the begin­
ning, it is but a simple point in our hearts, from which our whole
perspective must be reversed. This is the authentic and literal meaning of
the Greek word p.6Tdvoia, which means “change of mind.”
Thus, the icon is both a means and a path to follow. It is itself a prayer.
Visibly and directly, it reveals to us this freedom from passion about
which the Fathers speak. It teaches us “to fast with our eyes,” in the words
of St Dorotheus.52 And indeed, it is impossible “to fast with our eyes”
before just any image, be it abstract, or even an ordinary painting. Only
the icon can portray what it means “to fast with our eyes” and what this
allows us to attain.
Thus, the aim of the icon is not to provoke or glorify in us a natural
human feeling. It is not “moving,” not sentimental. Its intention is to
attune us to the transfiguration of all our feelings, our intelligence and all
the other aspects of our nature, by stripping these of all exaltation which
could be harmful or unhealthy. Like the deification which it conveys, the
icon suppresses nothing that is human: neither the psychological element,
nor a persons various characteristics in the world. Thus the icon of a saint
51 Russian PhilokaUa, vol. 1, 230.
52 Teachings and Messages Usefid to the Soul (in Russian), 7th ed. (Optina Pustyn, 1895), 186.
182 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

20. The Virgin with Child.

16th century Russian icon.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 183

21. Madonna del Granduca

by Raphael
184 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

does not fail to indicate his occupation in the world, which he was able to
turn into a spiritual activity, whether an ecclesiastic occupation such as
that of a bishop or a monk, or a worldly activity, such as that of a prince,
a soldier or a physician. But, as in the Gospel, this burden of activities—
thoughts, learning, and human feelings—is represented in its contact
with the divine world; this contact purifies everything and consumes that
which cannot be purified. Every manifestation of human nature, each
phenomenon of life, is illumined, becomes clear, acquires its true mean­
ing and place.
Just as we represent the God-Man as being similar to us in all things
except sin, so do we represent the saint like a person freed from sin.
According to St Maximus the Confessor,
Our flesh, like the flesh of Christ, is also freed from the corruption of sin. For
just as Christ was without sin through His Flesh and His soul as a Man, so can
we who believe in Him and who have put on Christ through the Spirit, be in
Him without sin, through our will.53

The icon shows us precisely the body of a holy person, “in the mould of
His glorious body” (Phil 3:21), a body freed from the corruption of sin,
which “in a certain manner partakes of the properties of the spiritual body
it will receive at the resurrection of the just.”
Orthodox sacred art is a visible expression of the dogma of the Trans­
figuration. The transfiguration of man is understood and transmitted
here as a well-defined, objective reality, in full accordance with Orthodox
teaching. What is shown to us is not an individual interpretation or an
abstract or more-or-less deteriorated understanding, but a truth taught by
the Church (Fig. 20 and Fig. 21).
The colors of the icon convey the color of the human body, but not
the natural flesh tints, which, as we have seen, simply do not correspond
to the meaning of the Orthodox icon. Also, much more is involved than
depicting the physical beauty of the human body. The beauty in the icon
is spiritual purity, inner beauty and, in the words of St Peter, “let it be the
hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and
quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Pet 3:4). It is the
beauty of the communion of the terrestrial with the celestial. It is this
beauty-holiness, this divine likeness attained by man, that the icon por-
53 Active and Contemplative Chapters (in Russian), ch. 67, Philokalia, vol. 3, 263.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 185

trays. In its own language, the icon conveys the work of grace which,
according to St Gregory Palamas, “paints in us, so to speak, on what is the
image of God that which is in the divine likeness, in such a way that...we
are transformed into His likeness.”54
The justification and the value of the icon do not, therefore, lie in its
beauty as an object, but in that which it represents—an image of beauty
in the divine likeness.
It is understandable that the light of the icon which enlightens us is
not the natural brightness of faces depicted by color, but rather the divine
grace which purifies man, the light of purified and sinless flesh. This light
of the sanctified flesh must not be understood only as a spiritual phenom­
enon, nor as a uniquely physical phenomenon, but as the two together, a
revelation of the spiritual flesh to come (Fig. 22).55

The clothing, while keeping its distinctiveness and covering the body in a
perfectly logical fashion, is represented in such a way so as not to conceal the
glorified state of the saint. It emphasizes the work of man and becomes in
some way the image of his vestment of glory, of his “robe of incorruptibility.”
The ascetic experience, or rather its result, also finds here its outward expres­
sion in the severity of the often geometrical forms, in the lighting and in the
lines of the folds. They cease to be disordered. They change their appearance
and acquire a rhythm and an order which is subordinate to the general
harmony of the image. In effect, the sanctification of the human body is
communicated to its clothing. We know that touching the clothing of Christ,
the Virgin, of the apostles and the saints brought healing to the faithful. One
54 Philokalia, vol. 5 (Moscow, 1889), 300-1, “To the Nun Xenia, on the Virtues and the
Passions’* (in Russian).
55 This is why the problem of representing the human body never arose in Orthodoxy as in
Roman Catholicism after the decision of the Council of Trent (25th Session): “The Holy
Council wishes that all impurity be avoided, that images not be given provocative charms.”
The “impurity” that had to be avoided was the human body. This is why the first thing that
the Roman ecclesiastical authorities did was to prohibit the representation of the naked body
in religious art. A real purge against nudity began. By order of Pope Paul IV, the figures of
Michelangelos Last Judgment were veiled. Pope Clement VIII, renouncing half-measures,
decided to have the whole fresco obliterated, and was only stopped by the entreaties of the
Academy of St Luke. Charles Borromeo, who firmly believed in the decisions of the Council
of Trent, had the nude obliterated whenever he found it. Paintings and statues which did not
seem modest enough were destroyed (see E. Mâle, L*art reUgieux après le Concile Je Trente
[Paris, 1932], 2). Painters themselves burned their own works. The very character of sacred art
in the Orthodox Church would make such a situation impossible.
 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON
186

22. St Basil the Blessed.

20th century Russian icon.
Icon painted by Leonid Ouspensky
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 187

need only recall the Gospel story of the hemorrhaging woman or the
healings that took place through die clothing of St Paul (Acts 19:12).
The inner order of the man represented in the icon is naturally
reflected in his posture and in his movements. The saints do not gesticul­
ate. They are in prayer before the face of God, and each of their move­
ments and the very posture of their bodies take on a hieratic, sacramental
aspect. Usually, they are fully turned towards the spectator, or at least
partially turned. This trait characterizes Christian art from its origins, as
we have seen when we studied the art of the catacombs. The saint is
present before us and not somewhere in space. Addressing our prayer to
him, we must see him face to face. This is without a doubt the reason why
the saints are almost never represented in profile, except in very rare cases
when they are turned towards the center in complicated works. A profile
does not allow direct contact; it is, as it were, the beginning of absence.
This is why only persons who have not yet attained holiness are repre­
sented in profile, such as the wise men and the shepherds in the icon of
the Nativity, for example.
It is the nature of holiness to sanctify that which surrounds it. It is in
man and through man that the participation of all creatures in the divine
eternal life is actualized and made manifest. Just as creation fell with the
fall of man, so is it saved by the deification of man, for
it was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed upon it,
but for the purposes of him who imposed it, with the intendon that the whole
creadon itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the
same glorious freedom as the children of God. (Rom 8:20-23)
We have a sign which marks the beginning of the restoration of unity in
the entire fallen creation. This is the sojourn of Christ in the desert: “He
was with the wild beasts, and the angels served him” (Mk 1:13). The
heavenly and earthly creatures destined to become the new creation in the
God-Man Jesus Christ are assembled around Him. The thought of the
unification in peace of the entire universe clearly informs all Orthodox
iconography.56 This union of all creatures, beginning with the angels
down to the inferior creatures, is the renewed universe to come; in the
icon, it is contrasted to the general discord, to the prince of this world.
56 It is most particularly emphasized in certain icons which reveal the cosmic meaning of
creation—for example, “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord," or “All creation rejoices
in you," and others.
188 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

23. St Blaise and St Spyridon, protectors ofanimals.

14th century Russian icon.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 189

Peace and harmony restored, the Church embracing the entire world—
this is the central idea of Orthodox sacred art, which dominates architec­
ture as well as painting.57 This is why, in the icon, we find that everything
which surrounds a saint changes its mien. The world that surrounds
man—the bearer and announcer of the divine revelation—here becomes
an image of the world to come, transformed and renewed. Everything
loses its usual disorderly aspect, everything becomes a harmonious struc­
ture: the landscape, the animals, architecture. Everything that surrounds
the saint bows with him to a rhythmic order. Everything reflects the
divine presence, is drawn—and also draws us—towards God. The earth,
the world of vegetation and the animal world are represented in the icon,
not to bring us close to what we always see around us—a fallen world in
its corruptible state—but to show that this world participates in the
deification of man. The effect of holiness on the entire created world,
especially on the wild animals, is often seen in the saints’ lives (Fig. 23).58
Epiphanius, a disciple and biographer of St Sergius of Radonezh, com­
ments as follows on the attitude of wild beasts toward the saint: “Let no
one be astonished, for you know that when God dwells in a man and
when the Holy Spirit rests in him, everything submits to him as to Adam
before his fall, when Adam lived alone in the desert.” The life of St Isaac
the Syrian states that the animals who came to him smelled in him the
odor which Adam exhaled before his fall. This is why, when animals are
represented in an icon, they have an unusual appearance. While preserv­
ing the characteristic traits of their species, they lose their usual appear­
ance. This would seem to be odd or awkward if we did not understand the
profound language of the iconographers, who allude here to the mystery
of paradise which is, at the moment, inaccessible to us.
As for architecture in the icon, while subordinate to the general
harmony, it plays a particular role. Like the landscape, it identifies the
place where the event takes place: a church, a house, a town. But the
building (just like the cave of the Nativity or that of the Resurrection)
never encloses the scene. It only acts as a background, so that the event
does not occur in the building, but in front of it. This is because the very
meaning of the events that the icons represent is not limited to their
57 E. Trubetskoi, The Meaning ofLife (in Russian) (Berlin, 1922), 71-2.
58 For example, those of St Isaac the Syrian, St Mary of Egypt, St Sergius of Radonezh, St
Seraphim of Sarov, St Paul of Obnorsk and many others.
190 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

24. The Annunciation,

16th century Russian icon.
Icon Museum, Recklinghausen.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 191

historical place, just as, while having taken place in time, they surpass the
moment when they occurred. It is only since the beginning of the
seventeenth century that Russian iconographers, under the influence of
western art, have begun representing scenes which take place within a
building. The architecture is linked with the human figures in the general
meaning of the image and in its composition, but the logical connection
is often completely missing. If we compare the way in which architecture
is represented, we will see a great difference. The human body, although
represented in a manner which is not naturalistic, is, however, with very
rare exceptions completely logical: Everything is in its place. The same is
true of clothing: The way in which garments are treated, in which the
folds fall, is quite logical. But the architecture frequently defies all human
logic, both in its forms and in its details (Fig. 24). If real architectural
forms are the starting point, proportion is absolutely neglected, the doors
and windows are not in their proper place and, besides, are completely
useless because of their dimensions, etc. Contemporary opinion sees
many Byzantine and antique forms in the icon, due to a blind attachment
of the iconographers to forms which have become incomprehensible. But
the true meaning of this phenomenon is that the action represented in the
icon transcends the rationalistic logic of men and the laws of earthly life.
Architecture, be it antique, Byzantine or Russian, is the element which
best permits the icon to portray this. It is arranged with a certain pictorial
“foolishness for the sake of Christ,” in complete contradiction to “the
spirit of gravity.” Such architectural fantasy systematically frustrates rea­
son, puts it back in its place, and emphasizes the meta-logical character of
faith.59
The strange and unusual character of the icon is the same as that of the
Gospel. For the Gospel is a true challenge to every order, to all the wisdom
of the world. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of
the clever I will thwart,” says the Lord by the mouth of His prophets
whom St Paul quotes (1 Cor 1:21). The Gospel calls us to life in Christ;
the icon represents this life. This is why it sometimes uses irregular and
shocking forms, just as holiness sometimes tolerates extreme forms which
59 The alogical character of architecture continued until the period of decadence (end of the
sixteenth-beginning of the seventeenth centuries), when the understanding of iconographie
language was gradually lost. From that time on, architecture became logical and proportioned.
What is amazing is that today one finds truly fantastic masses of architectural forms.
192 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

seem like madness in the eyes of the world, such as the holiness of the
fools in Christ. “They say that I am mad,” said one of them, “but without
madness one does not enter into the Kingdom of God...To live according
to the Gospel one must be mad. As long as men are reasonable and of
sober mind, the Kingdom of God will not come to earth.”60 Madness for
the sake of Christ and the sometimes provocative forms of icons express
the same evangelical reality. Such an evangelical perspective inverts that of
the world. The universe shown to us by the icon is one which is ruled not
by rational categories or by human standards, but by divine grace. Hence
the hieratic nature of the icon, its simplicity and majesty, its quietness;
hence also the rhythm of its lines and the joy of its colors. It reflects the
ascetic effort and the joy of victory. It is sorrow transformed into the “joy
of the living God.” It is the new order in the new creation.
The world which we see here no longer reflects its daily banality. The
divine light penetrates everything, and this is why the persons and the
objects are not illuminated from one side or another by a source of light;
they do not project shadows, because there are no shadows in the King­
dom of God, where everything bathes in light. In the technical language
of iconographers, “light” is called the background of the icon. We will
speak of this later on.
In this study, we have tried to show that, just as the symbolism of the
first centuries of Christianity was a language common to the entire
Church, so also the icon is a language common to the entire Church
because it expresses the common Orthodox teaching, the common Or­
thodox ascetic experience and the common Orthodox liturgy. The sacred
image has always expressed the revelation of the Church, bearing it in a
visible form to the faithful, placing it before their eyes as an answer to
their questions, a teaching and a guide, as a task to accomplish, as a
préfiguration and the first-fruits of the Kingdom of God. Divine revela­
tion and its acceptance by man are the same action in two ways, so to
speak. Apocalypse and gnosis, the path of revelation and that of knowl­
edge, correspond to each other. God descends and reveals Himself to
man; man responds to God by lifting himself, by harmonizing his life
with the attained revelation. In the image he receives the revelation, and
by the image he responds to this revelation to the degree that he partici-
60 Archimandrite Spiridon, Mes Missions en Sibérie (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1950), 39-40.
The Meaning and Content ofthe Icon 193

pates in it. In other words, the icon is a visible testimony to the descent of
God to man as well as to the impetus of man towards God. If the word
and the song of the Church sanctify our soul by means of hearing, the
image sanctifies by means of sight, which is, according to the Fathers, the
most important of the senses. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your
eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light” (Mt 6:22). By word
and by image, the liturgy sanctifies our senses. Being an expression of the
image and likeness of God restored in man, the icon is a dynamic and
constructive element of worship.61 This is why the Church, by the deci­
sion of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, orders that icons be placed “on
the same level as the images of the life-giving cross, in all of the churches
of God, on vases and sacred vestments, on the walls, on wooden boards,
in homes and in the streets.” In the icon, the Church recognizes one of the
means which can and must allow us to realize our calling, that is, to attain
the likeness of our divine prototype, to accomplish in our life that which
was revealed and transmitted to us by the God-Man. The saints are very
few in number, but holiness is a task assigned to all men, and icons are
placed everywhere to serve as examples of holiness, as a revelation of the
holiness of the world to come, a plan and a project of the cosmic
transfiguration. Furthermore, since the grace attained by the saints during
their lives continues to dwell in their image,62 these images are placed
everywhere for the sanctification of the world by the grace which belongs
to them. Icons are like the markers on our path to the new creation, so
that, according to St Paul, in contemplating “the glory of the Lord, [we]
are being changed into His likeness” (2 Cor 3:18).
Men who have known sanctification by experience have created im­
ages which correspond to it and which truly constitute a “revelation and
demonstration of that which is hidden,” in the words of St John of
Damascus, just as the tabernacle does, following the directions of Moses,
revealing what had been shown to him on the mountain. These images
not only reveal a transfigured universe to man, but they also allow him to
participate in it. It can be said that the icon is painted according to nature,
but with the help of symbols, because the nature which it represents is not
directly representable. It is the world which will only be fully revealed at
61 It is far from being merely conservative and having a passive function only, as certain outside
observers think.
62 St John of Damascus, De imagimbus oratio I, ch. 19, PG 94(1 ):1249CD.
194 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the second coming of the Lord.

So for, we have explained the content of the icon as an expression of
dogma and as the fruit of the Orthodox spiritual experience during the
christological period in the history of the Church, a content highlighted
by the Fathers and by the councils, and especially by the dogma of the
veneration of icons. We will now explain succincdy how the content of
the icon developed and became more precise through its classical artistic
language; we shall also consider the role played by the icon during the
centuries that followed, including in our time.
THEOLOGY OF THE ICON
Volume II
THEOLOGY OF THE ICON
Volume II

by

LEONID OUSPENSKY

translated by
ANTHONY GYTHIEL

ST VLADIMIR’S SEMINARY PRESS

CRESTWOOD, NY 10707-1699
1992
 The publication of this book has been underwritten by a generous contribution
by Dr. and Mrs. Demetre Nicoloff, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Dau

Ouspensky, Léonide
[Essai sur la théologie de l’icone dans l’Eglise orthodoxe. English]
Theology of the icon / by Leonid Ouspensky; translated by Anthony Gythiel
with selections translated by Elizabeth Meyendorff.
p. m.
Vol. 1 is a rev. translation of: Essai sur la théologie de l’icône dans l’Eglise or­
thodoxe; v. 2 is a translation of: La théologie de l’icône; both were translated origi­
nally from Russian.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88141-122-1 (v. 1). — ISBN 0-88141-123-X (v. 2) — ISBN
0-88141-124-8 (set)
1. Icons—cult. 2. Orthodox Eastern Church—Doctrines. 3. Orthodox
Eastern Church and art. 4. Icon painting. I. Ouspensky, Léonide. Théologie
de l’icône. English. 1992. II. Title.
BX378.5.09713 1992 92-12323

THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Volume II

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATION

COPYRIGHT© 1992

by

ST VLADIMIR’S SEMINARY PRESS

All rights reserved

Originally published in French

under the title La Théologie de l’icone
by Les Editions du Cerf in 1980.

Vol. II ISBN 0-88141-123-X

Set (Vol. I & II) ISBN 0-88141-124-8

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 Contents
11 The Post-Iconoclastic Period....................................................... 207

12 Hesychasm and Humanism:

The Paleologan Renaissance............................................... 231

13 Hesychasm and the Flowering of Russian Art.......................... 253

14 The Muscovite Councils of the 16th Century.

Their Role in Sacred Art ............................................................. 287

15 The Art of the 17th Century

An Art Divided, The Tradition Abandoned............................. 325

16 The Great Council of Moscow and the Image

of God the Father........................................................................... 371

17 Art in the Russian Church During the

Synodal Period............................................................................... 411

18 The Icon in the Modem World................................................... 463

Index 517

List of Plates 527

 11

The Post-Iconoclastic Period

Tt is significant that the struggle for the image occurred at the juncture of
xtwo periods in Church history, each of which formulated a different
aspect of the dogma of the Incarnation. Between these two periods stands
the dogma of the veneration of icons, like a boundary stone looking in
both directions at once, yet uniting the teachings of each.
The entire period of the Ecumenical Councils was essentially christo­
logical; it articulated Orthodox teaching concerning the Person of Christ,
simultaneously God and man. The icon, which during this whole era was
incorporated into all of christological theology, witnessed above all to the
reality of the Incarnation. The Church asserted the teaching concerning
the icon, both through word and image.
The period that followed, extending from the ninth to approximately
the sixteenth century, was pneumatological. The central question, around
which both heresies and the Church’s teaching revolved, then became that
of the Holy Spirit and His activity in man, that is, the effect of the
Incarnation. During this period the Church gave testimony above all about
its conviction that if “God became man,” it is in order that “man might
become God”; and the icon, in perfect harmony with theology and with the
Liturgy, pointed in a more special way to the fruit of the Incarnation, with
the deification of man. With increasing precision, the icon showed the
world an image of man become God through grace. It was then, above all,
that the classical form of sacred art was being elaborated, and the promises
of Christian art of the first centuries fulfilled. Church art flourished: it was
an extraordinary flowering associated with a significant rise in holiness
especially of the monastic type, and with a magnificent development of
theology. Church decoration then acquired its forms. Beginning with the
eleventh century, it became a precise, exact, dogmatic system.
New populations entered the Church, especially the Slavs. They had a

207
208 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

share in the development of this classic language; and each created a

well-defined kind of holiness, its specific type of icon. In this manner,
church art, in its classic form, acquired great variety and was exceptionally
splendid.
The victory over iconoclasm, proclaimed as the Triumph of Ortho­
doxy at the Council of 843, did not signal the end of heresy, which
continued to play an active role. “Convinced iconoclasts, who would
prove it by stubbornly maintaining their views after the last iconoclast
emperor had died, seemed to have been just as numerous during the
entire half-century that followed the official restoration of religious im­
ages.”1 During this period, the Church in Constantinople was in a
difficult situation, not only because of the strength of the iconoclasts but
also because of dissenting views about them among the Orthodox them­
selves. Patriarch St Methodius was a benevolent, lenient man. But many
Orthodox took a more intransigent attitude than he. The patriarch
avoided giving important positions to these hardliners so as not to irritate
the iconoclasts. He refrained from making “confessors” out of them,
thereby aggravating the conflict. For this he was criticized most severely
by the extremists, especially the monks of Studion, whose opposition
became so strong that the patriarch had no choice but to excommunicate
them. The conflict created by this excommunication led to such great
problems that after the death of Methodius on June 14, 847, Empress
Theodora, on her own authority—in place of the normal election of a
new patriarch by a local synod—appointed Nicetas (called Ignatios in the
monastic life), a son of Emperor Michael I, as patriarch. During his
patriarchate, the extremists soon occupied all the leading positions. The
excommunication of the Studites was lifted, and in turn certain moder­
ates were excommunicated. The iconoclasts regained their strength. Suc­
ceeding events modified the course of the Church’s anti-heretical struggle.
Empress Theodora was sent to a convent, and Michael III became em­
peror. St Ignatius resigned as patriarch. A new patriarch, St Photius, was
elected.2 Both held their see on two different occasions.3 This change of
1 André Grabar, L'iconoclasme byzantin (Paris, 1957), 13.
2 An accurate description of the epoch is found in Francis Dvomik’s article, “The Patriarch
Photius and Iconoclasm,“ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (Cambridge, MA, 1953), 67-98.
3 The first from 847 to 858, and from 867 to 877; the second, from 858 to 867, and from 877
to 886.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 209

25. St Photius the Great

20th century by Monk Gregory Kroug
Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
210 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

patriarchs due to internal conflicts in the Church certainly did not

contribute to a normal course of events during this period.
At the end of the period of the Ecumenical Councils that had formu­
lated the dogmas about the Incarnation of the Word, St Photius opened a
new era in the struggle for true Church doctrine. Henceforth, the struggle
would center above all on the truths associated with the mystery of
Pentecost: the Holy Spirit, grace, and the nature of the Church. In other
words, if during the period of the Ecumenical Councils the economy of
the second Person of the Holy Trinity was revealed, the new era witnessed
how theological thought and art were oriented primarily toward the
revelation of the third divine Hypostasis. This turning point, which in
many respects was decisive for the direction the Church and its art were
to follow, carried the stamp of the great hierarch and confessor St Photius
(Fig. 25).4 The life of the Church, its thought and art, are marked by the
exceptional personality and activity of this patriarch, not only during this
period but well beyond it. “He became the central force in the intellectual
and literary movement of the second half of the ninth century...His
education had been many-sided, and his knowledge was extensive not
only in theology but also in grammar, philosophy, natural science, law
and medicine.”5 It is to Patriarch Photius, humanist and inspirer of the
eleventh century “renaissance,”6 that the main credit for the ultimate
defeat of iconoclasm belongs.

In the struggle against heresy, Photius possessed exceptional assets: he

belonged to a family of confessors of Orthodoxy (he himself, his father,
and his uncle had been anathematized by the iconoclasts). Combining a
solid theoretical education with flexible, impeccable tactics, he clearly saw
the road that was to lead to the defeat of heresy. He reorganized the
academy in order to fight against the argumentation of the iconoclasts.
During the reign of Ignatius, a certain obscurantism had prevailed: the
sciences, to which the iconoclasts were so zealously dedicated, were con-
4 For a long time in the West, the personality and the writing? of St Photius have been presented
in an extremely negative manner. Only in our time has F. Dvornik reestablished the truth: see
especially his book, The Photian Schism: History and Legend (Cambridge, 1948).
5 A. A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire: 324-1453 (Madison, 1964), vol. 1, 296; F.
Dvornik, Photian Schism, 2.
6 A. Grabar, L'Art religieux et l’Empire byzantin à l'époque des Macédoniens, Ecole pratique des
Hautes Etudes, Annuaire 1939-40,19.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 211

sidered to be less important than piety. By contrast, Patriarch Photius viewed

the latter as being insufficient; he saw one ofthe great means of fighting heresy
precisely in the acquisition of knowledge. A close friend of the patriarch,
Constantine (Cyril), the future aposde of the Slavs, was put at the head of the
academy. Beginning with his first patriarchate, Photius gathered artists and
learned men and began the restoration of paintings in the churches. His name
is linked to the ninth-century renaissance of art,7 which experienced an
especially brilliant development during his second patriarchate.

St Photius was absolutely intransigent with regard to iconoclasm. Like

the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, he viewed this heresy as a
denial of the central dogma of Christianity. In his letter to Michael, King
of Bulgaria, he called the iconoclasts “Christ-fighters, worse than the
Jews.”8 Elsewhere he stated, “In your mind, you [iconoclasts], are con­
ducting an ignoble war against Christ, not openly and directly, but by
means of the icon.”9 Like the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council,
he saw in the icon an analogy with Holy Scripture, an idea he further
clarified and developed. He drew attention to the primacy of seeing over
hearing (a primacy emphasized in patristic writings), and he was emphatic
about the importance of teaching through the icon. The one who refuses
it has already refused instruction by the Holy Scriptures. To venerate
icons means to understand Holy Scripture correctly, and vice versa.10

Photius’ anti-iconoclast thought and activity are reflected, both di­

rectly and indirectly, as much in the objectives, decisions, and judgments
of the ninth-century synods as in the general orientation of the theological
thought of this period. Thus the Synod of 861, known as “first-second,”
which took place during his patriarchate and with the participation of
Roman legates, was convoked for a new, solemn condemnation of the
heresy.11 The acts of this Synod were burned by the council of 869-870,
and thus we unfortunately know nothing of what was said there about
iconoclasm.
7 F. Dvomik, “Patriarch Photius,” 87-91.
8 PG 102: 695D.
9 PG 101:949D.
10 Hom. 73, Greek cd. ofAristarchos (Constantinople, 1901), vol. 2, 304-5.
11 This is clear from the correspondence between Pope Nicolas I and Emperor Michael III
(Mansi XV, 161, 261, 243). See also F. Dvomik, “Patriarch Photius,” 77; and K. Héfélé,
Histoire des Conciles, IV, 1 (Paris, 1911)» 272.
212 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The anti-Photian council of 869-870, held during the patriarchate of

St Ignatius, returned once more to the problem of iconoclasm. The
question was posed at the initiative of Emperor Basil I. The heresy was
condemned, and its exponents, led by Theodore Crithinus, were anathe­
matized. During the council, a message from Pope Nicolas I was read, the
sixth paragraph of which was directed against iconoclasm:
With regard to the holy and venerable images of our Lord, of His ever-virgin
Mother and all the saints, beginning with Abel, it is fitting to keep unchangeably
what the holy Church has always accepted everywhere in the world, and what
the popes have ordained and prescribed regarding this. We anathematize John,
former Patriarch of Constantinople, and his followers who say that icons should
be broken and trampled under foot.12

This text, as can be seen, is of no theological interest.

The council of 869-870 (during which the Church of Rome con­
firmed the council of 843, the Triumph of Orthodoxy) is, ever since the
Gregorian Reform, called the Eighth Ecumenical Council by Rome. The
Orthodox Church does not recognize this council, which condemned
Photius. Consequently, its decisions have no official value. Nonetheless,
this council was Orthodox in theory, and its third canon, which deals
with sacred art, is of great interest to us. We shall focus on it for a moment
because it expresses the orientation of theological thought about the
image within the general context of the post-iconoclastic period. The
following is the text of the canon:
We ordain that the holy icon of our Lord be venerated in the same way as the
book of the Gospels. Indeed, just as all receive salvation through the syllables
contained in it, so do all, both learned and ignorant, draw profit from what the
colors of the icon possess. For that which words announce through syllables, the
colors in painting show. If one does not venerate the icon of Christ the Savior,
let him not see His face at the Second Coming. In the same manner, we venerate
and bring homage to the icon of His all-pure Mother, to those of the holy angels,
painted as they are described in the words of Holy Scripture, and furthermore
to those of all the saints. Let those who do not do this be anathema.13
Clearly, this canon represents a brief recapitulation of the main principles
of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. But two details should be noted. First,
the council states that the icon is useful to the learned and the ignorant—that
its importance is therefore the same for all members of the Church, regardless
12 Héfélé, ibùLt 324.
13 Mansi XVI, 400; 12 Héfélé, 869-70.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 213

of their cultural level. We surmise that this declaration by a council

considered so important in the West was directed against the viewing the
icon as a “Bible for the unlettered.” As is known, Gregory the Great’s
notion that “What Scripture is for the literate, the image is for the unlettered”
became popular in the West. Even the recognition by die Church of Rome of
the council of 869-870 as the Eighth Ecumenical Council did not weaken
this view; it is partially held until now.14 Such a concept of the image has
never seemed adequate to the Orthodox East. St Theodore the Studite wrote:
“Just as everyone, no matter how perfect, is in need of the Gospel tablet, so
[does one need] the painting expressed according to it.”15
Canon 3 is expressed forcefully: “If one does not venerate the icon of
Christ the Savior, let him not see His face at the Second Coming.” This is
an interesting sentence, because it essentially translates the fundamental
truth of the veneration of icons expressed in different words by the
decision of the Ecumenical Council: “The one who venerates the icon,
venerates the hypostasis of the one it represents.”16 But here the truth is
expressed in a more concrete, a more imperative form; the general anti­
iconoclast tenor of the sentence thus acquires a clearly eschatological
dimension. In this, it also corresponds to the decision of the Seventh
Council which emphasized the eschatological aspect of the icon, though
less emphatically, through the prophecy of Zephaniah (3:14-15). The
vision of Christ at His Second Coming presupposes a confession of His
first coming and the veneration of the image of His person that points to
it. The reverse is also true: the veneration of the image is a pledge, a
condition for the vision of Christ in the glory of His Second Coming. In
other words, “the cult of icons will therefore be in a certain sense the
beginning of the vision of God,”17 a beginning of the vision face-to-face.
Here we recall the second troparion of the fourth ode of the canon of the
Icon of the Holy Face: “In former times, Moses, having asked to see God,
was able to contemplate God only obscurely, seeing His back; but the new
Israel now sees you, our Deliverer, clearly face to face.” The icon not only
14 We certainly cannot maintain today that a church decoration by Matisse or a non-figurative
painter represents a “Bible for the unlettered.* In such cases, the image (if there is one) is not
designed for spiritual instruction, but for purely aesthetic appreciation.
15 PG99:1537D.
16 Mansi XIII, 377-80.
17 Vladimir Lossky, The Vision ofGod> trans. A. Moorhouse (New York: St Vladimirs Seminary
Press, 1983), 168.
214 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

teaches us things about God; it makes God himself known to us. In the
icon of Christ, we contemplate His divine Person in the glory with which
He will return, that is, in His glorified, transfigured face.
On icons, the third canon of the council concludes, we also represent the
Mother of God, the angels and all the saints. This is because, in the eyes of the
council, the image of a saint and above all ofthe Mother of God represents, like
the image of Christ, a visible préfiguration of the future: of the eschatological
Kingdom of God, a manifestation of His glory in man. “I have given to them
the glory which you have given me” (Jn 17:22). “But we know that at this
revelation we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn 3:21).
This vision of the luminous face of God turned toward each man, the vision of
Christ transfigured, is given its theological structure in the doctrine ofSt Gregory
Palamas and in the definitions of the nature of grace by the councils of the
fourteenth century.18

As we shall see, this vision will also be the theological framework for the
content of the icon. Thus, in the nineteenth century, Metropolitan
Philaret of Moscow would apply the words of St Paul to the icon, “And
we all, who with unveiled face, behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as from
the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). Philaret says the following:
Notice that St Paul does not speak of himself but of alL Consequently, he is not
speaking of the distinctive privilege of a man inspired by God, but of an action,
a state that is available to a great number and, to a certain degree, to alL He says,
And we all, with unveiledface, behold the glory ofthe Lord. That is, we behold not
only the face of Jesus Christ, but his glory.. .We do not watch like passive
spectators, but we present our soul to the luminous face of Jesus Christ, like a
mirror to receive His light. We are being transformed into the same image, we
steadfastly try to grow in the likeness of the image ofJesus Christ.19

The council of 869-870 was not content with deposing Patriarch

Photius; obstacles were set up to get in the way of all he had undertaken
to restore and disseminate sacred art. Indeed, the men he had gathered
around him for that purpose were put out of action and were unable to
continue. Indeed, does not the icon have such a significant meaning that
18 Ibid
19 Homily on the consecration of a church dedicated to the Icon of the Holy Face (November
17, 1855). Sermons, vol. Ill (Paris, 1866), 232. In the nineteenth century, Metropolitan
Philaret explained, as can be seen, the power of the image upon the believer in the same
context as St John of Damascus.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 215

persons who are anathematized (and who are therefore deprived of the
right to teach in the Church) may not paint it?20
The struggle of St Photius against iconoclasm reached its peak with the
recognition of the Second Council of Nicaea as the Seventh Ecumenical
Council, at the (Ignatian) council of879-880. The (Photian) councils of 867
and 869-70 had already recognized it But the Church of Rome continued to
count only six Ecumenical Councils.21 Nonetheless, in 879-880, at the
insistence of Patriarch Photius, the papal legates concurred unreservedly with
this recognition and threatened to excommunicate any who refused to recog­
nize this council as the Seventh Ecumenical Council.22 According to Francis
Dvomik, it was precisely Patriarch Photius who brought the Church of Rome
back to unity with the Orthodox Church.23

The confession of St Photius was particularly important for its opposi­

tion to the error of the filioque, an addition made to the Creed, intro­
duced, as is well known, in many Western regions during this period.
Thus, in recently converted Bulgaria, Latin missionaries insisted upon
this insertion. One of the dogmatic questions raised by the council of
879-880 dealt precisely with this insertion (the council summoned by St
Photius in 867 had already addressed this issue). The council proclaimed
20 Canon 7 of this council sûtes: “To make holy and precious icons, as well as to teach one's
neighbors the precepts of divine and human wisdom, is very useful, and not to be done by the
unworthy. The excommunicated are therefore not allowed to paint icons in the holy churches
nor, by the same token, teach there unless they abjure their errors. If someone, after we have
made this decision, surts painting holy icons in churches, he will be deposed if he is a cleric,
and deprived of the divine Mysteries if he is a layman” (Mansi XVI, 402).
21 F. Dvomik, “Patriarch Photius,” 96.
22 “I, Paul [Bishop of Ancona, first of the legates], recognize the venerable Photius as the
legitimate and canonically elected Patriarch and, in accordance with the letters of the Pope and
the terms of the Commonitorium, I declare that I am in communion with him. I repudiate
and anathematize the Synod that was summoned against him in Consuntinople [the “Eighth
Ecumenical”], together with everything that was done against him at the time of Hadrian.
Whoever severs himself from him, is severed from the Church. Moreover, I recognize the
Second Council of Nicaea as the Seventh Ecumenical Council” (Héfélé, Histoire, 601). Let us
note that this Seventh Ecumenical Council was in fact recognized only by the hierarchy of the
Church of Rome. The situation in the Western Church as a whole was hardly clear. Thus,
while referring to the ecumenical councils, some Western bishops enumerated six, others four,
still others only two. The Seventh Ecumenical Council was either rejected or simply ignored
(F. Dvomik, The Photian Schism, 310-2). Thus, as can be seen, ignorance of the conciliar
decisions regarding iconoclasm was matched by equal ignorance about the other heresies
condemned by the preceding councils.
23 F. Dvomik, “Patriarch Photius,” 96.
216 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the immutability of the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople, without the

filioque: “If any one should venture so far in his madness as to propose
another creed...or dare to make an addition to, or omission from, the
creed handed down to us by the Fathers of the holy Ecumenical Council
of Nicaea.. .let him be anathema.” The papal legates made no objection to
this decision of the council, and they signed it with all the other partici­
pants.24
In the anti-iconoclastic struggle, the recognition of the Second Coun­
cil of Nicaea as the Seventh Ecumenical Council was not merely a formal
act of great importance: it was a decisive blow to iconoclasm. Henceforth,
iconoclasm was condemned as a heresy by the entire Church, and the
decision was final, irrevocable. The dogma of the veneration of icons was
thereby recognized as one of the basic truths of Christianity; and the
image itself was confirmed as a witness to the Incarnation, and as a way of
knowing God and of communion with Him.
We have already spoken of the reaction of the West to the Byzantine crisis of
iconoclasm. However, it seems necessary to us to complete our presentation
somewhat in the light of the attitude taken in our time regarding this question.
As during the iconoclastic period, the Western Church continued to support
with its authority the orthodox position of the Eastern Church. However,
neither the cult of the icon nor its significance profoundly affected the con­
sciousness of the Western Church. According to a Roman Catholic theologian
of our time, it was the doctrinal struggles that led to a deepening, and to a
definition of doctrine—the true stages of dogmatic development Not knowing
such struggles, the West paid little attention to them and did not see in this a real
dogmatic development but merely a disciplinary action, an approval of the cult
of images, without really understanding any dogmatic implication.25
This is true. The West did not see what Byzantium saw in the icon; it
did not understand its content. While taking part in the discussion, “it
never followed the East in the theological argument, nor did it understand
all the implications of the Byzantine theology of icons and everything
connected with it.”26 And the implications were indeed numerous. In our
24 K. J. Héfélé, Histoire des Conciles, 601. The text of the declaration is found on pp. 602-3. See
also A. Vasiliev, History ofthe Byzantine Empire, vol. 1,331.
25 M. J. Le Guillou, L’Esprit de [’Orthodoxiegrecque et russe (Paris, 1961), 45.
26 G. Florovsky, “Origen, Eusebius and the Iconoclastic Controversy,” Church History 19, no. 2
(June, 1950), 77.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 217

day, when the Western attitude toward the icon has changed, there is a
gradual awareness of the scope of the discussion that took place in
Byzantium, and of their consequences. This is clearly illustrated in the
words of Daniel-Rops, who states:
The icon makes Westerners understand what was really at stake in this "quarrel
over images” by which the Byzantine East was so bitterly torn apart for so many
years. Is it possible that people killed one another in order to know if one had
the right to represent God and His saints? In reality, this was not the issue. We
are dealing with a debate in which the most profound truths of the faith were at
stake. If the unchanging, imperishable icon is some sort of "type” of the ineffable
reality, would denying it not be the same as denying this reality?27

The struggle against iconoclasm and the defeat of heresy were of

capital importance to the art of the Church. “It is precisely this conflict
that helped to free painting from all subsidiary, secondary accretions. It
led art to express what had essential value—and only that.”28 However, it
seems to us that this return to what is essential was not so much the direct
result of the conflict itself as it was a deeper awareness of the significance
of the image, provoked by the conflict. It would be more correct to say
that the conflict goaded Christianity into stating and working out the
christological basis of the image, into formulating its theological founda­
tion. It is an awareness of this theological ground that resulted in the
purification and accuracy of the artistic language of the Church. Once the
christological foundation of the icon had been laid, there appeared a
conscious, determined tendency that clearly showed the content and
essence of the icon, and that was based on experience, past and present.
Thus the center of gravity moved from the christological aspect of the
icon, which had been preponderant until then, to its pneumatological and
eschatological dimensions, which found their theological expression in
the Liturgy of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, particularly in the kontakion
of the feast (see above, p. 151). In art history, this process is known as
“spiritualization.” It reached its peak in the second half of the eleventh
27 Daniel-Rops, “Devant les icônes," Ecclesia no. 3-4 (January, 1952), 10. Daniel-Rops reaches a
correct conclusion. However, as a Roman Catholic, he adopts an erroneous view of the image.
He makes a serious error by attaching no importance to “the right to represent God and the
saints." This is precisely one of “the highest data of the faith* and “the ineffable reality* of
which he speaks, and which cannot be expressed otherwise but by historical reality.
28 O. Demus, “L’an byzantin dans le cadre européen,* Catalog Van byzantin (Athens, 1964),
93-4.
218 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

century, leaving its mark on all genres of sacred and even profane art. In
other words, the trend which had already become apparent in pre-
iconoclastic art, and the principle of which was expressed by canon 82 of
the Quinisext Council, continued and became dominant.
Just as the reaction against iconoclasm was equally important for the
whole Church, so also the programs and norms elaborated by Church art
of this period had a general impact upon the Church. They served as
guiding principles for the development of all Orthodox art. Thus the
period that immediately followed iconoclasm witnessed the formation of
the canon of sacred art. Let us not forget that the general form of the
liturgical synthesis also dates back to this period. The definitive form of
what is called the “Byzantine rite” was established in Constantinople after
the Triumph of Orthodoxy. A harmonious whole, encompassing architec­
ture, poetry, painting, and chant, was being worked out. All this con­
formed to only one goal: the expression of the very essence of Orthodoxy.
Apparently, after the defeat of iconoclasm, the veneration of icons was
not quickly reestablished everywhere, and icons themselves were not
disseminated at once. Immediately after the Triumph of Orthodoxy,
during the patriarchate of St Methodius or of St Ignatius, the mosaic in
the apse of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, representing the Virgin
enthroned (843-845),29 was probably restored, as well as the icon of
Christ above the entrance to the imperial palace. Nonetheless, it seems
that even in Hagia Sophia there were not yet any icons in the proper sense
of the term. This is made clear in the homily given by Photius in 867 on
the occasion of the solemn dedication of an icon.30
Numerous provincial trends played a considerable role in reestablish­
ing sacred art after iconoclasm. In general, this ninth-century art is noted
for its great variety of styles and techniques.31 As to the subjects repre­
sented, two main trends emerge from this variety. The first shows Ortho­
dox truth on the dogmatic level.32 It is precisely in this trend that a
29 This mosaic is attributed to St Lazarus, icon-pa inter and confessor of Orthodoxy during the
period of iconoclasm (commemorated on November 17). See A. Grabar, Lïconoclasmc by­
zantin (Paris, 1957), 190-1.
30 Hom. 73, cd. Aristarchos (Constantinople, 1901), vol. 2, 294-300. A. Grabar dates this
homily from 858 to 865, Iconodasmc, 191.
31 A. Grabar, ibid., 192.
32 A typical example is provided by the mosaic in the Cathedral of the Dormition restored during
the episcopacy of the Confessor St Theophanes the Marked (graptos), Confessor (commemo­
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 219

tendency toward a more elevated iconographie style can be detected—a

trend toward the hieratic, the “spiritualized.” Iconographically, the sec­
ond trend reflects the struggle with the defeated heresy.33 This trend is
especially manifest in the illustrations of the Psalter, which occasionally
were carried to the point of caricature.34
However, if this polemic appears in illustrations, it is not at all re­
flected in church art. More precisely, the struggle against heresy is here
shown on a different, non-polemical level. Church art has never been, and
cannot be, a polemic in the proper sense of the term, for its aim is
different. In its worship, the Church deems it sufficient to oppose error
simply by presenting its faith in a positive way. This is why the Orthodox
Church could react only by proclaiming the true faith. This could be
done by clarifying certain details or by a deepening of teaching,35 but not
by introducing a polemic iconography. This is why in such art we find no
reaction even to an event as significant as the break with Rome.36
Ninth-century secular art is characterized by its closeness to sacred
art.37 Freed from the caesaro-papism of the iconoclast emperors, the
Church now put its stamp on secular art. If during iconoclasm, it was the
emperors who led heresy and started the persecution of the Orthodox, the
Byzantine emperor was now obliged to prove his Orthodoxy to the
rated on October 11). The cross in the apse has been replaced by an image of the Theotokos
with the Child. Above her, three rays and a hand extend from a symbolic heaven. A symbolic
image of the Trinity has been put in the conch above: a throne with the Gospel book and a
dove. Along the edge of the heavens runs the inscription, “Before the morning star, I have
begotten you* (Ps 109). As in the Liturgy of Christmas, we see here how the two births of the
Savior are collated: the generation from the Father outside of time, unutterable and therefore
unrepresentable, and attested only a text; and the representable human birth from the Virgin.
In his History ofByzantine Painting (in Russian) (Moscow, 1947), vol. 1, 69, V. Lazarev dates
this mosaic from the end of the eighth century (shortly after 787). A. Grabar and Frolov date
it after 843.
33 Thus the four Orthodox Patriarchs, defenders of icons, are represented together with the
apostles in one of the halls adjoining Hagia Sophia.
34 For example, the Psalter of Khludov, on Mount Athos (Pantocrator, no 61), and the Psalter of
the British Museum. See A. Grabar, L’iconodasme6\t 196, 202; illustr. 141, 143, 144, 146,
152, 155,157.
35 This can be seen, for example, in the mosaic of Nicaea (see above, n. 32), and later; for
instance, in the iconography of the Transfiguration, where in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries scenes were introduced of Christ ascending and descending the mountain with His
disciples—an echo, no doubt, of the symbolic exegesis of this event and especially of the
mountain.
36 A. Grabar, Byzance (Paris, 1963), 51-2.
37 A. Grabar, L’empereur dans l’art byzantin (Paris, 1936), 173.
220 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Church. This is reflected in art. It was indeed during the post-iconoclastic

period that the piety of the emperor became one of the leading themes of
the official art of the empire. New iconographie subjects appeared: the
emperor before Christ, before the Theotokos, before a saint or a cross.58

A change in the system of decorating churches was introduced during the

patriarchate of St Photius. He was the inspirer of the iconography and its
regulations which were now being refined in Constantinople.39 The choice of
subjects according to the historical principle, which had dominated church
decoration up to then, gave way to a dogmatic principle.40 This new system
was adapted at a time when the type of cruciform cupola church—the
architectural principle of which is a cube with a dome on top—became
universal.41 In architecture, such a building is the perfect expression of the
principles of Orthodox liturgical thought42 Unlike classical architecture
which, starting from the exterior, moves to the interior and gives content to
form, Orthodox architecture starts with the content and gives it form, thereby
moving from the interior to the exterior.43 A decorated, cruciform, domed
church provides for a clearer, more vivid expression of its symbolic meaning
and, within the limits of the possible, of the Orthodox doctrine of the
38 Ibid, 100. Thus in the ninth-century mosaic of the kenowgion, Emperor Basil I, with his wife
and children, extends his hands towards a cross. Above the ninth-century entrance to Hagia
Sophia (where the emperor, before entering the church, listened to the prayer of entrance and
prostrated himself three times), the enthroned Christ is represented, with the emperor (Leo
VI?) on his knees before him (ibid, 101). The words written in the Gospel which Christ holds
in his hands, “Peace be with you” and “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12) lead A. Grabar
to conclude that the two essential qualities of the emperor—to be a peacemaker and bearer of
the light of Rome—are attributed to Christ, since this is how the emperors had been called,
beginning with the third and fourth-century panegyrics (ibid, 103-4). Unfortunately, we
must disagree with this author. Indeed, the Gospels containing the words of Christ precede the
panegyrics; and if the latter attribute to the emperor a light reflected, so to speak, from Christ,
there is no reason to do the opposite and attribute to Christ a light reflected, so to speak, from
the emperor.
39 André Grabar and Monolis Chatzidakis, La peinture byzantine du haut moyen âge (Paris,
1965), 22.
40 V. N. Lazarev, The Mosaics ofSt Sophia ofKievan Russian) (Moscow, I960), 36. M. Alpatov,
General History ofthe Arts (in Russian), vol. 1, 229; Ch. Diehl, Manuel dart byzantin (Paris,
1926), 486,496; P. Lemerle, Le style byzantin (Paris, 1943), 83.
41 In Byzantium, this type of church had been in existence since the fifth and sixth centuries. A
church dating from the fifth century is found in Salonika; and one from the sixth at Edessa.
The eighth-century chapel of St Zeno in Rome is also a cube, surmounted by a cupola. See A.
Grabar, Byzance, 902.
42 K. Onasch, Ikonen (Berlin, 1961), 85.
43 P. Michelis, Esthétique de l*art byzantin (Paris, 1959), 62.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 221

Church. This style of architecture was adopted as a basis for the entire
Orthodox world. It was modified or refined depending on local taste, and
received new aesthetic expression. Variations in composition, new construc­
tion and decorative methods were developed in various places. These would
subsequently be reflected in the architecture of Byzantium itself.44

It seems that one of the earliest examples of this change in church

decoration appeared in a church in Constantinople built by Emperor
Michael III. We know of this decoration from the homily given by
Photius at its consecration (around 864).45 In the dome is the image of
Christ:46

He seems to supervise from above the orderly government of the earth. Thus,
through forms and colors, the painter has sought to express the Creator’s care
for us. In the pendentive is a throng of angels, escorting the Lord. In the apse
above the altar radiates the Theotokos, her pure hands outstretched toward us
in protection. A choir ofaposdes, martyrs, prophets, and patriarchs fills the entire
church with images.47

44 R. A. Katznelson, “The Question of the Connection Between East and South-Slavic Architec­
ture* (in Russian), Vizantiiskii VremennikYS (Moscow: 1957), 242-62. By the same author, a
review of N. Mavrodinov, “Byzantine Architecture* (in Russian), Viz. Vrem. 14 (1948),
277-83.
45 Which church this was is not precisely known. On p. 35 of Mosaïques, V. Lazarev states that
it was Our Lady of the Pharos; so do Jenkins and Mango, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9 (1956).
A. Grabar, in L’iconodasme byzantin, 183-4, believes that it was the Odigpn.
46 Before Iconoclasm, Christ was represented in the apse; for example at Rome in the church of
Sts Cosmas and Damian; at Ravenna in St Vitalis. Numerous examples of this type of
iconography are offered by the sixth and seventh-century chapels and churches in Egypt and
in Armenia. In the West, such usage continued in the Middle Ages, even up to our time; this
was undoubtedly also true among the Christians of Asia. In areas under Byzantine domination
(for example, Asia Minor, Latmos, near Smyrna, and Cappadocia), they continued to repre­
sent Christ in the apse. Various prophetic visions of God, to which some apocalyptic motifs
had been added, were also represented. In Asia Minor, such compositions were repeated up to
the eleventh century. In Constantinople in the ninth century, in the church of the Mother of
God built by Basil I and in Hagia Sophia, as well as in the tenth-century churches, the apse
was occupied by the image of the Theotokos, while the image of Christ was transferred to the
cupola. In Baouit and in Saccra, however, the icon of the Virgin appeared in the apse from the
sixth century on (A. Grabar, “Sur les images des visions théophaniques dans 1c narthex,*
Cahiers archéologiques [Paris, 1962]). We also know from written sources that in the fifth
century in Constantinople, there was an image of the Virgin in the apse of the church of
Blachernae. Beginning with the eleventh century, in all the churches of the Byzantine empire
as well as in Russia, the Balkans and the Caucasus, the Mother of God was regularly
represented in the apse, while Christ figured in the cupola (A Grabar, “Sur les images des
visions théophaniques,* ibicL, 374-5).
47 PG 102: 293CD.
Ill THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

A similar system of decoration is mentioned in two orations given by

Emperor Leo IV (886-912) for the consecration of churches.48

The architecture of the domed cruciform churches, combined with

the new system of decoration, most fully expresses the Christian concept
of a temple, its liturgical meaning. “It is the most brilliant creation of the
doctrine of icons,” aWestern author states.49 In a church of this form, the
architectural center corresponds to its very meaning; and it is around this
one (theological and logical) center that the subjects of decoration are
organized. Here, everything is subordinated to an overall plan translating
the catholicity of the Church: everything is incorporated into a vast unity.
The entire heavenly and earthly creation, destined to become a new
creation in Christ the God-man, is gathered around Christ in the dome
and around Mary in the apse. The angelic powers, mankind, the animals,
the birds, the plants and stars—the entire universe unites to form an
unmatched temple of God. The entire world is sheltered under the vault
of the church; this is an image of unity restored, the unity that was broken
by the fall of man. This is the cosmic aspect of the Church, the body of
Christ, since the universe belongs to it—this universe which, after the
resurrection of Christ, shares in His glorification and is subject to His
power. “All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Mt
28:18). The accursed earth (Gen 3:17) becomes the blessed earth, the
first-fruits of a new earth under a new heaven. This cosmic aspect of the
Church is expressed not only in the architecture and in the decoration of
the places of worship, but also in the subjects of certain icons (“All of
creation rejoices in you, full of grace”; “Let every breath praise the Lord”).
This union of all beings in God—His universe to come, renewed in
Christ and transfigured—is in contrast to the hostility and inner strife
that wreck creation.50 The world of animals and of vegetation (for exam­
ple, the vegetal or geometric ornamentation) represented in mural deco­
ration (as in the icons) is not merely an ornamental addition: it expresses
how the created world is part of the Kingdom of God, through man.
Thus, painting corresponds to reality itself, since man brings the first-
fruits of the created world to the Church, from its consecration to the
48 A. Grabar, L’iconoclasme byzantin, 186.
49 H.-J. Schulz, Die byzantinische Liturgie (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1964), 22.
50 Eugene N. Trubetskoi, A Theology in Images (in Russian), (Paris, 1965), 43. (English trans, by
Getrude Vakar, Icons: Theology in Color [New York: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1973], 32).
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 223

eucharistie sacrifice (“Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee on

behalf of all and for all”). Indeed, it is in the Liturgy that the significance
of a Christian church is fully realized. Its architecture and decoration have
acquired all their meaning from the union of the heavenly and the earthly
Church in the person of its members united by the spirit of love in living
communion with the Body and Blood of Christ.51 It is in them and
through them that the union of all is actualized. Thus the temple acquires
the fullness of meaning which the Father-liturgists of the pre-iconoclast
period had already detected in it: it is an image of the Church rising
towards eschatological fulfillment. In reality, as in image, it is a compo­
nent of the Kingdom of God to come.52
All this is centered on man so as to place him in conditions most
favorable to the exaltation of knowing God and of communing with
Him. In an Orthodox church, all efforts are aimed not at creating a place
that calls for “solitary meditation, a turning inward, a prolonged private
conversation with one’s own secrets”53—but at including man in the
catholic unity of the Church so that in its entirety, earthly and heavenly,
it may acknowledge and praise God “with one mouth and one heart.”

In Catholicism, church architecture and decoration are marked by

great variety, and the architectural style is sometimes radically different,
depending on the spiritual traditions. The Orthodox world, by contrast,
has always been guided by a faithful search for an architectural, artistic
expression that best translates the meaning of a temple understood as a
symbolic image of the Church and the universe. Unlike in Roman Ca­
tholicism, regardless of the richness and diversity of architectural solu­
tions, when a suitable expression was found, it was definitively adopted,
at least in its main features. In conformity with a sense of the Church, its
program of decoration also remained the same in its principle, regardless
of the type of church and its purpose, whether a cathedral, a monastic or
parish church, or even a cemetery chapel.54 This system of decoration
reflected not so much the function of a building linked to a practical
51 E. Trubetskoi, ibid,
52 On the symbolism of the church and its decoration, see L. Ouspensky, “Symbolik des
orthodoxen Kirchengebäudes und der Ikone," Symbolik der Religionen (Stuttgart, 1962),
56-68.
53 R. Cognât, "Architecture de la foi," Le Figaro (10 Sept. 1964).
54 A. Grabar, Byzance, 52.
224 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

purpose: its very changelessness corresponded to that of the essential

function of every Christian church—to be a place of the Liturgy. Cer­
tainly, the mural paintings might deviate from the ideal balance and the
decorations might not be entirely finished. But no matter which aspect
was emphasized (christological, mariological, sanctoral or another), its
basis always remained the same. This does not mean that the subjects of
which this basis was composed always remained unchanged themselves:
they continued to develop naturally—or rather, to be precise, their vari­
ous aspects were clarified. Yet the classical system of decoration developed
during the post-iconoclastic period remained as the general formula in the
Orthodox Church until the end of the seventeenth century.
A renewal of the mission “among the Bulgarians, Khazars, Russians
and the Slavs of Moravia as well as among the Christian but schismatic
Armenians (to bring them back to Orthodoxy)” occurred during the time
of Photius and at his initiative. “In his day also the theologians of his circle
attempted Christian propaganda action among the Arabs.”55 Subjects
corresponding to this missionary effort appear in the mural paintings of
this period, and above all in illustrations. They express the successive
apostolic preaching and the actualization of the economy of the Holy
Spirit: the sending of the aposdes by Christ, the apostolic preaching to
various races, the adoration of Christ by different nations. In the iconog­
raphy of Pentecost groups are introduced representing the various races to
whom the preaching of the aposdes was addressed (Acts 2:9-11).
Such Byzantine missions are usually explained as an expansion of
Byzantine art, culture, and politics tied to a consolidation and expansion
of the empire.56 Since culture and politics were linked to the Church, it is
certain that the cultural influence and the interest of the empire were
disseminated with the preaching of Orthodoxy, all the more since culture
itself was conditioned by the faith. Culture was intimately linked to
55 A. Grabar, Lïconodasme byzantin (Paris, 1957), 223. In 863, the brothers St Constantine and
St Methodius went to Moravia. After their death, their disciples, persecuted by the German
clergy, fled to Bohemia and to Bulgaria, via Serbia (Pierre L’Huillier, Les relations bulgaro-byz-
antines aux IX-Xsiècles [Thessalonika, 1966], 222-3). In his Letter to the Eastern Patriarchs
(867), St Photius speaks of the conversion of the people of Rus* and of sending a bishop to that
nation. In “Etudes sur le IXe siècle," Byzantion 7 (1933), 553-8, Grégoire states that the
bishop Photius refers to was sent not to the Crimea or the Caucasus, but to Kiev.
56 In the ninth and tenth centuries, Asia Minor was reconquered, as were Syria and southern
Italy.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 225

doctrinal suppositions and was influenced by them, and vice versa. The
missions also frequently coincided with the interests of the state, which
exploited them for its own ends as much as possible.57 However, the
preaching of Orthodoxy remained the center of gravity. It was a mission
of the Church, and Patriarch Photius was guided not by the desire to
preach the kingdom of Caesar but rather by what was for him the essential
character of Orthodoxy: its universality. Sacred art, “exported” in this
manner, was definitely a preaching of Orthodoxy, and not a “civilization”
understood as an expansion of Christian culture or of the empire. Cer­
tainly, together with the dominant art of the Church, culture also brought
its own art, a secular one, the form of which was indeed close to sacred art.
However, the unity of Orthodox religious art was a result, a manifesta­
tion, not of a cultural, artistic or other influence of the Byzantine empire
but of the oneness of doctrine and of the spiritual life. Works bom of this
art have been preserved in many countries, nations which have nothing in
common from either the political or the ethnic point of view. And yet,
with the exception of certain details, national differences are not reflected
in the character of sacred art.58

Let us repeat that in the preaching of Orthodoxy, art was a vehicle not
of culture but of the faith, of which it was one of the essential, organic
elements. The populations that embraced Christianity received its artistic
language that had been forged in the very heart of the Christian world.
They accepted Christianity as the living expression, couched in artistic
forms, of the truth which they embraced. All the peoples entering the
Church accepted the Church in its entirety, with its past, present, and
future. The heresies of Arius, Nestorius, and of the iconoclasts were not
something alien, but dealt with their own faith, a truth that was indeed
theirs. This is why the answer of the Church was always adopted as an
antidote against any possible resurgence of such heresies, in one form or
another. It is for this same reason that every people joining the Church
57 It is hard to take seriously that “the preachers of Christianity habitually pursued political goals
outwardly disguised as religious instruction/ and that “as a pledge of security, the Church
cleverly imposed the feudal system supposedly established by God Himself* (O. I.
Dombrovskii, ibuLt 6). Categorical statements of this nature are not a matter of historically
attested facts but rather of the author’s temperament, which leads him to abandon the
province not only of learning but sometimes also of propriety (see, for example, ibùL» 101).
58 A. Grabar, Byzance» 122. Nonetheless, differences in belief are cleady reflected in the arts of
nations that are ethnically related and politically united.
226 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

brings its specific, national characteristics to it, and matures according to

its own genius as much in the sphere of holiness as in its external
expression— sacred art. Every group accepted the painted language of the
Church in an active, creative manner by introducing local artistic tradi­
tions into it. Thus, building upon a common foundation, every nation
created its own artistic language, thereby achieving unity in diversity. In
Orthodox countries, the originality of art is due especially to the fact that
in the Orthodox Church, the unity of faith and sacrament not only did
not exclude a variety of forms of worship, art, and other manifestations of
Church life conditioned by national and cultural characteristics but, on
the contrary, encouraged such variety because it implied a living experi­
ence of the tradition, always renewed, original and creative by necessity.
Unlike Rome, Orthodoxy always encouraged the national aspect of the
Church in every people.59 Not only did Orthodox missionaries not im­
pose their language, but on the contrary, when necessary, they composed
an alphabet and a grammar to translate Holy Scripture and the Liturgy
into the local language. The substructure of the artistic language of the
Church remains unchanged; and it is upon this foundation that each
people created its own artistic language through a direct, living experience
of the truth it had embraced.60 Holiness and the image were recreated on
a common ground accepted by all. Holiness and the image were given a
national form and stamp because they were the fruit of a living experi­
ence. Thus appeared a specific type of Russian, Serbian, and Bulgarian
holiness, as well as specific type of icon corresponding to each.
The activity of St Photius in the missionary and artistic spheres re­
sulted, on the one hand, in the conversion of the Slavic peoples and, on
the other, in the development of eleventh-century art. It was this art in
full bloom that was adopted so widely and spontaneously by the Slavs.

Beginning with the second half of the eleventh century, the role of
Constantinople had truly become extraordinary...Its influence had
spread in all directions: it is seen in Cappadocia, in Latmos, in the
59 G. Moravscik, “Byzantinische Mission im Kreise der Türkvölker an der Nordküste des
Schwarzen Meeres," Main Papers, 13th Byzant. Congress (Oxford, 1966), 14. See also, I.
Duitsev, “Centers of Byzantine-Slav Contact and Collaboration," (in Russian), Trudy Otdela
drevnerusskoi Uteratury 19 (1963), 107-8.
60 In our time the Marxist concept of a socialist culture, one in content and diverse in its national
forms, is in fact a variation of this basic idea of the Orthodox Church.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 227

Caucasus, in Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, on Mount Athos, in Italy. It combined

into one homogeneous whole the creative efforts of nearly all the peoples of
the Christian East, imprinting a type of common seal upon them.61
The eleventh and twelfth centuries were for Byzantium a period of
intense life, as much in the political as in the ecclesiastic spheres. But if, in
the political domain, the state entered “a phase that contained all the
germs of a fatal disease that inevitably led to the catastrophe of 1204,”62
these two centuries were, by contrast, a thriving age in die cultural and
theological domains.
The tenth century witnessed a renaissance of spiritual life, and St
Symeon the New Theologian represents its pinnacle. Ascetic and spiritual
writing? were disseminated. The writings of Isaac the Syrian were translated
into Greek; there appeared the works of Philotheus of Sinai on the Jesus
prayer and those of Elias Ecdicos (whose life, admittedly, cannot be dated
with certainty).63 The writings of St Symeon the New Theologian, dissem­
inated by his disciples during the life of the author, influenced the religious
and literary circles of Constantinople, and especially after his death.64
Together with Constantinople, Mount Athos, intimately linked to all Or­
thodox countries, assumed a special importance in the spiritual life. In
Russia and in the Balkans an intense activity developed through the transla­
tion of spiritual works. Monasteries were founded, linked to Mount Athos
and Constantinople. Spiritual life in these countries began to acquire a
national character that became greatly visible in holiness. Such great spiri­
tual flowering was the fertile soil on which sacred art could develop.

On the other hand, the tenth century witnessed a terrible catastrophe

in the history of the Church which has not yet been overcome: the schism
between East and West. The polemic with the West, and with the
Bogomil and Cathar heresies, as well as the struggle against errors within
the Church itself, contributed nonetheless to a development of theologi­
cal thought.
61 V. Lazarev, History ofByzantine Painting (in Russian), 105.
62 H. Evcrt-Kappesova, Supplement to the Report of N. Svoronos, Supplementary Papers, 13th
Byzant. Congress (Oxford, 1966), 121.
63 Symeon the New Theologian, Catéchèses» Introduction, Critical Text and Notes by Basil
Krivochéine, vol. I (Paris, 1963), 41, n. 1.
64 Ibid., 61. The tide of “New Theologian," given to him while he was alive, means “Renewer of
the mystical life" (ibid., 53, n. 1).
228 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Until then the East and the West had not always agreed with each other,
as we have seen, and quite often their joint action had been marked by
serious misunderstandings. Nonetheless, it was a truly common action, that
of two members of the same Church. The Patriarchate of Rome was part of
the Church; this is why the numerous and profound misunderstandings
became somewhat muted and did not compromise the oneness of this
patriarchate with the rest of the Church, its participation in the common
sacramental life. It was a member of the Body of Christ, drinking from the
same chalice, eating the same bread as the other local churches. What was
missing in the Church of Rome could always eventually be supplied by the
common patrimony. Inversely, the spiritual riches of the West entered the
common treasury of the one Church. But in the eleventh century, Rome
separated from the rest of the Church. Sacramental communion was inter­
rupted, and the Church of Rome withdrew from the common life of the
Church in this pneumatological period. This is why even the amazingly
creative impulse of the Romanesque period, when the West used forms
borrowed from the East, was but a brief flame that did not endure. Later,
beginning with the close of the Romanesque period, spiritual art in the
West entered upon path of progressive laicization, betraying its meaning, its
destiny, even its very reason for being.
In 1053-1054, discussions with Rome were centered on the question
of the azyma (unleavened bread). At about the same period, the dispute
about the central question, that of the insertion of the fiUoque into the
Creed,65 became more acrimonious.

The controversy over the filioque intensified toward the end of the
eleventh centuiy. It is mentioned in eveiy Byzantine polemical treatise. In the
twelfth century this question became predominant, if not by the number of
pages dedicated to it then at least by its importance. The dispute between
Greek and Latin theologians at the Synods of Bari in 1098 and of Constanti­
nople in 1112 dealt mainly with the procession of the Holy Spirit.66
The council of 1062 condemned John Italos and the Hellenistic
philosophic trend he represented. Let us note that one of the reasons for
his condemnation was his opposition to the veneration of icons.67 In the
65 A. Poppe, “Le traité des azymes," Byzantinion 35 (1965), 507.
66 /W, 508.
67 A. Vasiliev, History ofthe Byzantine Empire, vol. II (Madison, 1964), 473.
The Post-Iconoclastic Period 229

twelfth century, discussions were held with the Latinizers about the words
of the eucharistie Liturgy: “For thou thyself are he that offers and is
offered”; and also about the question to whom the sacrifice is offered, to
God the Father or the Holy Trinity.68 The councils of 1156 and 1157
condemned those who held a heretical view of the Eucharist, as “inventors
of new and strange doctrines.”69
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the dogmatic struggle dominated the
life of the Orthodox Church. The development of its spiritual life and the
theological polemic against heresies and error are most visible in sacred art by
what is known as its “spiritualization.” According to V. Lazarev, perhaps never
before or later did this art reach “such a degree of ideological saturation.”70
The prodigious flowering of the twelfth century was only a continuation of
that of the eleventh century, the art of which became “the norm, we can even
say the canonical style, for the centuries that followed.”71 Such art acquired a
form that most folly reflected the spiritual experience of Orthodoxy. During
this period, the image reached a height of expression noted for its clarity and
distinctness: such art was inseparably tied to the very reality of the spiritual
experience Form was conceived and executed as the most complete and most
convincing way to transmit content—a. form that led the attention of the
believer to the prototype, and made the acquisition of the likeness with it
easier. Here we can clearly see the correspondence of such art to the type of
spirituality so strikingly exemplified by St Symeon the New Theologian: “For
him, the suffering and humiliated Christ is always and especially the risen
Christ, transfigured in glory.”72 Art found the means to express, within the
limits of the possible, the beauty so characteristic of the spiritual vision of St
Symeon and his disciples. This artistic language was at once changing (since
its forms are those of an unfolding experience, and could only vary and change
with time) and stable, just as the spiritual experience is itself unchanging in
its essence.
68 P. A. Chercmukhin, “The Council of Constantinople in 1157 and Nicholas, Bishop of
Methona* (in Russian) Bogoslovskie Trudy I (Moscow: 1959), 157-8; “The Doctrine of the
Economy of Salvation in Byzantine Theology* (in Russian), BogpsL Trudy III (Moscow:
1964), 154-6. See also, Archbishop Basil, “Les textes symboliques dans l’Eglise orthodoxe,*
Messager de TExarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe Occidentale, no 48 (1964), 211.
69 P. A. Cheremukhin, Bogosl. Trudy I, 96.
70 Otai reply to the report of K. Weitzmann, 13th Byzant. Congress (Oxford, 1966).
71 K. Weitzman n, “Byzantine miniature and icon painting in the eleventh century," Main Papers
VII, 13th Byzant. Congress (Oxford, 1966), 18.
72 Symeon the New Theologian, op. cii.t 247, note.
230 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Toward the end of the twelfth century, external and internal causes led
to total disorder in the Byzantine state apparatus. The empire lost its
territories in Europe, and the steady progress of feudalism in the East
provoked social strife in the interior of the country. The Latin influence
so unpopular among the Greeks increased, and the antagonism against
the Latins grew after Rome separated from ecumenical Orthodoxy. Under
such conditions, the repeated attempts of the Comneni emperors to
resolve the question of union of the churches for political reasons merely
added fuel to the fire. All this sapped the strength of the empire and led to
catastrophe at the beginning of the thirteenth century. On Easter Sunday
of the year 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade broke into Constan­
tinople. The world capital of art was sacked. “Monuments of classical art
and sacred relics from apostolic times perished or were dispersed to the far
corners of Europe.”73 “Constantinople never recovered from the ruin
caused by the Latins. The impoverished empire no longer had the
strength to recover the incomparable thousand-year-old riches accumu­
lated since the fourth and fifth centuries.”74 Morally and materially, its fall
was a decisive calamity for the Byzantine empire. The profanation of what
was most sacred profoundly marked the soul of the Greek people. The
sack of Constantinople marked the end of the magnificent renaissance of
art in the twelfth century. Byzantine painters in large numbers went into
exile to the Balkans, to the East or to the West.
Nonetheless, Byzantium was not defeated, either spiritually or cultur­
ally. Certainly, on the political and national plane its role had ended. But
from the cultural perspective and on the religious level, it still had a word
to say. This word was spoken at the time of the Paleologi in the thir­
teenth-fourteenth centuries.

73 Th. I. Ouspensky, History of the Byzantine Empire III (in Russian), (Moscow-Leningrad,
1948), 339.
74 Ibid.
 12

Hesychasm And Humanism:

The Paleologan Renaissance
VWhen the Greeks regained Constantinople in 1261, the state was in full
v disarray. Misery and epidemics were widespread. Civil wars (three in
one generation) were raging. In the meantime, Emperor Michael VIII
Paleologus pursued negotiations with Rome (the Council of Lyons, 1274).
Under these conditions, sacred art enjoyed a new efflorescence—the last
one in Byzantium—which is called the “Paleologan Renaissance.”1
Today this flourishing is often explained as a resurgence of Greek
national consciousness during the Empire of Nicaea. Indeed, after the fall
of Constantinople, Nicaea became the political and ecclesiastical center of
the independent Greeks; the best spiritual and national forces of Byzan­
tium were concentrated here.2 The clergy who were able to flee Constan­
tinople emigrated to Nicaea, where monk-scholars created a philosophic
and theological academy, the guardian of Orthodox learning in the
thirteenth century.3 It is to Nicaea that the revival of Hellenic culture can
be traced. Under such conditions, “a return to the ancient traditions,
1 Until recently, the “Paleologan Renaissance” was viewed as an enigma. Scholars wondered
under what influence this rebirth, which contrasted so sharply to the economic and political
situation, was able to develop. “Some have chosen to explain it through the influence of the
Italian trecento: an unlikely hypothesis because, except for a few cases, it was rather Greek art
which had an influence on Iulian art at this time” (P. Lemerle, Le style byzantin [Paris, 1943],
35-6). See also, A. Grabar, Byzance (Paris, 1963), 171-2.
2 Of the three independent centers that were formed on the territory of the dismantled
Byzantine Empire—the Empire of Trebizond, the Despotate of Epirus in northern Greece,
and the Empire of Nicaea—the latter was to play a dominating role. In Nicaea stood the
residence of the patriarch, who continued to carry the tide of “ecumenical,* of “Archbishop of
Constantinople, and who was viewed as the only legitimate head of the Greek church. As
before, his jurisdiction extended to the territories canonically dependent on it. Thus the
Metropolitanate of Kiev, the only one in Russia at this time, subject to the patriarch,
continued to receive Greek metropolians, and mainrained relations with Nicaea” (M.
Levchenko, Ocherki po istorii rusko-vizantiiskikh otnoshenii [Moscow, 1956], 504-6. See also,
G. Ostrogorsky, Histoire de l'Etat byzantin [Paris, 1956], 542).
3 Th. Ouspensky, Istoriia Vizantiiskoi Imperii \\\ (Moscow-Leningrad, 1948), 542.

231
232 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

which was consciously opposed to the hated Latin culture, was not only
natural but in a sense inevitable.”4
The reemergence of national consciousness was certainly to play an
important role, especially since it had cultural, political, and religious
ramifications. The empire considered itself Orthodox. This is why there was
no clearly defined differentiation between cultural and political life on the
one hand, and religious life on the other. Now, the source of this religious
vitality was “the Orthodox church, the most stable element in Byzantium.”5
Certainly, the Church was able to maintain its monolithic unity at a time
that was tragic for the empire. The anti-Latin struggle was not merely
national but also cultural; above all, it was perceived as a religious obliga­
tion. The efforts at union, in particular, could not fail to inspire within the
Church a reaction of Orthodox Byzantium against the Roman Catholic
West, and consequently, an even deeper awareness of the spiritual richness
of Orthodoxy.6 If one does not take into account the role of the Church
“which bore the brunt of the battle,”7 or disregards the crucial factors that
played a leading role in the life of the Greek people, if the inner life of the
Church is overlooked, one can only be surprised that Byzantium, during
the reign of the Paleologi and under such painfill conditions, could
display such great activity in thought and art.8 Whatever the case, one fact
remains obvious, that “in representative art, the ‘Paleologan Renaissance’
is expressed almost exclusively in religious painting.”9 Clearly the inner
life of the Church, which was later to be a subject of controversy, played
a seminal role in the art of the time. The future of the Orthodox Church
and of its art was decided through the struggle of hesychasm against what
is called “humanism.” Once more, the task of formulating Orthodox
doctrine against deviations fell to the Church of Constantinople.
In the fourteenth century, the discussions that agitated the Byzantine
4 V. N. Lazarev, “Novyi pamiatnik konstantinopolskoi miniatury XIII veka," Vizantiiskii
Vremennikî (1952), 188, and Istorii Vizantiiskoii zhivopissi, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1947), 158-9.
5 G. Ostrogorsky, Histoire de l’Etat byzantin, 509.
6 It is indeed illustrative that, at the time of negotiations concerning union, the historian Nicetas
Acominatos, working in Nicaea, wrote (1204-1210) a dogmatic-polemic treatise consisting of
twenty-seven books, entitled Thesaurus of Orthodoxy (PG 139: 1093-1102). See P. A.
Cheremukhin, “Uchcnie o domostroitelstve spaseniia v vizant. bogoslovii,* Bogpslovskii Trudy
III (Moscow, 1964), 159.
7 Th. Ouspensky, Istoriia Vizant. Imperii (1948), 622.
8 V. Lazarev, Istoriia Vizant. zhivopissi (1947), 209.
9 A. Grabar, L’empereur dans l’art byzantin (Paris, 1936), 226.
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 233

26. St Gregory Palamas. Byzantine icon, 14th century.

234 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Church dealt with the very essence of Christian anthropology—the deifi­

cation of man as understood, on the one hand, in traditional Orthodoxy
as represented by the hesychasts under the direction of St Gregory Pal­
amas (Fig. 26) and, on the other, in philosophic, religious circles nour­
ished by the Hellenistic heritage and represented by the “humanists” led
by Barlaam, a monk from Calabria, and Akyndinos. The so-called
“hesychast” councils held in Constantinople in 1341, 1347, and 1351,
were especially devoted to these discussions. In the preceding period,
Byzantium had experienced a time of external crisis, of inner struggle and
intellectual development. The end of the thirteenth century had wit­
nessed renewed discussions on the procession of the Holy Spirit. They
paved the way for the definitive expression of the doctrine of man’s
deification.10
The term “hesychasm” is generally associated with the theological discus­
sions that took place in Byzantium at the time. These discussions prompted
the Church to clarify its teaching about man’s deification. Conciliar decisions
gave a theological framework to the doctrine of man’s illumination by the
Holy Spirit, that is, to what has been from the beginning of Christianity the
impetus and vitality of its art, the very principle that governed the artistic
forms. Indeed, properly speaking, hesychasm was neither a new doctrine nor
a new phenomenon: it was a form of the Orthodox spiritual experience dating
back to the sources of Christianity.11 To limit hesychasm strictly to the
10 J. Meyendorff, Introduction à l'étude de Grégoire Palamas (Paris, 1959), 30. (English trans, by
G. Lawrence, A Study of Gregory Palamas [New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974],
42ff).
11 Hesychia, impassibility, is the state reached by “sobriety” of the spirit, when the intellect
controls the heart and the heart controls the intellect: “(It) is the appropriate Christian
expression of apatheia, where action and contemplation are not conceived as two different
orders of life, but on the contrary are merged in the exercise of'spiritual action*—praxis noertP
(V. Lossky, The Vision ofGod trans. A. Moorhouse [New York: St V1adimir*s Seminary Press,
1983], 142-3). The term “hesychasts,” as applied to Christian ascetics, can be traced back to
the fourth century.
On the subject of hesychasm, see the remarkable study of the monk Basil (Krivochéine),
“Asketitcheskoc i bogoslovskoe uchenie sviatogo Grigoriia Palamy,” Seminarium Konda-
kovianumWW (Prague, 1936). See also, J. Meyendorff, Saint Grégoire Palamas et la mystique
orthodoxe (Paris, 1959) (English trans, by Adele Fiske, St Gregory Palamas and Orthodox
Spirituality [St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974]); Introduction à l'étude de Grégoire Palamas
(Paris, 1959); 5. Grégoire Palamas: Défense des saints hésychastes, Introduction, Critical Text
and Notes by J. Meyendorff (Louvain, 1959) (Partial English translation by N. Gendle,
Gregory Palamas: The Triads [New York, 1938]); S. Syméon le Nouveau Théologien, Catéchises,
three volumes with Introduction, Critical Text and Notes by Basil Krivochéine (Paris,
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 235

Byzantium of the Paleologi would therefore be incorrect. Whether the

term is used in its proper sense, as a Christian ascetic practice, or in the
narrow sense of the fourteenth-century theological discussions, the phe­
nomenon of hesychasm has a pan-Orthodox scope (Fig. 27).12 Indeed,
according to the council of 1347, “the piety of Palamas and of the monks’* is
“an authentic piety truly common to all Christians.”13 Anchored in the
tradition of the Fathers, die hesychast spiritual renewal, which received its
dogmatic expression in the writings of St Gregory Palamas and in the four­
teenth-century councils, as well as the discussions surrounding them, exer-
1963-1964, 1965); Traités théologiques et éthiques, Introduction, Critical Text and Notes by J.
Darrouzès (Paris, 1966); In the Light of Christ (New York: St Vladimirs Seminaiy Press,
1986).
12 Thus in Russia, spiritual “praxis” was observed as soon as Christianity had been introduced. At
any rate, a recent work (A. Tachiaos, The Influence ofHesychasm on the Life ofthe Church in
Russia in 1328-1406, [in Greek] [Thessalonika, 1962]), gives specific data for the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. On the basis of certain texts (the “Teaching” of Vladimir Monomachos,
1115-1125, and the 1220 “Answer* of Theodosius, Archimandrite of the Lavra of the Kievan
Caves), Tachiaos concludes that this practice existed in Russia during the period preceding the
Mongolian invasion. The fourteenth century witnessed the increasing influence of hesychasm,
and we shall see that in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and part of the sixteenth centuries, Russian
art as a whole depended upon it. In the Balkans, the fourteenth century represents “the age of
a truly hesychast International” (A. Elian, “Byzance et les Roumains,” 13th Byzant. Congress
[Oxford, 1966], Supplementary Papers, 48).
In the thirteenth century, St Sava, hesychast and first leader of the autocephalous Serbian
church (d. 1237), drew upon the writings of St Symeon the New Theologian; and through
him, hesychasm governed the life of the Serbian church, that of its monasteries and art. Indeed
the high artistic flowering in Serbia coincided with the autocephaly of its church and is linked
to the name of St Sava. Through his mediation, all of Serbian church life was marked by
hesychasm. A long line of successors to St Sava (Arsenius I, Sava II, Daniel I, Joannicus I, and
Eustachius I) became “the most vigilant guardians of hesychasm, and its most fervent champi­
ons* (M. Vasic, “L’Hésychasme dans l’Eglise et l’art des Serbes au Moyen Age,” Recueil
Ouspensky, vol. I, 1 [Paris, 1930], 114). The influence of St Sava upon the spiritual and
cultural life of Serbia continued until the end of the eighteenth century. St Gregory of Sinai
(1266-1346) played an important role in the spread of hesychasm in the Balkans. He settled
in Thrace, on the border between Byzantium and Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, hesychasm was
disseminated especially at the time of St Theodosius of Tmovo; and it played a leading role
when Patriarch Euthymius (1375-1393) was placed at the head of the church (see M. Vasic,
ibid). In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Bulgarian monasteries, together with
Mount Athos and Constantinople, served as meeting centers between Slavs and Greeks (D.
Likhachev, Kultura Russi [Moscow-Leningrad, 1962], 39). “In the fourteenth century, Bul­
garia was an immense center through which Byzantine influence moved into Serbia and
Russia* (D. Likhachev, ibid,). The close cooperation between Walachia and Mount Athos
assured the spread of hesychasm also in Romania, where it “strengthened the church hierar­
chy” (A. Elian, Byzance et la Roumanie, op. cit.).
13 Archbishop Basil (Krivochéine), “Les textes symboliques dans l’Eglise orthodoxe,” Messager de
TExarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe occidentale, no 48 (1964), 214, n. 36.
236 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

27. St Sava. Serbian fresco, ca. 1225.

Monastery of Milesevo.
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 237

cised an enormous influence on the entire Orthodox world, as much in the

realm of the spiritual life as in that of sacred art The cultural renewal of secular
learning and literature was closely linked to the flowering oftheological thought,
which it either followed without reservation or rejected.
“The fourteenth-century theological discussions resulted from a clash
between various trends within the Byzantine church itself.”14 Indeed, the
intellectual circles of Byzantium had been in a state of inner turmoil for
quite some time. Behind a facade of strict fidelity to Orthodoxy, a certain
opposition had manifested itself since the ninth century. It came from a
strong undercurrent, the source of which lay with the advocates of secular
Hellenism, followers of the neo-Platonic tradition in philosophy. With­
out breaking with Christianity, this religious philosophy lived a life that
was parallel to the doctrine of the Church. Classical Greek thought,
overcome and outmatched by theology, reappeared among the represen­
tatives of this trend, the “humanists,” who, “formed by their studies of
philosophy, wish[ed] to see the Cappadocians through the eyes of Plato,
Dionysius through the eyes of Proclus, Maximus and John Damascene
through the eyes of Aristotle.”15 When these hellenizing philosophers went
too far by trying to create a synthesis between Hellenism and the Gospel
which, in their view, would replace the tradition of the Fathers, the Church
condemned them. In the eleventh century already, the philosopher John
Italos was condemned for his Platonism, and a new anathema was intro­
duced into the Synodicon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy both against those
“who held that Plato’s ideas had real existence” and against those “who
devote themselves to studies not merely as an intellectual exercise, but
actually adopting the futile opinions of the philosophers.”16

The Byzantine Fathers were trained in Greek philosophy, but they

14 Ibid, 216.
15 V. Lossky, The Vision ofGod, trans. A. Moorhouse (New Yoik: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1983) 156.
16 J. MeyendorfF, St Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality, trans. A. Fiske (New York: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 98. In his discussion with Gregory Palamas, Barlaam rose
against the hesychast tradition that contradicted his Platonism. A disciple ofJohn Italos, John
Petritsis (ca. 1050-1130), a Neo-Platonist and one of the most important people in Georgian
culture, complained about the representatives of the traditional trend in Orthodox thought:
“Had I found love and help among them, I swear that I would have made the Georgian
language similar to the Greek, and could have raised philosophic theories to the same height
as Aristotle* (Ch. Amiranchvili, La miniature géorgienne [Moscow, 1966], 11,18).
238 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

adopted it as a purely intellectual discipline, as a means of training the

mind, as an introduction to theology which, in itself, was based on Holy
Scripture. The “humanists” endeavored to explain the elements of faith
by means of natural reason. To them, faith was a matter of knowledge,
gnosis. According to Barlaam, knowledge of God was only possible
through the mediation of creation, and such knowledge could only be
indirect. St Gregory Palamas did not deny this type of knowledge, but
claimed that it was insufficient, and that it was impossible to know
directly by natural means that which transcends nature.
One of the main issues that set the hesychasts and humanists in
opposition to one another was that of the light of Mt Tabor. The
discussion arose out of a disagreement concerning the nature of this light,
and its place in the spiritual life of man. The opponents of Palamas saw in
the Taboric light a natural, created phenomenon:
The light that shone on the apostles on Mount Tabor and the sanctification and
grace similar to it are either a created mirage, visible through the medium of the
air, or else a figment of the imagination, lower than thought and harmful to
every rational soul in so far as it derives from the sensory imagination. In short,
it is a symbol, the nature of which we cannot determine, whether it belongs to
things existing in reality or only in thought related to some object. It is a symbol
which occasionally appears in a ghostly fashion, but which has never existed
because it has absolutely no being.17

It merely reveals a divine presence. By contrast, for St Gregory Palamas,

the Taboric light “is the unchangeable beauty of the prototype, the glory
of God, the glory of the Holy Spirit, a ray of divinity,”18 that is, the energy
of the divine nature which at the same time properly belongs to the three
Persons of the Holy Trinity, an external manifestation of God. However,
in the eyes of his opponents, whatever was not part of the divine essence
is not God. This is why the operations of God, as distinct from His
essence, are a result of this essence. Now, according to the teaching of St
Gregory, essence and energy are two aspects, two modes of the existence
of God, and the very name of God is related as much to the essence as to
the energy.19 The same God remains absolutely inconceivable in His
17 J. McycndorfF, “Une lettre de saint Grégoire Palamas à Acyndinos, envoyée de Thessalonique
avant la condamnation conciliaire de Barlaam et d’Acyndinos,” Pravoslavnaya My$L, no 10
(1953). The Greek text is found in Theologia (Athens, 1953).
18 Basil Krivochéine, “Asketicheskoc i bogosl. uchenie...,” op. cit., 139.
19 Among the anathemas of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, die Council of 1352 included those
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 239

essence, but truly communicates Himself entirely by grace. The Taboric

light is one of the modes of God’s manifestation or revelation in the
world; it is a presence of the Uncreated within the created order, a
presence that is not allegorical but actually revealed and contemplated by
the saints, an ineffable beauty. Unknowable in His nature, God thus
communicates Himself to man through His operations, deifying man’s
entire being and making him God-like.20 “And when the saints contem­
plate this divine light within themselves they behold the garment of their
deification.’’21 This divine grace is not merely an object of faith; it is also
an object of concrete, living experience. For Palamas, as for traditional
Orthodox theology in general, deification could not be separated from the
vision of God or from personal contact with Him, a “face-to-face” con­
tact.
By contrast, the rationalists could not see how God was, on the one hand,
unknowable and, on the other, communicable to men. They viewed the very
concept of deification as a pious metaphor. To them, God was unknowable
and impenetrable. As for autonomous human reason, it could know every­
thing which is not God. This is why Barlaam and his followers could not
tolerate any bridge between God and man other than a symbol. Nicephoros
Gregoras wrote: “This dogma was made known to the Church and has been
handed down to us by our God and Savior Jesus Christ and His disciples that
no one can see God, except through symbols and corporeal préfigurations.”22
As for the hesychasts, a symbol was acceptable only insofar as was consistent
who maintained that the name of God only applies to the one divine essence and not to the
energies (Basil, ibid., 119).
20 St Gregory Palamas saw in Barlaam’s teaching on created grace a direct link with the Latin
doctrine of the filioque. “Why, [he asks] has this man [Barlaam] made such a strenuous effort
to demonstrate that the deifying grace of the Spirit was created?... Indeed, we undersand that
the Spirit is given by the Son, that He pours Himself upon us through the intermediary of the
Son; on the other hand, the great Basil writes, ‘God has abundandy poured out the Spirit
through the Son; He has sent Him forth but did not create him’ [Contra Eunomium V, PG 29:
772D]. If, on hearing all this, we arc convinced that grace is created, what, in our view, will
then be given, awarded, poured out through the mediation of the Son? Certainly the Spirit
Himself, the One who acts by grace, since we would then say that He is the only one to be
without beginning, whereas all energy which proceeds from Him is created, as this new
theologian mainrains? And so, do we thereby not directly arrive at the thought of the Latins
that led to their being chased from our church: it is not grace but the Holy Spirit Himself who
at the same time is sent from the Son and pours Himself out through the Son* (Défense des
saintshésychastes. TriadeXW. 1, 3, [Louvain, 1959], 560-2).
21 Triad 1, 5, trans. N. Gendle, Gregory Palamas: The Triads (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 33.
22 Liber dogmaticus quartus, PG 149: 357AB.
240 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

with the history of salvation, and its christocentrism was not silenced. The
hesychast disposition toward symbols may be illustrated by the words of
Nicolas Cabasilas, himself a hesychast and a friend of St Gregoiy Palamas: “If
that (Old Testament) lamb had accomplished everything, what need would
there be of the future Lamb? For if types and images have brought the
searched-fbr salvation, truth and reality are useless.”23 As soon as the Taboric
light was understood by the “humanists” as a symbol, the Lord’s Transfigura­
tion itself assumed an unreal, symbolic character in their eyes. Replying to
Akyndinos, St Gregory asked: “What? Neither Elias nor Moses were really
there since they too were used as symbols?...and the mountain was no real
mountain because it is also symbolic of the ascent to virtue?” On the other
hand, he continued, symbolism was not unknown to the Greek philosophers;
how then does Christian doctrine differ from their knowledge?24
By denying the suprasensory, immaterial nature of the Taboric light,
the “humanists” could neither understand nor accept the Orthodox spir­
itual experience represented by the hesychasts, who claimed that man,
through purification of mind and heart, might be sanctified by the divine,
uncreated light. What was questioned in the fourteenth century and was
to be given dogmatic definition, was the full demonstration of Christian­
ity as man’s union with God.

This union, this synergy of man with God, presupposes that the human
being remains undivided. What is united to God is the totality of the
23 The Life in Christ I, par. 67, trans. C. J. de Catanzaro (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1974); P. A. Cheremukhin, “Uchcnie o domostroiteltsve spaseniia v vizantiiskom
bogoslovii,” Bogodovskie Trudy 3 (Moscow, 1964).
24 “Against Akyndinos,” inj. Meyendorff, Introduction à l'étude de Grégoire Palamas (Paris: Seuil,
1959), 270-2. [Abridged English translation, A Study ofGregory Palamas (London: Faith Press,
1962)]. It is precisely at this time that the representations of the Transfiguration became
particularly widespread in sacred art, as an expression of the hesychast doctrine on the light of
Tabor. Moreover, in response to the symbolic explanation of the mountain and of the
Transfiguration itself, a group of aposdes led by Christ is introduced into the iconography of
the feast: they are represented as ascending and then descending the mountain. The three
apostles at the bottom are portrayed as prostrated, overthrown by an invisible force which, like
a hurricane, lifts them up from the ground. The reality and force of the light of Tabor are
further emphasized by the gestures of the aposdes: James and John cover their eyes with their
hands, as they are unable to withstand the brilliance of the divine light emanating from Christ.
On the other hand, the halo surrounding Christ receives a particular form: it consists of
various spheres and rays, three of which can be distinedy seen, thereby indicating — in
conformity with the doctrine of St Gregoiy Palamas — that the light of Tabor is an energy
proper to the essence of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 241

spiritual-psychic-bodily composite. In the fullness of his nature, man is

not divisible; the human being, as a totality, shares in sanctification and
transfiguration. Fbr the hesychasts, the integrity of human nature was
self-evident. No part of this nature was viewed in isolation as an autono­
mous means of knowing God; no part was excluded from union with Him.
Not only the mind, but also the soul and the body share in His union.
The spiritual joy which comes from the mind into the body is in no
way corrupted by the communion with the body, but transforms the
body and makes it spiritual. Because it then rejects all the evil appetites of
the body, it no longer drags the soul downwards, but rises together with
it. Thus it is that the whole man becomes spirit, as it is written, “He who
is bom of Spirit, is spirit” (Jn 3:6-8).25
Orthodox spiritual experience transcends the ancient, enduring dual­
ism of matter and spirit; the one and the other are united because they
share together in what surpasses both of them. “It will be neither the
reduction of the sensory to the intelligible, nor the materialization of the
spiritual, but a communion of the whole man with the uncreated”26—a
personal communion which is therefore easier to present than to describe.
This experience is naturally antinomian and does not easily yield to the
norm of philosophic thought. The “humanistic” negation of the Taboric
light is indeed a negation of the possibility of a real transfiguration,
experienced in the body. It was precisely the human body which was a
stumbling block for them. The concept of the body’s participation in
divine knowledge and transfiguration eluded them. The doctrine of
Barlaam and his followers, which typically saw a created (or, in modern
terms, “imaginary and psychic”) phenomenon in the light of Tabor, led to
a docetist view of the body, to a denial of the possible transfiguration,
since what was stressed was the separation between the divine energy and
human energy, their autonomy, and the impossibility of uniting the two.
The theology of St Gregory Palamas raises man to an extraordinary
height. Continuing the theological tradition that goes back to the anthro­
pology of St Gregory the Theologian and of St Gregory of Nyssa, it
emphasizes man’s central position in the universe. St Gregory Palamas
25 Gregory Palamas: The Triads, trans. N. Gendle (New York: Paul ist Press, 1983), 51.
26 V. Lossky, The Vision ofGod, trans. A. Moorhouse (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1983), 163.
242 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

wrote: “Ail that exists is drawn together in man, this macrocosm enfolded
in the microcosm. He is the head of all God’s creatures.”27 Such an
anthropology provides a solid foundation to authentic Christian human­
ism, and it embodies the answer of the Church to the general interest in
man so apparent during this time.
It is natural, therefore, that this period also witnessed a greater interest
in the image of man in art. The representation of feelings and emotions,
so typical of the age, gives it a distinct character. Since the thirteenth
century, the time of St Sava, Serbian art already contained the elements
that would later characterize the so-called “Paleologan Renaissance.” It is
above all a very expressive representation of the world of emotions, of the
“passionate part of the soul.”28 In the fourteenth century, such traits were
expressed in art with great intensity, in connection with the discussions
about prayer practice. In the person of Gregory Palamas, the Church
placed these traits in their true Christian perspective. In his treatise against
the hesychasts, Barlaam “recommended ‘causing the complete death of
the passionate part of the soul’ and ‘of all activity common to soul and
body,’ for ‘such activity attaches the soul to the body and fills it with
darkness’.”29 St Gregory replied that “...impassibility does not consist in
mortifying the passionate part of the soul, but in removing it from good
to evil...” He continues: “It is thus not the man who has killed the
passionate part of the soul who has the preeminence;...but rather, the
prize goes to him who has put that part of his soul under subjection, so
that...it may ever tend toward God, as is right.”30 In other words, a
sharing in the grace of God does not kill the passionate powers of the soul,
but transfigures and sanctifies them. Such transfigured emotions, the
expression of the soul’s most intimate stirrings, represent one of the
typical traits of the sacred art of this period.31
27 Basil (Krivochéine), “Asketicheskoe i bogoslovskoe uchenie sviatogo Grigoriia Palamy," Semi-
narium KondakovianumV[\\ (Prague, 1936), 103.
28 When he was made head of the church, St Sava invited iconographers from Constantinople
and ordered icons from the best painters in Thessalonika. See S. Radojcic, “Icônes de
Yougoslavie du XIIe à la fin du XVII siècles,” in Icônes (Paris-Grenoble, 1966), p. be.
29 J. Meyendorff, A Study ofGregory Palamas, trans. G. Lawrence (New York, 1974), 139.
30 Gregory Palamas: The Triads, trans. N. Gendle (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 54.
31 This is seen most clearly in the iconographer Theophanes the Greek (see N. Goleizovskii,
“Zametki o tvorchestve Feofana Greka,” Vizantiiskii Vremennik'XXJN, 145) and in Manuel
Panselinos (See A. Procop io u, La question macédonienne dans la peinture byzantine [Athens,
1963], 45).
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 243

Neither the hesychasts nor their opponents have left any writing? specific­
ally devoted to art, as had been the case during the iconoclastic controversy. The
question of the image did not arise and was not a topic of polemics. But the art
of the period shows a mixture of the Orthodox tradition and of elements linked
to the “humanist” renaissance—one that reflected the struggle between “hu­
manism” and hesychasm, between a return to the ancient Hellenistic tradition
and a deepening of the spiritual life. Such intermixing can be detected as much
in the very conception of art as in its nature and its subjects.

The number of borrowings from Antiquity greatly increased in the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and these motifs did not merely have
a secondary, complementary function. They invaded the subject itself and
its expression.32 Thus, one sees a methodical tendency to represent vol­
ume by means of a certain depth. A certain mannered style appeared, for
example, in representations from the back, or in profile. Foreshortening
was used. Subjects taken from the Testament became especially common.
Among these were préfigurations of the Theotokos (for example, the
Burning Bush, Gideon s fleece), of Christ (for instance, the Sacrifice of
Abraham, Melchisedech), as well as certain symbolic representations of
Christ (in the form of an angel). Church decoration lost the unity and the
monumental laconism so typical of the previous era. It did not renounce
dogmatic principle, but its organic link to architecture began to diminish.
“Painters and mosaicists are no longer subservient to the inner space of the
church...in order to bring out its meaning. They juxtapose innumerable
representations.. .”33 An essentially spatial art which, up to that time, had
conveyed attitudes rather than gestures, a spiritual condition rather than a
series of emotions, witnessed the introduction of a temporal element, the
representation of what occurs as time flees: recitation, psychological reac­
tions, and so forth. The connection between what is represented and the
viewer also changed. Whether the icon represented a single person or a
given scene, it was no longer turned outward, toward the believer who
prayed before it. Frequently, the representation unfolded like a scene,
having a life of its own, independent of the viewer, as if it were closed in
upon itself.
32 A. Grabar, Byzance (Paris, 1963), 70; V. Lazarev, Istoriia Vizantiiskoi zhivopisi (Moscow,
1947), 224.
33 Olivier Clément, Byzance et le christianisme (Paris, 1964), 75.
244 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

At this time also, representations of subjects on the altar screen were

directly related to the pivotal sacrament of the Church, the Eucharist, became
more numerous. Two trends emerged when the Eucharist was transposed into
images. On the one hand, there was the search for a coherent theological
system that would unveil the entire economy of salvation through images.
This trend would lead to the elaboration of the iconostasis which was given its
classical form in fifteenth-century Russia.34 On the other hand, there was the
tendency, so typical of this period, to explain the meaning of the sacrament by
illustrating certain moments of the Liturgy, for example, the Great Entrance.
It is in this latter iconographie theme that the line between what can and
cannot be represented was frequendy overstepped. There is, for example, the
scene in which a hierarch immolates the Christ-Child lying on the diskos (in
the fourteenth-century church in Mateic, Serbia)—a. specific reminder of a
ritual murder. Unquestionably, the theme of the Child on the diskos was a
reaction to the twelfth-century liturgical discussions or, more precisely, an
echo of them in the camp of the Latinizers. At the time of the Paleologi, such
discussions must have grown on fertile soil in the abstract, rationalistic
thought of the “humanists.”35
Parallel to the illustrations of certain moments of the Liturgy, we find
a series of iconographie subjects apparently intended to reveal the mean­
ing of the sacrament by means of symbolic images, such as Wisdom’s
Banquet, or Wisdom giving communion to the apostles. Such motifs
intended to represent the text of Proverbs 8:1-7 —“Wisdom has built
herself a house...”—in the form of an image. The text was represented in
two ways. On the one hand, there was Wisdom—an angel—who embod-
34 See our article “L’Iconostase,” in Contacts no 46, (Paris, 1964), 83-125.
35 In the thirteenth century, the motif of Christ on the diskos in the representation in the Liturgy
became widespread, especially in Serbia. It is also found in the painting? of Mistra, in
Trebizond, Bulgaria, Russia, and on Mount Athos (sec V. Lazarev, Freski Staroi Ladogi
[Moscow, 1960], 25.) This motif appeared in the twelfth century; its oldest known example is
found in the church ofSt George in Kurbinovo (Serbia), as well as in Nerezi (see Lazarev, ibid.,
24). A bread plate from the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century from
Xyropotamou (see Lazarev, ibid) shows the dead Christ-Child on the altar, the Gospel book
on His chest. On each side of the altar, the adult Christ is portrayed as “the great hierarch."
This is a direct illustration of the words, “You are the Offerer and the Offered"—words that
were at the core of the discussions at the Council of 1156-1157; the Christ-child is the
Offering, and the Christ-Hicrarch is the Offerer. At Mistra (Pcrivlcpte), above the prothesis
table, God the Father is represented in the place of the Holy Trinity. Is this not an echo of the
discussions on the question: To whom is the Sacrifice of Christ offered, to God the Father or
to the Trinity?
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 245

ied Divine Wisdom according to the type of personifications in Antiq­

uity. On the other, there was Christ-Wisdom under the guise of an Angel
of the Great Council.36 It should be kept in mind that the theme of
Wisdom was very current at the time of the conflict between the
hesychasts and their opponents; it is unquestionably in this context that
the symbolic image of Sophia became especially widespread at the time of
the Paleologi. In the development of this type of symbolism one cannot
help but see the influence of the “humanist” renaissance. However, in
spite of its incompatibility with hesychast concepts, it must be said that
this symbolism, as well as borrowings from Antiquity, were not always
alien to hesychasm. The symbolic representation of Wisdom can there­
fore be understood not only as a “humanist” encroachment, but also as an
attempt on the part of the hesychasts to contrast the wisdom of the
philosophers to the Wisdom of God.37 This type of symbolism, used
consciously or unconsciously by painters, undermined the realist Ortho­
dox doctrine of icons, and occasionally violated canon 82 of the Quinisext
Council (in Trullo). This rule, one recalls, abolished those symbols that
replaced the direct image of the incarnate Word of God: “While we
venerate the images and ancient shadows as signs and préfigurations of the
Truth.. .we prefer to them grace and truth, which is the fulfillment of the
law.” Now, a “disincarnation” of this type, violating the principle of
Gospel realism, was particularly problematic in the case of a eucharistie
subject. A fruit of abstract reflection, such symbolism certainly did not
correspond to traditional Orthodox thought, anymore than did a confu­
sion between what could and could not be represented.

Symbolic representations that replaced the direct human image, ex­

pressive artistic images of the emotional life, a tendency toward naturalis-
36 The oldest known representation of the Wisdom-angel is found in a catacomb of Alexandria
and dates back to the sixth century. Next to the angel is the inscription: Sophia Jesus Christ.
It is not easy to determine whether this image was originally orthodox or heretical. Concerning
the representation of Wisdom, see G. Florovsky, “O pochitanii Sofii Pre mud rost i Bozhiei v
Vizantii i na Rusi,” Words of the Fifth Congress of Russian Academics Abroad vol. 1 (Sofia,
1932); J. MeyendorfF, “L’iconographie de la Sagesse divine dans la tradition byzantine,”
Cahiers archéologiques, vol. X (Paris, 1959).
37 The appearance at this time, in the narthex of Orthodox churches, of representations of
ancient philosophers and Sibyls as somehow announcing Christ may be understood as an
attempt to sanctify Hellenic wisdom (N. L Okunev, “Arilje, Pamiatnik serbskogo iskusstva
XIII veka,” Seminarium Kondakovianum VIII [Prague, 1936], 221-58; K. Specieris, Represen­
tations ofGreek philosophers in the Churches [in Greek] [Athens, 1964]).
246 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

tic, Hellenistic traits, the great variety of new iconographie subjects, and
the proliferation of Old Testament préfigurations: all this was the product
of an era guided by a profusion of new ideas, the time of the “humanist”
and of the hesychast renaissances. If traditional painters were not always
immune from “humanist” influences, painters who favored humanism, in
turn, nonetheless held on to the traditional forms of Orthodox art repre­
sented by hesychasm. The Paleologan renaissance did not abandon these
traditional forms. Nevertheless, when compared to the preceding era, and
under the influence of the ideas of the time, elements that diminished the
spirituality of the image were introduced into these traditional forms.
Occasionally, such elements even changed the very concept of the icon, its
meaning, and consequently its function in the Church. Such elements,
the result of an abstract view of God based on a natural knowledge of the
world, were related to the Orthodox tradition just as the “humanist” view
of the world was to the traditional hesychast attitude. This is why the role
and importance which the “humanists” attributed to philosophy and
secular knowledge in the spiritual life on the one hand, and, on the other,
the hesychast attitude toward them, are useful: they give us indirect
indications about the views each held about the content and the function
of sacred art.
In his controversy with the “humanists,” St Gregory Palamas wrote:
We do not prevent anyone from being initiated into secular learning if he so
desires, unless he has embraced the monastic life. But we advise against becoming
too deeply involved with it, and we categorically forbid anyone to expect from
it precise information about things divine, for one cannot derive any sure
teaching about God from it.

A little further we read: “There is indeed something useful in the philoso­

phers, as there is in a mixture of honey and hemlock. But the danger is
great that those who want to separate the honey from the hemlock may
accidentally consume a deadly residue.”38 St Gregory Palamas reflected at
length and in great detail upon the question of the relationship between
secular learning and philosophy on the one hand, and knowledge of God
on the other. Despite the profoundly negative evaluation just mentioned,
he did not merely deny the importance of secular learning but even
recognized that it was relatively useful. Like Barlaam, he recognized in it
38 Gregory Palamas: The Triads, I, trans. N. Gendle (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 28.
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 247

one of the paths imparting an indirect, relative knowledge of God. But he

strenuously denied that religious philosophy and secular learning could
possibly serve as a means of communicating with God or of obtaining
direct knowledge about Him. Not only is learning unable to give “any
precise information about things divine”; it also leads to error when it is
applied in a domain that is alien to it. Worse still, it may even prevent the
very possibility of communing with God; it can become “deadly.” As can
be seen, St Gregory merely protected the reality of communicating with
God against encroachment by the field of religious philosophy and natu­
ral knowledge. Before such hesychast intransigence regarding the mixture
of secular learning (including religious philosophy) and the domain of
direct knowledge of God, one may suppose that Gregory viewed the
content and functions of sacred art from the same perspective.
Even if in the psychosomatic technique used by the hesychasts one
could detect a certain detachment from images, their attitude regarding
the veneration and the importance of the icon in worship and prayer
remained profoundly faithful to Orthodox doctrine. When St Gregory
spoke of icons he did not limit himself to expressing the classic Orthodox
view. He also added to it a few characteristic precisions about hesychast
teaching and the general trend of Orthodox art. He states:
Out of love for Him, make an icon of the One who became man for our sake.
Through it, remember Him; worship Him through it; through it, raise the mind
to the adored body of the Savior seated in glory at the right hand of the Father
in heaven. Make icons of the saints in the same manner...; venerate them, not
as gods, which is forbidden, but as a sign of your loving communion with them
and of your veneration. Through their icons, raise your mind toward them?9

As can be seen, St Gregory expresses traditional Orthodox doctrine as

much in his veneration of the image as in his view of its basis (the
Incarnation) and content. But in the context of his theology, this content
sounds a note that is typical of the pneumatological era. For Gregory, the
Incarnation was, as it were, the starting point looking forward to its fruit:
the divine glory manifested in the human body of God the Lord. The
deified body of the Lord has received and transmitted the eternal glory of
the divinity. It is His glory that is represented on icons; it is worshipped
to the degree that it reveals the divinity of Christ.40 But since God and the
39 Decalogus Christianae Legis, PG 150:1092.
40 J. Mcyendorff, A Study ofGregory Palamas, trans. G. Lawrence (New York, 1964), 183.
 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON
248

28. The Entombment ofChrist. 12 th century.

Serbian fresco from Nerezi-Skopje.
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 249

saints possess the same grace,41 their representations are made “in the
same fashion.”42
In light of such a view ofthe image and its content, it is certain that for the
hesychasts the only image that could serve as a means of communing with
God was one that reflected this communion in conformity with hesychast
teaching. By contrast, artistic elements that were based on philosophic
drought and on empirical knowledge of the worid could not, anymore than
abstract learning, give “any precise formation about things divine.” Specific­
ally, a symbolic representation ofJesus Christ that replaces the personal image
of the Bearer of divine glory meant an attack upon the very foundation of the
doctrine of the icon—a witness to the Incarnation. Such an icon could not
therefore “raise the mind to the adored body of the Savior seated in glory at
the right hand of the Father.” Consequently, it is quite understandable that
after the victory of hesychasm, the Church put an end to the development of
those elements in its sacred art which undermined its doctrine in one way or
another. It was due precisely to hesychasm that “the last Byzantines—in
contrast to the Italians—made room for the natural, but without developing
a naturalism; made use of depth without imprisoning it in the laws of
perspective; and explored the human, without isolating it from the divine”
(Fig. 28).43 Art retained its link with revelation and preserved its synergistic
character between man and God.
The doctrine of St Gregory Palamas about the essential communion
with the divine energies “destroyed that last trace of rationalism and of
iconoclastic positivism,”44 since it was a development of the position
already sketched out in the doctrine about the veneration of icons. In this
domain, dogmatic work could be pursued as an elucidation of the very
content of the spiritual experience, and therefore of the content of sacred
41 Sec, for example, Maximus the Confessor, Opuscula theologica etpolemica ad Marianus, PG 91 :
12B; Ambiguorum Liber, PG 91: 1076BC.
42 Concerning hesychasm, we learn from the works of certain contemporary authors that this
doctrine pursued so-called ways of salvation “outside the practice of the Church, and paid no
attention to the cult or to Church dogma”; and that such a system had nothing to do with
either the cult of the Virgin Mary or that of the saints. “ Faith in Christ the Savior and the grace
of the sacraments were alien to them.” Hesychasm “attempted to achieve deification by pious
prayer, that is, a prayer that killed the spirit”; “the hesychasts were opposed to universal
dogma,” and so forth. What does all this have to do with hesychasm? The answer remains the
authors* secret; at any rate, it is presented to the reader as objective scientific fact.
43 Olivier Clément, Byzance et le christianisme (Paris, 1964), 76-7.
44 A. V. Kartashev, Vselenskie Sobory (Paris, 1963), 709.
250 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

art. Through its dogma about the veneration of icons, the Church recog­
nized that it was possible to translate the result of divine action in man by
means of forms, color, and lines; and that this result could be shown.
Through its doctrine of the Taboric light, the Church recognized that the
divine action transfiguring man originates in the uncreated, imperishable
light, the energy of the Divinity felt and contemplated in the body. Thus
the doctrine of the divine energies joins that of the icons, since what was
formulated dogmatically during the discussions about the Taboric light
was the deification of man, and hence the basis of the iconic content. It
was at this time that the boundaries of sacred art were established—limits
beyond which sacred art cannot go if it is to remain Church art.
The victory of Palamas was decisive for the subsequent history of the
Church. Had the Church remained passive before the upsurge of “hu­
manism,” the tide of new ideas would unquestionably have led to crises
analogous to those in Western Christianity: that of Renaissance neo-pa-
ganism and of the Reformation, both conforming to new philosophies.
This would have resulted in a radical modification of Church art.45

And thus, thanks to hesychasm, sacred art did not overstep the bound­
ary beyond which it would have ceased to express Orthodox doctrine.
However, beginning with the second half of the fourteenth century, the
living, creative tradition which had produced the Paleologan Renaissance
began to give way to a certain conservatism. After the fall of Constantino­
ple in 1453 and the invasion of the Balkans by the Turks, the leading role
in sacred art was passed on to Russia.46 The living hesychast impetus and
the dogmas that had formulated Orthodox anthropology in the light of
Palamism would bear precious fruit in Russian art and spiritual life. There
the renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would have a
basis different from the one that produced the Byzantine Paleologan
Renaissance. As for conservatism, it would show itself by its very nature to
be incapable of resisting the external influence coming from the West.
45 Having found a favorable domain in Roman doctrine, “humanism” enriched the most varied
spheres of human activity. Its development, however, followed its own path outside, and even
against, the Church. This shows that such “humanism” was not the Christian anthropology
which the Church had to reveal.
46 This is why the rest of our account is essentially devoted to Russian sacred art. On account of
its historic conditions (and also because of heresies in the Russian church), this is where the
destiny of Orthodox sacred art was played out.
Hesychasm and Humanism: The Paleologan Renaissance 251

M. S. Radojcic has reason to state that “Western influences have done

more damage to Byzantine painting than the Turks.”47
The Council of Constantinople (1351) was the most solemn act by
which the Church confirmed the doctrine of St Gregory Palamas. The
fourteenth century witnessed how the decisions of this council were
adopted by the entire Orthodox Church. One year after the council, its
definitions were introduced into the ritual of the Triumph of Orthodoxy.
In 1368, shortly after his death, St Gregory Palamas was canonized. He is
commemorated on November 14. In addition, the second Sunday of Lent
is also dedicated to his memory as “the preacher of divine light” (Vespers,
third stichera). He is also hailed as “the torch of Orthodoxy, doctor and
pillar of the Church” (troparion). Thus, after the Sunday of the Triumph
of Orthodoxy, the Church celebrates the doctrine of the deification of
man; and the Council of 843 which closed the christological era of the
Church is intimately and liturgically linked to the height of its pneu-
matological period.

47 S. Radojcic, “Les Icônes de Yougoslavie du XIIe à la fin du XVIIe siècle," in Icônes (Paris-Gre­
noble, 1966), Ixxi.
 13

Hesychasm and the Flowering

of Russian Art
Hphe Christianization of Russia was a long process that began well before its
x official baptism and continued for a long time afterwards. If Christianity,
despite pagan opposition which was fierce in some places, was able to become
the dominant religion, this is because the Christian segment of the popula­
tion was already numerically and spiritually important. Be that as it may,
there were already several Christian churches during the reign of Prince
Sviatoslav (d. 972).1 But if there were churches, there were icons. Were these
icons all imported, or had some of them been painted locally? The latter
hypothesis cannot be confirmed, nor can it be excluded. Knowing the great
respect for icons by the founder of the mission to the Slavs, St Photius the
Patriarch, as well as by his closest collaborators and those who continued his
work afterwards, one may venture to say that special attention had been given
to this aspect of Orthodoxy and to the dissemination of icons among new
converts. This hastened the process of acquainting the population with
Christian art and encouraged the appearance of local painters. Beginning
with the end of the tenth century, and in the eleventh, Russian-Byzantine
workshops existed in Kiev.2 Ifthe first churches built after the official baptism
were decorated by Greek artists invited to Russia, historians also note that
Russian artists participated. To judge by the homily of Bishop Hilarion of
Kiev (11th century), addressed to the deceased Prince Vladimir, the vener­
ation of icons and the awareness of their importance had already deeply
affected the minds and hearts of the people. “Behold this radiant, majestic
city,” Hilarion said, “these flourishing churches, the progress of Christianity.
1 V. Mochin, “The Periodization of Literary Relations Between Russians and Southern Slavs,*
(in Russian), Trudy Otdela drevnerussk. Literatury XIX(Moscow-Leningrad, 1963), 52. While
referring to the oath taken at the time of the treaty between Prince Igor and the Greeks, the
Chronicler writes: “All of us who received baptism took the oath at the cathedral, swearing by
the church of St Elias, because it was the cathedral church, and many Varangians, and Khazars
were Christians* (Chronicle ed. Academy of Sciences [Moscow-Leningrad, 1950], 38-9).
2 V. N. Lazarev, The Mosaics ofSt Michael's Church (in Russian) (Moscow, 1966), 9.

253
254 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Behold this city sanctified by the icons of saints.. .in which are heard divine
praises and canticles.”3 The Paterikon of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev
records that in the thirteenth century a more ancient tradition mentioned a
certain monk Erasmus who "had spent all he had on icons.”
Along with Christianity, Russia received a sacred image that had attained its
classical form, as well as an already formulated doctrine of icons, and a foil-
grown technique that had been developed over the centuries. This new faith and
its artistic language, which had been elaborated in a bitter and often tragic
struggle, were accepted by the Russian people in a creative manner, in keeping
with their own way of living the faith. Beginning with the period of assimilation
(1 lth-12th centuries), an original artistic language proper to Russia was devel­
oped; during the thirteenth century, its forms took on a specific national
character. The spiritual life of the people, their holiness and sacred art, received
a national stamp, the result of a new, original way of assimilating Christianity.
Thus the holiness of Princes Boris and Gleb is marked by its typically Russian
character. Due to their widespread veneration, they were the first Russian saints
to be canonized, despite the doubts and opposition of the Greeks. The eleventh
century witnessed how two monks of the Monasteiy of the Caves in Kiev,
Alipios and Gregory, canonized as iconographers, gave Russian sacred art an
inspiration derived from a living, direct knowledge of Revelation. From the very
beginning, all of Russian cultic art (architecture, painting, and music) carried an
original stamp. Originally, this manifested itself especially in the great variety of
painting styles developed in various historic centers of the state during its feudal
division, in conformity with local conditions and the particular character of the
people in each part of the immense Russian land.

The horrifying Tartar invasion curbed the creative spirit of the Russian
people but did not break it. Under the Tartar yoke they continued to build
churches and paint icons, even though the enthusiasm is not to be com­
pared to that of the preceding period. In 1325, at the time of the saintly
Metropolitan Peter, Moscow became the religious center of Russia, well
before becoming its capital. At this time of unceasing civil wars among the
princes, of widespread devastation due to the Tartar invasions, it was the
Church that assured the internal unity of Russia4 and served as a pledge of
3 B. L. Grekov, Kievan Russia (in Russian) (Moscow, 1953), 497.
4 M. V. Levchenko, Notes on the History ofRussian-Byzantine Relations (in Russian) (Moscow,
1956), 551.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 25:

29. St Sergius ofRadonezh,

Russian icon, 1940’s.
256 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

its future political unity.5 It was the Church that personified the hopes of
the Russian people, together with their aspirations for the liberation and
unification of their country. In the persons of its best representatives, above
all in St Sergius of Radonezh and the hierarchs of Moscow, the Church
accomplished the spiritual unification of the vast Russian lands around
Moscow before their political unification.6 The struggle against the Tartar
yoke “was not merely a national task but also a religious one.”7 As for the
civil wars and the quarrels of the princes who all shared the same faith, they
contradicted the very nature of the Church. Certainly, it is significant that
St Sergius consecrated his church to the Holy Trinity, “so that contempla­
tion of the Holy Trinity might conquer the fear of this world’s detestable
discord,” as wrote his biographer Epiphanius, called “the most wise.” 8
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the time of St Sergius (1314-
1392) and of the immediate successors who continued his work, wit­
nessed a great flowering of Russian holiness, as well as a rebirth not only
of monasticism and eremitism but also of art and culture, of which the
monasteries were the centers (Fig. 29).9 The unification of the Russian
people was forged around Moscow. This period of spiritual, cultural and
national reawakening witnessed a growing interest in the historic past, in
the days of Russian independence, in the painting, architecture and
5 In The Culture ofRussia at the Time ofAndrei Rublev and Epiphanius the Wise (in Russian)
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1962), 10, D. S. Likhachev correctly observes that “During the terrible
years of the Tartar yoke, the unity of the power of the church in Russia was of great political
importance. The ecclesiastic power of the metropolian extended over all of Russia, and
permitted one to glimpse the fiiture unification of his political power.* Following the metro­
politan, the princes, in turn, adopted the tide “of all Russia.*
6 It is typical that even a prince like Dimitri Donskoi, who according to the Nikon Chronicle
“Had brought all the Russian princes under his will,* was unable to think along pan-Russian
lines, despite his victory at Kulikovo. Before his death, following princely ideals, he honestly
distributed the territories surrounding Moscow to his sons; this created a classical hotbed of
internal warfare (which fortunately did not take place).
7 D. Likhachev, The Culture ofRussia, 88.
8 V. N. Lazarev, Andrei Rublev and His School (in Russian) (Moscow, 1966), 60; Ephiphanius
the Wise, The Lift ofSt Sergius (in Russian), in Monuments ofAncient Art and Literature (in
Russian), vol. 56 (S.Pb., 1885). It is typical that most of the monasteries linked to St Sergius
in one way or another were dedicated to the Holy Trinity (G. Fedotov, The Saints ofAncient
Russia [in Russian] [Paris, 1931], 154), the antithesis of “the hateful discord of the world."
9 In the eighty years between 1420-1500, fifty saints died, who were later canonized by the
Church. The number of monasteries also increased during this period: Russia counted close to
ninety between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, and the following century (1340-1440)
witnessed the appearance of one hundred and fifty more. The disciples of St Sergius founded
fifty new monasteries during his lifetime.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 257

literature of the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries in Kiev,

Novgorod, and Vladimir. Overwhelmed by the untold catastrophe of the
Tartar invasion, Russia finally emerged from this “trial by fire”; it rose
little by little and mustered its strength to free itself from the foreign yoke.
In those days, the country experienced the Gospel’s glad tidings more
vividly than at any other time before or since. In Christ’s suffering, Russia
felt her own recent calvary, and the Resurrection filled her with die joy of
a soul released from hell. At the same time, the generation of saints that
lived in Russia and healed her wounds made her constantly feel the active
power of Christ’s promise, “I am with you always, even unto the end of
the world” (Mt 28:20). The feeling that Christ’s power was effectively
participating in the life of mankind and in the life of the Russian people
finds expression in all Russian art of the time.10
Russia lived through a time of intense artistic activity. In the rapid
development of architecture, literature, and liturgical creation, it was
painting that predominandy expressed the spiritual and cultural life of the
Russian people. It is precisely at this dme that the pictorial language of
sacred art attained its highest expression; it is noted for its expressive form,
its freedom and spontaneity, its purity of tone, its intense and joyful
colors (Figs. 30 and 31).
During this period Russia was well-informed about what went on in
Byzantium. The rebirth of Orthodox Christianity, which in Byzantine
discussions had received the name of hesychasm, its theological presuppo­
sitions and the debate surrounding the ascetic experience—all this evoked
a powerful echo in Russia. We have seen that the language of the sacred
image had been shaped over the centuries by the spiritual experience of
Orthodox asceticism. It was quite natural, therefore, that the flowering of
Russian holiness should be accompanied by a rapid development of sacred
art. Ever since the pre-Mongolian period, the contacts of Russian monks
with Byzantine monasteries and spiritual centers of the Middle-East allow
us to conclude that spiritual praxis had played a decisive role in the
Russian assimilation of Christian art and the shaping of an ecdesial
artistic consciousness. Russian fourteenth and fifteenth-century art was
directly influenced by hesychasm. However, its flowering was not linked
10 Eugene N. Trubetskoi, Icons: Theology in Color, trans. Gertrude Vakar (New York: St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 83.
258 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

30. St Clement ofRome. Russian icon, ca. 1400.

Collection Vander Elst-de-Gruyter, Anvers.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 259

31. The Archangel Gabriel Russian icon, 15th a

260 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

to a dogmatic struggle, as was true for Byzantium. It does not represent an

answer to an attack: it is the visible manifestation of a rapid development
of the spiritual life, of a flowering of holiness. The words concerning
Russian saints may equally be applied to it: “The Russian land, O Lord,
brings you a choice fruit of your salutary sowing.”11
The hesychast movement reached Russia by two paths: direcdy from
Byzantium, whose link to Russia had always remained close, and from
Mount Athos and the Southern Slavs. A great number of Russian hier­
archs (the Metropolitans Theognostos, Alexis, Cyprian, and Photius)
were linked directly to this movement.12 Liturgically, the introduction of
the feast of St Gregory Palamas on the second Sunday of Great Lent
established the link of the Russian Church with Byzantine hesychasm.
Abundant writings were brought to Russia from Byzantium, Mount
Athos, and the Slavic countries. These writings, imbued with hesychast
theoria and praxis, influenced Russian monasticism.13 Spiritual praxis
reached a wide circle of disciples, friends or correspondents of St Sergius.
His monastery of the Holy Trinity became the spiritual center of Russia,
11 The kontakion of the feast of “All the Saints who sanctified the Russian land.** From the
liturgical service, ed. the Moscow Patriarchate (Moscow, 1946).
12 The decisions of the Council of 1341 in Constantinople, which had approved the teaching of
St Gregory Palamas and condemned the heresy of Barlaam, were sent to the Metropolitan of
Russia, St Theognostos (commemorated on March 14). His successor, St Alexis (1298-1378;
commemorated on February 12), knew the doctrine of Palamas well because he had spent the
years 1353-1355 in Constantinople, that is, shortly after the council that had condemned
Barlaam and Akyndinos. The saindy Metropolitans Cyprian—commemorated on September
16; during his pontificate Russia adopted the liturgical feast of St Gregory—and Photius
(commemorated on July 2) were also ardent followers of the teaching of Palamas. St Sergius of
Radonezh (commemorated on September 25), the greatest representative of Russian monasti­
cism, was in contact with Patriarchs Philotheos and Call ist us of Constantinople, who were
hesychasts. The nephew of St Sergius, St Theodore (later bishop of Rostov; commemorated
on November 28; a well known iconographer, tradition attributes to him the first icon of his
uncle) visited Constantinople on several occasions. When he founded the monastery of St
Simeon near Moscow, he asked and obtained stavropighial status from the Patriarch of
Constantinople (see M. V. Levchenko, Notes on the History ofRussian-Byzantine Relations [in
Russian] [Moscow, 1956], 532).
13 “In the second half of the fourteenth century in Constantinople and on Mount Athos, there
were entire colonies of Russians who lived in the monasteries and were occupied in copying
books, translating, compring Russian and Greek liturgical books, and so forth** (D.
Likhachev, The Culture ofRussia [Moscow-Leningrad, 1962], 30). In addition to liturgical
books and the lives of the saints, Russian translations were made of the works of St Basil the
Great, Isaac the Syrian, Abba Dorotheus, Dionysius the Arcopgite, Gregory of Sinai, Gregory
Palamas, Symeon the New Theologian, John Climacus, John Chrysostom, Patriarch Callistus,
Euthymius of Tmovo, Maximus the Confessor, and others (D. Likhachev, ibid., 33-4, 85).
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 261

the main locus of hesychast influence. But the link with Byzantium was
particularly productive in the domain of sacred art; numerous icons were
brought to Russia and many Byzantine painters worked there. Further­
more, during the fourteenth century, Southern Slavs, fleeing from Tartar
pressure, took refuge in Moscow. The Russian hesychast movement,
however, was not the result of external contacts with Byzantium by means
of books, iconographers, or imported icons. What happened was that the
dogmatic struggle raging in Byzantium was echoed profoundly in the
Russian spiritual life. It can be said that Russian art of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and partly of the sixteenth, is a type of contribution to
this dogmatic struggle in which the Russian church did not direcdy
participate. The theology of hesychasm is reflected in the spiritual content
and the entire character of this art; it is conveyed by a deep awareness.
The leading artists of this period were hesychasts themselves or were
somehow associated with them. Among them, art history singles out three
names which are linked with more or less certainty to specific works or
certain artistic trends: Theophanes the Greek (14th cent.), Andrei Rublev
(1360/70-1430), and the master Dionysius (b. in the 30s or 40s of the
15th cent.; d. in the opening decades of the 16th). According to
Epiphanius the Wise, Theophanes the Greek, in his work, “understood
the faraway and the spiritual with his mind, for he perceived spiritual
beauty through his enlightened bodily eyes.”14 St Joseph of Volokolamsk
spoke of Andrei Rublev and his circle as follows:
These marvelous, famous iconographers, Daniel, Andrei, his disciple, and many
others who were like them, had such virtuous zeal for fasting and the monastic life
that they were able to receive divine grace. They constantly raised their mind and
thought to the divine, immaterial light, and their bodily eye toward the images of
Christ, of his All-pure Mother and of all the saints painted with material colors.15

The work of the master Dionysius was likewise guided by hesychast

theology, and above all by the teaching concerning inner prayer.16 The
“many others like them” included Greeks, Southern Slavs, and Russians
influenced directly or indirectly by St Sergius—generations of iconogra-
14 V. N. Lazarev, Theophanes the Greek and His School (in Russian) (Moscow, 1961), 113.
15 St Joseph of Volokolamsk, “Answer to the Curious and Brief Story of the Holy Fathers Who
Lived in the Monasteries of the Russian Lands," Great Menaion of Metropolitan Macarius
(September 1-15), (St Petersburg, 1868).
16 N. K. Goleizovskii, “The Message to an Iconographer and Echoes of Hesychasm in Russian
Painting" (in Russian), Vizantiiskii VremennikXXVI (Moscow, 1965), 237.
262 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

phers of an extremely high spiritual and artistic standing. The names of

some of the successors are known, though no specific works can be
attributed to them. Most, however, remain anonymous.
The development and the flowering of holiness in Russia coincided
with the growth of heresies, and the flowering of sacred art with the
iconoclasm such heresies demonstrated.17

The heresy of the “Strigolniki” appeared toward the middle of the

fourteenth century in Northwest Russia (according to some, in Pskov;
according to others, in Novgorod). This movement, marked by critical
rationalism, was the first directed against the Church. The Strigolniki
rejected the Church, its dogma, and the sacraments.18 There is no direct,
precise information about their iconoclasm. Nonetheless, the general
nature of this heresy leads us to believe that its followers could not have
venerated icons.

Iconoclasm appeared in Rostov in the 1480s. Preached by a certain

Marcian, an Armenian, it had a fortuitous character and was inconse­
quential.19
17 Let us also note that the renewal of Russian art and holiness was in contrast to a disquieting
reality not only in civil but sometimes also in ecclesiastical life, when peace was broken in the
church during times of trouble. Thus in the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries, the Russian church
was divided on two occasions. First, John Calecas, the pro-Latin patriarch of Constantinople,
removed the metropolitanate of Galich from the Russian metropolitanate, and this provoked
a schism. In 1347, Patriarch Isidore, a hesychast, restored unity. In 1416, surrendering to
pressure by the Lithuanian Prince Vitovt, a synod of bishops called by him during the lifetime
of Metropolitan St Photius, “enthroned” in his place a certain Gregory Tsamblak, who had
been deposed previously in Constantinople. In the metropolitan see of Moscow, saints
alternated with utterly unworthy men such as, for example, Dimitrius (called “Mitiai”),
Isidore, and Zosima. On the other hand, we know from accusations formulated by the church
authorities that the clergy and monks were not always and everywhere of a particularly high
moral caliber, which was conducive to heretical propaganda. In the western regions, bordering
on Roman Catholic areas, numerous norms and regulations established by the church were
violated, particularly in Pskov: baptism by aspersion was condoned, sometimes even the use of
Latin holy chrism.
18 Apart from these negative characteristics, we know neither the positive aspects of the doctrine
of the Strigolniki nor the origins of the heresy or the meaning of its name. Some scholars
detect in it an echo of a secret Bogomil tradition, since the anti-church views of the Bogomils
invaded Russia as early as the eleventh century and gained followers among the leaders of
paganism; others attribute the heresy to eastern influence; and still others regard it as a political
and social movement.
19 LN. Shabatin, “Certain Details of the History of the Russian Church* (in Russian), Messager
de PExarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe occidentale, no 51 (1965), 192.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 263

In the fifteenth century, rationalism manifested itself in the heresy of

the Judaizers, first in Novgorod, then in Moscow. This heresy affected
first the higher clergy, then the upper-class lay people; it lasted until the
beginning of the sixteenth century. Like the Strigolniki, the Judaizers
rejected die Church, its hierarchy, sacraments and doctrine. They also
denied the Holy Trinity and the divinity of Christ. Their return to the
Old Testament, to which they owe their name, was apparent in their cult.
They observed the Sabbath and other Jewish feasts, and occasionally even
practiced circumcision. The Judaizing heresy was not homogeneous; it
consisted of various tendencies that occasionally even contradicted each
other.20 Not all of them rejected icons, and “some of these heretics made
references to iconographie subjects to strengthen their arguments.”21 But
iconoclasm was basically inherent in this heresy. It is this iconoclasm
which led to the conciliar decisions made concerning the Judaizers in
October, 1490. The council’s verdict sates that
Many of you have mocked the images of Christ and of the All-Pure represented
on the icons, while others mocked the Cross of Christ. Still others have uttered
words of blasphemy against the holy icons. Others, finally, have destroyed holy
icons with axes and burned them in the fire.. .Others among them have thrown
icons away. You have reviled the holy image of those who are painted on the
icons.22

The heresy of the Strigolniki is not directly reflected in sacred art,

anymore than is that of the Judaizers: it merely provoked the spread of
certain iconographie subjects that confirmed Orthodox doctrine. The
main reaction caused by the heresy was a polemic dealing with the
creation and theoretical foundation of sacred art—one that holds particu­
lar interest for us.
We have seen that Byzantine hesychast theology had given dogmatic
precision to the content of the icon by its doctrine concerning the divine
energies. However, when Byzantine hesychasts spoke of the icon, they did
not link its veneration or creation to spiritual praxis. St Gregory Palamas,
20 A I. Klibanov, The Reform Movements in Russia in the Fourteenth to the Beginning of the
Sixteenth Centuries (in Russian) (Moscow, I960), 205.
21 N. K. Golcizovskii, “Message to an Iconographer," Vizant. Vremen. XXVI (Moscow, 1965),
220.
22 Texts published by N. A. Kazakova and la. S. Lurié, The Heretical Antifeudal Movements in
Russia in the Fourteenth to the Beginning ofthe Sixteenth Centuries (in Russian) (Moscow-Len­
ingrad, 1955), 383.
264 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

for example, alluded to icons only within the framework of his profession
of faith. This was perhaps due to the fact that the heresy to which the
hesychasts reacted did not demand this type of precision. In fifteenth-cen ­
tury Russia the relationship between hesychasm and the icon was made
clear in the response of the Church to the Judaizing heresy. It is expressed
in a work entided Message to an Iconographer, included in The Instructor
(Prosvetitel), a polemical treatise by St Joseph of Volokolamsk against the
heresy.23 This Message was to play an important role in explaining the
meaning of sacred art. Its influence can be found in the writings of St
Maximus the Greek, Metropolitan Macarius, the monk Zenobius of
Otnia, and others. This work consists of the Message itself, as well as of
three treatises on icons and their veneration. It is addressed to the chief
iconographer, that is, the one who directs the others. One scholar who has
drawn attention to the hesychast nature of this work surmises that the
treatises included in the Message were garnered by St Joseph of
Volokolamsk at the request of Dionysius, the famous iconographer, “by
way of instruction for his apprentices and Russian iconographers in
general.”24 The same author notes, with good reason, that the intent of
the Message to an Iconographer was “to shed light on the most important
questions raised during the polemics against the heretics, and at the same
time to prevent the creation of new compositions”25 not consistent with
Orthodox doctrine. This last observation is due no doubt to the fact that,
even aside from heresy, the iconography of the period following that of
Rublev witnessed the beginning of a progressive diminution of its spiri­
tual meaning, of its deep structure. Beauty of artistic form began to take
precedence over spiritual depth of the image, which decreased somewhat,
23 Joseph himself has been viewed as being the author of the Message to an Iconographer,
However, la. S. Lurié believes that St Nilus of Sora might rather be the author of the Message
itself and of the treatises that follow, since this text corresponds word for word to his Message
to a Certain Brother. In addition, the stylistic particularities of the Message to an Iconographer
arc those of the other works of St Nilus (ibid., 321-2). The entire work could probably be the
work of two authors, not one. Indeed, not only do the treatises that make up the work differ
from one another, but within the treatises certain seaions clearly belong to different hands; in
them, one even finds inconsistencies concerning certain questions (among others, in the
evaluation in the presentation of the representation of the Holy Trinity). But whatever the
partial contributions of Sts Nilus and Joseph in the Message to an Iconographer, this common
work points to their agreement on what is essential, even if they disagree with each other on
certain practical questions.
24 N. K. Goleizovskii, "Message to an Iconographer," ibid., 234.
25 Ibid.,22\.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 265

causing dismay. The manner in which Message addressed its recipient is

revealing: a call to vigilance is sounded. “This message is appropriately
addressed to you, since you are the chief iconographer.”26 Joseph of
Volokolamsk mentioned Andrei Rublev and Daniel “the Black” as a
model, or a reproach, to the iconographers of his time, and not without
reason. “The former were never preoccupied with earthly things...but
always raised their spirit and thought toward the divine, immaterial
light.”
Thé account of the theological basis of icons in the Message to an
Iconographer is marked by a subdued lyricism, and by the author’s experi­
ence, which is expressed forcefully. “If Nilus expresses little that is his
own, distinguishable from generally accepted spiritual tradition, then at
least he expresses it independendy. He lives in the patristic tradition. That
tradition lives and is alive in him.” These words of Florovsky about the
work of Nilus of Sora27 characterize the author of the Message best of all.
Like any truly creative ecclesial work, while providing an answer to heresy,
it is not only a defense of the very existence of the icon and its veneration,
but also, most importandy, a positive contribution that explains its spiri­
tual content, and the role of the Orthodox spiritual experience in its
creation.
The first treatise is polemical, in the proper sense of the term. It is
directed against the Judaizing iconoclast argument “which maintains that
to venerate what is made by human hands is not proper.” The second
treatise, “useful to eveiy Christian,” presents the theology of the venera­
tion of icons. The third and last treatise, at once polemical and theologi­
cal, is devoted to a concrete subject, the representation of the Holy Trinity
by the heretics. In the brief analysis we give here of these treatises we shall
omit the third; we will return to it when we examine the representation of
the Trinity.
What characterizes these treatises is that the doctrine of the icon finds
its place in the overall context of the entire divine economy; not a separate
chapter, it is ontologically incorporated into the whole of Orthodox
doctrine, which is set forth precisely through the icon. The meaning and
26 N. Kazakova and la. S. Lurië, The Heretical Anti-feudal Movements, 323.
27 Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, trans. R. L. Nichols (Belmont: Nordland
Publishing Co., 1973), 23.
266 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the spiritual content of the image are always emphasized; theoretical

statements are never used.
The polemical content of the first treatise consists of a systematic
rebuttal of the Judaizing argumentation, which was generally the same as
that of Byzantine iconoclasm at its outset: the Old Testament interdiction,
the confusion between icon and idol, between veneration and adoration,
the refusal to venerate the saints and relics and, judging from the refutation,
the concept of the Eucharist as an image. A long section defends the
holiness of the church building as the place of worship—a subject that was
not part of the Byzantine polemic. This topic, as well as the refusal to
venerate the Cross, indicates how far beyond the Byzantine heretics the
iconoclasm of the Judaizers had moved. To the classical arguments of the
iconoclasts, the author gives an equally classical answer, largely drawn from
the works of St John of Damascus, St Theodore the Studite, and from texts
of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, but without referring to it. As was true
with the eighth and ninth-century Orthodox apologists, the defense of the
icon starts here with an elucidation of Old Testament representations, of the
difference between idol and icon, between worship of God and the venera­
tion of saints and holy objects. The theological effort of the Byzantine
apologists is reexamined here and reinterpreted in terms of the specifics of
the authors time and of new circumstances. The essential argument is based
on the truth of the Incarnation, with references made to the image of Christ
“not-made-with-human hands,” and to the icons painted by St Luke the
Evangelist. After showing that representations did exist in the Old Testa­
ment, the author sûtes:
How much more appropriate is it then, in this new time of grace, to venerate
and bow down before the image of our Lord Jesus Christ painted on the icon
by human hands.. .and to adore His deified humanity taken up to heaven. This also
holds true for His All-pure Mother. Likewise, to paint images of all the saints on
icons, to venerate and bow before them is equally appropriate. By painting images
of the saints on icons, we do not venerate an object but, starting from this visible
object, our mind and spirit ascend toward the love of God, object of our desire.28
This is an almost literal resutement of the thought of St Gregoiy Palamas
concerning the content of the image of Christ. In general, the spiritual
attitude of the author of the Message is marked by an understanding of the
role and importance of the icon, analogous to that of Gregory Palamas.
28 N. Kazakova and la. S. Lurié, 334.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 267

Such hesychast tendency is especially dear in the second treatise,

where it lies at the very root of every question that is considered. It must
be noted, however, that, in contrast to the Byzantine hesychasts, the
author says nothing about either the Taboric light or the divine energies.
Nonetheless, it is precisely these themes which form the basis for all the
author’s judgments and train of thought.

In the second treatise, the teaching “addressed to every Christian,”

begins by stating the need for the image of the Holy Trinity, the heart of
Christian life and doctrine. The Trinity must be represented “so that,
thanks to an iconographie representation, we may contemplate spiritually
that which our bodily eyes cannot possibly see.”29 The divine Trinity
cannot be described; and even though many just men and prophets have
announced it, the Trinity is only represented because
it appeared to Abraham in a sensory manner, in human form, as it wished to appear,
as it demanded to be represented. Starting from this visible aspect, our mind and
spirit ascend toward the love of God, object of all desire. What is venerated is not
the object, but the beholding and the beauty of the divine image.30

The apparition of the three divine hypostases to Abraham in the form of

three angels—a fact unique in history—is contrasted to the variety of
visions and prophetic announcements. It is precisely on this sensory
apparition that the so-called “Old Testament” icon of the Trinity is
based. In it, “the one nature of the Divinity is honored and venerated.”31
For the author, the outer beaiity of the image is synonymous with its inner,
spiritual beauty; perceiving this beauty induces spiritual contemplation and
leads to inner prayer. Starting with the icon of the Trinity, this concept
extends to the icon in general, which is viewed as a link between the present
life and that of the age to come. The love it provokes toward what is
represented is of such a nature that it links life on earth to that “in which the
bodies of the saints will be brighter than the sunlight.”32 This thought
seems so important to the author that he repeats it, in its entirety at the
end of the third treatise of the Message. Disclosing Orthodox trinitarian
doctrine, he also attaches great importance to the procession of the Holy
Spirit, and refutes the doctrine of the filioque at length. We surmise that,
29 7^2,336.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid
32 Ibid
268 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

within the context of the treatise and its exposition of the doctrine of the
image, this authentic acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit represents not a
theory, but the pledge of an authentic creativity and spiritual life.
According to the author of the Message, “what is specific to icons is the
divine meaning, to which all that is external in the icon must be subordi­
nated; and this meaning must be immediately obvious.”33 The icons of
Christ, of the Theotokos and of the saints are, like the image of the
Trinity, always primarily based on historical reality. The historicity in the
icons, which is essential for Orthodox theology, acquires here a very
special importance. The icon is a personal image: this excludes all confu­
sion. It is precisely because of this “that it is appropriate to venerate the
icon” and “to bow before the one it represents as if before the living
person...as before [the Theotokos] herself and no one else.”34 Such a
systematic, repeated emphasis on the historic basis of the icon was in­
tended to refute, we suppose, the view of the heretics who considered
icons to be idols. According to the author’s first treatise, what distin­
guished the one from the other was the difference in prototypes. The icon
points to the Incarnation of the Word of God, while an idol is “a demonic
invention.” This is why “the prototypes of divine icons are holy and
worthy of veneration, while the prototypes of idols are most wicked and
impure.”35 On the other hand, it is possible that the author, while empha­
sizing the historical nature of the icon, had in mind the inaccuracy of the
concept of the image that had begun to appear. Perhaps he was thinking of
the presence of fictitious elements in iconographie subjects, that would later
provoke discussions and protests against “personal inventions.”

Beginning with this historical basis, the author emphasizes just as

strongly the holiness and spirit-bearing character of the iconic prototype,
which ordains and conditions the content of the icon, as well as the
attitude we adopt toward it. In this context he often returns to the
well-known thesis: “the veneration of icons returns to its prototype; in
icons and through them, we worship the truth.” The author understands
the link between the image and its prototype so concretely that, when
referring to the persons represented on the icon, he states: “We venerate
33 N. K. Goleizovskii, “Message to an Iconographer,” 226.
34 N. Kazakova and la. S. Lurid, The Heretical Anti-fiudalMovements, 337.
35 Ibid., 333.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 269

their images and bow down before them; thus we think of them as being
present among us by the forcefulness of our unquenchable love.”36
God the Word “appeared in the flesh, condescended to live among
men, to work out my salvation through his visible flesh.”37 This is the
same body in which
the Divinity cannot be separated from the flesh.. .After his resurrection, [Christ]
appeared to His disciples in his incorruptible and already divine flesh; He
ascended to heaven in the flesh, and is seated at the right hand of the Father in
His deified body, not in decomposition or corruption like us.38
This is why the author, while emphasizing the inexpressible nature of the
Divinity, calls the image of Christ not merely “most pure,” which is
traditional, but also “divine-human,” the image of “His deified human­
ity.” It is precisely the historical-spiritual, human-divine fusion of these
two realities that constitutes the criterion of the very content of the iconic
expression of the God-manhood of Christ. Not since the eighth and
ninth-century apologists has the link between the two realities, the created
and the uncreated, as the indispensable content of the icon, been ex­
pressed so emphatically, forcefully, and significantly.
The doctrinal aspect of the icon “necessary to every Christian,” as the tide of
the second treatise indicates, is conveyed by means of pure hesychast teaching:
When adoring your Lord and God.. .let your whole heart, spirit, and mind be
lifted toward a contemplation of the holy, consubstantial and life-giving Trinity,
in purity of thought and heart.. .Let your bodily eyes ascend to the divine, all
venerable icon of the consubstantial and life-giving Trinity or to the divine­
human image of our Lord Jesus Christ or of His Most-pure Mother or of one
of the saints...; venerate them spiritually inyour soul and visibly with your body.
Be completely turned toward the heavens.39

It is typical of the A&twgr that much attention is given to teaching that

is permeated by the spirit of inner prayer, and that it gives advice about
asceticism in life and prayer. “Wherever you may be, O beloved, on sea or
on land, at home, walking, sitting or lying down—ceaselessly pray with a
pure conscience, saying, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
me,’ and God will hear you.”40 Also, “Close your eyes to the visible and
36 7W.241.
37 7^,335.
38 7^,348.
39 Ibid., 351-2.
40 Ibid., 356.
270 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

look at the future with your inner eye.”41 Within the context of the
Message, such instructions, addressed to an iconographer, assume a partic­
ular significance: they show what the author considers to be the norm and
the orientation of the iconographers creative activity.
The Message to an Iconographer presents nothing new about the doc­
trine of icons. But in the light of hesychasm it discloses an existential
attitude toward the icon by recommending the hesychast praxis of inner
prayer as the source of both its veneration (or, more precisely, of our
active reception) and its creation. Since the icon is ontologically linked to
the Orthodox doctrine of man’s deification by the uncreated, divine light,
the attitude toward its creation derives from the Christian practice of
“spiritual action.” In other words, in the light of hesychasm, the content
of the message presupposes a certain spiritual attitude to create it, as well
as to perceive it, in a productive manner. What is involved in both cases
is man’s spiritual rebirth. “The Spirit that renews gives him new eyes, even
new ears. Henceforth, as man he no longer perceives the sensory in a
sensory fashion; having become more than man, he contemplates sensory
realities in a spiritual manner.”42

This understanding of the content of the icon in the light of hesychast

doctrine indicates how high the author sets his standards with regard to
artistic creation. The painter must be acutely aware of the responsibility
that rests upon him when creating an icon. His work must be informed
by the prototype it represents in order for its message to become a living,
active force, shaping man’s disposition, his view of the world and of life.
A true iconographer must commune with the prototype he represents,
not merely because he belongs to the body of die Church, but also on
account of his own experience of sanctification. He must be a creative
painter who perceives and discloses another’s holiness through his own
spiritual experience. It is upon this experience of communing with the
archetype that the operative power of an iconographers work depends.
As has been noted, the treatises in the Message to an Iconographer
contain no theoretical statements. At that time, there was no “theory of
art” as we understand it. The aesthetic appreciation of a work corre-
41 7^,358.
42 St Symeon the New Theologian, CatéchèsesW (Paris, 1964); Introduction, Critical Text and
Notes by Basil Krivochéine, CatéchèseXXV, 213-5.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 271

32. Detail of an icon by Master Dionysius.

272 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

sponded to an understanding of its theology. Art was theology expressed

through aesthetic categories. An icon’s beauty was understood as a reflec­
tion of the holiness of its prototype. In other words, the Orthodox
doctrine about the deification of man was the “theory of art.” From this
doctrine derives the practice of both spiritual life and art. Therein lies the
organic unity of the spiritual life and its artistic expression.
The recipient of the Message to an Iconographes supposedly the master
Dionysius, decorated the church of the Nativity of the Virgin in the
Monastery of St Therapontus between 1500 and 1502, together with his
sons. The frescoes are in visible agreement with the Message, as much in
their motifs as in the quality of their spirituality. Their leading theme is
an affirmation of Orthodox doctrine against the heretical errors enumer­
ated by the council of 1490. The divinity as well as the humanity of
Christ are re-affirmed; in them, the coronation of the Virgin assumes a
central position, and the role of the ecumenical councils is emphasized.
According to a contemporary scholar, the frescoes of the Monastery of
Therapontus constitute on the spiritual level the visible illustration of
“hesychast psychological theory.”43 The figures drawn by Dionysius are
imbued with a beauty that is not of this world (Fig. 32); “this is the result
of inner prayer [of spiritual praxi^.n^ Dionysius omitted
details that could have interfered with a perception of the idea. He shows what
is essential: spiritual inwardness, the guarding of the spirit, attention, the power
of wisdom shining through a piercing yet inward-looking gaze, love of beauty,
and humbleness. Like Nilus of Sora and the author of the Message, he chose to
translate the ideal, embodied in aconcrete image, and let the viewer judge himself
by comparison.45

In its theological content and spiritual temper, the Message to an

Iconographeris in agreement not only with the art of Dionysius, but more
generally with Russian art at the time of its origins—an art characterized
by the same perfect fusion of dogmatic content, inner prayer, and artistic
creation. Complying with the demands of Orthodoxy, the art of this
period reached its apex. Certainly, in Byzantium as in Russia, neither all
painters nor all the clergy understood hesychast teaching or put it into
43 N. K. Goleizovskii, “Message to an Iconographer,* Vizant. Vrmen. XXVI (Moscow, 1965),
238.
44 Ibid., 237.
45 IbU.,23%.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 273

practice. But it was hesychasm that played the decisive role in the spheres
of man’s spiritual and practical activity.46 As has been said, the develop­
ment of Russian art was not the result of a struggle. But what lay at the
heart of Byzantine theology at that time was made manifest on Russian
soil in its practical, existential aspect. It is here that the fullness of its
incarnation was revealed in life and art.47
As in Byzantium, iconographie subjects in Russia became more com­
plex and richer. In particular, the general interest of the period in man’s
emotional world, his soul, shines through.48 It is typical that both in the

46 Hesychasm, whether Russian or Byzantine, can certainly not be viewed as an “anti-ecdesiasti-

caT phenomenon, even “to a certain extent” (see D. S. Likhachev, The Culture of Russia
[Moscow-Leningrad, 1962], 85, 131), except on the basis of a misunderstanding. It certainly
had nothing to do with “rifts,” profound or not, “in the dogmatic view of the world” in the
fourteenth-fifteenth centuries (See V. N. Lazarev, /ta£Zrv[in Russian], [Moscow, 1966], 54-5;
History ofRussian Art [in Russian] vol. 3 [Moscow-Leningrad, 1955], 175). What appeared as
being “anti-ecclesiastical” or as “rifts,” was in reality nothing but a normal manifestation of this
“dogmatic view of the worid” corresponding to the life of a given epoch. In other words, this is
how such a view unfolded itself in the multiplicity of phenomena and of human experiences.
47 In practice, the application of the hesychast doctrine about the divine uncreated light is reflected,
among other thingy, in the consecration of a large number of churches dedicated to the Holy
Trinity and to the Transfiguration, and also in the wide diffusion of these two subjects in
iconography.
48 In Russian painting of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, two trends emerge: one represented
by Theophanes the Greek, the other by Andrei Rublev. Among the various opinions about their
associations, the theory predominates according to which Rublev was, if not a direct disciple of
Theophanes, then at least a painter whose art matured under his influence. Moreover, it was from
Theophanes that Rublev inherited the “hesychast insight into the meaning of phenomena, the
ability to translate the spiritual by means of sensory images” (N. Goleizovskii, “Message to an
Iconographer,” Vizant. Vremen. XXVI [Moscow, 1965], 223). Such statements seem questionable
to us, all the more since they are based neither on facts nor on works that would demonstrate the
dependence of one painter on the other they are based on the painters* collaboration in the
decoration of the Cathedral of the Annunciation (in 1405), and on the manner in which Epiphanius
the Wise describes the personality of Theophanes and his influence on the Russian painters.
Epiphanius* enthusiastic appreciation should be viewed with greater caution, it seems to us. He was
a great admirer of Theophanes, and in such cases, exaggerations are hard to avoid. As “a most wise
philosopher,” Theophanes the Greek, to judge from his works, was a typical representative of the
Paleologm Renaissance, when it was common for quite a few hesychasts to mix traditional Orthodox
thought with concepts of the period. The dramatic tension so typical of Theophanes* painting, “the
passion and dramatic pathos” of his saints (V. Lazarev, Theophanes the Greek and His School
[Moscow, 1961], 41), their inner tension and lack of serenity are due not only to his temperament
or character traits, but also to the characteristics of the Paleologan Renaissance—peculiarities which
can be detected in the subjects of the frescoes he painted in the church of the Transfiguration at
Novgorod (provided the assumptions of the specialists are correct), namely an Adoration of the
Victim, the Tree ofJesse, Sophia, and so forth (none of which have been preserved).
Theophanes has unquestionably left a profound mark on Russian art. However, his
TJi THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

lives of saints and the figurative arts made an effort not merely to show
holiness, but also to disclose it to the fullest possible extent. They show “the
Kingdom of God within” man in all the complexity of human nature
illumined by the divine, uncreated light49 They present the integrity, the
fullness of a life guided by a Christian teaching that flourished once again in
hesychasm. The expression of the inner harmony of man reconciled with
God, with self and with the world, reached its highest perfection in Russian
art. This is the best demonstration of what is called “sacred stillness”
(hesychia): when, through the power of the Spirit, as St Gregory Palamas said,
“we fasten His law to every power of the soul and each bodily member.”50
What is shown by the Russian icon is not so much the struggle against fallen
nature as the victory over it—freedom recovered, when “the law of the Spirit”
creates the beauty of body and soul which are no longer subject to “the law of
sin” (Rom 7:25; 8:2). The center of gravity does not lie in the hard struggle,
but in the joy of its harvest, in the sweetness, the lightness of the burden of the
Lord spoken of in the Gospel pericope read on the feast days of the holy
ascetics: “Take my yoke on your shoulders, and learn from me, because I am
gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul, for my yoke
is easy and my burden light” (Mt 1:29-30). In the domain of art, the Russian
icon is the highest expression of humility learned from God Himself. This is
manner of painting and creating stands in sharp contrast to the serene harmony, the contem­
plative peace, so typical of the art of Andrei Rublev. We are in the presence of two very
different spiritual paths. Even if Andrei Rublev was not shaped directly by the Trinity-St
Sergius Monastery, he was in any case molded by the environment of St Sergius* immediate
circle of friends. From this derives the hesychast character and the “insight into the meaning
of the phenomena" which so vividly mark his life and creation. We know that Rublev’s
environment was of such a high spiritual caliber and of such intensity that its influence must
have been decisive, and that Theophanes could hardly have counterbalanced it. On the
contrary, judging from the change which Theophanes* art underwent during the years he
spent in Russia, he himself must have been influenced by the Russian hesychasts, provided it
can be proved that the icons in the Cathedral of the Annunciation that are attributed to him
are really from his hand (see A. N. Grabar, “Some Remarks About the An of Theophanes the
Greek" [in Russian] Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury'XXM [Moscow-Leningrad, 1966],
86).
49 This is seen most distinedy in the icons of the Mother of God called “Lovingkindness"
( Umilenie, Eleousd), one of the main subjects, and one of the summits of Russian an. The most
profound human feelings, the most intense emotions are shown there, transfigured: these,
connected with motherhood, embrace the psychic as well as the physical life, and link the
human being to the whole of the created world.
50 First Triad second answer. St Gregory Palamas, Défense des saints hésychastes, Introduction,
Critical Text and Notes by J. MeyendorfF (Louvain, 1959), 76-7. (Panial English trans, by N.
Gendle, Gregory Palamas: The Triads [New York: Paulist Press, 1983]).
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 275

why the extraordinary depth of its content is associated with childlike joy,
with intimacy and serenity.
We can say that if Byzantium primarily gave theology its verbal expres­
sion, Russia gave it above all its visible, figurative form. In the realm of the
artistic language of the Church, it was Russia’s lot to reveal the depth of
the icon’s content, and the highest degree of its spirituality.

One of the most important results of the development of hesychasm in

Russia—a period of the flowering not only of holiness and sacred art, but also of
liturgical creation—is the iconostasis in its classical form (Fig. 33 and Fig. 34).
As in Byzantium, there were attempts in Russia during this period to make
the meaning of the sacrament of the Eucharist more explicit by illustrating
various moments of the Liturgy. However, parallel with these attempts, one
sees the development of the altar screen separating the sanctuary from the
nave. The screen was transformed into an iconostasis, with several rows of
icons, and became one of the essential elements of an Orthodox church. It
became a partition, hiding the sanctuary from the eyes of the faithful. In our
time this partition seems useless, even offensive, not only to non-Orthodox
but sometimes even to some Orthodox. This is why it seems useful briefly to
discuss the iconographie content and meaning of the iconostasis, in an
attempt to show the precision and power of expression proper to hesychasm
revealed there.51 In its classic form, elaborated in the fifteenth century, the
51 In churches of the early Christian centuries, the sanctuary was separated from the nave by a
screen or a curtain, or even by a row of columns with an architrave. "The use ofcurtains seems
to be older than that of screens. Curtains are mentioned in the first centuries of the Christian
Liturgy* (G. Filimonov, Questions Regarding the Initial Form of the Iconostasis in Russian
Churches [in Russian], [Moscow, 1859], 29. The use of a curtain instead of a screen is
preserved in Armenian and Ethiopian churches). The oldest known reference to the screen and
the colonnade dates back to Eusebius of Caesarea (for the first, see his Ecclesiastical History, Bk
10, ch. 4, PG 20: 846; for the second, see his De Vita Constantini, Bk 3, ch. 38, PG 20:
1097-1100). The development of the iconographie subjects on the screen, and its transforma­
tion into an iconostasis began very early. Initially, the architrave carried a cross that was either
placed above it or carved into the stone itself. But already in the sixth centuiy, having placed
twelve columns in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Justinian has bas-relief representations
done of Christ, the Mother of God, angels, apostles and prophets. This is about all we know
about the iconographie content of the screen before iconoclasm. Afterwards, a new period
begin in the development of the iconostasis. In the eleventh century, there apparendy already
were two-story iconostases in Byzantium (K. Weitzmann, “Byzantine Miniature and Icon
Painting in the Eleventh Century,* Main Papers, 13th International Congress of Byzant.
Studies [Oxford, 1966], 17). The screen spread to Russia in this form and with the same
liturgical significance. The Fathers explained its meaning as being not a separation but a type
276 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

iconostasis consists of five rows of icons. It is topped by a cross.

The upper row, depicting the patriarchs, represents the Old Testament
church from Adam to Moses—the period before the Law. The patriarchs
are wearing unfolded phylacteries (tephilliri) with appropriate passages. At
the center of the row is placed the image of the Trinity, appearing to
Abraham near the oak of Mamre. This is God’s first covenant with man,
and the first revelation of the one triune God.

The row of prophets underneath represents the Old Testament church

from Moses to Christ—the period of the Law. It includes images of
prophets, who are also carrying scrolls containing texts of their prophecies
about the Incarnation. At the center of this row is the icon of Our Lady
of the Sign, the Mother of God with the child on her bosom. She is the
sign announced by the prophet: “The Lord himself will give you a sign.
Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his
name Immanuel” (Is 7:14), “which means God with us” (Mt 1:23).

These two rows represent the preparation for the New Testament
church among the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh, as well as its
préfiguration and announcement by the prophets. Thus the icon of the
Incarnation in the middle of the row of prophets indicates the direct link
between the Old and New Testament.52 Each row corresponds to a
well-defined period of sacred history, to a time of preparation; and each
of the figures seen there is connected to the central image representing the
culmination of all these prophecies and preparations.
of union between the two parts of the church. Thus Symeon of Thessalonika wrote: “Above
the transom on top of the columns, in the center between the holy icons, are representations
of Christ, and on His side of the Mother of God, of the Forerunner, the angels, aposdes and
other saints. This tells us that Christ dwells at the same time with His saints and presently with
us, and that He is still to come” (De sacra templo, PG 155: 345).
In Russia, a series of modifications had to be made to the screen, both because of an
increase in the number of rows of icons and because of their dimension and distribution.
Within the evolving framework of Christian worship, it is significant that the sanctuary screen
has not been preserved anywhere in its original form: either it developed as in the Orthodox
church or it disappeared, as in the West. (For further details, see our study, “The Question of
the Iconostasis” [in Russian], Messager de ÏExarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe occidentale,
no 44 [Paris, 1963]. In English, in St Vladimirs Seminary Quarterly 8,4 [New York, 1964]).
52 These two upper rows show the pre-Christmas liturgical cycle, or more precisely, the two
Sundays that precede the feast, consecrated to the memory of the patriarchs and fathers. The
subjects were divided into patriarchs and prophets out of a concern for better visual expression.
However, on rather low iconostases, they are represented on the same row.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 277

The next row of the iconostasis, containing the feasts, represents the
New Testament period, the time of grace. It shows that what had been
announced in the upper rows has become reality: “one [of the testaments]
declared the divine works of Jesus to come, and the other accomplished
them; as the former described the truth in figures, so the latter revealed it
as present.”53 Here are represented the New Testament events that make
up the liturgical year, and which are celebrated by the Church with special
solemnity as steps of God’s providential activity in the world, the progres­
sive unfolding of salvation.54
Further down is the row of Deesis (AéT|<nç), which means “prayer.”
The angels and the saints, the apostles and their successors—the bishops,
monks, martyrs, and so forth—are linked to the central object according
to a well-established order: at the center is the Deesis proper, the tripartite
icon of Christ, with His mother to the right and the Forerunner in a
position of prayer to the left.55 This entire row is nothing but a developed
Deesis. It shows the result of the Incarnation and of Pentecost, the fullness
of the New Testament church, the fulfillment of what is shown on the
three upper rows of the iconostasis. It is therefore its central, essential part.
The main theme of this row is the prayer of the Church for the world: this
is the eschatological aspect of the Church.56
53 St Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, De ecclesiast. hierarchia, ch. 3» 5» PG 3: 460; English
trans, by Thomas L Campbell, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (University Press of America,
1981), 38. It is possible that the Areopagitica, which were highly popular and influential in
Russia at the time of the formation of the iconostasis, contributed to the distribution of the
rows. These writings appeared in Russia in the form of a copy made by Metropolitan Cyprian
from a Bulgarian translation of 1371.
54 This row usually consists of the icons of Easter (the myrrh-bearers at the tomb or the Descent
into Hell) and those of the twelve major feasts: six of Christ (Nativity, Theophany, Entrance
into the Temple, Entry into Jerusalem, Ascension, Transfiguration), fourof the Virgin (Birth,
Presentation in the Temple, Annunciation, Dormition), and two essentially ecdesiological
icons (Pentecost and the Exaltation of the Cross). Where there is space, icons of other, less
important feasts are added, as well as the icon of the Crucifixion. As a rule, the icons are
arranged according to the order of the liturgical year, but they sometimes follow the chrono­
logical order of the events commemorated.
55 The Deesis is known in literary documents from the seventh century. In the eulogy to St Cyrus
and St John, written by St Sophronius of Jerusalem, we read: “We have entered the
church...We saw a great and marvellous icon where in the middle were represented in color
the Lord Jesus Christ. To the left was the Mother of God, our Sovereign Virgin Mary; to the
right was John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the Savior... Here were also represented some of
the glorious choir of the apostles and prophets and some of the martyrs, among them were
Cyrus and John, martyrs* (SS. Cyri etJoannis Miracula, PG 87, 3:3557).
56 This is why on the classical Russian iconostasis, the holy warrior-saints and princes are never
278 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The lowest level of the iconostasis is called “local”: a large icon is placed
on either side of the Holy Door. Customarily, this includes the images of
Christ and, to His right (left with regard to the viewer) that of the Mother
of God with the child. It is true that there are exceptions to this rule: the
icon of Christ is sometimes replaced by that of a saint or of a feast to which
the church has been dedicated. It is in front of these that, since the end of
the iconoclastic period, the entrance prayers are reared. These include a
confession of the image of Christ before the icon itself, and a prayer to the
Virgin in front of her icon. These local icons are the object of a most direct
and intimate veneration: they are kissed, candles are lit before them, and so
forth. On the side doors, north and south, archangels or saintly deacons are
represented, since deacons play the role of angels (“messengers”) in the
celebration of the Liturgy. On the south door, the archangel is sometimes
replaced by the Good Thief, which emphasizes that the sanctuary is a
symbol of paradise: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43). If
additional space remains on each side of the doors, it is occupied by other
icons. This row does not have the order or the rhythm of the others; it is
often asymmetrical, and adorned with icons that vary widely, depending on
local needs and on the character of the church.
The central door, called “Royal” or “Holy,” has existed as long as the
altar screen; it has been adorned with icons from the earliest times.57
Customarily, the Annunciation is represented here, with the four evange­
lists underneath. St Basil and St John Chrysostom often appear holding in
their hands the book of the Gospels, or phylacteries with texts from their
liturgies.58 On the symbolic level, this doorway to the sanctuary preemi­
nently represents the entrance to the Kingdom of God. The Annuncia­
tion is the starting point, the beginning of our salvation, opening the gate
to the Kingdom. It represents the good news announced by the evangelists.
Their preaching is addressed directly to the one who comes to this spot to
partake of His Kingdom. It is on the solea, the dividing line between the
sanctuary and the nave, that the faithful receive communion. This is why the
represented in armor or with weapons. The reverse is true in the case of murals. No exceptions
to this rule are found, except during the period of decadence in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
57 A. Grabar believes that the Royal Door had been so decorated from the fifth-sixth centuries
(“Un portillon d'iconostase sculpté au Musée National de Belgrade/ Recueil des travaux de
l’institut d’Etudes byzantines no 7 [Belgrade, 1961], 16).
58 Sometimes one also finds Royal Doors with images of numerous saints on them.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 279

Eucharist is often represented above the Holy Door (Fig. 35). It is the
liturgical transposition of the Last Supper, when Christ Himselfgave commu­
nion to the apostles. On one side He gives them the Bread, and on the other
the cup. This two-fbld representation expresses that communion must be
given under both species. The image of the communion of the apostles
emphasizes the ministry of Christ, die sovereign Sacrificer. This ministry is
direcdy expressed here by His priesdy actions.
As an image, this iconographie structure of the iconostasis, the order of
its rows, corresponds to the liturgical prayer immediately preceding the
epiclesis: “You and Your Only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit, did bring
us from non-existence into being, and when we had feilen away did raise us
up again, and did not cease to do all things until You had brought us back to
heaven and had endowed us with Your kingdom which is to come”

On a flat surface feeing the faithful, easily seen from any distance, the
iconostasis unfolds the ways ofthe divine economy: the history of man created
in the image of die triune God and the working of God in history. The ways
of divine revelation and the work of salvation descend from top to bottom,
beginning with die image of the Holy Trinity, the eternal counsel, the source
of the life of the world and of divine economy. The Old Testament prepara­
tions, the prefigurations and prophecies gradually lead to the row of feasts—
the actualization of what had been prepared. From there they extend to the
coming completion of the divine economy—the row of the Deesis. All this is
centered on die person of Christ, One of the Holy Trinity. The central image
of Christ is the key to the entire iconostasis. For “Christ is never alone. He is
always the Head of His Body. In Orthodox theology and devotion alike,
Christ is never separated from His Mother, the Theotokos, and His ‘friends/
the saints. The Redeemer and the redeemed belong together inseparably.”59
Thus the Deesis shows that “the final purpose of the Incarnation was that the
Inçamate should have ‘a body/ which is the Church, the new Humanity,
redeemed and reborn in the Head.”00 The row containing the Deesis there­
fore represents the culmination of the historic process. It is an image of
the Church in its eschatological dimension. The entire life of the Church
is found on it, epitomized, as it were, in its supreme, unvarying destina-
59 Georges Florovsky, “The Ethos of the Orthodox Church,* The Ecumenical Review 12, no 2
(1960), 195.
60 Ibid.
280 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

35. A 16th-century Russian Holy (or Royal) Door

Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 281

tion: the intercession of the saints and of the angels for the world. All the
figures represented are united in one body. It is the union of Christ with
His Church: the total Christ, the Head and the body (totus Christus,
Caput et corpus}, a union accomplished by the sacrament of the Eucharist.
In response to divine revelation, the paths of the human ascent lead from
foe bottom to foe top through an acceptance of foe preaching of foe aposdes
(foe evangelists on the Holy Door), by foe conformity of foe human will to
foe divine (as represented by foe Annunciation on foe Holy Door), through
prayer, and finally by partaking of the eucharistie mystery—man
accomplishes foe ascent to foe reality represented on foe row of foe Deesis: foe
unity of foe Church. Indeed, foe Church is foe ongoing Pentecost; and
through foe power of foe Holy Spirit, man is part of this Body of which Christ
is foe Head. The Eucharist builds up this Body of Christ. The iconostasis
shows this by placing before foe eyes of foe fàifofùl an image of foe organism
which they join as members. It shows foe Church formed in foe image of foe
divine Trinity, an image found at foe top of foe iconostasis: a multi-unity, in
the image of the Tri-unity. This is foe icon to which foe icon of Christ leads
foe believer. “Another revelation unfolds before his eyes...foe heavenly Lit­
urgy, the eternal eucharistie sacrifice which originated for all eternity in the
bosom of the Holy Trinity, which continues now, and forever unto foe ages
of ages.”61
One scholarly point of view holds that the iconostasis somehow re­
placed, or repeated, foe mural decoration of foe church. Indeed, the
essential elements of this decoration equally find their place on the
iconostasis, and quite a few subjects are found in both. However, the
connection that exists between mural decoration and foe iconostasis can
be understood only if one considers the purpose of foe one and foe other,
foe respective role of each, which is entirely different.
As a place of worship, a church in its totality is a liturgical space for foe
gathering of foe faithful. Symbolically, it includes foe entire universe, and thus
it represents foe cosmic dimension of foe Church. Even if foe mural decora­
tion conforms to an overall scheme that requires certain fixed subjects in
certain parts of foe building, it nevertheless allows for a great variety of
subjects in other parts of foe building, foe choice of which is more or less left
to discretion, depending on foe needs of foe place and of foe moment.
61 Archimandrite Cyprian, The Eucharist (in Russian) (Paris, 1947), 342.
282 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

By contrast, the subjects on the iconostasis are strictly defined for the
whole as well as for each of its parts. The iconostasis shows the develop­
ment of the Church in time, its life until its fulfillment in the Parousia, its
gradual realization from Adam to the Last Judgment. It thereby discloses
the significance of the time process, the meaning acquired by time
through its participation in an act outside time, the Eucharist. The
Eucharist “incorporates every age and all generations...It is history ‘re­
duced to unity,’ die renewal of the salutary event which makes us encoun­
ter all the ages before and after us.”62 The iconostasis shows what is
created by the cooperation between man and God. It reveals this synergy:
people and events give history its meaning and sanctify it. It thereby
indicates how everyone has a place in this historical process and defines
the significance of the present moment for each person. The meaning of
the boundary between the sanctuary and the nave, between the eternal
and the temporal, is thereby pointed out—a meaning that consists of the
interpenetration of the one by the other, their union. The believer enters
the Holy of Holies of the New Testament, the Kingdom of God, “through
the veil that is the flesh of Christ” (Heb 10:20)—this flesh that replaced
the tom veil of the temple.63 We recall how, according to St Gregory
Palamas, “His deified flesh has received and communicates the eternal
glory of the Deity; it is represented on the icons and worshipped insofar
as it manifests the divinity of Christ, and it is that too which is offered to
us in the sacrament of the Eucharist.”64

The iconostasis therefore has more than merely a didactic meaning. It

represents the ontological link between sacrament and image, and shows
this glorious body of Christ, the same real body given in the Eucharist and
represented on the icon. This is why, during the iconoclastic period, the
Orthodox defenders of images viewed the icon not only as a proof of the
Incarnation, because it pointed to the historicity of Christ, but also as
witnessing to the reality of the sacrament of the Eucharist. “If that witness
62 J. Tyciak, Maintenant II vient, 34, translated from the German (1963), 34.
63 The fact that St Paul compares the flesh of Christ to the veil of the Temple could certainly
have led people to put a veil in front of the Holy of Holies in New Testament churches. This
analogy, with all the richness of its meaning, was subsequently extended to the sanctuary
screen (at the Church of St Sophronius in Jerusalem, for example, the architrave) and later to
the iconostasis as a whole. The analogy in the latter case, with the Old Testament veil tom at
the time of the Crucifixion, remains alive within the consciousness of the church.
64 J. Meyendorff, A Study ofGregory Palamas, trans. G. Lawrence (New York, 1974), 138.
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 283

is impossible, the Eucharist itself loses its reality.”65 Indeed, the true
theological dimensions of the iconoclastic controversy are seen here. This
also explains the intransigence of the defenders of the icon.
From this perspective, the function of the iconostasis at the very edge of
the sanctuary is precisely to show what is not an image, but is real and by its
very nature different from an image. Christ does not show Himself in the holy
gifts: He gives Himself. He shows Himself in the icon. The visible aspect of the
Eucharist is an image which can never be replaced, either by the imagination
or by ä mere contemplation of the sacrament
What Russian hesychasm contributed to the development of the clas­
sic iconostasis was a living, existential interiorizing of the sacrament of the
Eucharist, of the content of the icon of Christ. Hence the awareness and
the uncommonly eloquent indication of the link between the two. There
is first the slow growth of the body of Christ in the Old Testament
(comparable to the care with which Matthew and Luke specify the
genealogy of Christ) and its actuality in the New. In other words, it is a
proof of its historicity through images, a proof that excludes all abstract
thought. We recall that for the iconoclasts, the sacrament of the Eucharist
was an image, the only possible one. Thus, by rejecting the icon and
therefore implicitly the reality of the Incarnation, they necessarily denied
the reality of the eucharistie body and blood. Significantly, the period that
witnessed the formation of the iconostasis coincided exactly with a new
questioning by Russian heretics of both the image and of the sacrament of
the Eucharist. In our time, as has so often been the case in history, this
issue takes on great importance.
But the crucial contribution of hesychasm was undeniably the expan­
sion of the tripartite Deesis into an entire series of intercessory saints, with
Christ of the Last Judgment at its center (Fig. 36). This development was
deemed so important that the iconographers greatly enlarged the size of
the Deesis (3.15 meters high in the Cathedral of the Dormition, in
Vladimir). They gave it a dominant place, no doubt understanding the
impact of this rank of the iconostasis, placed in close proximity to the
communicant (the Deesis created by the hesychasts Andrei Rublev, The­
ophanes the Greek, and their companions). Indeed, to the reality of the
65 J. MeyendorfF, Christin Eastern Christian Thought, trans. Y. Dubois (New York: St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1987), 190.
284 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

36. Christ in Glory, 15 th century.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (no. 44.101).
Hesychasm and the Flowering ofRussian Art 285

eucharistie body corresponds the reality of the judgment. This is clearly

emphasized in all the prayers before communion (“I eat and drink my
judgment”). The communicant becomes one body with Christ {syssomOy
“a joint-body,” Eph 3:6), the body of the Second Coming. This is why
this row is presented exactly above the place where the faithful receive
communion. It emphasizes this aspect of judgment and intercession.
Only by passing through communion-judgment is one able to interiorize
the reality depicted on the iconostasis—a reality that corresponds to the
eucharistie prayers for all those who are united by the sacrament of the
Body and Blood: the patriarchs, fathers, and prophets fallen asleep in the
Old Testament faith; the apostles, martyrs and confessors (who fell asleep
in the New); and finally the living, including the faithful present in the
church. It is therefore the reality of the Body joined to that of the image
which, together with the word, ensures fullness in liturgical participation:
the physical union and the union of prayer through the image.
Thus the iconostasis is far from being a mere recapitulation of decora­
tions on the walls. Nor is it a haphazard collection of icons lacking
didactic significance—a collection “that has become a false focal point of
the Byzantine church,” unrelated to the eucharistie sacrament, and “cre­
ating an obstacle to keep the lay people, unworthy creatures, at a distance”
{sic I).66 Such a point of view is still widespread. However, as P. Florenskii
states,
the iconostasis does not conceal any fascinating, strange secrets from the faithful,
as some imagine in their ignorance and self-conceit. On the contrary, the
iconostasis shows them, the half-blind, the mysteries of the sanctuary. It opens
the gate to another world for them, the limping and disabled—a door that is
closed to them because of their stagnation. It announces the Kingdom of Heaven
by shouting into their ears that remain deaf.67

Clearly, when it is materially impossible to have a complete iconostasis

in a church, it can undoubtedly be limited to the Deesis itself, or even to
the single icon of Christ. However, deliberately to forgo the fullness of the
iconostasis is to repudiate what the Church teaches through it.

66 Julian Walter, “The Origins of the Iconostasis," Eastern Churches Review 3, no 3 (1971), 261,
266,267.
67 P. Florenskii, “The Iconostasis,” (in Russian), Bogaslovskie Trudy 9 (Moscow, 1972), 97.
 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON
286

37. & Cyril ofBeloozero. 16th-century Russian icon.

A. Rublev Museum, Moscow.
 14
The Muscovite Councils of the 16th Century:
Their Role in Sacred Art
T^he sixteenth century is one of the most complex periods in the history
x of Russian sacred art. On the one hand, it remains one of the most
brilliant, especially during the first five decades; the dominant trend in art
still preserved all the spiritual richness, the simplicity, the sobriety and
monumental character of the image (Fig. 37). On the other hand, a
noticeable change takes place around mid-century. This change develops,
forms a trend that clearly crystalizes in the seventeenth century and
gradually leads to a break with the tradition. This change is due to a variety
of external and internal reasons rooted in the preceding epoch. We have
already noted how the period that followed Rublev already witnessed a
gradual disappearance of the meaning of the spiritual basis of the image.
The hesychast spirit weakened, spiritual development declined. What
happened was not unlike what had occurred in Byzantium where, “since
the official triumph of hesychasm and the canonization of Palamas himself,
the response to his doctrine became merely routine, devoid of any true
understanding of its spiritual, creative essence.”1 Because of this decline,
the creative living tradition in Byzantium gave way to a conservatism that
would subsequently be defenseless against the external influences coming
from the West. In Russia, in the period under scrutiny, hesychasm
gradually ceased to play a leading role. In the spiritual life, the trend headed
by St Joseph of Volokolamsk achieved dominance. Though a hesychast
himself, St Joseph accorded great importance to outward asceticism and
to intense activity, whereby prayer became subordinate to social service.
For his followers and successors, it was education that occupied the first
place. The spiritual life dwindled and grew more narrow; it was oriented
above all to the external. Parallel with the orientation of spirituality in the
direction of a ritualized, stricdy regulated piety, the same, formalistic
1 Alexander Schmemann, “An Unpublished Work by St Mark of Ephesus on the Resurrection”
(in Russian), PravoslatmaiaMysl’(Paris, 1951), 144.

287
288 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

orientation is found in art. The dogmatic content of the image begins to

lose its predominant significance, and is not always understood to be its
very basis. The preference of the Josephites for well-ordered beauty and
well-arranged harmony encouraged quantity, to the detriment of quality.
The external historical conditions of Muscovite Russia likewise con­
tributed to a decline of the spiritual life and a corresponding change in art.
With the fall of Constantinople (1453) and the occupation of the Balkans
by the Turks, the slow reorientation of Russia began: from the circle of
Orthodox countries in the East it turned toward the sphere of western
culture.2 This was the beginning of the influence of western ideas. At this
time, this influence upon sacred art was expressed merely by the borrow­
ing of certain subjects and details of an iconographie character, revamped
in the spirit of traditional painting. These influences, which entered
Russia by way of the border cities (above all Novgorod and Pskov, which
had intense relations with the West) gradually intensified, and found a
fertile soil in the “intellectual stagnation” so typical of the period.
In Russia, the middle of the sixteenth century was a time of compila­
tion and conservation. Just as Moscow moved to the forefront of the
united principalities, so the Muscovite metropolis became the center
toward which the local spiritual traditions converged. Civil as well as church
life was organized, the situation was assessed, and everything received from the
2 The beginning of this process, which took its definitive form in the sixteenth century and
reached completion under Peter I, goes back to the end of the fifteenth century, the reign of
Ivan III (1462*1505). When he married Sophia Paleologus, who had been educated by the
Pope in Rome, the princely court experienced a true infatuation for the West. When
Gennadius, the Archbishop of Novgorod, undertook a new translation of the Bible, the work
was directed by a Dominican friar called Benjamin; and it was the Vulgate that was used as a
reference. Translations from the German and Latin of western spiritual literature, made in
“the archbishop’s residence,” appeared in Novgorod (“On the Veneration of Sophia, Divine
Wisdom in Byzantium and in Russia” [in Russian], Trudy V siezda russkikh akademicheskikh
organizatsuzagranitsei, vol. I [Sofia: 1932], 497). At this time, the anti*heretical struggle bore
the stamp of western methods. The struggle against Latinism, while being characteristic of the
period, got on well with a certain leaning toward the West. Western influences keep increasing
and present a very complex phenomenon in the sixteenth century. At the time of the
Renaissance in the West, the arts and sciences were inseparable from magic and all sorts of
occult lore. What foreigners such as the Roman Catholic Nicholas the German, private
physician of the great prince, imported to Russia were astrology, a belief in the Wheel of
Fortune, and other superstitions which St Maximus the Greek, a great defender of the true
faith, labeled as “Greek, Latin, and Chaldean teachings.” To this unhealthy amalgam should
have been opposed the vigilance, sobriety of thought and of the heart found in hesychasm, but
it had already weakened in Russia.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 289

historical and spiritual past was recorded. But what was thus compiled
already contained some elements foreign to the Orthodox tradition,
elements that had been introduced as a result of the decline of the spiritual
life, and also because of the contemporary historical situation.

The “Hundred-Chapters Council” (Stoglav)

On June 21,1547 Moscow was devastated by a terrible fire that destroyed
cathedrals, monasteries and palaces. After this disaster everything had to
be rebuilt, and the burned icons had to be replaced. Such a task could not
be faced solely with the means the Muscovite iconographers had at their
disposal.
The sovereign Orthodox tsar.. .sent people to Novgorod the Great, Smolensk,
Dmitrov and Zvenigorod to find holy, precious icons. Numerous holy and won­
drous icons were brought from several cities. They were placed in the Cathedral of
the Annunciation to be venerated by the tsar and all the Christians, until new icons
could be painted. The sovereign sent for iconographers from Novgorod the Great,
Pskov, and other cities. The iconographers arrived, and the sovereign tsar ordered
some to paint icons, others to decorate the walls ^>f the palaces.. ?

In the Kremlin, the work of the iconographers was supervised by Sylves­

ter, archpriest of the Annunciation Cathedral, born in Novgorod, and the
private tutor of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. It was probably on his orders that
the iconographers created a whole series of symbolic icons which were
subsequently characterized as “theological-didactic.” The themes of these
compositions became the topic of discussions and conciliar decisions in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They reflected the beginning of
the change that had made itself felt both in iconography and, much more
importantly, in the consciousness of the faithful, in their attitude toward
and their understanding of the icon. At the beginning, this transforma­
tion was not interpreted in a positive manner, by a definition of principle,
but rather through a lack of clarity and preciseness in reasoning.
In 1551 a council, known in history as the “Hundred-Chapters Council”
(Stoglav), was held in Moscow, presided over by Metropolitan Macarius.4 The
3 Communications ofthe Imperial Society ofRussian History and Antiquities (1847), 19. Quoted
by N. Andreev, “The Affair of Diak Viskovatyi* (in Russian), Seminarium Kondakovianum V
(Prague, 1932).
4 The name is derived from the fact that the decisions of this council arc divided into one
hundred chapters. The Russian text was edited in 1890, in Moscow. There is a French
290 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

council was convoked to bring order into various aspects of Church life,
including art, and because, in the words of the tsar, “morals are wavering,
arbitrariness has set in, and everyone acts according to his own will.”
Among the regulations of the Stoglav concerning art, some addressed
specific, concrete questions (chapter XLI, questions 1 and 7), while others
dealt with the basis and the very principles of icon painting and with the
painters themselves.
Of the two specific questions discussed by the council, one (question
7 of chapter XLI) dealt with the possibility of representing on icons
persons, living or dead, who were not saints. By way of example, the tsar,
in asking this question, mentioned the icon with the inscription, “Come,
O peoples, let us adore the Divinity in three Persons.”
There, at the bottom, tsars, princes, prelates, and people of lower standing are
represented while they were still alive.. .They are painted even on the icon of the
All-pure Mother of God in Tikhvin, which describes her miracles.. .We must
reflect on this, remembering the writings of the holy Fathers. Is it proper on
icons to include both the living and the dead at prayer?
The council replied that the traditions and “the writings of the holy
Fathers,” as well as the icons themselves, attested to such practice.5
Indeed, we know that the tradition of painting persons who are not saints
on icons and mural church decorations, where required by the subject,
goes back to the earliest Christian times. Such representations were there­
fore not a novelty but common in sacred art. By way of examples, the
council enumerated the following as contemporary illustrations of such
iconographie subjects: the Exaltation of the Cross, the Protection of the
Virgin, the Procession of the Wood of the Cross, and the Last Judgment.
In the latter case, “not only are saints painted, but also a great number of
unbelievers from various countries.”6 The custom of representing non-
translation by M. Duchesne, Le Stoglav ou les Cent chapitres (Paris, 1920).
5 Stoglav, 111.
6 Ibid., 174. Nonetheless, the very existence of this problem leads to questionable statements
about the reasons why it arose in the first place. It has been attributed to the fact that in the
sixteenth century, "secular painting* began to infiltrate Russian iconography (N. Pokrovskii,
The Monuments of Christian Art and Iconography [in Russian] (St Petersburg, 1900), 347), or
to ideas from portrait painting (N. Andreev, "Metropolitan Macarius and Religious Art* [in
Russian], SeminariumKondakovianum VII [Prague, 1935], 241). It is assumed, therefore, that
this question posed by the tsar presupposed the principle of representing on icons portraits of
non-saints, both living and dead. Consequently, the answer of the council is considered
inadequate in relation to the scope of the question asked (N. Andreev, ibid., note 70). But at
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 291

saints on icons and wall paintings must have been widespread at the time,
due largely to new subjects and compositions, particularly in the case of
icons of saints containing illustrations of scenes from their life. But the
balance had been upset, and the non-saints often occupied too much
space in the composition. Naturally, the question of the propriety of such
representations had to arise.
Another question, the first in chapter XLI, is more significant for us. It
deals with the iconography of the Holy Trinity:
On icons of the Holy Trinity, some represent a cross in the nimbus of only the
middle figure, others on all three. On ancient and on Greek icons, the words
“Holy Trinity” are written at the top, but there is no cross in the nimbus of any
of the three. At present, “IC XC” and “the Holy Trinity” are written next to the
central figure. Consult the divine canons and tell us which practice one should
follow. The Reply: painters must paint icons according to the ancient models,
as the Greeks painted them, as Andrei Rublev and other renowned painters made
them. The inscription should be: “the Holy Trinity.” Painters are in no way to
use their imagination.7
As we can see, this deals with the traditional Orthodox representation of
the Trinity in the form of three Angels.
Though we do not know why, some scholars believe that the council’s
reply to the question lacks precision,8 or that “the question remained
without solution, since the Fathers of the council were only able to make
a general statement concerning the need to follow ancient models,”9
especially the icon of Andrei Rublev. But in fact, if one takes into account
the sense of the question, the answer is very clear and specific: the council
decided that there should be only one general inscription, “the Holy
this time, portraits that imitated nature did not exist. Whether a man was alive or not, a saint
or not, his image was made in the style of an icon; if not, the image would be meaningless.
Thus, for the council, there could not have been another type of image-portrait. Moreover, the
very manner in which the question was formulated does not in our opinion justify giving it a
scope it did not have. Indeed, the question was not on how to represent people who were not
saints (as a portrait or not), but whether their representation was allowed on the icon at all.
The question’s precise wording is, “Is it proper to paint them?* It seems to us, therefore, that
N. Pokrovskii’s position is justified when he gives as reason for this question the fact that the
presence of non-saints in icons, as well as their great number, could perturb and scandalize the
faithful. One should add the possibility that such representations could be criticized by the
heretics.
7 Stoglav, 107 (There are some errors in this French translation, due to the translator’s lack of
knowledge about iconography).
8 N. Pokrovskii, Monuments, 356-7.
9 AI. Nekrasov, Figurative Art in Ancient Russia Çin Russian) (Moscow, 1937), 278.
292 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Trinity,” and that none of the figures depicted should have either an
inscription or a cross in the nimbus.10 It is true that the council did not
give a theological explanation to its ruling: it limited itself to referring to
the authority of Andrei Rublev and to ancient models. Here, as in other
instances, the weakness of the Hundred Chapters Council can be seen—a.
weakness which was later to have disastrous consequences for Russian
iconography.
Returning to the question at hand, one should note that most of the
representations of the Trinity that have come down to us have neither a
cross in the nimbus nor any identifying inscription. However, in both
Greek and Russian iconography, before and after Rublev, but particularly
in later works, the angel in the middle—always interpreted by the iconog-
raphers as symbolizing the second Person of the Trinity—is sometimes
depicted with a cross in the nimbus bearing the inscription ho on,n IC
XC, and with a scroll in its hand instead of a staff12 As the reference of the
Stoglav indicates, the icon by Andrei Rublev contained no such specifica­
tion. At the time of the struggle against the heresy of the Judaizers, who
denied the divinity of Christ and the Orthodox doctrine of the Holy
Trinity, all three angels were sometimes represented with a cross in their
nimbus. Moreover, though indeed very rarely, icons are found in which
10 N. V. Malitskii, “Contribution to the History of the Composition of the Old Testament
Trinity" (in Russian), SeminariumKondakovianum II (Prague, 1927), 43, shared this opinion.
The decision of the council has certainly helped to stabilize the iconography of Andrei
Rublev's Trinity by making it “a canonical model," in a certain sense. However, there is no
reason to view this decision as the fixing of an unchangeable iconographie outline, as is
sometimes said.
11 There is an inaccuracy in the study made by N. Pokrovskii of the council's decision on this
subject. In Monuments, 353, he views the cruciferous halo as an attribute of the Divinity. In
truth, the cross in the halo is an attribute belonging exclusively to Jesus Christ: it designates
the sufferings he underwent in His humanity. The inscription ho ôn, “The Being," (ho is the
article, àn the present participle of the verb “to be") indicates His Divinity. This “Son of man"
represented in the icon is the same God who, in the Old Testament, spoke to Moses (Ex 3:14).
Gregory the Theologian writes: “This name is the one He gives Himself when He speaks to
Moses on the mountain. He concentrates in Himself the fullness of being which has neither
beginning nor end, which is like an ocean of being, unlimited and infinite, transcending the
boundaries of every concept of time or of nature" (Oratio XXXVII, PG 35: 317BC). This
inscription is explained in the same way by Maximus the Confessor in his commentary on the
halo of the Lord.
12 The oldest examples of images where the angel in the middle is understood as Christ are in a
tcnth-century Greek Bible (where His halo is cruciferous) in the Biibiothèque Nationale
(Paris), and in an eleventh-century Cappadocian fresco (sec M. Alpatov, “La Trinité dans l’art
byzantin et l'école de Roublev," Echos d'Ovient [April-June, 1927]).
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 293

the inscription “IC XC” appears not only next to the angel in the middle,
but also next to the two others. Both cases can be interpreted as an
attempt to emphasize the equal honor of the Three, though such attempts
falsify Orthodox doctrine. It is true that many patristic commentaries give
a certain theoretical justification for specifying the angel in the middle.
Nonetheless, the inscription “IC XC” on this image is an error, because
the name of the God-man is applied there to an image that is not His
direct, concrete representation. “When the Word became flesh.. .then He
received the name of Christ,” St John of Damascus wrote.13 It is then that
He also suffered. This is why it is wrong to put a cross in the nimbus of
the middle Angel in the Holy Trinity. To depict such a nimbus, and the
inscription “IC XC,” on the other two angels is even more erroneous.
Indeed, in this case the signs of the Incarnation and Passion of the Son of
God would be attributed to the other Persons of the Holy Trinity, thereby
assigning to them the specific economy that is proper to the second
Person. The common will of the Trinity, that makes the three Persons
share the economy of the redemption, is one of the basic truths of the
Christian faith. But
this same unity of nature and of the divine will of the God-man with His Father
and the Holy Spirit excludes any possibility of transmitting His sufferings, accepted
in His human nature and human will, to the common will and nature of the Holy
Trinity. It is not the Holy Trinity that suffers with the Son, nor is it the Divinity of
the Son consubstantial to that of the Father and the Spirit that suffered and died. It
is the Hypostasis of the Son that suffered on the cross according to His humanity,
by accepting this through the human will which only in Christ is distinguished from
the one divine will common to the Father and the Spirit14

Thus any specification, whether through an inscription or by a cross in

the nimbus, is either an absurdity (in this case there would be three
Christs) or a heresy condemned by the Church: “You fools, who attribute
the passion to the Godhead, be silent!”15
Chapter XLIII of the conciliar decisions contains a question that is
directly related to the iconography of the Holy Trinity, that of the
“representation of the Godhead”:
The prelates, each in his own diocese, will carefully and with unflagging attention
see to it that the good iconographers, and their apprentices, paint according to
13 Define orthodoxaX, 4, ch. 6, PG 94, 1:1112.
14 V. Lossky, The Discussion About Sophia (in Russian) (Paris, 1936), 77.
15 Canon of Tone 7, Ode 9.
294 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the ancient models, and do not depict the divinity according to their own
concept or assumptions. If Christ our God can be depicted in the flesh, He is
not depictable according to His Divinity; as John of Damascus has it, “Do not
represent the divinity. You, blind ones, do not lie because the Godhead is simple
and indivisible, inaccessible to the eye. But in representing the image of the flesh?
I venerate and believe, and I glorify the Virgin who gave birth to the Son...”
As can be seen, this text is not conspicuous for its clarity. In its obvious
sense, it seems to refer to the divinity of Christ. But Christ is represented
in His humanity, and no one has ever attempted to depict or describe His
divinity, His undescribable Divine nature. In Orthodox thought, the
question of whether one could depict the Godhead or not had never
arisen, as making no sense. Yet here we have an Orthodox council that
strongly accuses the iconographers of trying to represent the divinity
“according to their own conception.” The contrast between the depict­
able flesh of Christ and His divinity, which is undepictable, seems to
suggest that there was some representation of the Deity other than the
image of the incarnate Son of God. Indeed, at the time of the Stoglav,
there already existed three iconographie representations of the Trinity: the
traditional Old Testament Trinity, the image called “the Paternity” (God
the Father with the Son in His lap, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a
dove), and the “New Testament Trinity,” the Father and the Son seated
on a throne, with the dove between them. At the council no question was
asked, at least not directly, about the iconographie content of the last two
representations. The lack of clarity in the conciliar decision has led some
scholars to conclude that “the precise iconography of the Trinity was
passed over in silence” by the council.16 17 However, as we have seen, the
council gave a clear response about the iconography of the Old Testament
Trinity, about which a question had arisen. Thus an iconographie subject

16 Stoglav» 136. This text does not appear literally in the writing? of John of Damascus, but it
may derive from liturgical texts. îïie Hundred-Chapters Council generally treated sources
with a great deal of freedom, as is known. Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow went so far as to
entertain doubts: “Does a council that resorts to lies to support its opinions and attributes to
the holy Fathers and Apostles non-existing doctrines and canons, deserve the name of Church
Council?” (“Conversation With an Old-Believer,” Works» vol. 1 [Moscow, 1835-1836],
180-205). Cited by V. Nikonov, “The Stoglav” [in Russian], The Journal of the Moscow
Patriarchate» no 9 [1951], 46).
17 N. K. Goleizovskii, “The Message to an Iconographer and the Echoes of Hesychasm in Russian
Painting in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” (in Russian) Vizantiisky Vremenmk 26
(Moscow, 1965), 220.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 295

that was apparently hard for the council to define, and which was not
connected to the historicity of the Gospel—this basic principle of Ortho­
dox iconography—was “passed over in silence.” A comparison of the
regulations concerning the Old Testament Trinity with the context of
chapter XLIII has allowed certain scholars to conclude that the council
attempted to limit the representation of the Trinity to this one icono­
graphie type and thereby “to prevent any attempt to depict God the
Father in icons of the Trinity, as was done in the West.”18 Indeed, the
quoted text, as well as the instruction given to iconographers at the
beginning of chapter XLII to “apply themselves to paint the corporeal
image of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ” and the decision
concerning the Old Testament Trinity (chapter XLI), allow us to con­
clude that the “representation of the Divinity” refers precisely to the icon
of God the Father—an image which, two years later, would provoke
impassioned discussions that continue to our day. Let us recall that the
image of God the Father on frescoes and icons (“the Paternity”) was still
unusual at the time of the Stoglav. Moreover, and this certainly is essen­
tial, this image remained ambiguous for a long time, as we shall see when
we study this iconographie subject: it lacked precision and lent itself to
diverse interpretations.19
In Russia, the first known example of the so-called “New Testament
Trinity” is found in the famous quadripartite icon in the Cathedral of the
18 G. Ostrogorsky, “Les décisions du Stoglav au sujet de ia peinture d'images et les principes de
l'iconographie byzantine,” Orient et Byzance, Recueil à la mémoire de Th. Ouspcnsky I (Paris,
1930), 402.
19 N. K. Goleizovskii detects, in the attitude taken by the council on the subject of the
representability of the Deity, the influence of certain texts in the second and third treatises of
the Message to an Iconographer, that comment on the image of the Trinity and which justify,
according to him, “almost any representation of the Divinity” {op. cit., 228). If certain texts of
the third treatise permit such a conclusion, the second treatise categorically prevents it. We
have seen that a very clear line was drawn in it between prophetic visions and sensory
manifestations—elements that are totally confused in the third treatise. It is stated there
specifically that God “does not appear as He is, but as the viewer may see Him,” that is, in very
different ways. Such a commentary can indeed justify any representation of the Deity. It
should be added that, in spite of certain sometimes literal coincidences between the second
and third treatises, there is a clear difference between them not only in content but also in the
manner of exposition. In the one, such content is expressed briefly and with great precision; in
the other, with prolixity and emphatically. In the latter, the author tries hard to make his text
more pompous and to express his thought in a more sentimental, emphatic way, but the
thought itself loses clarity. This leads us to believe that these two texts were written by two
different authors.
296 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Annunciation. It was painted after the fire by iconographers from Pskov on

order from the archpriest Sylvester, the closest collaborator of Metropolitan
Macarius. This image could hardly remain unnoticed, especially since it was
to one of the themes of this same icon (“Come, O peoples, let us adore...”)
that the tsar referred to in his question concerning die representation of
non-saints. We must believe that die council had its reasons for “passing over
in silence” all iconography of the Holy Trinity aside from the Old Testament
Trinity. First, it is possible that neither the fathers of the council, nor Metro­
politan Macarius himself, had any clear concept about the subject of repre­
senting the Divinity. But then, it is not clear why, two years later, the same
Macarius would suddenly defend so harshly the representation of God the
Father. Certainly, his view on this question may well have changed. On the
other hand, some scholars believe that there was less than total unanimity on
all points between the council and the metropolitan.20 There may not have
been agreement on this point either. One may venture this hypothesis: did the
lack of precision of the conciliar judgments not derive from the feet that the
fathers could not decide whether to adopt the metropolitan’s attitude or to
challenge it direcdy, and that they were satisfied with merely making allu­
sions? On the other hand, the thinking of the council may have been
influenced by the third treatise of the Message to an Iconographer which, in
contrast to the second treatise, shows evidence of confusion and a lack of
clarity about the prophetic visions and the apparitions in the Old Testament.
At any rate, the inaccuracy of this text may have introduced uncertainty in the
argumentation of the councils, which clearly avoids naming an image that
seems to it incomprehensible.
The questions dealing with the very basis of iconography and with the
iconographers are grouped together in this same chapter XLIII. Here, the
essential principles seem to evanesce into secondary considerations: on
morality, on the supervision of painters, on their relationships with their
apprentices, and so forth.
The council required that icons be painted according to ancient
models,21 “in the image and likeness, according to the essence, by looking
20 For example, I. N. Zhdanov believed that Macarius did not exercise a great influence on the
decisions of the council. See N. Andreev, “Metropolitan Macarius and Religious Art* (in
Russian), Seminarium Konkokovianum VII (Prague, 1935), 239, note 59» also, G. Os­
trogorsky, “Les décisions du Stogjav,* Orient et Byzance (Paris, 1930), 402.
21 StoglavAW, 118,133,134.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 297

at images by ancient painters, and by keeping to good models.” Such rules

are repeated on several occasions and in various contexts. A new icon must
present its prototype, the person or what is represented (be “in the
image”), the similarity of features (“in the likeness”), and finally, must be
“according to the essence”—since an Orthodox icon should correspond
to the Tradition, to the iconographie canon established by the Church.22
In art history, such demands—to follow the ancient iconographers, “not
to invent anything according to one’s imagination,” also “not to depict
the Godhead according to one’s own concepts”—are usually viewed as an
expression of the council’s tendency to restrict the painter’s creative
initiative, even as an obligation to copy the models literally. One scholar
goes so far as to say: “At the council of 1551, named Stoglav, the decision
was made to introduce painting manuals—stereotyped models for the
representation of saints and of entire compositions,” by means of which,
it is argued, the Church “endeavored to subordinate art to its regulations
and established canons.”23 It is true that iconographie manuals
(podUnniki) were widely disseminated after the Stoglav. However, such
“collections adapted to those of the saints’ lives arranged by month
appeared only at the end of the sixteenth century, and were never either
printed or approved legally.”24 The content of such manuals was deter­
mined by the printers themselves, not by the church authorities. They
were books of drawings, of schematic models, serving as documentation
used at various epochs by iconographers. Such sketches had nothing to do
with the artistic quality of their works.25 Their role was purely informa­
tional: they imparted data, and anyone who knows their content and is
not blinded by prejudice certainly sees their place in the creative process.
They prescribed nothing. They presented models, that is, the schematic
characteristics of the saint (Fig. 38) or the event to be depicted, and

22 While speaking of ancient models, in chapter 27, the council ordered that old icons are to be
cared for, preserved and repaired (pp. 82-3).
23 N. E. Mneva, History ofMuscovite Russia (in Russian) (Moscow, 1965), 115. We have not
found any such decision in the 1890 Moscow edition of the conciliar decisions, nor is it found
in the Duchesne translation, Le Stoglav (Paris, 1920), which uses several editions of these texts.
Moreover, the "inventions” and "imaginations” the council refers to are not deviations from
artistic models but from the doctrinal foundations of the Orthodox image. As we have seen,
they are concerned only with certain iconographie subjects, even their details: errors in the
iconography of the Trinity, and “the representation of the Deity.”
24 A. I. Nekrasov, Figurative Art in Ancient Russia (in Russian) (Moscow, 1937), 316.
25 A. Grabar, Byzance (Paris, 1963), 54.
298 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

38. Page from painters’manual.

The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 299

thereby made the painter’s work easier by preserving it from historical

errors concerning any given person—in sum, they prevented the iconog-
rapher from falsifying the memory and the tradition of the Church.
We will return later to die issue of the connection between rules and
artistic creation. Suffice it to say here that neither manuals (podlinniki) nor
the ancient models the painters had to follow could limit the freedom of
their creation.26 The obligation to conform to ancient models is perfecdy
normal and in keeping with the foundations of sacred art. It has always
existed in the Church. “Iconographers paint icons modelled not on poor
images, but on beautiful ones that are noted for their antiquity,” Theodore
the Studite wrote in the ninth century.27 Painting according to ancient
models does not mean reproducing them literally. Such a requirement—
even when it is expressed in a still more emphatic manner as, for example,
in the Russian Pedalion (The Rudder: Kormchaia Knigd) cannot harm the
painter’s creativity in the least. We know that the Stoglav frequendy referred
to this work while pondering various issues, perhaps including the quesdon
about iconographers and about the painting of icons. At any rate, there is such
a similarity between the Pedalion and the conciliar decisions that it is
impossible not to see a direct influence. The Rudder states: “Let the
iconographer’s skills resemble those of the ancient models, the first painters,
men of divine wisdom.. .Let him not add anything new himself, not even
an iota; even if he thinks he knows many things, let him not dare transgress
the tradition of the Fathers.”28 The request “not to add an iota” and the
council’s “not to invent anything according to one’s imagination” essen­
tially mean the same thing. What they proscribed is not artistic creation but
departures from “the tradition of the Fathers,” that is, from Orthodox
doctrine, even if such departures seem inspired by the painter’s great
knowledge. During its entire existence, sacred art has always obeyed “rules

26 It should be added that no manual can keep a painter from making alterations if his creativity
deviates from the Tradition of the church.
27 Ad moniales, PG 99:1176.
28 The chapter from which this passage is borrowed presents an almost complete analogy with
the decisions of the Hundred Chapters Council concerning iconographers (their moral
caliber, and so on). The text of the Pedalion used by the council was hand-written and was
composed by Metropolitan Macarius just before the council. The chapters that deal with icon
painting were not part of the printed edition of the Pedalion, but are (bund in the iconographie
Manual (podlinnity of Bolchakov, which appeared under the direction of Uspenskii (Moscow,
1909).
300 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

and canons,” or more precisely, it is always guided by them. It has never

been hampered by them, as this art itself clearly demonstrates.29
Aside from concrete issues and iconographie principles, the Stoglavs
essential prescriptions aimed at raising the level of quality of iconography
and the moral level of iconographers. Chapter XLIII, the longest, is
devoted to these two topics. It sometimes deals in great detail with the
most varied aspects of life and daily relationships. Unlike what happened
with matters of principle, here the council expressed itself in a much more
concrete and prolix fashion.
At this time, there was undoubtedly intense artistic activity, particularly in
the towns and villages removed from the cultural centers. The council said:
Let those who up to now have painted icons without having learned to, who
paint fancifully, without either practice or conformity to the image.. .be obliged
to learn from good masters. Whoever, by the grace of God, will start painting
according to the image and likeness, let him paint. Let the one from whom God
has withheld such a gift abandon painting altogether, so that the name of God
may not be blasphemed by such paintings?0

Taking into account the overall situation in which sacred art found itself in
the middle of the sixteenth century, the Hundred-Chapters Council endeav­
ored to place it under the supervision of the higher church authorities.
In all towns and villages and monasteries of their diocese, the archbishops and
bishops will inspect the icon painters and will personally examine their
works...The archbishops and bishops will personally assess the painters they
have charged with supervising the others, and will control them rigorously?1

The council imposed supervision not only over the quality of sacred art,
but also over the iconographers moral life. It ordered bishops to forbid the
painting of icons by any painter, master or apprentice, who “does not live a
well-ordered life, but lives in impurity and in disorderly fashion?2
The control by the church hierarchy over the painting of icons,
established by the Stoglav, has been judged in many different ways by
29 It is fair to say that certain present-day scholars have a rather “original” concept of the canon,
which corresponds neither to its sense nor to its purpose. Since they inevitably and constandy
are faced with facts that contradict their view, they explain such facts as so many “aberrations*
(“ in spite of the canon”), as resistance to the “constraining role of the Church,” and so forth.
30 StogUvt 135.
31 /W, 136.
32 Ibid., 135. At the same time, the council pays high regud to the iconographers who live up to such
demands: they “will be highly respected and will receive special esteem...The great lords and the
people of humble estate will honor such painters because they paint venerable icons* (p. 136).
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 301

scholars. Some considered such a measure perfecdy normal and rational,

the clergy being more able, if not to evaluate an icon’s worth then at least
to decide on its Orthodoxy or heterodoxy, on its conformity to the
teaching of the Church or the lack of it.33 N. Kondakov, by contrast, held
the opposite view: “The degree to which spiritual censorship, established
on principle, yielded nothing was, and still is, not worth talking about.
Indeed, it was clear to all that the bishops were able neither to keep a close
watch over iconography nor to teach iconographers anything.”34 And
indeed, the situation did not change in the least, neither immediately after
the council nor subsequently. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, a whole series of authors describe the situation in the same
terms as did the Stoglav, and they repeat the same demands.35
In the decisions of the Stoglav, “one no longer really sees that the work
of the painters is viewed as spiritual asceticism, which was typical of the
Message to an IconographerS36 Nor does one see in them the view of the
icon held by the author of the Message. He addressed himself to men who
shared his views on the spiritual praxis of hesychasm, and, more generally,
to all those to whom they served as models, people whose life conformed
to theirs. By contrast, the council addressed itself to the great number of
contemporary iconographers and their apprentices. It only gave them a
minimum of moral rules, and established norms concerning their faithful­
ness to those rules and the production of icons. As we have seen, it was
precisely in Russia that what constituted the very heart of Byzantine
theology found its more complete incarnation, as much in life as in art.
Russian theology expressed itself not so much in words as through the
image, in an existential fashion, so to speak But now this practical
application of theology began to weaken: the spiritual attitude concerning
the icon and its creation that characterized the Message to an Iconographer

33 G. Ostrogorsky, “Les décisions du Stogjav,“ Orient et Byzance (1930), 407; N. Pokrovskii,

Monuments» 350.
34 The Russian Icon (in Russian), part I (Prague, 1931), 44.
35 J. Vladimirov, Symeon of Polotsk, Tsar Alexis, as we shall see. At the time of Peter the Great,
the author I. T. Posochkov wrote: “From now on, illiterate peasants should be strictly
forbidden to paint icons without having received written permission.“ After describing the
very low level of icon painting, he concludes, “This is why in this domain more than in that of
the other arts, tight supervision should be established“ (A Book About Wealth and Poverty [in
Russian] [Moscow, 1951], 146).
36 N. Golcizovskii, “The Message to an Iconographer»1* Vizant. Vremen. 26 (Moscow, 1965), 225.
302 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

is altogether absent from the decisions of the Stoglav. Theoretically, the

council formulated reasonable demands—“to follow the ancient iconog­
raphe«,” that is, to conform to the tradition. But deprived of its vital
foundation, spiritual asceticism, such a demand degenerated into mere
outward regulations that were imposed and accompanied by controls.
The Hundred-Chapters Council may appropriately be described not
by what it was, but by what it lacked. It deviated from the essential. This
council was certainly faithful, at least in theory, to everything Orthodox
theological thought demanded of sacred art; but its judgments on specific
iconographie subjects, like those on matters of principle (creation, the
moral life, and so forth) lacked what was essential, an exposition of
theological reasons. In principle, from the viewpoint of the Church, a
reference to the traditions in the form of models “of great painters” was
certainly normal—references to ancient classical masters always carried
great weight—but the way this principle was understood and the lack of
any criticism of existing models led the council to promote passive
conservatism, instead of creativity within the Tradition.37 If, on the one
hand, it made a solid effort to prevent the play of the imagination, on the
other hand, it did not take notice, or seemed not to take notice, of the
existence of eccentricities in a whole series of new compositions. Hence
the contradiction between the council’s theoretical decisions and its prac­
tical attitude toward existing icons. Indeed, an entire series of images
painted during this era, and which were at the council’s disposal, con­
tained embellishments by Russian painters, as we shall see. These fantasies
were based not only on Byzantine models, but also on direct borrowings
from Roman Catholicism. The Stoglav passively adopted all such depar­
tures from Orthodox doctrine—deviations which it was precisely sup­
posed to correct. It thus allowed them to pursue their course and by doing
so, it ratified “wavering morals.”
The Hundred-Chapters Council appears as a phenomenon typical of an
epoch of transition. It had serious consequences for the subsequent path of
sacred art, not only in Russia but in the Orthodox Church in general. It reflected
the theological powerlessness of its epoch, when the criterion ofauthenticity was
37 Similar measures were adopted by the Stoglavregarding liturgical music. In this area, as in the
case of all ecclesiastical life, the council, using the same terminology, refers to existing
practice—thus legitimizing all the deviations which existed in this period (sec N. D.
Uspenskii, The Art ofAncient Russian Chant [Moscow, 1965]» 204.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 303

replaced by conservatism, and the living, creative tradition by superficial

regulations. The innovations, passively accepted by the Stoglav, continued to
spread, and this led to opposition on the part of those who continued to
view the icon in the traditional Orthodox fashion. Beginning with the
second half of the sixteenth century, discussions started on the content of
sacred art and the direction it should take. As we shall see, the ideas
expressed in these discussions were symptomatic of the changes that were
taking place.

The Council Of1553-1554: The Trial OfJohn Viskovatyi

Two years after the Hundred-Chapters Council, the case of John
Viskovatyi, Chancellor of the Foreign Office WMh38 required conciliar
deliberations known under the title, Instruction or Document on the Blas­
phemous Writings and the Doubts About the Holy and Venerable Icons of
Chancellor John Mikhailov, Son of Viskovatyi, in the Year 1553.39
What led Viskovatyi to speak out and begin discussions with Metro­
politan Macarius were the new icons painted after the fire of 1547 by
iconographers from Pskov in the Cathedral of the Annunciation, as well
as the wall paintings done in the palace of the tsar.
In the year 7062 [1553], on October 25, a discussion took place between the
sovereign tsar and John Vasilievich, the crown prince, sole Ruler of all Russia,
and his father, Macarius, Metropolitan of all Russia, the archbishops and bishops,
the nobles and the entire holy assembly.. .The metropolitan said, “Sovereign, here
in Moscow, your capital, four iconographer-syndics have been appointed, in
conformity with the conciliar decision [by the Stoglai}. They were charged with
38 “Diak* means civil servant, in this instance, Minister of Foreign Affairs. His trial has been
edited (in Russian) by O. Bodianskii in Chteniia imperat. Ob. Istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, Bk
2 (Moscow, 1858), based on the Volokolamsk monastery MS. This is the edition we have used
here. The best and most detailed work on the subject is that of N. Andreev, “The Trial of Diak
Viskovatyi1* (in Russian), SeminariumKondakovianumN (Prague, 1932). See also, “Metropol­
itan Macarius and Religious Art* (in Russian), Semin. Kondak. VII (Prague, 1936), and “The
Monk Zenobius of Otniaon Iconography* (in Russian), Semin. Kondak.WW (Prague, 1935).
Viskovatyi’s trial is sometimes attributed (twice by I. Grabar, Schweinfurth, Alpatov and
Brunov) to the Hundred-Chapters Council, which is not correct. As N. Andreev points out,
the mistake comes from an error in chronology. The council which studied this case convened
at the end of 1554.
39 Of humble origin, having arrived at the high position of Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Viskovatyi was an exceptional person: “In Moscow at the time, he was second to none*; “His
intelligence, and his art as an unlearned Muscovite, amazed the foreign ambassadors,* sated
Russow, author of the Livonian Chronicle, (Andreev, op. cit., 217).
304 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the supervision ofall the iconographers, so that they paint according to the image
and likeness.. .At this moment, chancellor John Mikhailov said, “It is not proper
to represent either the invisible Godhead or the bodiless powers, as we see it done
these days in the icon ‘I believe in one God.”* When the metropolitan asked,
“How should this be painted?”, John replied, “One should write on this icon
the words, ‘I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth, and of all things visible and invisible.* Only the elements which follow
this may one paint and represent iconographically.” The metropolitan abrupdy
replied, “You speak and reason falsely on the holy icons. Such reasoning is the
heresy of the Galatians who prohibit the painting in the flesh of the invisible
bodiless powers, on earth.” Also, “You are not allowed to express any opinion
about God and the divine actions...You should mind your own business, the
one entrusted to you. And do not lose your manuscript.”40

In spite of this reply by the metropolitan, Viskovatyi did not keep quiet.
In November he brought him a manuscript “of his thoughts and opinions
about the holy icons,” asking that it be examined by the council then
being held in Moscow to deal with the heresy of Matvei Bashkin.41
Viskovatyi formulates the reason that had prompted him to speak in
the following words:
Lord, all my zeal has to do with the fact that the image of our Lord and Savior
according to His economy in the flesh, as well as those of His All-pure Mother
and of the saints that were well pleasing to Him, have been removed. Personal
comments on the parables have been put in their places. It seems to me, Lord,
that this expresses individual understanding, and not Holy Scripture.42

Viskovatyi ends the explanation of his doubts by asking the metropolitan

for pastoral directives: “I bow before you, my Lord. Consider all my
doubt, and instruct me in what is or is not according to God.”43
The icons which contained the subjects that offended Viskovatyi and led
to his protest were a series of new, symbolic compositions on the Creed, the
Trinity and its works, the eternal Counsel, and the quadripartite icon in
40 O. Bodianskii, op. cit., 1-2.
41 The council was not “summoned because of the trial of Viskovatyi,* as N. Pokrovskii and N.
E. Mneva state in The Art ofMuscovite Russia. (Moscow, 1965), 116. Sec also, Y. A. Lebedev,
Ancient Russian Art ofthe Tenth to the Seventeenth Century (in Russian) (Moscow, 1962), 186.
42 O. Bodianskii, op. cit., 11.
43 IbuL, 12. When Viskovatyi brought his manuscript “and asked the metropolitan and the entire
holy assembly to be so good as to verify it according to Holy Scripture,* Macarius sent “this
manuscript... to the autocrat of all Russia, asking what the pious tsar ordered him to do about this.*
The tsar sent the manuscript back to the metropolitan and ordered the council to discuss it, and to
let him know the result (pp. 2-3).
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 305

the Cathedral of the Annunciation, which can still be found at the same
place and included four subjects: “God rested on the seventh day,”
“Only-begotten Son and Word of God,” “Come, O people, let us adore
God in three Persons,” and “In the tomb, in your flesh (Fig. 39).”
Viskovatyi characterized some themes of these icons as “inventions,”
others as “Latin concepts.” What was of concern was the image of God
the Father, that of Christ “in the image of David,” that of the young
Christ as a warrior or naked, covered by the wings of the cherubim, and
also that of the image of the Holy Spirit, “standing up, alone, in the
likeness of an incomprehensible bird.” These were precisely the subjects
that the Stoglav had avoided, either by using imprecise terms or by passing
over them in silence.
In his manuscript, Viskovatyi based and developed his point of view on
the iconographie subjects that had offended him. “It is by basing himself on
this manuscript that the metropolitan gave his answers to the council.”44

Most of the contested subjects are no longer reproduced today and

have lost their topicality. Nonetheless, they reveal the changes that were
taking place in Russian sacred art, and this specific cast of mind that
corresponded to the decay in the Church’s awareness, of which we are not
yet entirely free in our day.
The dispute began with one of Viskovatyi’s most important points: “It
is not proper to portray the invisible Deity.” This had never been required
of the icon, and the icon had never dared to do so. Now, however,
iconographers began to depict the invisible Deity according to the vision
of the prophet Daniel45 in the icon depicting the Creed, or more precisely,
its first article (God the Father), as well as in other compositions.
We have seen that the issue of representing the Deity had already been
raised at Stoglav, though in a very imprecise form. The council had
spoken out strongly against iconographers who, “according to their own
imaginings,” had portrayed the Deity in a form other than Christ, who is
God representable in His flesh. If, in terms of chapter XLI1I, it is possible
44 Ibid., 3
45 “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of
heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days...* (Dn 7:13). “I beheld till the thrones were cast
down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his
head like pure wool* (7:9).
306 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

39. The four-part icon from Cathedral of Annunciation, Moscow.

The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 307

to conclude that this text was directed against the image of God the
Father, here, by contrast, there can be no doubt. What had remained
imprecise at the Stoglav, insufficiendy expressed or simply passed over in
silence, now came to the fore without ambiguity. The metropolitan and
the council now began explicitly to defend the image of God the Father
and the subjects which represented the “imaginative embellishments” that
had theoretically been condemned two years earlier by the Stoglav.46

The metropolitan began his defense of the contested image with a

long, detailed list of examples found in various churches. Referring to
these models, he stressed their antiquity and above all their Greek origin.
In order to confirm the legitimacy of the image of God the Father, he
appealed to the testimony of the Athonite monks present at the council:
there are twenty-one great monasteries on the Holy Mountain, “and in
the holy churches it is impossible not to see the painted image of Lord
Sabaoth or the Holy Trinity.”47 “In our Russian land,” the metropolitan
concluded, “ever since our enlightenment by holy baptism, the painters
do not represent the Godhead invisible according to His essence, but they
portray and represent according to the prophetic visions and the ancient
Greek models.”48 But “Viskovatyi’s 'doubts’ centered precisely on the
point that one should not paint according to prophecies, which have already
been fulfilled and surpassed, but according to die Gospels, i.e., according to
the fullness of the historical Incarnation.”49 According to Viskovatyi, the
prophetic visions could not serve as models for depicting God. The Old
Testament knew no direct, divine revelation; and the prophets “did not all
receive the same vision, which was not of the essence, but of the glory” of
God.50 Viskovatyi drew a sharp demarcation line between the revelations
of the Godhead in the prophetic visions, and the revelation fulfilled in the
46 The iconographie subject of God the Father will be studied singly, in conjunction with its
proscription by the Great Council of Moscow. Here we limit ourselves to a brief analysis of the
argumentation of both parties.
47 O. Bodianskii, op. cit., 14.
48 Ibid.
49 Georges Florovsky, Ways ofRussian Theology, Part One, trans. R. L Nichols (Belmont, MA:
Nordland Publishing Co., 1979), 30.
50 O. Bodianskii, op. cit., 7. It is accurate that the Old Testament revelations, even when they take
concrete forms as, for example, with the prophet Isaiah, are visions not of the essence but of the
divine glory: *1 saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne* (6:1); “my eyes have seen the King,
Yahweh Sabaoth* (6:5). This revelation is explained by Christ Himselfas a vision of the divine gjory
(Jn 12:41).
308 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Incarnation. “Everything that is old has passed away; everything is new.”51

He did not deny the scope of the Old Testament, but placed it in the
general perspective of the Church: the latter lovingly accepts the Old
Testament préfigurations, but prefers their fulfillment, grace and truth.
To support his position, he referred to the eighty-second canon of the
Council in Trullo, to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, to the Synodikon
of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, and to the writings of John of Damascus.
Viskovatyi contrasted the Old Testament préfigurations with their
fulfillment: the true vision of God, the appearance of the Son of God in
the flesh. In the prophetic visions, including that of David, the Church
sees manifestations of the Word of God announcing His Incarnation (see,
for example, at Vespers on the Sunday of the Patriarchs, the fourth
sticheron after “Lord, I call upon thee”). The significance of the prophetic
visions was precisely to be “types and shadows,” stilled by the appearance
of the authentic human image of God. This does not preclude the Old
Testament prohibition of the image: God remains unrepresentable, “for
no one has seen God anywhere.” Only in His Incarnation is God visible,
and thus portrayable. “Who can make an imitation of God who has
neither flesh, nor a description, nor an image?”, Viskovatyi asked, refer­
ring to St John Damascene. This is why the representations of God the
Father, who did not become man, can only be based on the imagination;
they “are not based on any witness.”
In the image of God the Father, Viskovatyi saw an attempt to represent
the unrepresentable divine essence. He says this in his self-criticism: “I
believed that they had represented the unrepresentable Deity.”52 The
prophets did not see the divine essence, he argued; and this is what
allowed the metropolitan to refute Viskovatyi’s main reproach of the
iconographers, that of painting according to the imagination. They repre­
sent God, Macarius emphasized, not according to the essence, but accord­
ing to the visions. “The Lord Sabaoth is depicted according to His
humanity, as he was seen by the saints and the holy Fathers.”53
As with the image of God the Father, Viskovatyi saw flights of fancy in
51 Ibid, 6.
52 Ibid., 32.
53 Ibid, 36. The metropolitan’s argument seemed so irrefutable that it appears, quite recogniz­
ably, in the arguments of all the defenders of the image of God the Father. It has lost none of
its value, even in our time.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 309

the representations of the Son of God other than in His human form. He
stated: “I have seen that, while depicting the creation of heaven and earth,
that of Adam and others, they painted our Lord Jesus Christ in the form
of an angel.”54 “Holy Scripture convinces me that the Word of God, our
Lord Jesus Christ, is truly visible to us in His fleshly economy. But as born
of the Father before all ages, He is neither visible nor representable.”55 To
this, Metropolitan Macarius replied, “While portraying the creation of
Adam and of all creation, Christ our God, invisible according to His
divinity, is represented on icons in the flesh, under the form of a winged
angel according to the prophecy of Isaiah, the Angel of the Great Counsel,
for God is with us...”56 According to Viskovatyi, God the Son can only
be represented in “the economy of the flesh,” His humanity. Only
through such an image can He be known. But according to the metropol­
itan, He can also be represented “in the flesh, in the form of an angel.” To
support his contention, he referred to the icon of the Holy Trinity where
the Three that appeared to Abraham are portrayed “in their human
form...with wings, according to the great Dionysius.”57 Viskovatyi was
troubled by the image of Christ in the form of an angel: it could be
interpreted as if Christ had assumed the angelic as well as the human
nature, or even as proclaiming the superiority of the angelic order over the
Incarnation.58 It is true that certain Old Testament texts speaking of the
Messiah call him “Messenger,” in Greek, dyyeXoç (angel). Thus in Isaiah,
He is the “Angel of the Great Counsel”; in Malachi, “the Angel of the
Covenant” (3.1). But the name “angel” refers to His ministry, not to His
nature. He is the divine Messenger (angel) because he became incarnate.
The Messiah is known only in His human aspect, not in an angelic form.
Furthermore, if the Word of God “by whom all things were made” is
depicted, in His creative act (the creation of the world), in the form of an
angel, then the angelic order is truly considered as superior to the Incar­
nation. In other words, the One who was incarnate and suffered is not
considered to be the Creator. Taking into account heresies and “unstable
minds,” Viskovatyi could well have concrete reasons to justify such fears.
54 ZW, 10.
55 Ibid,*.
56 Ibid, 22. “For unto us a child is bom, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be
upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor..." (Is 9:6).
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid, 10.
310 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The metropolitan ’s reference to the image of the Old Testament

Trinity contradicted the perfecdy traditional decision of the Stoglav: the
inscription IC XC, the name of Jesus Christ, was identified as an error
when applied to an angel. The image of the Trinity is not that of the
persons of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit: it is that of the
tri-unity of God. This is why, for the Stoglav, the only possible inscription
on this icon could be the general name, “Holy Trinity.” What was at stake
here was the giving of the name of Christ to a symbolic image, that of an
angel, understood as a hypostatic image of the second person of the
Trinity before His Incarnation—an image, so to speak, parallel to His
human image. This clearly contradicted canon 82 of the Quinisext Coun­
cil (in Trullo), which prohibited the substitution of a personal image by a
symbolic one.
In the new iconographie subjects, Viskovatyi saw a move away from
the truth of the Gospel, a return to the Old Testament, to the prophetic
“types and shadows.” Referring to canon 82, he stated that it was not
proper to venerate the préfiguration more than the truth. If God is
portrayed according to the prophetic préfigurations in the same manner
as He is represented in the Incarnation, “the glory of the economy of our
Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh is diminished.”*9
Moreover, according to Viskovatyi, the icon must be iconographically
correct and recognizable in order for it to be an authentic witness: “In
order not to create controversy, things should be painted in the same
manner. There is one icon in the narthex and another one in the church.
The same subject is depicted on them, but from a different aspect.”60 (For
example, when the creation of the world is portrayed, Christ is sometimes
painted in the form of an angel, sometimes in that of the Ancient of
Days.) In other words, the painters extrapolated the visible or verbal
prophetic images from their context and adapted them in a different
manner to a different context, “according to their idea,” whereby their
witness lost its authenticity.
By contrast, in the eyes of the metropolitan, the portrayal of God
according to the prophetic visions had the same power of witness as the
image of the Incarnation. He saw no difference between them. Alongside
59 Ibid.,J.
60 Ibid..
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 311

the historic image of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, there can be a
representation of God because
He does not appear as He is, but in a manner accessible to the viewer. This is
why he appears old, then young, sometimes in the fire, sometimes in the cold,
in the wind or the water, or dressed in armor. He does not thereby change His
nature, but adapts His features to the different persons to whom He appears.61

This quotation, taken from the third treatise of the Message to an Iconog­
raphe^ indeed justifies any representation of the Godhead. According to
the metropolitan, “the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ in human form” not
only is not diminished thereby, but glorified even more. For him, the
incarnate Son of God is only one of the possible prototypes. His image is
on the same level as the prophetic visions, and thereby loses its unique­
ness. Macarius put all these on the same level: the icon-witness to the
Incarnation, the portrayal according to the prophetic préfigurations, the
illustration of biblical stories, the various transformations into images of
the symbolic-poetic descriptions of divine power, wrath, and so forth, as
well as the mystic, didactic allegories which he used abundantly to justify
the compositions objected to by Viskovatyi. His explanations and justifi­
cations illustrate even more abundantly than the images themselves the
changes that had occurred in the understanding of the icon. We find here
a complete break with the patristic underpinnings of the image.
Thus, in one of the icons (“God rested on the seventh day”), the body
of Christ on the cross is covered by the wings of the cherubim. Viskovatyi
saw in this “a Latin heretical concept.” He said, “In conversations with
Latins, I have often heard that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was
covered by the cherubim to avoid shame”62—to which the metropolitan
replied that a testimony coming from “enemies of the truth” is not
acceptable. “As for the wings of the cherubim in the Eternal Counsel,
there is sure and authentic witness from the great Dionysius.”63 Macarius
interpreted these two wings as the “logical and spiritual soul” of Christ by
which He redeemed our darkened, corrupted soul, just as by the flesh He
assumed, He redeemed the flesh of Adam.
61 Ibid., 19.
62 Ibid., 7. Viskovatyi’s position continually put him in touch with foreigners and, according to the
testimony of Heinrich Staden, “he was very hostile to Christians" (N. Andreev, “The Trial of Diak
Viskovatyi" [n Russian], Semin. Kondakov. V [Prague, 1932], 217). Indeed, the text indicates that
he dearly saw the dangers of corruption heterodox influences presented for Orthodoxy.
63 O. Budianskii, op. cit., 19*20.
312 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Another detail of the same icon is commented on by Macarius as

follows:
As for God the Father, the Lord Sabaoth who pours the content of a vessel on
the standing Christ in the Crucifixion [naked and covered by the wings of the
cherubim. L. O.], this prefigures holy baptism and the chalice He accepted in
His flesh at the Crucifixion, that is the vinegar mixed with gall. The prophet
Daniel witnessed to this when he said, “They gave me gall to eat and vinegar to
quench my thirst.” The four Gospel writers also testify to this.
Indeed, this composition is close to that of baptism, but since this
“préfiguration of baptism” is presented as an “aspersion,” that is, in “a
Latin form,” the metropolitan added comments about the chalice.
In the icon “Only-begotten Son and Word of God,” one detail repre­
sents “the young Jesus Christ, dressed in armor, holding a sword in one
hand, and seated on the cross.” The metropolitan explained this as
follows: “He will put on the armor of justice and a helmet. He will render
just judgment, and will whet his wrath against His opponents...whom
He will kill with the breath of His mouth.” In his comments, Macarius
referred to the prophets, the Book of Wisdom, the psalms and various
hymns, as well as to the commentary of John Chrysostom on Psalm 44
(“At Thy right hand stood the queen”). He supported his reflections by
the text already referred to, that of the third treatise in the Message to an
Iconographer.65
Thus, Viskovatyi attempted to clarify the meaning of the image, the very
intent of the new icons, and their compliance or non-compliance with
Orthodox tradition. By contrast, the metropolitan, as we have seen, was
satisfied with external signs, with references to words taken from “the divine
Scriptures.” As soon as Viskovatyi expressed his dissatisfaction with this
way of justifying these images, he was accused of “fantasies” for failing to
ground himself in the “divine Scriptures.” This literal correspondence of the
images with texts, even words, was constantly supported by references to
Greek models. For the metropolitan, the infallibility of the Greek iconogra-
phers was never in doubt. A painter himself, he had clearly understood the
psychology of these painters who worked according to accepted models,
without any verification or assessment.66
64 Ibid., 21.
65 Ibid., 19.
66 Sec N. Andreev, op. cit., 231, note 245.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 313

In some cases the metropolitan and the council agreed with

Viskovatyi, in particular on the issue of the hands of the crucified Christ
which were shown clenched. This image had to be modified.
As for Christ portrayed in the “image of David,” that is, wearing royal
vestments and the pontifical omophorionf7 no prophet, Viskovatyi main­
tained, had confessed the economy in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ in
the image of David. With regard to this image, as well as that of the Holy
Spirit, “represented alone in the form of an incomprehensible bird,” “of
whom he could not even think without being horrified,” the council
recognized that its grounding was inadequate. “We will search the
Scriptures for evidence on this subject. After conciliar discussion, we will
render our decision.”68 Apparently, no evidence for this image of the Holy
Spirit was found, for it disappeared, and we do not know what this
representation looked like.69
Aside from the issues raised in the manuscript, the metropolitan
replied to Viskovatyi’s oral protest against the depiction of the bodiless
powers. At the time of the chancellor’s first intervention, the
metropolitan’s reaction had been violent and enigmatic “You speak and
reason falsely about the holy icons. Such reasoning is the heresy of the
Galatians, who prohibit the painting in the flesh of the invisible bodiless
powers, on earth.”70 At the council, the metropolitan interpreted the
portrayal of the angelic choirs by references to Dionysius the Areopagite,
and other Fathers and prophets. It is generally admitted that in his protest
against the portrayal of “the Divinity and the bodiless powers,” Viskovatyi
understood by such bodiless beings the world of angels in general. This
conclusion is justified mainly on the basis of the metropolitan ’s reply. On
the other hand, it is true that, while quoting the decision of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council that enumerated the objects to be represented,
67 This image is undoubtedly due to a legend about the episcopacy of Christ, which appeared in
Russia precisely in the sixteenth century.
68 O. Bodianskii, op. cit.t 19.
69 As to the icon of Christ "with the features of David," it spread widely in the seventeenth
century under the names of "Christ the High Priest," "King of King?," and "The Queen stands
at Your right hand.”
70 See Andreev, op. cit., 233. There are various scholarly hypotheses about the enigmatic heresy
to which the metropolitan refers. Some scholars believe "that one should perhaps not look for
a specific meaning in the accusation of Metropolitan Macarius... What was essential was the
accusation of heresy; that such a heresy... never existed was of little importance* (N. Andreev,
ibid., 224, note 188).
314 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Viskovatyi omitted mention of the angels. In his manuscript, however, he

did not speak of the unrepresentability of the incorporeal beings; and
replying to the metropolitan at the council, he maintained that he did not
have in mind the representation of angels.
I only spoke to you, Master, of the one indivisible Godhead, not ofangels.. .Mas*
ter, you have now asked the bishops what I said, and they have told you that I
had spoken of the incorporeal beings and of angels. Now, Master, I do not
remember having said this. But if the bishops say so and I am guilty of this, I
ask you Master, for the love of God, to forgive me, together with the entire holy
assembly.71

There seems to be no reason to doubt the sincerity of Viskovatyi on this

matter.72

Aside from objecting to certain icons, Viskovatyi was offended by the

wall painting in the palace of the tsar where “the image of the Lord is
portrayed; and next to it is depicted a woman, in sleeveless garment, as if
she were dancing; above are the inscriptions ‘fornication,’ ‘jealousy,’ and
other mockeries.’’73 The context indicates that Viskovatyi was perturbed
not so much by the tasteless nature of such juxtaposition, and thus by the
lack of respect for the image of Christ, as by the fact that the image of
Christ “according to his human economy” was drowned here in allegories
and parables. As frequently happened, the metropolitan’s reply was lim­
ited to a detailed description of the subject of the decoration, supported
by a reference to the life of St Basil the Great.74
71 O. Bodianskii, op. tit., 33.
72 There certainly is no way one can conclude from the metropolitan's reply that Viskovatyi was
a “semi-iconoclast,” as V. Riabushinskii does in “Un tournant dans le développement de
l'iconographie russe au XVIe siècle: l'affaire du diak Viskovat,” Russie et Chrétienté, nos 3-4
(1948), 9. He detects in the words attributed to Viskovatyi “a departure from the spiritual and
a return to the corporeal.1*
73 O. Bodianskii, op. cit, 11.
74 “In the largest hall, he says, the Savior in heaven is painted in the middle, surrounded by
cherubim, with the inscription ‘Wisdom Jesus Christ'; to the Savior's right is a door with the
words: 1) courage, 2) intelligence, 3) purity, 4) justice; on His left, another door with the
words: 1) fornication, 2) folly, 3) impurity, 4) injustice; between the lower doors is a
seven-headed devil; above him stands Life holding a torch in its right hand, and in its left, a
lance; above all this stands an angel—the spirit of the fear of God. Behind the right door are
represented the foundations of the earth and sea and everything invisible in it, and then an
angel, the spirit of piety; around this are the four winds surrounded by water, above which is
the dry land... An angel, a spirit of great understanding, holds the sun; underneath him, to the
south, night hunts down day; still further down is virtue and an angel with the inscription, ‘zeal,'
together with jealousy, hell and a hare. On the left side behind the doors there is also the dry land
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 315

It is clear from the trial that, before going to the metropolitan,

Viskovatyi had for three years “shouted to the people,” that is, had openly
proclaimed what was false in these new icons. He probably began to
“shout” well before the Stoglav. He certainly made die mistake of not
addressing himself at once and direcdy to the metropolitan to tell him of
his doubts: it is for this that the latter reproached him.75

“Although a council charged him with heresy and disorderliness, it did

not give any satisfactory answer to his questions and bewilderments.”76 It
condemned him, describing his writings as “perverse and blasphemous.”
In January 1554, two meetings were devoted to his condemnation. Since
the council had been called to judge heretics, the case of Viskovatyi was
automatically put in the same context. The council neither studied nor
discussed: it denounced and accused. “As if they were out to confound
Viskovatyi at all cost, the ecclesiastical powers attached great importance
on which the Lord is painted in the form of an angel, holding a mirror and a sword; an angel
is putting a crown on His head; the entire scene carries the inscription: ‘bless the crown of the
year of your goodness.* Below, there is the wheel of the year with still another wheel; and to
the right are love, a hunter, and a wolf. On the left side, jealousy says to the hare, ‘jealousy is a
terrible evil which has begotten and produced fratricide.* Jealousy subs itself with a sword.
There is also death, and around all this is the dry land and angels who serve the surs** (ibùL,
27-8).
The metropolitan explained these composite paintings by means of the story of the
conversion to Christianity of Ebbulius, the tutor of St Basil the Great. However, as N.
Pokrovski i correctly observes, “This explanation... does not really explain any of the represent
utions mentioned** (op. cit).
75 In Viskovatyi*s behavior there ceruinly are things that are not clear. This has led some scholars
to suspect him of heresy, and to see in his intervention motives of a personal nature (hostility
toward Sylvester) or of political character (the struggle of political group surrounding the
tsar). It is possible that such considerations played a certain role in the discussions. However,
they should ceruinly not be viewed as the discussions' overriding concerns. What led
Viskovatyi to speak out was precisely the danger he saw to the purity of Orthodoxy.
“Viskovatyi’s ‘doubts* disclose a very profound and penetrating religious undersunding** (G.
Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Part One, trans. R. L. Nichols, 29)» which could be
prompted only by intense and sincere convictions of faith. Hence his obstinacy, his logic, and
the maturity of his theological argumenration. On the other hand, the position of Metropoli-
un Macarius in this affair is not very clear either. How can one explain the violence of this
“sweet and lovable bishop** (A. Kartashev, History of the Russian Church [in Russian], vol. 1
[Paris, 1959], 426), and his desire to condemn Viskovatyi at any price: Was his ideological attitude
in defense of new icons not also accompanied by personal interest? In this matter, he was a most
competent person: as an iconographer himself and a builder of churches, one who especially loved
the beauty of the Liturgy, he must at least have permitted the subjects of the new icons in the church
of the tsar, the Cathedral of the Annunciation. Indeed, he felt responsible for them.
76 G. Florovsky, Ways, 29.
316 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

to various secondary errors, in word choice or quotations. Using the great

weight of its authority, the council forced Viskovatyi to submit.”77
Despite all the respect due to Metropolitan Macarius, to his talents and his
remarkable and multiple activities, it must be said that the case of Chancellor
Viskovatyi leaves a hardly flattering impression of those who judged him. Even
before he began to answer the questions raised by Viskovatyi, the metropolitan
clearly took pains to discredit him by creating an unfavorable climate against
him. He tried to find out whether Viskovatyi acted alone or had accomplices.
He pointed out imprécisions, unfortunate or wrong expressions in his manu­
script, and he suspected willful errors in it, even though Viskovatyi recognized at
once that Macarius was right AU this, in connection with the trial of heretics
(Kossoi, Bashkin) cast a shadow over Viskovatyi

But the metropolitan’s stubbornness in defending the new trend in

iconography can certainly not be explained only by his desire to condemn
Viskovatyi for having caused trouble among the faithful. Nor can it be
explained only by the fact that a believing layman, who had intervened in
theological matters and had adopted a critical attitude, had vexed
Macarius. On several occasions, the latter repeated: “You are forbidden to
scrutinize matters of the Divinity and divine actions. You must only
believe and venerate the holy icons with fear.” This already shows a
Roman Catholic view of the Church, representing it as divided into a
“teaching Church” (ecclesia docens) and a “learning Church” (ecclesia
discens). But the real problem was undoubtedly that Macarius, in all his
sincerity, did not understand the essence of the issues raised by
Viskovatyi. In reality, two essentially different views of sacred art were
taking shape in the discussions that took place between them.

For Viskovatyi, all appreciation of iconography was based on the essen­

tial truths of Orthodoxy. He was far from being a conservative, “fiercely
attached to the past.”78
Viskovatyi did not defend the past, he defended “truth,” that is, iconographie
realism. His quarrel with Metropolitan Macarius was a clash of two religious and
esthetic orientations: traditional hieratic realism as opposed to a symbolism
nourished by a heightened religious imagination.79
TJ N. Andreev, “The Trial,” Semin. Kondak. V, 240.
78 N. Pokrovskii, Art, 335.
79 G. Floiovsky, Ways, 30.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 317

For the metropolitan and the council, the determining principle was the
practice existing in the Church, supported by a nebulous and powerless
theological argumentation, and also by references to Russian and Greek
monuments, used injudiciously and unscrupulously. In answering
Viskovatyi, Macarius constantly invoked the holy Fathers, but he had not
truly assimilated the spirit of their teachings. He limited himself to piling up
quotations, sometimes, as we have seen, only isolated words, provided there
was an outer correspondence to what was depicted. His entire argumenta­
tion showed a fidelity to the letter, but not to the patristic spirit.
The patristic foundation of the icon—to witness to the Incarnation,
that is, the realism of the Gospels, which is basic to Orthodox theology—
became blurred. It ceased playing its crucial and decisive role. The new
trend in iconography “constituted a break with hieratic realism and its
replacement by decorative symbolism or, more accurately, allegorism...
The decisive dominance of 'symbolism’ signified the decline of iconogra­
phy.”80 The focus shifted from the face or fact to be depicted to the
abstract idea. The theological and spiritual content gave way to intellectu­
alism and pictorial virtuosity. What found an ideological defender in the
person of Metropolitan Macarius was a deviation from sacred art; it was
this deviation that was defended by him and by the council. “In the
sixteenth-century atmosphere, charged with the electricity of Protestant­
ism and of free inquiry,”81 such a deviation proved to be fertile soil for
western influences. The case of Chancellor Viskovatyi represents the clash
between the traditional Orthodox understanding of the image and the
growing western influence. “Paradoxically, such ‘Westernism’ achieved
victory under the guise of‘antiquity’ and ‘conservatism.’”82
It must be said that Viskovatyi was neither the first nor the only one to
be perturbed by the “embellishments” of the iconographers.83 Similar
compositions had prompted doubts and discussions much earlier. Thus a
letter written by the interpreter Dimitrios Gerasimov to chancellor Mi­
so Ibid., 13.
81 A. Kartaschev, History, vol. 1,515.
82 G. Florovsky, Ways, 30.
83 A contemporary of Viskovatyi, Artemius the monk, abbot of the Monastery of the Trinity,
objected to the image of Sabaoth with the features of an old man because it was “western”
(Ustrialov, The History of Ivan the Terrible, the Prince Kurbsky [in Russian], 3rd cd., [St
Petersburg, 1869], 17-9); in 1592, the Brotherhood of Lvov did the same (A. I. Nekrasov,
Figurative Art [Moscow, 1937], 290).
318 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

chael Misiur-Munekhin at Pskov states how, since 1518 or 1519, a

composition similar to the ones contested by Viskovatyi had been submit­
ted to St Maximus the Greek for evaluation. At the time, it was “an
unusual image which was found nowhere in the Russian land except in
one city.” St Maximus replied that he had never seen anything like it
“anywhere,” and that the iconographers must have composed such an
image “on their own.” Apparendy, a written commentary had also been
submitted to him. He adopted a negative attitude towards icons of this
type. “To paint such images that scandalize the heterodox and our simple
Christians is most unnecessary”; one should “paint and venerate the
images that correspond to our feasts, established by the Fathers and the
councils.” Otherwise, “if anyone would want to paint images by borrow­
ing lines from Scripture, he could make an unlimited number of them.”
In this same letter Gerasimov added that, long before this, there had
already been a great discussion about this image at the time of Archbishop
Gennadius (archbishop from 1484 to 1504). A disagreement had arisen
between him and the iconographers of Pskov concerning their “incor­
rectly painted images.” The iconographers alleged that they painted im­
ages “according to the models of the masters with whom they had studied,
who reproduced Greek models.” They limited themselves to this vague
reference, “without submitting any documentation on this subject.” The
inhabitants of Pskov “then listened more to the iconographers than to the
archbishop.”
In the 1560s, about ten years after the discussion with Viskovatyi, a
similar composition was submitted to the monk Zenobius of Otnia for
evaluation.84 They asked him what he thought of the icon “God the
Father,” which some “did not accept for veneration, while others praised
it and said that it has been composed with profound wisdom.”85 Appar­
endy, the question must have been painfolly urgent, and, to judge from
the insistence of Zenobius’ interlocutors, it had lost nothing of its
acuteness since the discussion with Viskovatyi. “I beseech you, for the
84 According to tradition, Zenobius (d. 1568), a disciple of St Maximus the Greek, was a writer
and a polemicist of great authority among his contemporaries. The questions and Zenobius*
answers are included in his work, A Demonstration ofthe Truth to Those Who Asked About the
New Doctrine. A portion of it was later included in the collection of his works edited in
Moscow in 1642.
85 N. Andreev, “The Monk Zenobius of Otnia on Iconography” (in Russian), Semin. Kondak.
VIII (Prague, 1935), 268.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 319

love of your neighbor; had there been no quarrel about this icon, no one
would have brought this up. But since some do not accept this icon for
veneration, I beg you, speak.”86 Zenobius was undoubtedly not aware
of this icon, as he did not understand the question. “What is the icon
you call ‘God the Father? I do not understand? He was told that it
was an icon of “God the Father Sabaoth,” and was given a “commen­
tary,” that is, an explanatory description.
To judge from this “commentary,” the incriminated icon, based on a
combination of biblical texts, was a variant of the composition “Only-begot­
ten Son and Word of God,” which had earlier offended Viskovatyi. God the
Father was depicted on it as David, king and pontiff (“with a miter on his
head and an omophorion on his shoulders,” a sword in his iron-gloved hand),
the young Christ wearing armor, seated on the cross, and so forth.
Having listened to this commentary, Zenobius expressed himself
forcefully and unambiguously:
The model as well as the commentary on this icon are far removed from the
thought of the holy and apostolic Orthodox Church. They are totally alien to
faith and pious thought. They are a great blasphemy against the divine nature,
a lie about Jesus Christ.87

According to the commentary, Sabaoth was represented “as David,”

because the latter was an ancestor of Christ according to the flesh; he is
called “the ancestor of God,” and, in the Gospel, the Savior is often called
“Son of David.” Zenobius reacted to such confused reasoning by stating
that, according to the same line of thought, one should represent God the
Father as Abraham. An image of Sabaoth resembling David is “a blas­
phemy against the glory of God. If a corruptible man, bom and mortal,
has to be viewed as the origin of the One who is without beginning, this
would be an impiety that has not yet been found in any heresy.”88
Zenobius sarcastically noted that “if God had been represented as king
and pontiff, to whom would he, as bishop, have to address himself, since
He himself is God the Father?”89 In general, “this icon in the likeness of
David corresponds to nothing in Holy Scripture, whether apostolic or
prophetic, or even in the Gospel itself. Rather, that image of God the
86 Ibid. t 27
87 ZW, 269.
88 Ibidt note 65.
89 Ibid., 290.
320 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Father as David, and the image of Christ as David, was composed on the
basis of numerous heresies.”90 We remember that what had prompted
Viskovatyi’s protest was precisely the image of Christ in the form of
David. In his rebuttal, Zenobius referred to canon 82 of the Council in
Trullo. As for the details of the image, in particular the iron glove and
sword, he said: “It is not proper to represent God the Father, incorporeal
and invisible, who brought all things from nothingness into being, as an
avenger.” If this is how “the power of the punishment of God” had to be
“portrayed on icons,” then one would have to “represent the bowels of
God in the form of a lute or that of a threatening bear” on the basis of
texts such as “my bowels shall sound like a harp on Moab,” or “I will be
for them like a devouring bear.”91 Zenobius said nothing about the very
principle of whether or not it is possible to represent God the Father; he
limited himself strictly to the concrete question that had been submitted
to him. Nonetheless, from his surprise and disapproval, one may conclude
that an image of the “incorporeal and invisible” God the Father in human
appearance was to him utterly inconceivable.
Zenobius condemned the representation of the young Christ, seated
on the cross, a sword in His hand, as an arbitrary modification of the
Gospel record: “Not one of the theologians has presented, and none of the
Fathers has celebrated a Christ who vanquished hell by descending from
the cross, wearing iron armor and a copper helmet”; likewise, “the young
Christ seated on the cross is alien to Orthodox thought and is a diabolical
blasphemy.”92 Indeed, in this representation one does not see the Chris­
tian concept of the supreme humiliation of the cross as a victory. The
victory of the cross is depicted by means of weaponry, and the realism of
the Gospel is replaced by allegorism.
Zenobius objected with no less indignation to another detail of the same
icon: a crucified seraphim (“as deriving from a heresy,” Maxim the Greek
had said on the same subject) and cherubim of whom the commentary
spoke as follows: “the white cherubim is His [that is, Christ’s] holy soul.
The two red cherubim are the word and the spirit.” All this probably
represented a development of the same subject already commented on by
90 ZW,271.
91 Ibid., 270, note 69.
92 I. Mansvetov, “The Crucifixion Represented on a Spoon of the Monastery of St Antony in
Novgorod* (in Russian), Trudy Mask. Ob.t vol. 4 (Moscow, 1874), 44.
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 321

Metropolitan Macarius. Some scholars speculate that the crucified cheru­

bim was a variant of the vision of Francis of Assisi on Mt Alvemo.93
However, as G. Florovsky believes, this could equally have resulted from the
influence of German mysticism. In the fourteenth century, the image is seen
in Suso, the well-known Roman Catholic mystic who had become highly
influential, especially beginning with the fifteenth century. His mystic-erotic
works, with his own illustrations, were certainly known to the iconographers
of Pskov, who had close connections with the West
Having analyzed the details of the incriminated iconographie subject
point by point, Zenobius found in it traces of Gnosticism, Manichaeism,
and Sabellianism. He stated that the entire composition was the outcome
of “heretical thinking, of the deviation of mad frenzy.” “I reject all this
according to the rule of the Sixth Ecumenical Council,” he wrote.94
Zenobius did not speak of the western origin of certain details in the
compositions which he rejected. Unlike Viskovatyi, he may simply not
have know their origin. In his judgment of principle concerning the icon,
he displayed a strong, unwavering fidelity to the patristic tradition. In his
rebuttals he relied especially on the decision of the Quinisext Council: the
council has ordained “that icons be painted according to grace and truth,”
he said, to commemorate “the life of the Lord in the flesh, His salutary
passion and death, the divine deliverance thus given to the world.”95
The appearance and above all the wide dissemination of new “theologi­
cal didactic” compositions is generally interpreted by scholars as one of the
means used by the Church in its struggle against heresies. However, we find
no confirmation of this in contemporary documents. Not one of the
anti-heretical writings composed during this period warrants such a conclu­
sion. Such subjects are missing from the enumeration ofwhat is depicted on
the icons made by St Joseph of Volokolamsk, the great enemy of heretics. If
the intent of such images was to fight heresy, it is strange that such fierce
opponents of heresy as Gennadius, Bishop of Novgorod, or St Maximus the
Greek adopted such a negative attitude toward them. Even when defending
such compositions, Macarius himself did not view them as anti-heretical
93 L. Mastulevich, “The Chronology of the Reliefs of the Cathedral of St Dimitrius in Vladimir”
(in Russian), Ezhegodnik Rossiiskogo Institute Istorii isk,” vol. 1 (St Petersburg-Moscow, 1922),
quoted by N. Andreev, “The Trial,” 235-6.
94 I. Mansvetov, op. cit., 44 and N. Andreev, “Zenobius the Monk,” 274.
95 N. Andreev, ibid, 274.
322 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

weapons. What could such “mystic-didactic” compositions teach or

prove? This is all the more difficult to admit since even then no one could
understand them without special explanations. “There is no inscription
on them,” Viskovatyi told the council;
“Our Lord Jesus Christ is portrayed in the form of an angel, or seated on the
cross wearing armor; or one sees the Eternal Counsel—all this without an
inscription.” The metropolitan told John, “There certainly are inscriptions on
all these holy icons. On the Eternal Counsel is written ‘the Lord Sabaoth,* and
the image of the crucified Christ in the lap of the Father carries the inscription
‘Jesus Christ.’” And John said, “My Lord, I have indeed seen the inscriptions
‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘Sabaoth’ on all these icons; but there is no written explanation
of these parables, and no one of those I asked knew anything about it.”96

This dialogue illustrates how impossible it was to find one’s way through
such compositions without an explanation, or to see the meaning of what
was represented. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, all these
subjects had become so common that they are viewed as normal phenom­
ena even in our day. Thus, in Lebedev’s The Science ofthe Liturgy in the
Orthodox Church, one reads about the sixteenth-century representations,
The pastors of the Russian Church have always accepted and approved such
representations not only because of their inner meaning, but also because they
saw in them a system of teaching through the image, and because the essential
symbols that are part of the composition of such images have been used in the
Greek church since ancient times.97

As we can see, this last argument is the same as that used by Metropolitan
Macarius: the practice of the Greek church is a criterion of truth. However,
the “inner meaning” of a great number of these images reveals an incredible
amount of embellishment and is expressed in a choice of symbols and
allegories so “profound” that it not only did not form “a system of teaching
through the image” but remained simply incomprehensible. Hence the pro­
fusion of inscriptions on such icons in the second half of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. “Without them, such icons would have remained
incomprehensible,” a nineteenth-century author stated. The meaning and the
content of these images were simply inaccessible to the people. “Experience
has shown that icons without inscriptions became the object of various
commentaries that often caused the people to become agitated.”98But inscrip-
96 “The Trial,* op. cit., 35.
97 (In Russian), Part One (Moscow, 1900), 128.
98 la. Lebedinskii, “The Measures Taken by the Russian Government to Improve Iconography in the
The Muscovite Councils ofthe 16th Century 323

tions were not always the solution. Even a man as cultivated, and a
theologian of such repute, as Metropolitan Philarct of Moscow wrote on
the subject of the icon “the Burning Bush”: “In the composition of this icon
quite a few things seem incomprehensible.”99 One can easily imagine what
this “system of teaching through the image” would produce among the simple
believers.
It is certainly possible that heresies were somehow linked to these
“symbolic” icons. It is a matter, however, not of polemical intent, but
rather of a clear inner affinity. The creators of the new icons were mystics
no less pretentious and nebulous than the Judaizers themselves. Both were
nourished by the same unhealthy “heightened religious imagination.” In
its polemic, the Church could certainly not make use of icons “composed
of numerous heresies,” according to the evaluation of Zenobius the
monk
In the second half of the sixteenth century, however, this decadence in
sacred art was far from predominant in ; on the contrary, its achievements
were only slightly inferior to those of the preceding epoch. But the general
erosion of spirituality deprived art of the foundation it had when hesych­
asm played a crucial role. In this period, a disparity was created between
the ascetic life and prayer on the one hand, and creation and theological
thought on the other. There was a gradual departure from the Orthodox
view of the image, and from its doctrinal foundations formulated by the
Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical Councils. The art trend championed by
the Council of 1553-1554 would gradually cease to recast foreign bor­
rowings into an artistic language proper to Orthodoxy. This would subse­
quently lead to a direct imitation of the West, and to a break with the
Tradition.

Seventeenth Century’ (in Russian), vol. 12 (Kharkov: Dukhovnyi Vestnik, 1865), 53-4, note 1.
99 Quoted by L. S. Retkovskaia, The Universe in the Art ofAncient Russia (in Russian) (Moscow,
1961), Trudy Gossud. Istor. Muzeia, “Pamiatniki Kultury,* no. 33, 15. The “Burning Bush'*
is one of the “theological-didactic* compositions found in the list of subjects given to the
council by Metropolitan Macarius.
 15

The Art of the 17th Century:

An Art Divided, the Tradition Abandoned
Tn the seventeenth century, artistic activity in Russia experienced an extraor-
xdinary flowering. Never had as many works of architecture or mural
decorations been created as during the second half of the century. It was an
epoch of great acquisitions in the artistic domain, but also of great losses.
The loss of the grand style, of the deep meaning of the pictorial image, in short,
the absence in seventeenth-century painting of the expression and spiritual
intensity proper to the works of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, was
compensated by intense liveliness of color, a superbly decorative character, and
great ornamental richness.1

Nonetheless, this art, the painting of icons in particular, was still of a

rather high spiritual and artistic quality. The patriarchal workshops, the
monasteries, as well as the great majority of the iconographers, contin­
ued to create strictly traditional art. Russian art spread widely beyond
the country’s borders. At the request of church and civil authorities,
Russian painters were sent to decorate churches in Georgia, Serbia,
Moldavia, and Walachia. The higher clergy and the nobility of various
Orthodox countries particularly appreciated Russian icons: these were
ordered or brought back as gifts. Greek painters tried to get “recipes”
from iconographers in Moscow.2 Thus, the technical procedures and
the style of Russian painters were disseminated, as well as the subjects
adapted by Russian sacred art in the sixteenth century.
In accord with the taste of the epoch, what was most appreciated was
mastery of execution. Since the sixteenth century, the art of numerous
talented painters had become a type of virtuoso performance: it began to
resemble that of the miniature. In icons, such virtuosity was regarded, if
not as the essential, then at least as its main quality. In the seventeenth
1 Periodical, Ancient Russian Art, the Seventeenth Century (in Russian) (Moscow, 1964), 7.
2 André Grabar, L'expansion de la peinture russe aux XVI et XVII siècles, L'art de la fin de
l'antiquité et du moyen âge, vol 2 (Paris, 1968), 946-63.

325
326 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

century, Deacon Paul of Aleppo made a tour of Russia with Macarius, the
Patriarch of Antioch. He became ecstatic upon seeing such icons. “You
should know,” he wrote,
that the iconographers of that city [Moscow] are unequalled anywhere in the
world as concerns the artistry, the finesse of the painting, and ability in artistic
mastery. They make little icons that make the heart of the viewer beat fast. On
them, each saint, every angel has the dimensions of a lentil or of an osmam [a
small coin]. We were thrilled when we saw them.3

The absence of the essential qualities of the great art of the preceding
epochs in seventeenth-century art was largely the result of spiritual decay,
but also of the historical conditions which had arisen already in the
sixteenth century. In other Orthodox countries, interest in Russian art
was due not only to the decline of artistic life under the Turkish occupa­
tion; there was also a concept of sacred art that was essentially the same,
and a common attitude toward such art caused by the circumstances that
marked the history of Orthodoxy at this time.
By progressively moving away from the hesychast spiritual attitude,
the creative tradition of the Orthodox world became lifeless, the level of
theological thought sank. This spiritual decadence affected all of Ortho­
doxy (though not simultaneously, it is true), independently of the ex­
tremely diverse historical conditions in which the local churches found
themselves. In their inner life, all these churches were in the same situa­
tion when confronted by the new times—new times that brought a
showdown between Orthodoxy and the non-Orthodox West, between
the vision of the Orthodox world and the rationalism of western culture.
Despite the variety of circumstances, not only did the historical condi­
tions not contribute to bringing an end to this spiritual decay; on the
contrary, they deepened it, thereby opening wide the door to foreign
influences on Orthodox spiritual life. As much in the countries under
Turkish domination as in Russia, the pressure from the western confes­
sions increased. “Entire armies of propagandists well-trained in special
schools4 were sent to the East.. .A network of Roman dioceses covered the
3 The Journey ofPatriarch Macarius in Russia, (henceforth, Journey), translated from the Arabic
into Russian by G. Murkos, published in Chteniia Imper. Ob. Istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, Bk
X, ch. 10 (Moscow, 1889), 43.
4 The most famous of these was the College of St Athanasius in Rome, opened by Pope Grcgpry
XIII in 1577. See Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Orthodoxy, trans. L Kesich
(New York, 1963), 323ff.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 327

entire Orthodox East.” Since the level of instruction among the Orthodox
was low, people were sent to the West for their schooling. They returned
under the influence of a western theological and spiritual atmosphere.
In Russia, this century, the last before the time of Peter I, began with
“the Time of Troubles” and ended with this emperor’s brutal reform.
During the Time of Troubles, the decisive role in the reconstruction of
the state fell once more upon the Church: only its voice had sufficient
authority to put an end to anarchy and to rally the Russian people.
However, by the middle of the century, the situation changed. The
historical development of the Russian state brought it within the orbit of
western culture. For lack of its own system of education, a western type of
teaching was introduced. Southwest Russia played the greatest role in this.
“The Orthodox monk of southwest Russia, educated either in a Latin
school or a Russian one of the same type, was called to Moscow and was
the first to promote western learning.”* Together with such learning, a
scholastic theology was instilled. Not only did the Russian southwest live
in close proximity to the peculiarly western problems of this time, it also
had to live through them and to seek a solution for them. Itself already
contaminated by occidentalism, it infected the Russian Church with the
diseases of the West.

The withering of the creative theological tradition in Orthodoxy

weakened it to such a degreethat, in its defense against the attack by the
western confessions, it was “forced to arm itself with western scholastic
arguments” which, in turn, gave rise to a new and dangerous influence
upon Orthodox theology, one that derived not merely from the use of
improper theological terms but from theological and spiritual doctrines.”
What certain theologians such as Florovsky call “a pseudo-morphosis of
Orthodoxy”—an Orthodoxy “dressed in improper thought forms and
expressions”—had arrived.6 Russian as well as Greek theology were per­
meated with scholasticism; Orthodox thought was paralyzed. It was a
subservience, the Latinization of a defenseless Orthodoxy, and this Latin­
ization encompassed theology, the vision of the world, and religious
psychology itself.
5 V. O. Kliuchevskii, Works Russian), vol. 3. (Moscow, 1957), 275.
6 Archbishop Basil (Krivochéine), “Les textes symboliques dans l’Eglise orthodoxe,” Messager de
l’Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe occidentale, n. 49 ( 1965), 11 -2.
328 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

In the spheres of both artistic creation and theological thought, the

creative life in the Tradition became weaker. The evaluatoin in the light of
the Tradition of everything heterodoxy had brought with it, as had
happened earlier, now came to and end. The changes that had occurred in
the religious psychology of the epoch were expressed by a break between
prayer and asceticism on the one hand, and creation and theological
thought on the other. The creative tradition was replaced by two opposite
trends: a conservatism (which had also occurred in Byzantium, as we have
seen) and, under the influence of western culture, a rallying of the painters
around the art of western culture.
The Orthodox countries under Turkish domination saw their artistic
life, if not disappear, then at least greatly diminish. The imitation of
western art gained ground in the great cities, in areas open to western
influence. Traditional Orthodox art was relegated to the monasteries and
the provinces. A split occurred, for the simple people continued to hold
firmly to traditional art, seeing in it both a defense against heterodoxy and
a proclamation of the national spirit.7

In seventeenth-century Russia, under the pressure of western civiliza­

tion, culture became separated from the Church, and became an autono­
mous sphere. Until then, the Church had embraced all aspects of life, all
domains of human creativity. Certain areas of creative activity now freed
themselves, and this caused a split in Russian society. Formerly, despite all
differences in social standing, the spiritual mentality of the Russians had
been homogeneous, but now western influence broke “the moral unity of
Russian society. Just as glass cracks when it is heated unevenly in various
parts, so Russian society, unevenly touched by western influences,
cracked.”8

Such influences increasingly penetrated the very life of the Church and
its art. Russia was flooded by western religious art works as well as by
7 This plight of traditional Orthodox art was already obvious on the Adriatic coast in the
fourteenth century, where it found itself face to face with the strong western influence coming
from neighboring Italy, the center of the Renaissance. The painters were forced either to
imitate the Italians in order to satisfy their clients, or “to return to Byzantine forms to please
conservative taste, and to work in small churches where the Byzantine forms were identified
with the highest expression of the sacred” (see J. Djuric, Icônes de Yougoslavie [Belgrade, 1961],

8 V. O. Kliuchevskii, op. cit.,361 -2.

The An ofthe 17th Century 329

“copies, drawings, and pictures reproducing original western works, in­

troduced by the Jesuits.”9 Russian painters made great use of all this; in
decorating churches they borrowed entire compositions. They were most
strongly attracted by the anecdotal, everyday manner in which such
western reproductions represented biblical subjects. The illustrated Bible
of Piscator, published in Amsterdam in 1650, became highly popular
among the Russians. It should be added, however, that while using all this
material, the Russian painters still recast it in the organic language of
Orthodox sacred art. From the artistic point of view their works, such as
the wall paintings on the churches of Yaroslavl, Kostroma, and Rostov, far
surpass their originals. Nonetheless, this art was only minimally
“illuminated by fleeting gleams of the great traditions.”10
Beginning with the fourth decade of the seventeenth century, painters
in the Ukraine used western reproductions as models.11 As for the second
half of the century, according to Paul of Aleppo, “While painting Ortho­
dox images, Cossack painters, now skilled and educated, borrowed beau­
tiful things from Frankish and Polish painters when doing the faces and
the coloring of the clothing.”12 The influence of western models no doubt
explains why on Mount Athos, where at this time the monks were fiercely
loyal to the Orthodox tradition, they were very hostile to Russian and
especially to Ukrainian icons. They suspected Latin heresy in them and
“preferred the most modest local image to the best Russian icon.”13
In Muscovite Russia, in the circles of first class painters—especially in
the tsar’s iconographie atelier and among painters who were somehow
attached to it—a new trend surfaced, revealing new aesthetic ideas, and a
new type of art arose. The historical and spiritual conditions of this stage
in the life of the Russian Church and its art were such that it was this
trend that became dominant and turned its back on tradition.
Nowhere did the break with tradition cause such acrimonious discus­
sions, such impassioned commotion, and such a painful sundering as in
9 M. Sychev, An Icon of Simon Ushakov in the Diocesan Storeroom of Novgorod (in Russian),
Collection dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the scholarly work of P. Ainalov (St Peters­
burg, 1915), 96.
10 I. Grabar, History ofRussian Art (in Russian), vol. 6 (Moscow), 492.
11 V. Sventsitskaia, “The Works of Ivan Rudkovich" (in Russian), in the journal Iskusstvo, no 6
(1964), 65, note.
12 Journey, Bk IV, ch. 12, 41.
13 A. Grabar, L'expansion de la peinture russe, 941.
330 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Russia. Nowhere had the question of art been raised with such clarity.
This “century of lost equilibrium”14 manifested a particular unease, which
became apparent in a series of measures taken by church and civil author­
ities, as well as in written documents. The second half of the seventeenth
century has left us more than a dozen of these,15 devoted to sacred art
either completely or in part. We have seen how in the sixteenth century
the discussions that agitated large segments in Russia dealt with the
doctrinal basis of the image, with the conformity, or the lack of it, of
certain iconographie subjects with Church teaching. In the seventeenth
century also, certain texts continue to focus on the same problem. They
are the Acts of the Great Council of Moscow, the writings of the monk
Euthymius, and (partly) the Testament of Patriarch Joachim. Another
series of documents is of special interest to us. These documents are the
first Russian treatises devoted to aesthetics and the theory of art. They

14 G. Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Part One, trans. R. L. Nichols (Belmont, MA:
Nordland Publishing Co., 1979), 87.
15 The most important of these are: 1) Joseph Vladimirov, “Letter of a Certain Iconographer
Joseph to the Iconographer of the Tsar, the Wise Simon Theodo rov ich (Ushakov),* edited in
Russian by E. Ovchinnikova in Drtvnerusskoe IskusstvoXVIIveka {Moscow, 1964). Hereafter,
“Letter*; 2) Simon Ushakov, “Discourse to the One Who Has Zeal for the Painting of Icons,*
edited in Russian in the collection Mastera iskusstva ob iskusstve, vol. 4 (1937). Hereafter,
“Discourse*; 3) Symeon, Bishop of Polotsk, “Request or Message to the Tsar during the Great
Council of Moscow,* partially published in Russian by L. N. Maikov in Ocherki iz Istorii
russkoi literatury XVII-XVII stol., (St Petersburg, 1889), and in Simeon Polotskii o russkom
ikonopisanii (St Petersburg, 1889); 4) The Acts ofthe Great Council ofMoscow of1667, edited
in Russian (Moscow, 1893); 5) “The Writing of the Three Patriarchs of 1668,* written at the
request of the tsar and signed by Patriarchs Paisius of Alexandria, Macarius of Antioch, both
visiting Moscow, and by Joasaph of Moscow. Text edited by P. P. Pekarskii, Materialy dlia
istorii ikonopisaniia v. Rossii (St Petersburg, 1865); 6) “Edict of the Tsar* of 1669, in the same
edition; 7) Euthymius the monk, “Questions and Answers Concerning Russian Seventeenth-
Century Iconography," edited by G. Filimonov in Vestnik Ob. drevnerusskogo iskusstva (Mos­
cow, 1874-1876); 8) La vie de Varchiprètre Awakoum, edited in part by P. Pascal, Awakoum
et les débuts du Raskol (Paris, 1938). (Partial English trans, by H. Iswolsky, “The Life of
Archpriest Avvakum by Himself,* in G. Fedotov, A Treasury of Russian Spirituality, vol. 2
[Belmont, 1975], 136-81); 9) Patriarch Joachim, “Testament* (fragment that appeared in
Russian in the iconographie manual edited by Bolshakov, with text edited by Th. Uspenskii in
Moscow); 10) Karion Istomin, “Discourse to the One Who Has Zeal for the Painting of
Icons," written at the end of the seventeenth century. This is a compilation of the works of
Ushakov, Symeon of Polotsk, and of the Writings of the Patriarchs and the Tsar. Let us also
mention the collection published in 1642 under the tide Florilegium. Selected Writings on the
Dignity ofHoly Icons and Their Veneration. It contains no original works, but includes a series
of older texts of a polemical nature against the Protestants and reflects the discussions with
them. It has not been reprinted since.
The An ofthe 17th Century 331

express the totally new concept of art that appears at this time. Directly or
indirectly, they are devoted to a defense of the new trend which has
become entrenched in Russian art practice, and they give it a theoretical
justification. These are the works of master iconographers Joseph
Vladimirov and Simon Ushakov, as well as those of Symeon of Polotsk,
the Writing of the three patriarchs and, in part, the Edict of the Tsar.
Lastly, a third group of documents expresses opposition to the new trend:
the Testament of Patriarch Joachim, and the Life of Archpriest Avvakum.
The importance of all these documents lies in the fact that they illustrate
the changes that have occurred, as much in art itself as in its conception.
They show how the new trend was understood by its followers, and how
its opponents judged it. All of them reflect the complex, even contradic­
tory, conceptions of art in the seventeenth century. Even the documents
that defended traditional painting reveal the decay that had begun in the
sixteenth century, but now in a more dangerous and advanced form.

Most of the seventeenth-century documents are rooted in the anxiety

caused by the poor condition of contemporary sacred art, and they
attempt, more or less insistently, to improve its quality. Beginning with
the sixteenth century, as we have seen, the ever-growing demand for icons
had led to a significant increase in the number of iconographers.16 Men
who sometimes lacked even the necessary technical skills come to swell
their ranks. The regulations of the Stoglav already witness to this, and then
the documents of the seventeenth century. It is clear that, under such
16 Let us note that nowhere was the icon so widely spread, nor did it play such an important role,
as in Russia. The chronicles mention the building and decorating of churches, the creation,
transfer and even the restoration of icons, together with events of national importance. The
icon was organically linked to the life of the people. It accompanied them in all the events of
their life; all of life, and especially the agricultural calendar, was structured around feast days;
and this naturally translated itself into the veneration of certain icons and in their dissemina­
tion. Icons were an indispensable element in the layout not only of the interior, but also of the
exterior of all public and all private buildings. It is hard for us to imagine today that “Tsar
Alexis Mihailovich had 6200 icons in his hall of icons, received as gifts... In addition, there
were more than 600 old icons, and also a great number in storerooms, images that had been
removed from the rooms to protect them from thieves” (N. P. Kondakov, The Russian Icon,
III [in Russian] [Prague, 1931], 30-1). The Cathedral of the Annunciation had no less than
3000 icons, as did the Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk in the Novodevichii Monastery. Of
all these treasures, only a few fragments are left. “What neither devastating fires nor invasions
which destroyed all the decorations in the cathedrals and the wooden churches, and the icons
in private homes, were able to accomplish, was accomplished through neglect” (ibùL, 38).
Then, of course, there was the premeditated destruction for ideological reasons.
332 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

conditions, the general level of sacred art could not be maintained appro­
priately.
In their struggle against poor painting the authorities, religious as well
as secular, required that icons be painted “according to the ancient
models.” Such “ancient models” became the only criterion forjudging the
correctness of an image. They replaced the theological criterion, and
perfectly satisfied church and civil authorities. To remedy the existing
situation, the Great Council of Moscow formulated a similar decision,
without entering into as many details as the Stoglav. It instituted control
over the iconographers, exercised by a syndic, a painter belonging to the
clergy. Thus it repeated an approach to fighting bad painting which had
already proved unsuitable and had foiled totally. One year later, the
Writing of the three patriarchs tackled the same problem, though in a
more general way. It required that skilled painters oversee the others and
testify to their abilities in signed affidavits. Following the patriarchs, the
1669 Writing of the tsar created a type of sure diploma: “After examina­
tion, we want to grant our tsar’s charter to all the best iconographers, to
each according to his ability, by way of confirmation.”17 This is how the
supervision of the work of the iconographers moved from spiritual teach­
ing, asceticism, and prayer to the control of the church, and then to that
of the civil authorities. The Hundred-Chapters Council had already relied
upon the latter by threatening to use “the tsar’s wrath.” The art of the
Church was now regulated by both church sanctions and official decrees
from the tsar.
Among the seventeenth-century documents, it is above all the writings
of Joseph Vladimirov and Symeon of Polotsk that address the quality of
icon painting. The latter presented a special note to the Tsar, to be studied
at the council. The Letter of Vladimirov, the first document in chronolog­
ical order, provided source material for several later writings and influ­
enced them to a greater or letter extent. Symeon of Polotsk used it
extensively. More than the other documents, this Letter described in detail
the defects of the icons themselves and of the attitude of the faithful
toward them, all the while lacing this description with biting criticism
which was formulated intelligently, ingeniously, and coherently.
Vladimirov used wit and a fiery temper to assail the manufacturer of bad,
17 “Edict of the Tsar,” 17.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 333

cheap icons, and those who bought them. “Where else,” he wrote,
can we see such indecencies as can be recognized here and now? The lowering
and profanation of the venerable, sound art of the icons have been caused by
ignoramuses for the following reason: everywhere in the villages and hamlets,
wholesale merchants bring icons by the basketful. They are painted in a most
ridiculous manner. Some of them do not even resemble human images; their
aspect is like that of savages.18

According to the author, such icons were resold in great quantities from
one merchant to the other. They were taken to remote villages and
“exchanged, like children’s whistles, for an egg, an onion, or all sorts of
things.” Vladimirov did not limit his criticism to “the simple folk,” who
acquired an icon for an egg or an onion. He went to war against the rich
who had bought these same icons cheaply. He maintained that the evil
did not only come from the merchants who earned a living by selling
icons, but “especially from negligent priests who lack zeal and care in
administering church matters.” The greatest encouragement for bad
painting came from people “whose mind is bent on gold and silver, who
build luxurious homes and love to keep high-priced horses in their
stables—but who buy bad icons in churches.”19 According to Symeon of
Polotsk, such paintings are a blasphemy against God himself, and the
ones who paint them are called “God’s scribblers.”20 The mass production
of icons, the authors state, results in unemployment for the good iconog­
raphers, who live in poverty or change jobs.21 “All this leads to a decline
of God’s churches,” Symeon of Polotsk exclaimed.22 What was at stake
was not just the popularity of handcrafted icons: there was also the
situation of the average iconographers. In addition to their occupation,
they had to perform the mandatory labor imposed upon all citizens by the
sure. This is why the Stoglav, as well as a series of seventeenth-century
documents, asked that iconographers be given a higher social standing in
order to improve their way of life.
The criticism of sacred art by the seventeenth-century documents is
certainly well-founded. The massive buying and reselling and the com­
mercialization of the icon led to inevitable carelessness and abuse, which
18 Joseph Vladimirov, “Letter,” 33.
19 Ibid., 36.
20 Maikov, ed., 8.
21 J. Vladimirov, “Letter,” 35.
22 Maikov, ed., 5.
334 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

could only lower the quality of icons. It is certainly not without reason
that an order of the tsar in 1688 prohibited icon painting by the inhabi­
tants of the villages of Mstera and Kholui. Vladimirov blamed particularly
the merchants, and rightly so: it is they who, in their own interest,
suggested to buyers that “salvation cannot be gained by good painting,
and that among the miraculous icons there were many that were badly
painted.”23 He also blamed the faithful who, out of naivete, or “in order
to save money, buy bad icons cheaply and then wait for signs and
miracles. In truth, such people tempt God and do not really venerate the
icons of the saints.”24 Vladimirov recognized that miracles are not depen­
dent on the images, just as He “works through unworthy persons” and
through the forces of nature. But if He acts this way, it is not because of
the unworthiness of the icons but despite it. Thus, “when a miracle occurs
through one of these unsuitable images, this will not protect us before the
just Judge.”25

And yet, despite all these good points, the all-too-generalized criticism
of artisanal icons by the above authors is somewhat suspect What did
they understand by “bad icons?” According to what criterion did they
judge their quality? Was it only a matter of poor workmanship? A great
number of seventeenth-century icons have come down to us; they are
extremely diverse in character and quality. However, we do not know of
any “unsuitable images” whose aspect is like that of “savages.” It is
difficult to imagine that they all have disappeared without leaving a trace,
while others remain. Certainly, in the eyes of the painters of whom Paul
of Aleppo spoke, and in the eyes of their clients, the customary trade icon
must have looked like a daub. But this was not the only problem. In an
article devoted to some of the documents we have mentioned, G. N.
Dmitriev correctly notes that they fought the production
of cheap icons used by the people, the simple folk It goes without saying that the
authors of these documents viewed the painting oficons as poor, as not correspond­
ing to what they required of art. However, we are in fact dealing here with two
different arts existing side by side: that of the leading classes and that created by the
people, or, at any rate, spread among the people and accepted by them. The struggle
against that art was but a manifestation of the class struggle. It was not only the
23 “Letter,” 33.
24 Ibid, 36.
25 Ibid, 34.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 335

pretext, but the reason behind the first Russian “ treatises” on art history—trea­
tises that justify and praise the “superior” art of the leading classes as well as their
struggle against the art used by the common people. To a greater or lesser degree,
the authors of the “treatises” (not only Simon Ushakov, but also the others) were
advocates of the new style of painting that was established at this time.26

Indeed, what was at stake was not merely the quality of the icons, and
polemical impetuosity was not the only reason that led the authors to
exaggerate the faults of artisanal painting. They too had appropriated the
ideology that sustained the new trend in painting.

By its very nature, the art of the Church, sacred art, did not and could
not have a class character. On the contrary, independent of its artistic
qualities, it has over the centuries served as a unifying element, not only
on the social and political, but even on the national plane. It obeyed only
one criterion; and in it the doctrinal aspect was not differentiated from
the aesthetic. The aesthetic appreciation of a work, as we have stated,
coincided with its theological appreciation. Indeed, art was theology
revealed by means of aesthetic categories. In some of the seventeenth-cen­
tury documents this theological criterion remained decisive, but only in
the realm of iconography. As for the followers of the new trend, for them
the aesthetic criterion gradually separated from the doctrinal and acquired
an independent value. It is no surprise that the unqualified criticism of the
artisanal icons derives from the ideologists of this trend. And thus, for
Vladimirov, the aesthetic criterion was the only decisive one: it was better
to have a well-painted image of Christ than many bad, “unsuitable” icons.
What is more, if one could not have a beautiful icon, it was better not to
have one at all rather than to pray before a “bad one.”27 The attitude of
Symeon of Polotsk was more flexible. On the one hand, he vehemendy
criticized the production of bad icons; on the other, he defended these
same icons in his discussions with the Protestants.28 It is clear that from
the doctrinal perspective such “bad icons” nonetheless conformed to their
intention. Is this not the reason why the official documents (the Acts of
the Great Council, the Writing of the three patriarchs and of the tsar) were
more muted in their criticism than the above authors, and were limited to
26 I. N. Dmitriev, “Art Theory in Ancient Russian Literature,“ [in Russian] Trudy Otdela
drevnerusskoi Zr/mx/wy IX (Moscow-Leningrad, 1953), 108-10.
27 “Letter,“ 42-3.
28 Maikov, ed., 137.
336 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

general considerations about iconographers? Euthymius the monk, Patri­

arch Joachim, and Archpriest Avvakum say nothing about the quality of
icons. As for the people, an aesthetic appreciation of the icon was entirely
foreign to them. Paul of Aleppo, who judged sacred art precisely from the
aesthetic point of view, wrote: “As all Muscovites are known for their
great affection and love of icons, they consider neither the beauty of the
image nor the art of painting. For them, all icons, beautiful or not, are the
same.”29 For the mass of the people, therefore, artistic quality was not the
decisive factor. Whatever changes had occurred in the consciousness of
the Church, the icon remained an expression of faith, independent of its
aesthetic quality.
What, then, was the decisive factor that controlled the opinions of the
authors of our innovating documents? In the work cited above, Dmitriev
states:
It would not be correct to suppose that the opinions expressed in the treatises
were justified by “western ideas” that had penetrated among us in the seventeenth
century. Anyone who knows the writings of the Byzantine theoreticians devoted
to the question of art will certainly easily recognize the intimate link between
our treatises and these works.30

Such a conclusion can only be the result of a purely superficial juxtaposi­

tion of texts. Certainly, the ideologists of the new art did not openly break
with the Orthodox tradition: they even stressed their fidelity to the
Tradition of the Church. This is why in their theological reasoning they
often appealed to the thinking of the “Byzantine theoreticians” and
repeated their classical exposition on the image. However, both in prac­
tice and in theory, as we shall see, they had recourse to ideas and they
elaborated theses that were diametrically opposed to the tradition, and
therefore to the “Byzantine theoreticians.” Most certainly, “western ideas”
do not folly explain their treatises; but the culture in the making, the way
of thinking and of viewing life, and also theology “had put on a western
dress.”

This radical modification in culture and world vision, which appeared

among the “elite” and the ruling circles of Russian society, had to bring
with it an equally radical modification in art, a new attitude toward it, and
29 Journey, Bk IX, ch. 3,136.
30 Dmitriev, “Art Theory,” 110.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 337

new aesthetic categories. This new vision of the world was peddled by a
desacralized culture of the western type, a class culture. The art of this
new culture was also desacralized, foreign to the masses. This very art and
the way of understanding it revealed an artistic vision and new aesthetic
categories that were no longer founded either on doctrinal premises or on
the Orthodox spiritual experience, but which came from that desacralized
culture. Faith itself was viewed as an aspect of culture; and in the appreci­
ation of art the aesthetic factor became decisive. It is this factor, this new
concept of art, which is the basis for the critical attitude toward the
artisanal icons among the ideologists of the new style of painting.
Art historians have often observed that the treatises of the seventeenth
century represent a defense of art. To a greater or lesser extent, all
endeavor to justify art and prove its usefulness. But if the subject of these
treatises is wider than the framework of sacred art, it is certainly the
defense of the latter that caused their appearance. The work of Vladimirov
is openly addressed to a well-defined antagonist (the defenders of tradi­
tional art and of the artisanal icon). The other documents, by contrast, do
not name their opponent. Nonetheless, in the course of their argumenta­
tion, their apology assumed a clearly anti-iconoclastic character. “The
creation of icons,” Simon Ushakov wrote, “has been greatly praised in all
centuries, countries, and social environments since it has been much used
everywhere because of its great usefulness.” He develops at length the
classical argumentation against the iconoclasts using references to the Old
and New Testaments. Describing the creation of icons as originating with
God himself, he concluded: “If God forbids the making of images in the
Decalogue, the one who reasons soundly will see that He forbids the
fashioning of idolatrous images, venerated instead of God—not images
that bring beauty, spiritual well-being, and that represent the divine
economy.” Referring to the Holy Face, he concluded: “Why should we
not paint that of which God himself has given us an example?”31
The Writing of the patriarchs opens by stating that iconic art was not
invented in India, as Pliny thought, nor by Pyrrho: “It is neither the
Egyptians nor the Corinthians, nor the inhabitants of Chios, nor the
Athenians who first invented this honorable art, as some have thought. It
is indeed the Lord himself who is said to be the creator of all the arts and
31 S. Ushakov, “Discourse,” 22.
338 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

of all matter.”32 In other words, the creation of images is not a pagan

invention, “as some would think,” but an aspect of human creation
introduced by God himself. The patriarchs closed their argument as
follows: to show in detail all the praises due this art would indeed be the
same as “emptying the Atlantic with a cup.”33 Ushakov, on his part,
concluded his account with the word:
Hating this beauty of the Church and God’s grace, the devil created through his
servants an intolerable calumny of the holy icons by calling them idols, just as
through a clever ruse he has smitten the image of God in Adam with a flaw, a
great defect.34

But to defend icons and prove their usefulness to the Orthodox,

especially to the Russians, was like breaking through an open door. At this
time, the sin of the Muscovites was a somewhat exaggerated, occasionally
even falsified, veneration of icons, rather than any leaning toward icono­
clasm. It can therefore not be denied that these writings, devoted to
aesthetic theory and which, according to the expression of Dmitriev,
“justified the superior art of society’s privileged circles,” reflected at the
same time the struggle against Protestantism—the Protestantism outside
the Church as well as the protestantizing trends within the Church.
Beginning in the sixteenth century, the iconoclastic danger became more
acute because of the infiltration of Protestantism into the Muscovite state,
and above all because of the rapid, conspicuous success of the Reforma­
tion in Poland and Lithuania. It was precisely at this time that Maximus
the Greek wrote his anti-Protestant works ( Treatise Against the Lutherans
Concerning the Veneration of Icons, Writing Against the Heretics). The
Protestant refusal to venerate images is the Judaizing heresy, against which
the first treatise of the Message to an Iconographer had been written. As for
the seventeenth century, Protestant pressure was felt very strongly in the
entire Orthodox world, especially after the Calvinist and iconoclastic
profession of faith by Cyril Loukaris, Patriarch of Constantinople, ap­
peared within the Church itself. This profession of faith caused great
upheaval, as much in the Greek-speaking East as in southern Russia. In
Muscovite Russia, the question of Protestantism posed itself with great
intensity early in the 1640’s when the Anthology in defense of the holy
32 “Writing of the Three Patriarchs,” 8.
33 Ibid., 9.
34 “Discourse,” op. cit.
The An ofthe 17th Century 339

icons was published (1642). The discussions became especially acrimoni­

ous when Valdemar, Prince of Denmark, asked for the hand of the
Russian Princess Irene. Later, the authors of our treatises must certainly
have been in continued contact with the Protestants residing in Moscow,
as is known from the polemical disputes of Symeon of Polotsk with
them.35
Aside from their anti-Protestant argumentation, our documents at the
same time defended the new art that had become rooted in the Church
and in the daily life of its members—the art of a culture independent of
the Church. This new art, on the one hand, caused a blind infatuation
and, on the other, provoked an equally blind opposition. The apology of
the theoreticians of this new art is characterized by a particularly revealing
trait: it uses the traditional anti-iconoclastic argumentation, both against
those who denied icons and against the opponents of the new art and of
new ideas. Thus, to its followers, this new trend in art became indistin­
guishable from the art which the Church had defended against the
iconoclasts. Vladimirov simply equated the iconoclasts with those who
opposed innovations in art

Among the seventeenth-century documents, it is the Writing of the

three patriarchs that is the most important for us since it best reveals the
changes that had occurred in the concept of sacred art. The patriarchs
viewed art above all from the perspective of its social, civil, and moral
usefulness; therein lie the content and the basic meaning of their Writing.
They did not analyze art from the perspective of the Church, but from
that of creation pure and simple. For them, “the art of images” was art in
general, independent of its ecclesial or secular character. Such confusion is
not limited only to the Writing of the patriarchs: it is typical of all the
documents in this group. Thus, in their argumentation, the patriarchs
referred indiscriminately both to the Church Fathers and to pagan think­
ers. In their reasoning and in the examples they cite, they put both on the
same level. For example, while demonstrating that icons ought to be
venerated on account of their link to the prototype, they naturally referred
to St Basil the Great. But then they immediately added that even before
him “the Stagyrite philosopher” (Aristotle) had found that the movement
35 In 1660, there were three Lutheran churches and one Reformed Church in the so-called
German quarter in Moscow (see V. O. Kliuchevskii, Works [in Russian], III, 270).
340 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

toward the image and its prototype was the same. Thus the Christian
doctrine of a Church Father on the personal link that exists, in the realm
of grace, between the image and its prototype was reduced to an abstract
philosophical concept. Speaking of the aim of art, the patriarchs explained
that it consists, above all, in representing everything: the sacred and the
profane. Images, they said, are like “learned instructors.” Referring to St
John Damascene, they likened the image to a book for the “unlearned.”
In agreement with the Seventh Ecumenical Council, they spoke of the
correspondence between word and image: but this council spoke of the
word of the Gospel, while the patriarchs referred to the word in general,
and by way of example, cited the judgment of pagan philosophers:
Simonides was not wrong in saying that the painting of images was silent poetry,
whereas poetry was painting in words. Plato, the greatest of philosophers, did
not miss the truth either when stating that the art of painting was alive but silent,
voiceless because of the very excellence of its honor.36

For the patriarchs, as can be seen, the word, whether pagan or Christian,
had value as such. They did not distinguish between the natural intelligence
of the philosophers and the intelligence of the Fathers illumined by grace, by
an understanding of revelation. The same holds true for their judgments
concerning the image. Patristic theology was totally absent from their
thought: the essential basis of sacred art, which witnesses to the Incarnation,
eluded them altogether. It is true that in their text a certain distinction is made
between the art of the Church and secular art.37 But artistic quality is the only
criterion they applied to the one and to the other. Their criterion was
therefore exclusively aesthetic. On this plane there was for the patriarchs no
difference, not only between the art of the Church and that of the worid, but
also between Christian and pagan art, as there had been none between the
holy iconographers and the painters of pagan antiquity. By considering
Orthodox iconography within the general domain of the creation of images,
the patriarchs erased the demarcation line; as they had done in the realm of
the word, they removed the fundamental differences that exists between the
sacred and the secular image. The one remaining distinction was the subject:
36 “Writing of the Three Patriarchs," 12.
37 Let us note that the patriarchs, while stating that the origin of art goes back to God Himself in
order to prove the sublimity of this human activity, refer to the sages of Antiquity: “The wise
Greek sages," they say, “have left written commandments so that no slave or prisoner may
learn the art of the image, and only the children of nobles and the sons of counsellors may be
initiated into this art" (ibid., 8).
The Art ofthe 17th Century 341

Christian or not, sacred or profane. The very concept of sacred art is thus
desacralized in the same manner as within Roman Catholicism. In this way
the patriarchs supported the new art trend represented in Russia by Ushakov
and Vladimirov. For such ideologues of innovation, there was no longer any
difference between an Orthodox and a Roman Catholic image, as many
examples indicate.
In this sense, the most telling documents are the Letter of Vladimirov
and the work of Simon Ushakov. The motive that led Ushakov to take up
the pen had been his discussions with John Pleshkovich, the Serbian
archdeacon, concerning the innovations that had appeared in the painting
of Russian icons. The content and the outlook of this writing are espe­
cially typical of the atmosphere in the seventeenth century. Articulate and
concrete, this text reflects, more than the others, the thought pattern of
the innovators, and the sources that nourished it. The two parts of the
Letter—the first devoted mainly to a criticism of bad painting, the second
to the discussion itself—are written forcefully and with passion. The
author repeatedly uses violent expressions and polemical tricks that are
not always entirely honest. The second part is entitled: “A Reply to Those
who Humiliate the Painting of Holy Icons, or Answer to a Certain
Blasphemer, John of the Wicked Mind.”

The sense and context indicate that Pleshkovich was utterly hostile to
western art and to the imitation of western models by Russian painters. Upon
seeing at Ushakov’s an image of Mary Magdalene painted in the western
fashion, Pleshkovich spat at it, saying that “he did not approve of such clear
images.”38 This provoked the discussion. We do not know Pleshkovich’s
reasoning, and evaluating it on the basis of Vladimirov’s refutations is diffi­
cult. Because of Pleshkovich’s hostility toward the new style of painting and
his predilection for “bad” icons, Vladimirov accused his opponent of icono­
clasm, that is, of nothing less than heresy. He even compared him to
Constantine Copronymus: “In vain are you vehemently opposed to the
beauty of the Church, and do you provoke anew the ancient struggle.”39
38 This attitude of the Serb Pleshkovich is quite understandable if one remembers the import­
ance that Orthodox art had for the Serbians of this time in the face of heterodoxy.
39 “Letter," 45. Such accusations of heresy were at times absurd. Thus a certain priest Loggin was
accused of iconoclasm: he had “blasphemed the icon" because he had severely criticized a
woman with too much white makeup, while the color white was used in the painting of icons,
(see A. V. Kartashev, History ofthe Russian Church \\n Russian], vol. 2 [Paris, 1959], 152).
342 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

In his evaluation of contemporary icons and in his attacks on

Pleshkovich, Vladimirov showed how convinced and logical a partisan of
western art he was, just as were Simon Ushakov and Symeon of Polotsk40
While praising western art, Vladimirov mentioned that he did not do this
to praise the faith of other peoples. However, as people “of little faith,” the
westerners so gready love wisdom and “very sophisticated painting” that
they paint not only Christ, the Virgin and die saints, but also their kings,
“as if they were alive.”41 As for Orthodox art, foreigners “do not denigrate
icons that imitate the light, nor do they mock images of the saints—but
they sneer at bad painting and at the ignorance of the truth.”42 What,
then, was this truth, the ignorance of which caused the reproach of
foreigners? Where did Vladimirov see it? Foreigners ridiculed not only
badly painted icons but also the very concept of the image, that through
which its authenticity is seen—and here, it seems to us, we approach the
doctrinal question. The rest of Vladimirov’s reasoning indicates that this
is indeed the case. Russian iconographers must have heard reproaches like
those about which Sawatii, the monk from the Solovki, spoke in his
petition to the tsar in 1662: “Strangers laugh at us, saying that up till now
we do not even know the Christian faith.”43 Indeed, the sympathy of the
iconographer Vladimirov for western art colored his artistic reasoning
with conceptions of the image and of its meaning that were proper to
Roman Catholicism, not to Orthodoxy.

Let us recall that Vladimirov did not speak of secular but of sacred art,
of the icon. But while defending it, he systematically referred to western
painters who represented Christ, the Virgin, and portraits of kings “as if
they were alive,” without distinguishing between them. Gradually,
Vladimirov himself adopted this attitude. In the method of representa­
tion, he no longer saw any difference between an icon, a cultic image (that
40 E. S. Ovchinnikova, who edited the “Letter* ofVladimirov, disagrees with G. Filimonov, who
detected “a strong sympathy for western painting* in Vladimirov’s attitude. Having made an
exhaustive study ofVladimirov’s treatise, Ochinnikova writes in the Preface to her edition that
the question is apparendy more complex (p. 13). She interprets the question as an expression
of the perfecdy legitimate struggle of the new art trend against the old, outdated tradition (p.
19). In fact, Vladimirov’s sympathy extended far beyond western painting; as we shall see, it
embraced the ideological content of which such painting was the expression.
41 “Letter,* 45.
42 /W, 41.
43 Cited by V. O. Kliuchevskii, op. «A, 311.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 343

of Christ or of a saint) and the common portrait of a person. “ The saints

and other people are represented by the lovers of wisdom not to obtain
signs or miracles, but to have a true image of them, and to keep their
eternal memory through the great love one has for them.”44 Vladimirov
did not see how the confusion between a cultic image and a secular
portrait results from a doctrinal attitude, and how it contradicts the
Orthodox concept of the sacred image.

He insisted that images, above all that of Christ, must be historically

true. He referred to the “image-not-made-with-human-hands ” (the Holy
Face), left to us by Christ himself. He explained with great clarity which
representation of Christ is authentic, which one false and leading to error.
He condemned those “who slap on the paint according to their own will,
in an ugly, inappropriate manner, one not in conformity with the real face
of Christ,”45 which is, no doubt, according to the imagination. He
indignandy mentioned the painter who, at the time of Leo the Great, had
painted Christ “in the image of Zeus,”46 that is, had copied an idol. Such
a copy, just as one made from the imagination, was strangely associated
for him with “bad painting.” He also considered such a copy as a devia­
tion from the image of Christ that was historically authentic. According
to him, a “badly painted” image was false. “An inappropriate and badly
painted image is unacceptable and contradicts its prototype.”47 To this
Vladimirov added a very correct theological reasoning. While relying, no
doubt, on St Basil the Great’s well known work on the Holy Spirit, which
he does not name, he sated that “God can only be adored through an
authentic image of Christ.” God is spirit, and only an image of the
incarnate Son of God shows, in the Holy Spirit, both the divinity of the
Lord and, through it, the Father.48 Thus the authenticity of the image of
Christ is indispensable to the adoration of the Holy Trinity. However, this
traditional Orthodox judgment is contradicted by its practical applica­
tion. For Vladimirov, an image of Christ is authentic when it imitates life,
nature. “In every icon or human portrait, reasonable painters represent
the aspect proper to each part, each joint, and thus every image or new
44 “Letter,* 37.
45 Ibid.,34.
46 Ibul.35.
47 Äwt,41.
48 IbûL, 43.
344 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

icon is painted with light colors, rosy cheeks, and shadows—as in life.”49
Vladimirov was convinced that the Holy Face, the “Image-not-made-
with-human-hands,” was precisely such a naturalistic image.50 In his
opinion, then, authenticity meant fidelity to what the painter saw in the
life surrounding him. “When he sees something or hears a description of
it, he retraces this in images, that is, in his personages, making them
resemble what one sees or hears.”51
The theoretical foundation of such a concept of the image is found in
the work attributed to Simon Ushakov. For him, the image as such is
based on the same principle as that of a reflection in the mirror. Ushakov,
too, cites the example of the Holy face, and then continues:
Not only is the Lord himself the creator of the image, but every object to which
sight has access possesses the secret and most amazing power of this art. For every
object, when placed before a mirror, paints its image on it by a decree of divine
wisdom. O miracle without miracle! A wondrous image appears that moves
when man moves.. .laughs when he laughs, cries when he cries.. .and seems fully
49 Ibid., 52.
50 A drawing made by him has been preserved, “representing the Holy Face with a living,
humanly expressive face, with wrinkles on the forehead and around the eyes’* (E. S.
Ovchinnikova, The Portrait in 17th Century Russian Art [in Russian] [Moscow, 1955], 20). In
1663 this drawing was used in Vienna to make an engraving which bore the following caption
in Polish: A long time ago, upon retumingfrom their pilgrimages, the Jesuit Fathers brought back
to Rome the true image made without hands, the linen ofAbgar. A copy ofit has been engraved in
Vienna, through the courtesy ofJoseph Vladimirov, Muscovite iconographer.
The iconographie manual of Siva reproduces this same engraving with the following
explanation: The transfer of the Holy Face from Edessa to Constantinople occurred in the year
6452from the creation ofthe world, the year944 since the Incarnation ofChrist... This image is
presently in Rome, at the church ofSt Sylvester, Pope ofRome.
Now, we know that the Holy Face preserved in Constantinople disappeared during the sack
of the city by the Crusaders in 1204. The Roman Catholic version according to which the
Jesuits 300 years later (the order was founded in 1534) supposedly rediscovered it has replaced
the Orthodox tradition about the fate of this image. Had it really been found and preserved in
Rome, this would have increased this city’s authority. Consequently, this Latin version did not
arise by chance: it would play a leading role in the strong western pressure exercised in the
spheres of theology, art, and eveiyday life. The very fact that a work of a Russian Orthodox
iconographer had appeared in Vienna under the patronage of the Jesuits is already significant.
For this, proteaion was needed and great praaical ability. It is hard to determine the role played
by Vladimirov himself in this reorientation. At any rate, this proves that in addition to his
“strong sympathy" for western painting, he also had concrete contacts with the West. We
should also note that the “Writing of the Three Patriarchs," after referring to the Orthodox
tradition about the origin of the Holy Face, adds to it the western legend of Veronica, which
appeared in the fifteenth century. To our knowledge, this is the first time this legend appears in
an Orthodox context; it is repeated subsequendy in the “Edia of the Tsar."
51 “Letter,” 58.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 345

alive without having either a human body or soul. Is it not God himself who
teaches us the art of painting icons through the intermediary of nature?*2

The natural property of reflecting objects is compared by Ushakov not

only to the creation of the Holy Face: he proposes this property as a model
for human creation. To create means to imitate the mirror which reflects
the divine order. To say this differently: for Ushakov as well as
Vladimirov, the image, like a reflection in the mirror, should represent
people and objects in their visible, daily condition,53 that is, according to
what is disclosed to the eye, to the emotions, and to reason.

This principle was applied to a realm that lies beyond the limits of
such a natural concept. A concrete example will allow us to see how
traditional Orthodox concepts were falsified by such re-interpretation. In
the image of the Nativity of Christ, he sûtes, the child “must absolutely
be white and pink, but especially beautiful—not deprived of beauty since
the prophet has said, ‘The Lord has entered into his kingdom. He is
adorned with splendor,’ And, ‘Lord, we will walk in the light of your
face.’” “How then,” he asks, “could one paint his face dark?”54 But the
two prophecies cited by Vladimirov have an eschatological meaning. The
52 “Discourse,” 22-3. In ancient Russian manuscripts, one comes across the phrase “as if he were
alive,” which is used to characterize what is represented in the icon. In no case is this
expression to he understood in the sense given to it by the seventeenth-century apologists of
the new an trend. As Dmitriev has noted correctly (op. cit., 113), this expression, as a form of
praise, is applied to works of art of a totally different nature. Indeed, when the ancient Greek
pagan writers as well as some Orthodox wished to praise an image, they said that it was “alive.”
The words are the same in the two cases, but the art they characterize is entirely different. This
is because here the term “life” (“living”) has two entirely different meanings. For both, the
image represents life, but this life is not the same for each. For the advocates of the new art, the
artistic translation of life—life being the inner, spiritual praxis—has been replaced by the
direct representation of the life that is accessible to the eye, “as one sees something, or hears a
description of it.” What was alive in the art of the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, has for
them perished. The same is true for the concept of “remembrance” (“recall”). The advocates
of the new art understood this term in a subjective, psychological sense, while to Orthodox
consciousness (a term often referred to during Iconoclasm), it meant not merely a commemo­
ration, but an ontological participation in the prototype.
53 Ushakov has painted an entire series of icons of the Holy Face in which he attempted to render
the human flesh, a living body and details of various psychological states as well as the natural
folds in the linen, with the greatest possible accuracy (see Plate 43). This painter undertook
the composition of a type of illustrated manual, “an alphabet of this art; all the members of the
human body which our art needs.” That is, he demonstrated the manner in which the
members of the human body are to be represented in a naturalistic instead of an iconographie
fashion. See the end of his “Discourse.”
54 “Letter,” 57.
346 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

first is the prokeimenon of Sunday, that is, an image of the eighth day of
creation, of the age to come. The second is used at the feast of the
Transfiguration, that is, of the uncreated divine light. A better choice
could not be made, since these two prophecies reveal precisely the essen­
tial character of the Orthodox icon, its eschatological orientation. But, we
know, the icon can only render this eschatological meaning of the proph­
ecies symbolically, and this is what eluded Vladimirov. In his view, vivid
colors were needed to render the uncreated light; and to correctly trans­
pose the prophetic words concerning the divine beauty and the uncreated
light, one should, he believed, represent the new-born child with a white
and rosy face, in the style of western painting.
He applied the same reasoning when speaking of the images of the saints.
Where is the rule to be found stating that all the faces of the saints are to be
represented equally tanned and dark? Not all the saints had a thin, drawn face.
And if during their life certain saints did not look healthy because they neglected
their body, they must exchange this face for a clear one after their death, having
received their crowns. But even during their life many saints were noted for their
striking beauty. Should one therefore represent them with dark faces?$$

To buttress his reasoning, Vladimirov cited examples from Scripture

When Moses, the great one among the prophets, received the law from the Lord
in Sinai.. .the children of Israel could not look at the face of Moses because of
the light that rested upon him.. .Should one therefore depict the face of Moses
as dark and tanned?
Or also,
When the elders saw how very beautiful Susannah was, they coveted her. They
slandered her because of it, and brought her before the court, ordering her to
uncover the head so that they could absorb the beauty of her bright free.. .And
in our time, you, Pleshkovich, ask iconographers to paint dark images that do
not resemble the beauty of their prototype. You teach us to give the lie to ancient
writings.
Now, first of all, we know that the faces on icons were not always dark:
they were painted dark or bright, independent of the color they had
during the saint’s life. But what is utterly absurd in Vladimirov’s reason­
ing is that he puts on the same level the face of a saint illumined by grace
(that of Moses), physical beauty (which he likens to a bright face, follow­
ing the taste of his time), the physical, sensuous beauty of Susannah which
55 7^,58.
The An ofthe 17th Century 347

prompted the lust of the elders, the bright aspect of the flesh in bloom,
and the divine light. Vladimirov saw no difference between the two types
of beauty. In order to transpose the one and the other into an image, it is
appropriate to use bright colors, and above all to approach visible reality
as much as possible. Thus Vladimirov no longer viewed the beauty of
holiness in the traditional Orthodox manner, that is, as a divine likeness.
For him, it consisted of physical beauty, and the divine light was the
physical light. He saw in both merely natural properties that did not
surpass the limits of the created. Through this, he introduced the concept
of created grace into the icon. It is precisely this beauty, “similar to the
one seen in life,” which the opponents of innovation “had begun to hate,”
Vladimirov states. “They maintain that the beauty of the saints is depicted
to tempt the Christians.”57 He became indignant when artistic paintings
prompted his opponents not to prayer but to guilty feelings, and he
compared them to sodomites. “Listen. How dare you look with evil intent
at images of saints, harboring seductive thoughts in your heart?” “A true
Christian,” he taught “should not be tempted even when looking at
prostitutes, and should not be overcome with passions when looking at
icons of the saints.” Vladimirov required that one take a spiritual, not a
carnal, attitude before man’s physical beauty, and that one should not let
oneself be tempted. In other words, according to his reasoning, an image
that reproduces nature puts one in the same situation as if one were
looking at a prostitute, and one should have the same reaction. Thus, one
is supposed to pray no longer thanks to the icon, but in spite of it.

According to Vladimirov, an image that imitates nature ought to

reflect the various physical and psychic states corresponding to the cir­
cumstances in which the person represented found himself. Thus, before
Pilate, Christ “stood perturbed.” On the cross, “His senses had with­
ered.”58 As for Ushakov, leaning on the well-known sermon delivered by
St Basil the Great on the day of St Bariaam, he said: “We strive to represent the
56 Among the saints, there were certainly persons of great physical beauty. But what the church
presents to us as an example is not this fleshly beauty but the saint’s inner life. Is this not the
reason why the Gospel does not give us any physical descriptions, and why it exalts neither the
beauty nor the strength of the human body? Is it not the goal of Holy Scripture, like that of
the icon, to lead us to a state opposite to the one in which the old men found themselves when
they looked upon Susannah?
57 “Letter," 61.
58 Ibid, 57.
348 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

sufferings of the martyrs in a vivid manner so that the viewers, their hearts
moved by pity, might share their merits.” Here we find the unequivocal
influence of western spiritual concepts.59 We detea not only the Roman
Catholic concept of “merit” but also that of the image as a stimulant for
natural emotions. It is true that an image which reproduces the physical and
emotional life of man in a naturalistic manner can only claim to prompt a
corresponding emotion in the viewer, a natural emotion.
Thus, even if in the theoretical reasoning of our authors there is a
certain formal link with “the Byzantine theoreticians,” even if they lean
on them, in reality—let us repeat—they reveal a diametrically opposed
attitude in their concept of the image (its content, its beauty, the light,
and so forth). We are confronted here with two views of the sacred image
that are radically different: the Orthodox concept and that of Roman
Catholicism. It is toward the latter that the concept of the image and its
piaorial language are now oriented.
Their new concept of the image has led the authors of the treatises to
view traditional Orthodox art as a stage that has been surpassed. Manu­
script G of the same Letter of Vladimirov contains a typical variant that
clearly illustrates his attitude toward the art of the past (or at least that of
the trend to which he belonged). Here we read: “That there have been bad
icons in Russia from ancient times is not surprising, since a people that
has been led from darkness into the light only recently could not, in such
a short time span, fully absorb an art of such great wisdom,”60 that is, the
art that seemed ideal to Vladimirov, as it represented the truth with
greater accuracy. Thus he was concerned not merely with his contempo­
rary iconographers and their errors, but with the Russian art of the
preceding periods in its entirety, with this art which Vladimirov viewed as
being “an ancient usage.” But a usage is not a written law:61 it perpetuates
itself thanks to ignorance and lack of understanding.

It should be said that such reasoning was somehow supported by the

59 In the same realm of ideas, Ushakov executed a representation of the seven deadly sins, which
was but a reworked copy of an illustration of Ignatius of Loyola's “Spiritual Exercises,* with a
purely Roman Catholic “classification* of sins (sec Sidorov, The Drawings of the Ancient
Masters [in Russian] [Moscow, 1955], 45; and History ofRussian Art [Moscow, 1959], vol. 4,
498-99).
60 “Letter,* 25.
61 IbuL
The Art ofthe 17th Century 349

reactions prompted by the reforms of Patriarch Nikon. Indeed,

It was the abrupt and indiscriminate rejection of all Old Russian ceremony and
ritual which gave Nikon’s reforms their sharp quality. Not only were these rites
replaced by new ones, but they were declared false and heretical, almost impious.62

True, things were different with respect to sacred art. Nonetheless, within
the overall context, the “corrections” of the rites by Nikon, on the one
hand, “scandalized and wounded the conscience of the people,” leading to
protests and a schism. On the other hand, for people leaning toward
innovation, they offered a pretext to doubt the Orthodox tradition and its
art, and to criticize them. Archpriest Avvakum, for example, mentions the
following words of the innovators, uttered during a discussion: “Dear
Avvakum, do not be stubborn. Why do you mention Russian saints?
They were stupid, our saints. They could neither read nor write—why
believe them?”63 Such a negative attitude was seen particularly among
those painters who were most influential.
What then was the reaction ofthe Church and ofthe defenders oftraditional
art? In what positive ways did they fight this abandonment of Orthodox
doctrine about the concept of die images, this distortion of its language?
Before all else, one should say that, because of the loss of the authentic,
traditional criterion and the implantation of scholastic theology, the
defenders of Orthodox art found themselves, when faced with new theo­
ries, without defense on the theological plane.
Characteristically, the Great Council of Moscow did not react to the
appearance of radical modifications in sacred art, despite the pressing
actuality of the question, just as the sixteenth-century councils had not
reacted to deviations from the Orthodox teaching concerning icons.
Certainly, the council showed its concern for the quality of sacred art and
required that icons be painted according to ancient models. But
Vladimirov and Ushakov also painted according to ancient models. The
council’s silence is all the more strange since the petition of Symeon of
Polotsk, an advocate of the new art, was completed precisely to be
discussed there. Yet there is no echo of it except on one point: the
representation of the Deity. The right to pronounce judgment on sacred
62 G. Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Part One, trans. R. L. Nichols (Belmont, MA:
Nordland Publishing Co., 1979)» 95.
63 The Life ofArchpriest Avvakum (the Russian text) (Moscow, 1960), 139 and 156.
350 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

art was no doubt reserved for the patriarchs of the East. But as we have
seen, their judgment was not only not opposed to the introduction of
alien elements into Orthodox art, but, on the contrary, supported it with
its authority. In his work cited earlier, Dmitriev writes:
In his argumentation, Ushakov refers to the phenomena of nature, to man’s
natural properties, and to the social dimensions of art, but he loses sight of the
interests of the Church. This oversight, so typical of the development of Russian
thought in the seventeenth century, is also characteristic of the Writingof 1668
[namely, that of the three patriarchs].64

With a painter carried away by new ideas, such an omission is understand­

able; it is more than strange with patriarchs. As much in content as in
overall orientation, their writing is unquestionably the least ecclesiastical
document of all. As for the Writing of the tsar, it essentially followed that of
the patriarchs and also contained no reaction against the innovations.
Nonetheless, the break of the new trend with the Tradition provoked
a violent reaction, characterized by the unhealthy rending proper to the
seventeenth century. According to the defenders of the Tradition, neither
western art itself nor its imitation was acceptable to the Orthodox Church
because they had been contaminated by ideas of the non-OrthodoxWest.
Those who defended the innovations viewed them as a legitimate succes­
sion to the Orthodox tradition, and the new art forms introduced by
Vladimirov aiid Ushakov as the normal development of traditional sacred
art. By contrast, for the defenders of the Tradition, the issue was not “a
development” but a break: alien elements had been introduced into
Orthodox art, thereby denaturing it. The “imitation of nature,” the
portrayal of what was directly visible inspired “fear” in them. Vladimirov
asked Pleshkovich: “You say that the image of the Lord scares you. Is it
because you have seen it painted in the imitation of man as he is?...It is
the image of Emmanuel.. .but your blasphemous tongue has called it that
of a German woman.”65 This is because the human flesh, deprived of the
spirituality of the represented prototype, became associated in the eyes of the
defenders ofthe Tradition with everything “German,” that is, heretical. To them
it seemed repulsive. “On the hill they have painted a German on this cross,”
Pleshkovich said, referring to a cross made in 1654-1655 and placed at the gate
of laroslavl. As for Archpriest Avvakum, he expressed himself in the spontaneous
64 Dmitriev, “Art Theory,” Trudy Otdela DC (Moscow-Leningrad, 1953), 102-3.
65 “Letter,” 50-1.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 351

and picturesque fashion that is typical of him:

The image of the Savior, Emmanuel, is painted with a puffy face, red lips, curly
hair, fat hands and muscles.. .He looks altogether like a German, pot-bellied and
corpulent; the one thing lacking is a sword on his hip. But all this is painted
according to unspiritual thoughts, for the heretics themselves have begun to love
the coarse flesh. They have abandoned the sublime.66

As is known, it is Patriarch Nikon whom Avvakum held responsible for all

such innovations, though this opinion is contested in a passage by
Vladimirov. In their discussion, Pleshkovich referred to the violent measures
against the new art taken by Nikon. Vladimirov replied by saying that
the honorable, most reverend Nikon...shows great zeal for the very judicious
painting of icons.. .He does not condemn the art of painting, but he does not
praise crude, unsuitable iconographers—not only Latins but also the Russians
when they are bad.. .As for beautiful painting, he does not repudiate it.67

Nonetheless, according to Pleshkovich and the testimony of Paul of

Aleppo, the patriarch destroyed icons, not because they were badly
painted, but precisely because of their western, heterodox character, say­
ing that this painting “resembled Frankish portraiture.”68 Thus what
Vladimirov says about Nikon’s fight against so-called badly painted icons,
regardless of their Latin or Russian character, does not agree at all with the
patriarch’s real attitudes. Furthermore, the icons Nikon destroyed be­
longed to nobles and high dignitaries: they could therefore hardly have
been of poor artistic quality.69 We may state with certainty that Patriarch
66 The Letter of Archpriest Avvakum, ibùL, 4th sermon, 135.
67 “Letter," 55.
68 Journey, Bk DC, ch 3,137.
69 There is not the slightest reason to ascribe to Nikon a resistance only to Latin and Lutheran
iconographie subjects, and a sanctioning of westernized painting (see History ofRussian Art [in
Russian], vol. 6 [Moscow], 426). Paul of Aleppo is very clear in his description. In 1654,
Nikon ordered that the icons painted by Muscovite painters “according to Frankish and Polish
models" be collected, “removing them even from the houses of functionaries of the State." He
had their eyes gouged out and had them paraded through Moscow, threatening to punish all
those who would paint icons according to such models. In 1655, on the Sunday of the
Triumph of Orthodoxy, after the Liturgy in the cathedral, the patriarch had these icons
brought to the middle of the church. He gave a long address, saying that such painting was
“inadmissible," using explanations borrowed from a collection of patristic sermons (this
undoubtedly was the Florilegium, edited in 1642). Then taking the icons one by one, he
showed them to the people, saying, “This icon comes from the house of such and such a
dignitary, the son of so and so." He broke them and threw them on the stone slabs. Together
with Patriarch Macarius of Antioch and Metropolitan Gabriel of Serbia who were present, he
anathematized all those who would paint such images or keep them at home (see Journey).
352 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Nikon was aware of the limits of sacred art.

As for the apologists of the new art, the artistic quality of the western
art works was for them a sufficient reason to venerate them on par with
the Orthodox icon. Thus, in the eyes of Vladimirov, both a naturalistic
image, and even its printed reproduction, could be blessed and replace an
icon.
When we sec among our compatriots or among foreigners an image of Christ
or of the Virgin which is well printed or painted with this very sagacious art.. .we
prefer such salutary objects to all the things of the earth. We buy them from
strangers with love.. .and receive a representation of Christ on sheets of paper or
on boards, kissing it lovingly. Following the rules, we bring such icons to the
priests who recite the necessary prayers, praise God, and bless His image by
sprinkling it with holy water, as is prescribed by the rubrics for the consecration
of church objects.
A little further, after enumerating various cultic objects made with materials
of foreign origin, he continues: “And as all this is blessed by the hands of the
bishop and the words of prayer, why should one also not bless this image of
Christ painted in imitation of life, even if it is made by foreigners?”70
These words of Vladimirov indicate that there was a ritual blessing not
only of icons painted “according to Frankish and Polish modes,” which
were destroyed by Patriarch Nikon, but also of western art works and
reproductions, as if they were Orthodox icons. This shows the degree of
indifference toward the doctrinal content of the icon reached by the
Muscovite clergy. This indifference, indeed this forsaking of the doctrinal
criterion, provoked a violent reaction on the part of Patriarch Joachim. In
his Testament, he wrote:
In the name of the Lord, I command that icons of the God-man, of the most
holy Mother of God and of all the saints not be painted according to Latin and
70 “Letter," 50. In his argumentation, Vladimirov put the various objects used in worship (sacred
vessels, priestly vestments) on the same level as a cultic image. However, as far as the Orthodox
icon is concerned, such an assimilation is impossible. We find here a confusion which points,
once again, to the total loss of the Orthodox concept of the image. Furthermore, this sin exists
also in our own time: witness the list of subjects to be discussed at the council (Journal ofthe
Patriarchate ofMoscow [in Russian], 11 [1961], 25). Such confusion places the question of the
icon back to the stage which preceded its solution at the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Let us
recall from the Aft of the Council that what was asked was, “How should icons be venerated?
In the same manner as sacred vessels, ornaments and other cult objects, or differently?" We
know that the Council answered this question as follows, both in the Aft and in its decision:
the icon must be venerated on the same grounds as the cross and the Gospel. In other words,
the image was placed not in a utilitarian but in a dogmatic context.
The An ofthe 17th Century 353

German representations. They are tainted and unacceptable, newly invented

according to individual fantasies; they corrupt our Church tradition. If churches
have any that arc incorrecdy painted, they must be removed.71
With regard to prints of foreign origin, Patriarch Joachim wrote in his
Testament
Numerous merchants buy German printed sheets of paper, sold by German
Lutheran and Calvinist heretics. On them, one sees people portrayed as people
from their own country, clothed in foreign German dress, according to their
blasphemous opinions and not according to the ancient models found among
the Orthodox. These heretics do not venerate icons, and because of these sheets
of paper the veneration of icons is neglected.
This led the patriarch to forbid completely both the printing of sacred
images on paper and their sale, and even more their use in churches or
houses in place of icons.72
In spite of the inadequacy and the weakness of the arguments of the
defenders of traditional art (“The Church does not allow such new
expressions. This is not our custom,” Patriarch Joachim said), one senses
in them, if not an understanding, then at least a sure instinct of what an
Orthodox image is. For them, it was not a question simply of denying
what was incomprehensible or of rejecting “die new.” They repudiated
what was foreign, even hostile, and clearly destructive to Orthodox art,
and more generally to spirituality as such. This refusal was not expressed
in rational terms: rather it was instinctive, and thus all the more violent.
Patriarch Nikon smashed icons painted in the new fashion and poked out
their eyes. The “ascetic” reasoning of Archpriest Avvakum is lacking in the
rational arguments. He limited himself to insults which, it is true, were
spirited and humorous. Though he attacked Nikon, whom he held
responsible for the innovations in iconography, the fact remains that these
two men were, on this point, of the same opinion. A convinced grecophile
(at least during his patriarchate) and an enemy of western culture, Nikon
was accused by his enemies of being an advocate of “German” customs.
Such an accusation, at least with respect to icons, is absurd. The principles
of sacred Orthodox art were as dear to him as to Avvakum and his
followers. If the latter tried to accuse Nikon, it is because they viewed the
71 The book entitled Shield, quoted in the Iconographie Manual of Bolshakov (in Russian),
edited by Uspenskii (Moscow, 1903).
72 Mentioned by N. Pokrovskii in The Monuments ofChristian Iconography andArt (in Russian)
(St Petersburg, 1900), 370.
354 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

changes in art within the overall context of the reforms undertaken by

him. For Avvakum and his followers, everything in this domain was
sacred to the same degree, immutable like the Deity itself.
Only Patriarch Joachim clearly defined what he was fighting against,
even if his definition falls rather within the province of ascetic spiritual
practice, and lacks a theological terminology. Such images, he says, are
“perverted.” They are “newly-invented according to individual fantasies.”
They “corrupt the Orthodox tradition.” Joachim and Archpriest
Avvakum took the same approach in judging the new art: they viewed it,
above all, from the perspective of ascetic practice, and condemned it as a
“new invention” according to “the vague impulses of the flesh.” Neverthe­
less, the veiy concept of such ascetic practice and of the judgments it
inspired were different in each case. For Joachim, this new art was
unacceptable in worship, in the church; for Avvakum it was likewise
unacceptable, but on the national level, on the level of the sure which,
from his perspective, included the Church as a component of its life.
“Alas! Alas! O unhappy Russia! What is this craving for German customs
and mores that has taken hold of you?”73 For Avvakum and his support­
ers, the sacred character of the state extended to everything; in it, there
could be nothing that was not sacred. Salvation, for him, dwelt not in a
creation inscribed in the Tradition but in the intangibility, the immutabil­
ity of everything that exists, whether authentically traditional or not,
whether in form or in content. “What has been established before us, let
this remain so unto ages of ages.”74 This immutability thus included
everything that had been introduced into sacred art: all the fantasies of
Russian painters, all the borrowings from the West covered by the author­
ity of the sixteenth-century councils, as well as the borrowings that had
been accumulated since. All this was viewed as an inviolable heritage in
toto) and to our day the old-ritualists remain attached to this, at least in
principle.

It should be noted that, aside from Avvakum, the advocates of traditional

art did not defend it by reason of its venerable antiquity: not one of them
speaks of it in such terms. Only their opponents (Vladimirov) and contempo­
rary art historians attribute to them this attitude of attachment to “the old?
73 The Life ofArchpriett Avvakum (in Russian) (Moscow, I960), 136.
74 Ibid., 109.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 355

In the seventeenth century, the corruption of sacred art followed two

paths. On the one hand, there was a a re-orientation of the Orthodox concept
of the image and of its pictorial language in the Roman Catholic sense. On the
other, there occurred a deterioration of iconography under the influence of
western representations and the fantasies of Russian painters. We have seen in
the previous chapter that the abandonment of the realism of the Gospel
initially provoked strong protest. But in the seventeenth century such allegor-
ism—such painted parables that betrayed Gospel realism—multiplied. Be­
ginning with the sixteenth century, “There remained not one single idea,
however unimportant, belonging to the poetic view of the world in Christian­
ity, not a single liturgical chant, not a single psalm, for which no attempt was
made to personify it in iconography.”75 Certainly, among the numerous new
iconographie subjects, some can be justified by their theological content (for
example, “All of creation rejoices in you, full of grace,” and “Let every breath
praise the Lord,” and other icons of cosmic character); but for the overwhelm­
ing majority it was a question of fantasies which corrupted Orthodox iconog­
raphy. We have already said that errors occur in all periods, as much in
iconography as in theology, but earlier we dealt with exceptional phenomena.
Now, however, they become legion, caused as much by borrowing? from
outside Orthodoxy as by “departures of a drunken folly,” in the words of
Zenobius the monk
Certain seventeenth-century documents are devoted to the struggle
against this corruption of Orthodox iconography: the Acts of the Great
Council of Moscow, the works of Euthymius the monk, in part that of
Patriarch Joachim, and also those of Vladimirov. In this domain also, we
come across a phenomenon that is typical of this period: on the one hand,
certain iconographie subjects are well studied and critiqued according to
a theological criterion (particularly by the Great Council); on the other
hand, no light is shed on the incompatibility of the very principle of such
painting with Orthodox tradition.

For Vladimirov, the iconographie errors were but one indication of the
low level to which, according to him, Russian painting had sunk He
criticized such errors in the same way that he criticized the “bad icons,”
and on the same plane. He saw a similarity between errors in the old icons and
75 G. Filimonov, “Surveys of Russian Christian Iconography: Sophia the Divine Wisdom* (in
Russian), VestnikOb. drtvnerusskogoiskusstoapriMosk. PublichwmMuzee (Moscow, 1976), 131.
356 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

errors contained in the liturgical books, and he often referred to the

correction of the books which was then taking place.76 Vladimirov’s
criticism is justified only when he attacks subjects due to the “frenzy” and
the “fables” of Russian iconographers such as, for example, Archangel
Michael represented as a monk wearing the great schema,77 “or something
still worse and blasphemies against God still more impious: Christ in the
lap of the Either on the Cross, as if He were in the folds of the garments
of the Lord Sabaoth”78—a subject borrowed from Catholicism and al­
ready criticized in its own time by Viskovatyi. However, the criterion on
which Vladimirov based himself was neither the Tradition of the Church
nor theology: it was “reason.” Who, then, “being endowed with reason
will not mock such folly?,” he asked.79 In the examples we have cited, the
criterion of reason is justified by the patent absurdity of what he criticizes.
But this criterion is insufficient and powerless where the evidence is not as
absolute, and where a theological understanding, however elementary, is
indispensable. What was important for Vladimirov was to bring out the
“frenzy” that contradicted the natural reason, but whether any particular
style of iconography was Orthodox was for him no longer significant.
Thus, in his controversy with Pleshkovich, he constantly invoked histori­
cal realism, but he did not understand this in the Orthodox sense. For
him, only the fact as such was important, independent of its meaning.
Where will you find, he asks, the image of the Mother of God in the icon
of the Descent of the Holy Spirit? One does not find her there, he replies,
“believing her excluded from the reception of the Holy Spirit.”80 Indeed,
before the direct borrowings from Latin iconography, no image of Pente­
cost with the Mother of God at the center can be found in Orthodoxy.
But this is explained neither by an ignorance of Scripture nor by the
content of this feast, a content that eluded Vladimirov. In accordance
with his ideas, he created an image of the Descent of the Holy Spirit
according to a Catholic model, with the Virgin at the center.81 For the

76 “Letter,” 25.
77 “For these idiots say that when the archangel Michael became a monk, he was not yet able to
defeat Satan until he had received the great habit [great schema],” ibid. 59.
78 “Letter,” 60.
79 Ibid.. 59.
80 Ibid. to.
81 See L. Ouspensky, “Quelques considérations sur l’iconographie de la Pentecôte,” Messager de
VExarchatduPatr. russe en Europe occident., nos 33-4 (Paris, I960).
The Art ofthe 17th Century 357

same reason—the decisive importance of the historical fact as such—he

omitted the Aposde Paul in die iconography of this feast, since he was
absent from the event.
The iconographie question that most seriously preoccupied the Great
Council of Moscow was the “representability” of God the Father, or
rather the impossibility of representing Him. This question, as we have
seen, had already been raised at the Hundred-Chapters Council, and at
the 1553-1554 Council. For these councils, the decisive criterion had
been the practice existing in their time, regardless of whether or not it
conformed to the Tradition of the Church. Now the question was raised
differently; the Great Council judged current practice in the light of
doctrine and of Gospel realism, as the opponents of this iconography had
done in the sixteenth century. To prohibit the representation of God the
Father, the Great Council used extremely harsh terms and required con­
formity not to words, but to the sense of Orthodox doctrine.82 Unlike
Metropolitan Macarius, who had justified this image on the basis of
prophetic visions, the Great Council commented on these visions in the
traditional Orthodox way, which totally excluded the possibility of using
them to represent God the Father. By this conciliar decision, all the
subjects defended by Metropolitan Macarius were banned. In its essen­
tials, the decision of the Council was limited to subjects associated with
the representation of the Deity.

The same subject was at the core of the preoccupations of the monk
Euthymius. According to him, “it is quite proper to paint the image of
God the Father,” but for him this image was the incarnate Word, Christ
represented as a Child in the arms of his Mother, as a twelve year old
adolescent in the temple, then as an adult “as He lived in the world and
performed miracles,” and as He had been seen by the patriarchs and
prophets. Euthymius severely condemned the image called the “Pater­
nity,” seeing in it, “as much on the part of the painters as on that of those
who had commissioned it, an audacity deprived of all sense.” As the monk
Zenobius had done in his time, he brought to its logical conclusion the
transposition of a verbal image into an icon, thereby bringing its absurdity
to light. Thus iconographers depicted Christ “seated, wearing episcopal
82 In view of the great importance of this subject and the relevance of the decision of the Great
Council, we will study this question separately in the next chapter.
358 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

vestments.” But the Lord is also called priest, hegumen, lamb, shepherd,
king of king?, “and there still is a great number of other ascriptions. If the
iconographers were to begin painting Christ as a priest wearing a phelonion,
an epitrachilion and the rest, or else in the image of a monk hegumen, could
anything be more absurd than this?”83 The thought of Euthymius is charac­
terized by an intolerance toward any alteration of the historical truth, any
deviation from Orthodox doctrine. Christ and each of the saints must be
represented “according to what they looked like when they lived and walked
upon the earth.” But the iconographers were painting “the most holy
Mother of God wearing the vestments of a queen, and with wings”; and St
John the Forerunner “wearing a royal, winged crown on his head.” Is this in
agreement with the Tradition of the Church? Euthymius asked. “The most
holy Mother of God is indeed called a Queen, but not because she wears
royal vestments. It is because of the birth of her Son, the eternal King of
kings, and also because she now lives in the Kingdom of Heaven and reigns
eternally with her Son.” As for the representation of St John in the form of
an angel, with wings, Euthymius said that the title of “angel”, is given to
numerous saints (“an earthly angel, a heavenly man”), and although the
word “angel” means “messenger” and suits the Forerunner especially well,
such a portrayal with wings contradicts the historical truth, since he had no
wing? during his life.
While Patriarch Joachim limited himself to criticizing typically “Ger­
man” iconography, the monk Euthymius blamed Russian iconographers
for truncating and occasionally falsifying the meaning of the Orthodox
image through their fantasies and their use of foreign iconography. In
short, Euthymius rejected private “visions” and concepts that were not
based on the catholic teaching of the Church, on doctrine.

“The iconographers have recently begun to paint the most merciful

Lord according to Latin and Lutheran models, holding an apple or a globe
in His hand, which the holy Fathers do not accept.” Certainly, all of
creation is in the Savior’s power, but “the power of the Lord is not a globe.
It is His divine, life-giving word that delivers us from eternal torment,”
and this word is represented by means of a phylactery or a book. Also, “At
present, certain iconographers begin painting the holy apostles according
83 “Questions and Answers Concerning Russian Iconography” (in Russian), cd. G. Filimonov,
Vestnik Ob. drevn. iskuutva (Moscow, 1874-1876). See “Materials.”
The Art ofthe 17th Century 359

to German models, with instruments of torture according to the torments

they suffered.” And not only the apostles, but
the holy martyrs themselves are represented to this day according to the ancient
tradition, holding not instruments of torture, even if they had suffered various
torments, but the cross of Christ. They show thereby that they suffered for the
One who was crucified, that they were fortified by it in their sufferings, and that
they are now still glorified by it and not by instruments of torture.
In other words, what is important is not the method of execution itself
but its meaning. The essential trait of Orthodox iconography, especially
Russian, has always been to deepen the meaning, not to reduce it to an
episodic aspect, so typical of western iconography. What is important for
the Orthodox consciousness is not the type of death inflicted upon the
saints, but their witness to Christ, to His Incarnation and redemptive
mission.
Like Patriarch Joachim, Euthymius reacted vehemently against an aban­
donment of the tradition in the representation of the Mother of God, whom
“the iconographers also paint according to Latin models, with unveiled head
and disheveled hair...” “As soon as she was betrothed to Joseph, the holy
Mother of God no longer left her hair loose. She wore a veil, even though she
was, and remained, a virgin.” In other words, such a representation of the
Mother of God did not correspond historically to her social situation.84
But it was the image of divine Wisdom, Sophia, which Euthymius
attacked most severely:
The hypostatic Wisdom, as the Word and Power, is the Son of God. And if one
dares to paint Wisdom under an invented form, one will soon begin to dare
painting the Word by means of another invention, and the Power by still another
one. What, therefore, could be more absurd than that?85

84 One of the borrowings mentioned by Euthymius is the image of the Viigin “sanding on the
moon.’ The reference is probably to the image named “St Sophia of Kiev.” This subject
appeared in the West at the end of the fourteenth centuiy, with a precise theological content:
as a symbol of the Immaculate Conception. “How widely the Catholic opinion about the
Immaculate Conception had spread among the seventeenth-century theologians in Kiev is
well known...The members of the congregation of the Academy of Kiev were required to
confess that ‘Mary was not only without actual sin, but also free from original sin”* (G.
Florovsky, “The Veneration of Sophia Divine Wisdom in Byzantium and Russia* [in Rus­
sian], “Works of the Fifth Congress of Russian Academic Organizations Abroad, Part One*
[Sofia, 1932], 498, 500).
85 Euthymius undoubtedly had in mind the image of Sophia of Novgorod. For centuries, this
image had provoked explanations of its “mysterious meaning* that were as varied as they were
arbitrary. That gives us food for thought; it certainly indicates how unclear the image was.
360 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

“Concerning all this,” Euthymius said,

one should ask the wisest men to explain with greater precision, provided the
explanation be according to Holy Scripture and not according to human
syllogisms, that is, untrue reflections. For according to the tradition of the holy
apostles, the saints command us to flee from syllogisms that lead to lies. If
[according to the saints] we abandon our faith for syllogisms, our faith will be
lost, for we will no longer believe in God, but in men.
The monk Euthymius ended his exposition by expressing the desire to
have the Church decide such questions.
Everything that has been written should be presented to the consecrated bishops
so that they give a sure testimony of the truth, so that everything that must be
kept be kept, and everything not suitable for keeping be rejected. As to what is
doubtful, let this be corrected by the judgment of the Church.
The world of learning, both before and after the Russian Revolution,
has greatly, sometimes even enthusiastically, appreciated the seventeenth­
century treatises on art history and the role they have played. Scholars
before the Revolution saw in them a rejuvenation of worn-out concepts
and principles, and of art itself which was imitating ancient models. In the
treatise of Vladimirov some scholars even saw “a ray of light in the
development of the artistic ideas of old Russia.”86
For contemporary scholars, the value of these treatises lies in the fact
that they contributed to the genesis of the aesthetic concepts of an
emerging secular art, this within the framework of the changes to which
the regime and the culture were subjected at the time. The treatises
contributed to the ingrafting of a practically new way of viewing artistic
creation, and to the desacralization of church art.
Despite all the differences between the presuppositions of the two groups,
their general attitude toward church art is the same. The old scholars,
educated to the norms of academic painting with its proportions, its anatomy,
its perspective, eta, and the scholars of our day, starting from ideological
premises, view sacred art in the same way the authors of the seventeenth-cen­
tury treatises: for them, it is an art that is characteristic of a certain historical
period; its secularization corresponds to an organic evolution.
It must be said that the seventeenth-century treatises, especially those
of Vladimirov and of Ushakov, were in fact constructive in the sphere of
86 G. Filimonov, “Simon Ushakov and his Age in Russian Iconography* (in Russian), Sbomik
Ob. drevnerusskogo iskusstva (Moscow, 1873), 81.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 361

secular art, that is, the art that went hand in hand with the culture
emerging in Russia during this epoch. But at the same time, these treatises
were unquestionably destructive of sacred art: destructive because, while
they did not leave its domain, they broke with its principles. They applied
to sacred art the principles that are at the basis of contemporary western
art, and thereby undermined the very foundations of sacred art. This was
not a question of separation of church and state,87 which would be
normal; the evil lay precisely in the absence of separation. While becom­
ing secular, art still pretended to be religious. The emeiging secular art
certainly asserted itself and acquired its independence—but its principles
were also applied to the art of the Church, and they distorted it. The
change that occurred in sacred art is certainly neither a development nor
an evolution. The evolution of this art corresponded, as it still does, to the
orientation of the spiritual life, and to the general condition of the
Church. As long as the Tradition of the Church was lived in a creative
manner, new forms constantly emerged from within and developed ac­
cording to their own inner, spiritual laws. In the seventeenth century as
well, church art that had remained traditional also evolved. But this
evolution, by being attuned to the life of the Church during this epoch,
was oriented toward conservatism and artistry. It was not “the last century
of ancient Russian art,” of the icon, nor was it the inner depletion of
sacred art, as is often thought Just as the Church itself can neither
disappear nor become exhausted, nor can its art either wither or disap­
pear. But for a long time this an ceased to play the leading role of being
the mouthpiece of Orthodox faith and life.

The vision the Church has of the world does not evolve. It remains the
same in our day, just as the Church remains the Church. But within the
context of the reforms of government and culture, two different cultures
and two different visions of the world collided under the common aegis
of Orthodoxy. The world vision distinctive of the new culture made its
way into the consciousness of the faithful and into their spiritual life. And
widi it “was implanted a foreign, artificial, external tradition that blocked
the paths of creativity.”88 It obstructed the paths of both theology and of
art. Orthodoxy experienced the introduction of a concept of the image,
87 Sec History ofRussian Art (in Russian), vol. 4 (Moscow, 1959)» 54.
88 G. Florovsky, Ways ofRussian Theology, Pan One, trans. R- L. Nichols (Belmont, 1979)» 86ff.
362 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

and of its creation, that was independent of the spiritual life. The piety of
the faithful remained Orthodox, but their thinking and creativity broke
loose from Orthodoxy. They lived in an Orthodox way, but thought in a
heterodox manner. Their attitude toward the holy icon remained the
same, but they created it according to the western fishion. Spiritual
wholeness disintegrated. Seventeenth-century man remained profoundly
believing, but in his creativity he felt attracted to a non-Christian under­
standing of the world—a world the meaning of which his faith no longer
disclosed. The painter’s social experiences, varied and multiple, mingled
with his faith, marked his art.89 This is the ambiguity so typical of the
seventeenth century: a defense of the traditional art forms and their
destruction are often found side by side, not only in the same social class,
but even in the same person. What is tragic in the attitude of Simon
Ushakov and of Joseph Vladimirov is that they undermined the very
reality they defended so passionately and with such great conviction.
When considering sacred art as a whole, we can see how in the
seventeenth century the spiritual decay that ravaged the entire Orthodox
world resulted in a complete loss of the Orthodox conception of the
image, in a total lack of comprehension of its content. This is the main
reason for its decay on the one hand, for its secularization on the other.
External efforts were made to raise its artistic level, but its decomposition
was spiritual—and in this respect it is the official documents of the
Church authorities themselves that are most revealing. We have seen that
the Writing of the three patriarchs was marked by the total absence of any
theological basis for the image. The professions of faith that appeared in
the seventeenth century as a reaction to the Calvinist profession of faith
by Patriarch Cyril Loukaris are equally characteristic. These include: the
confession of faith of Metropolitan Peter Moghila, reworked and later
signed by four patriarchs and twenty-two bishops, and known under the
tide of the Orthodox Confession; The Message ofthe Patriarchs ofdie Eastern
Catholic Church Concerning the Orthodox Faith (the confession of Patri­
arch Dositheus of Jerusalem); and the Catechism of Peter Moghila. All
89 Hence the anxiety one perceives, among other things, in the contracts made with iconogra-
phers at the time: "Let nothing that is incompatible with the holiness of the church be
introduced” (seeG. Brusov, The Frescoes of Yaroslavl [in Russian] [Moscow, 1969], 15). Such
clauses are frequently found in Roman Catholic documents; it is hard to imagine them in the
Orthodox Church at the time of Dionysius or Rublev.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 363

these documents have a markedly latinized character. In the domain of

sacred art they just blindly followed the ways of thinking imposed by
Protestantism. They limited themselves to justify this art and to refute the
accusation of idolatry. Their content and spirit did not go beyond the
framework of the Council of Trent (1563); and the Catechism of Peter
Moghila only offered an abbreviated recapitulation of the decision of this
council. What is most distinctive of these documents is the absence of any
theology. It is as if the patristic theology of the image had never existed.
Even when they refer to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the authors and
the signatories only explain how icons ought to be venerated, just as the
Council of Trent had done. Equally typical is that, precisely in the
seventeenth century, everything concerning the doctrinal content of the
icon disappeared from the Russian Synodicon of the Triumph of Ortho­
doxy.
The patristic heritage ceased being a criterion, and this was made
apparent at times in an absurd way. Thus in the sixteenth century (in
1512) a compilation of various translations by an unknown author ap­
peared in the “Chronicle” under the title “Prophecies of the Hellene
Sages.” Here, prophecies invented to defend the Incarnation and the
dogma of the Trinity were put in the mouth of philosophers from
antiquity, Sybils, even pagan gods. These “prophecies” were subsequently
introduced into various collections and became widely disseminated,
especially during the seventeenth century.90 Corresponding to this litera­
ture, these “Hellene Sages” appeared on the walls, doors, even on icons in
Russian churches. Later they were at times even depicted on the iconosta­
sis, below the row of local saints. These images were accompanied by
“prophecies” corresponding to those in the collections, written either on
phylacteries or on the background of the image. Thus “Hermcs-the-
Thrice-Great...explains his theology. To understand God is difficult; to
explain Him impossible, for He is tri-personal, ineffable, a being and a
nature the likeness of whom is not found among men.” Menander: “The
Deity cannot be investigated. It is ineffable and indestructible, composed
and glorified in three persons, heard by man and glorified. God must be
90 Thus they are included in certain editions of a polemical nature, such as the Book of Cyril
(1644), containing patristic works that explain Orthodox doctrine. Articles against heretics
(Arians, iconoclasts, Latins, Armenians) were included, among which were the “prophecies of
the wise Hellenes," intended no doubt for the anti-heretical struggle.
364 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

born of the pure Virgin Mary, and in Him I also believe.” Homer “A star
will shine on mortals: it will be Christ among the nations. He will live
strangely, seeking to unite the earthly to the heavenly.” Aphrodition (“the
Persian of the perverse spirit,” who was earlier vehemently accused by St
Maximus the Greek): “Christ will be bom of the pure Virgin Mary. I too
believe in Him,”91 and so forth. Taking into account the renewed interest
in antiquity, it is possible that the “Prophecies of the Hellene Sages”
represented, in the eyes of the seventeenth-century people, an attempt to
combine “the history of natural revelation given to the pagans in the
persons of their best representatives”92 with the fullness of the Christian
revelation. But in fact these contrived “proofs” were part and parcel of the
“inventions” and the “frenzy” in iconography which had flooded sacred
art, and by means of which an attempt was also made to prove something.
It is striking and revealing of the condition of seventeenth-century
thought that these “prophecies” prompted no reaction, even though they
appeared in the main churches of the Kremlin (the cathedrals of the
Assumption and the Annunciation). Even the documents devoted to a
criticism of bad painting and iconographie errors said nothing against
such doctrinal “proofs.” On the contrary, some of the iconographie
manuals gave instructions on how properly to paint the “Hellene Sages”
with their “prophecies.”
The growing interest in antiquity, in wisdom from the outside, con­
taminated the ecdesial consciousness and distorted it. This is expressed,
on the one hand, under the unhealthy form of false prophecies and, on
the other, through an amalgamation of concepts based on the natural
reasoning of the philosophers and on texts by the Church Fathers. A
perfect example is the Writing of the patriarchs, in their argumentation
concerning art. In the properly theological realm, the same assortment
can be seen, for example, in Symeon of Polotsk, a latinizer and and
advocate of the new art. Thus in his work The Crown of Faith, which
Patriarch Joachim called “a crown of baleful thorns grown in the West,”93
91 N. A. Kazakova, “The Prophecies of the Greek Sages and Their Representations in Russian
Painting* (in Russian), Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi UteraturyYNW (Moscow, 1961), 368.
92 N. A. Speranskii, “Ancient Russian Iconostases* (in Russian), Khristianskoe Chtenie (Septem­
ber-October 1893), 330.
93 A. V. Kartashev, History of the Russian Church (in Russian) (Paris, 1959), vol. 2, 247. Like
some of our contemporaries, “Symeon did not attach great importance to the differences
between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches* (A. M. Panchenko, “Word and Knowl-
The An ofthe 17th Century 365

Symeon referred indiscriminately to the Church Fathers and to a series of

pagan authors. Such appeals to Antiquity provoked a severe criticism from
certain quarters. For example, Metropolitan Isaiah of Kiev, driven from
his see by Peter Moghila, wrote:
The reasoning of this world is one thing, the reasoning of the spirit another. All
the saints studied the spiritual reasoning coming from the Holy Spirit and, like
the sun, they have illuminated the world. But now one acquires his power of
reasoning not from the Holy Spirit, but from Aristode, Plato, Cicero, and other
pagan philosophers. This is why people are utterly blinded by falsehood and
seduced from right understanding.94

The realm of ritual and liturgical order was also affected by the general
decline of spiritual life. In Russia during the seventeenth century, this was
occasionally expressed in totally unhealthy phenomena. Thus, chanting
was frequently performed “in several voices” (that is, two or three parts of
the office were celebrated simultaneously, and sometimes even five or six,
which created a terrible cacophony). There was also what was called
khomonia, that is, the introduction of vowels and sometimes of entire
syllables into the chanted words, which distorted the text completely.
“While listening to such nonsense, some who admitted not one critical
thought in matters of religion saw in it a mysterious meaning, which
eluded their understanding,”95 just as they saw such a meaning in the
inventions of the iconographers on subjects taken from liturgical texts, the
psalms, and so forth. It is symptomatic that every attempt to return to the
norm by correcting errors, even in the most flagrant cases, met with
opposition and was classified, without the slightest embarrassment, as
“heresy.” It is all the more surprising that, alongside all these unhealthy
phenomena, most icons (except, naturally, those affected by the new
trend and by deformations) still remained on a high spiritual and aesthetic
edge in the Aesthetics of Symeon of Polotsk* [in Russian], Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi
literatusyXXV [Moscow, 1970], 236).
94 Cited by G. Florovsky, Ways ofRussian Theology, Part One, trans. R. L. Nichols, 70.
95 N. D. Uspenskii, The Art ofAncient Russian Chariten Russian) (Moscow, 1955), 205. In the
domain of sacred chant, something analogous to the phenomenon of new art happened. The
ornamentation of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries gradually gave
way to theatrical melodies brought to Russia by foreign masters. Patriarch Nikon himself,
although he had destroyed icons painted according to “Polish models,* invited Polish singers
who sang “like an organ.* For his choir, Nikon ordered the compositions of Martin
Mielczcwski, the director of the Rorantist chapel in Cracow, who was famous in his day (see
G. Florovsky, Ways ofRussian Theology, Part One, 105).
366 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

40. The Meeting ofOur Lord. 17th-century Russian icon.

Korin Collection, Moscow.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 367

level (Fig. 40). What is more, the painting of icons represented the most
healthy element of the liturgical life of the Russian church.
The general decay of spiritual life in Orthodoxy left it defenseless
against pressure from the western confessions. Faced with this new situa­
tion, Orthodoxy was unable to express its vital, creative strength, either in
the face of the West with its inner warfare (the crisis of the sixteenth-sev­
enteenth centuries) or in its own life. In opposing the western confessions,
Orthodox theologians (ought blindly, employing Protestant arguments in
their struggle against Catholicism, and Roman Catholic ones in their
struggle against Protestantism. This does not mean that Orthodoxy itself
had changed. While theological thought became paralyzed, spiritual life
continued. The Church did not modify its doctrine in the least and
adopted no false dogmas.
However low the level of theological training may have been as a result of historical
circumstances, and despite the heterodox influences that had penetrated it, the
Orthodox Catholic Church continued to keep, as its basis, the faith of the Ecumenical
Councils and ofthe holy Fathers. More precisely, it was the Church ofthe Ecumenical
Councils and of the holy Fathers.96

The Orthodox Church certainly kept its independence from Roman

Catholicism and Protestantism, but its theology and its art did not. It is
in art that this dependency revealed itself in the most pronounced and
long-lasting manner and was therefore the most fraught with conse­
quences. For a long time this state of affairs produced a kind of “inferior­
ity complex” toward western art, and uprooted it for a long time from its
living, creative tradition.
The new art trend modified not only the very concept of the image
and its content; not only did it divert the Orthodox image from its direct,
immediate purpose—it naturally also modified the artist’s consciousness.
In the traditional sacred image both content and form are defined by
the prototype represented, the inner state of which radically differs from
sinful man’s actual condition. It is its participation in the divine life, its
holiness, that defines both form and content. In Orthodox sacred art man
is the primary, not to say the only, subject. No art is so devotedly attached
to him, no art raises him as high as the icon. Everything the icon
96 Archbishop Basil (Krivochéine), “Les textes symboliques dans l’Eglise orthodoxe,* Messager de
l’Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe occidentale, no 49 (1965), 11.
368 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

represents refers to man: the landscape, the animals, the plants. In the
hierarchy of beings, man occupies the dominant position. He is the center
of the universe, and the surrounding world is presented in the condition
that man’s holiness confers upon it. The painters of the new trend,
however, endeavor to portray the saint as if he were not a saint.
Man’s body and his emotional world appear not to be destined for
sanctification. Everything that refers to man’s nature and all things sur­
rounding him are portrayed as being alien to spiritual sanctification, to
the transfiguration. The human being continues to be the main subject of
the image, but in his actual, non-transfigured condition. “This image of
man in all its inner significance becomes lost in the abundance of things,
animals and plants. Man merely becomes a fragment of the big, bustling
world, and is no longer able to occupy a dominant position in it.”97 Man
is lowered to the level of the rest of creation. The hierarchy of being is
broken.
In the sixteenth century it was the image of the Incarnation, the image
of Christ, that became lost in allegories, parables, and so forth. At present,
the image of deified man, the outcome of the Incarnation, disintegrated
into a mimesis (imitation) of the present life. First, the economy of the
second Person of the Trinity became indistinct, then that of the Holy
Spirit. The authentic link between the image and its prototype—a link
disclosed with such depth and insight in the Orthodox icon—was broken.
In the formula, “God became man so that man might become God,” the
second half seems to have slipped away from the artist’s awareness: it was no
longer perceived existentially. Life and self-awareness were severed from the
very purpose to which man is called: divine likeness. This eliminated the
eschatological orientation of the icon, deprived it of all dynamism. In other
words, the image ceased to be a revelation of God, “a revelation and
manifestation of what is hidden”: it was deprived of its Christian meaning
and goal. From this point on, there was no longer an image that was
specifically Christian insofar as it expressed Christian life and doctrine.
There was only the use by Christianity of an image which was alien to it.
Just as for the secular mind there is no human reason illumined by a
knowledge of God, but only the use by Christianity of man’s natural,
unaided reason. Art gradually ceased to be the Church’s own language; it
97 History ofRussian Art (in Russian), vol. 4, 39.
The Art ofthe 17th Century 369

only served the Church from the outside. This has always been, and still
is, the case in Roman Catholicism; and this way of seeing also began to
enter the Orthodox consciousness.98 Thus one arrives at a conscious break
with the principle established by the Seventh Ecumenical Council, accord­
ing to which only the artistic aspect properly belongs to the artist. In this
manner, the principle formulated in the Libri Carolini vns adopted: the
image is the fruit of the painter’s imagination, and he is responsible for it
as its author. The integral catholic experience of the Church was broken
into the multitude of the particular notions of isolated painters.99 The
concept of authorship became the same as in our time; the road was
cleared for the principle which, owing to the new trend, was later to
dominate and express the official life of the Church. Such art would
remain alien to the people until the moment when the ruling circles,
secular and ecclesiastical, imposed it by administrative means.

98 Hence the statement which is often heard not only among Roman Catholics but even among
Orthodox bishops, that the councils, supposedly, did not define a special type of ecclesiastical
image.
99 This situation is clearly illustrated by the appearance of signed icons in the seventeenth
century. Certainly, the example of Greek painters who began signing their icons in this age
may have influenced the Russian iconographers. Also, E. Ovchinnikova, who edited the
“Letter" ofVladimirov, is right in linking this question “to the theories expressed by him about
the need for a personal signature or a painters seal under his work" (ibid., 10), precisely as an
expression of his personal responsibility for the content of his work. On the traditional icon,
an author s signature as such is a phenomenon that is extremely rare, if not exceptional.
370 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

41. “ The Paternity.1* 15th-century Russian icon.

Tretiakov Galleiy, Moscow.
 16

The Great Council of Moscow and the Image

of God the Father
/Chapter 43 of the Acts of the Great Council of Moscow is devoted to the
question of the image of the Divinity, in particular that ofGod the Father.
The chapter is entitled, “On the Iconographers and the Lord Sabaoth.”1
We decree that a skilled painter, who is also a good man (from the ranks of the
clergy), be named monitor of the iconographers, their leader and supervisor. Let
the ignorant not mock the ugly and badly painted holy icons of Christ, of His
Mother, His saints. Let all vanity of pretended wisdom cease, which has allowed
everyone habitually to paint the Lord Sabaoth in various representations accord­
ing to his own fantasy, without an authentic reference.. .We decree that from
now on the image of the Lord Sabaoth will no longer be painted according to
senseless and unsuitable imaginings, for no one has ever seen the Lord Sabaoth
(that is, God the Father) in the Resh. Only Christ was seen in the flesh, and in
this way He is portrayed, that is, in the flesh, and not according to His divinity.
Likewise, the most holy Mother of God and the other saints of God...
To paint on icons the Lord Sabaoth (that is, the Father) with a white beard,
holding the only-begotten Son in his lap with a dove between them is altogether
absurd and improper, for no one has ever seen the Father in His divinity [Fig. 41].
Indeed, the Father has no flesh, and it is not in the flesh that the Son was bom
of the Father before all ages. And if the Prophet David says, “from the womb,
before the morning star, I have begotten you” [Ps 109/110:3], such generation
is certainly not corporeal, but unutterable and unimaginable. For Christ himself
says in the Holy Gospel, “No one knows the Father except the Son.” In chapter
40, Isaiah asks: “What likeness will you find for God or what form to resemble
his?” Likewise, the holy Aposde Paul says in chapter 17 of Acts: “Since we are
God’s offspring, we ought not to believe that the Godhead is the same as gold,
silver or stone shaped by human art and thought.” St John of Damascus likewise
says: “Who can make an imitation of God the invisible, the incorporeal, the
undescribable, and unimaginable? To make an image ofthe Divinity is the height
of folly and impiety” [On the Heaven^ Bk IV, chapter 17, on the image]. St
Gregory Dialogos forbade it in a similar way. This is why the Lord Sabaoth, who
1 The original appeared in the Acts of the Councils ofMoscow of1666-1667(Moscow, 1893).
Some passages that do not deal with the subject treated are omitted here.

371
372 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

is the Godhead, and the engendering before all ages of the only-begotten Son of
the Father must only be perceived through our mind. By no means is it proper
to paint such images: it is impossible. And the Holy Spirit is not, in His nature,
adove: He is by nature God. And no one has ever seen God, as the holy evangelist
points out. Nonetheless, the Holy Spirit appeared in the form of a dove at the
holy baptism of Christ in the Jordan; and this is why it is proper to represent the
Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, in this context only. Anywhere else, those who
have good sense do not represent the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, for on
Mount Tabor He appeared in the form of a cloud, and in another way elsewhere.
Besides, Sabaoth is not the name of the Father only, but of the Holy Trinity.
According to Dionysius the Areopagite, Sabaoth is translated from the Hebrew
as “Lord of Hosts.” And the Lord of Hosts is the Trinity. And if the Prophet
Daniel says that he has seen the Ancient of Days sitting on the throne of
judgment, that is not taken to mean the Father, but the Son at His Second
Coming, who will judge all the nations with His fearsome judgment.
Likewise, on icons of the Holy Annunciation, they paint the Lord Sabaoth
breathing from His mouth, and that breath reaches the womb of the Most Holy
Mother of God. But who has seen this, or which passage from Holy Scripture
bears witness to it? Where is this taken from? Such a practice and others like it
are clearly adopted and borrowed from people whose understanding is vain, or
rather whose mind is deranged or absent. This is why we decree that henceforth
such mistaken painting cease, for it comes from unsound knowledge. It is only
in the Apocalypse of St John that the Father can be painted with white hair, for
lack of any other possibility, because of the visions contained in it.
It is good and proper to place a cross, that is, the Crucifixion of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ, above the Deesis in the holy churches in place of Lord
Sabaoth, according to the norm preserved since ancient times in all the holy
churches of the eastern countries, in Kiev, and everywhere else except in the
Muscovite State. This is a great mystery kept by the holy Church...

The Council concludes with the words: “We say this to shame the iconogra­
phers so that they stop making false and vain paintings, and from now on paint
nothing according to their own ideas, without an authentic reference.”

The main subject of this chapter is therefore a question of principle. Is

it possible to represent the Divinity, in particular God the Father, in
human form? We recall that in sixteenth-century Russia, this question had
been raised at the Hundred-Chapters Council. Raised in relation to the
image of the Old Testament Trinity, it probably dealt with New Testa­
ment icons of the Trinity (the “Paternity,” the “Synthronon”), though
this is not formulated specifically. As much in the discussion between
Metropolitan Macarius and Viskovatyi as at the Council of 1554, the
The Great Council ofMoscow 373

question of the portrayal of the Divinity focused above all on the image of
God the Father. The defenders of this image, like its detractors, agreed in
saying that it was impossible to portray God in His essence. But while the
opponents saw in it an attempt to do so anyway, and consequendy as a
“fantasy,” its advocates replied that God is represented not according to His
nature but according to the prophetic visions. Metropolitan Macarius based
his justification on widespread church practice. For partisans of the por­
trayal of God the Father, this last argument has remained decisive to our
day. This image “had become a custom.”2 Sergius Bulgakov has stated that
“the icon of God the Father.. .though not foreseen by a direct decision of
the Seventh Ecumenical Council, is nonetheless legitimated through its
accepted use in the Church.”3 This “legitimization” by practice has shown
such resilience that, in spite of the decision of the Great Council of
Moscow, it was mentioned even recently in official handbooks for the
clergy.4 Explaining the symbolism of the hand reaching out of heaven, the
author states: “The introduction of this symbol in sacred art is explained
by the desire the Church has to preserve its flock from errors concerning
God the Father.”5 Another customary symbol to represent God the Father
was the image of an old man or the Ancient of Days. But, as we have seen,
the Great Council of Moscow not only did not recognize the accepted
usage but condemned it with an abruptness so typical of the epoch,
stating that this representation originated in “a mind deranged or absent.”

2 Archpriest Anatolius, On the Painting ofIcons (in Russian) (Moscow, 1945), 82.
3 Sergius Bulgakov, The Icon and Its Veneration. A Dogmatic Survey (in Russian) (Paris, 1937), 137.
4 For example, Lebedev, The Science of the Liturgy (in Russian) vol. 1 (Moscow, 1901), 119-20.
5 The explanation, given by certain authors, of the hand as a symbol of God the Father is rather
arbitrary. For example, I. N. Bogoslovskii states on p. 16 of God the Father, First Person ofthe
Trinity, in the Monuments ofAncient Christian Art (in Russian) (Moscow, 1893), that “in the
language of painters, the right hand is, as it were, a monogram of God the Father.* Such a statement
is refuted by iconography itself. In the Old Testament and in Jewish art (for example, in the
synagogues of Beth Alpha and Dura-Europos, third century AD.), the hand is generally a symbol
of the Divinity. It signifies that God is present and addresses Himself to man: “There the hand of
Yahweh came on him* (Ez 1:3); or that God speaks, “The word of Yahweh came to me, saying*
(Jer 1:4; 2:1), and so forth. This meaning of the hand has remained the same in Christian art. If, in
some cases—for example, in the images representing an action of the Trinity—one can see in it the
symbol of God the Father, in the icons of saints, by contrast, the hand is often accompanied by the
inscription 1C XC; or Christ himself is represented instead of the hand. There is, therefore, no
reason to see in the image of the hand the exclusive symbol of the person of the Father, without
taking into account the iconographie subject where it is found. This symbol is explained well by W.
Loeschke in “Neue Studien zur Darstellung des tierköpfigen Christophoros,* Beiträge zur Kunst
des christlichen Ostens, vol. 3 (Recklinghausen, 1965).
374 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Nonetheless, this decision prevented neither the dissemination of the

image nor, as shall be seen, its theoretical justification.
From the beginning of the quarrel about the image of God the Father
down to our time, this image was justified by prophetic visions: that of
Isaiah, “I am a man.. ..[and] my eyes have seen the King Yahweh Sabaoth”
(6:5), and especially that of Daniel, which gives a more concrete, descrip­
tive image, “one that was Ancient of Days took his seat; his raiment was
white as snow, and the hair of his head was like pure wool” (7:9, see also
7:13). These visions of the Lord Sabaoth and of the Ancient of Days,
understood as figures of God the Father, were not themselves the subjects
of icons, but the representation of God the Father was considered possible
because of them. They served as the basis of this representation, accompa­
nied by corresponding inscriptions: “We portray the Father without
beginning in the form of an old man, as Daniel saw him,” as the manual
for iconographers by Dionysius of Phourna puts it,6 “or for depicting God
the Father in the form of an old man or of the Ancient of Days.”7 At the
beginning of the twentieth century, teachers in schools of iconography
taught the delineation “of the Lord Sabaoth” in icons of the Holy Trinity
(we are dealing here no doubt with the subjects called “Paternity” and
“New Testament Trinity”) “according to the indications in Scripture and
his apparitions to certain elect in the Old Testament.”8 This indication is
also found in certain manuals for iconographers (podlinnikî), in which the
very image of God the Father appeared from the seventeenth century on.
Thus God, who could not be represented in His divinity, could be
portrayed in human form. For some He could be portrayed only in His
Incarnation (as the Son of God); but for others, it was also possible to
represent God the Father, in accordance with the Old Testament visions.
But if we consider the patristic commentaries on the Old Testament
prophecies, as well as the liturgical texts, it becomes clear that to see visions of
God the Father in such prophecies is flagrantly to contradict the manner in
which the Church viewed them. The Church related such prophetic visions
not to God the Father but to the Son of God. All of them prefigure His
Incarnation and have no other aim than its preparation, including Daniel’s
6 M. Didron, Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine (Paris, 1845), 451.
7 I. N. Bogoslovskii, 65.
8 Iconographie Collection (in Russian) (St Petersburg, 1907), vol. 1,84-5.
The Great Council ofMoscow 375

eschatological song (“I saw in a dream at night”) which prefigures the Second
Coming of Christ John of Damascus has left us the most systematic account
of the patristic view on theophanies and Old Testament visions:
And Adam saw God, and heard the sound of His feet as He walked in Paradise
in the cool of the evening, and hid himself (Gen 3:8). Jacob saw and struggled
with God (Gen 38:24), for it is evident that God appeared to him as a man
sitting upon a throne (Is 6:1). Daniel saw the likeness of a man, and one like a
son of man coming before the Ancient of Days (Dan 7:13). No one saw the
divine nature, but the image and figure ofwhat was yet to come. For the invisible
Son arid Word of God was to become truly man, that He might be united to
our nature, and be seen on earth.9
It is precisely in this sense that the Church explains the visions in the
liturgical texts that celebrate the prophets, in those of the Sunday of the
Patriarchs, and especially in the Liturgy of the feast of the Presentation of
the Lord in the Temple. This feast celebrates the encounter between the
Old and the New Testaments, thus revealing the meaning of the Old
Testament prophecies in the most concrete and dearest way. In the
person of St Simeon, the Old Testament prophetic ministry “departs in
peace” and the New Testament Church greets its founder, announced by
the prophets as the “Head of the Old and the New” (sticheron of the
aposticha). In this feast, the Church seems to summarize the prophetic
préfigurations. “You have been seen by the prophets, Jesus, as much as it
was possible to see You then” (second sticheron of the aposticha). “The
one who created Adam” (Matins, oikos), the same who is “the Ancient of
Days who formerly gave the law to Moses, is seen today as a child” (first
sticheron of the lite), and so forth. The vision of the Lord Sabaoth (the
title applied in images to God the Father) by the Prophet Isaiah is

9 De imaginibusoratio III, ch. 26, PG 94(1): 1345; On the Divine Images, trans. David Anderson
(New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 80. As far as is known (see, for example,
Joseph Barbel, CSSR, Christos Angelos [Bonn, 1941]), Hippolytus of Rome (third century)
represents the only exception among the ancient fathers in the way he comments on the
theophanies and visions of the Old Testament. In his Commentary on Daniel (Paris: Editions
du Cerf, 1947), ch. 11, 282, while predicting the Second Coming, he states: “For Daniel, the
Ancient of Days is none other than God and the Lord of all things, the Father of Christ
Himself...." By contrast, certain fathers expressed themselves very strongly in the opposite
sense. Thus Hilary of Poitiers writes: “The one Son who is in the bosom of the Father has
proclaimed God to us, whom no one has ever seen...This is what the words of the prophets
tell us, what is announced by the Gospel and indicated by the apostle, and what the church
confesses: the one who has appeared is the true God. But let no one pretend he has seen God
the Father" (De TrinitateS, 34, PG 152: 153A).
376 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

included as one of the readings of the Liturgy of the Presentation and it is

commented upon as follows: “When in a vision Isaiah saw God who will be
incarnate, O never setting light who rules the world” (irmos of the fifth ode of
the canon). The vision of the prophet Ezekiel is likewise commented upon:
“You appeared as a prophet of God, O wondrous Ezekiel, for you announced
to everyone the Incarnation of the Lord, the One who is the Lamb and
Creator, the Son of God, who appeared for eternity” (Liturgy of the feast of
the Prophet Ezekiel, July 21, kontakion). “And Daniel, the just and marvel­
lous among the prophets, clearly showing forth your Second Coming, says, ‘I
see thrones set up and the judge seated, and the river of fire flowing*” (Sunday
of the Patriarchs, fourth sticheron on “Lord, I call upon Thee”).
Thus, all these theophanies and prophetic visions of the Divinity are
revelations of the future. They are understood by the Church in a christo-
logical context, and the name “Ancient of Days” is applied not to the
Father but precisely to Christ. There is not one liturgical text that ascribes
the prophetic visions or the title “Ancient of Days” to God the Father.
It is the imagery-filled content of the prophecy of Daniel that served as
a pretext for its use in portraying of God the Father. There is a vision of
two different beings each with his own designation: the Son of Man and
the Ancient of Days: “And behold, one like the Son of Man came with the
clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days” (Dan 7:13). What is
not clear is the relationship between the two characters, who were under­
stood as two different persons. Since the Son of Man was Christ, then the
Ancient of Days, who is seated on the throne, and into whose presence
the other is brought, was understood as God the Father. Here also we
should rely on patristic commentaries and on the Liturgy. Cyril of Alex­
andria states: “‘He came to the Ancient of Days.’ What does that mean? Is
this a reference to a place? This would be absurd since God is not in one
place but fills everything. What then does this mean, ‘He came to the
Ancient of Days’? It means that the Son attained the glory of the Fa­
ther.”10 As we have already stated, there is no direct revelation of the
Divinity in the Old Testament, and all the prophetic visions are visions
not of the nature or of the divine Persons, but of the glory of the Divinity.
Even a vision as concrete as that of Isaiah, “My eyes have seen the king,
the Lord of Hosts” (6:5), is explained by Christ himself as a vision of glory:
10 In Danielem prophetam, PG 70: 1462.
The Great Council ofMoscow $77

“Isaiah uttered these words because he had seen his glory, and it was of him
that he spoke” (Jn 12:41). This is why the Council explained that the
inscription “Sabaoth,” which normally accompanied the image of God the
Father (on icons of the Trinity or when He was portrayed alone) is false the
name Sabaoth “who is the Divinity,” means not the Father, but “the Lord
of Hosts,” and refers to the entire Trinity, that is, in the vision of Isaiah, to
the glory of the Divinity common to the three Persons, Father, Son, and
Spirit—a glory manifested by the One who was to become man.
Thus, according to St Cyril, “the Son attained the glory of the Father”
means that the Son in the humanity assumed by Him attained the glory
of the Father from whom, in His Divinity, He was never separated. And
the vision of Daniel prefigures the two states of the same Son of God:
humility in the Incarnation (the Son of Days). This is precisely how the
Orthodox Church understands the vision of the two characters: “Daniel
spiritually learned Your mysteries, O Lover of man; for in purity of his
spirit he saw You walking on the clouds as Son of Man and Judge of all the
peoples and kings” (Feast of the Prophet Daniel and the Three Youths,
December 17, fifth ode of the canon). This is why the prophecy of Daniel
“is not taken to mean the Father, but the Son who, at His Second
Coming, will judge all the nations with His fearsome judgment.”

Thus the anthropomorphic image of the Godhead, the beholding of

His glory by the Old Testament prophets, can only refer to Christ, either
in the context of the Incarnation or in that of the Second Coming. This
is how the Orthodox Church interprets the Old Testament visions, and
this understanding nullifies the basic argument of those who advocate the
possibility of representing God the Father. To detect the two different
persons in the vision of Daniel would be to apply to a prophecy the logical
categories it transcends. From this derives the false interpretation allowing
one to see the image of the Father in the Ancient of Days.11

The Great Council of Moscow examined the principle of the portrayal

of the Deity not in an abstract manner, but in the context of specific
iconographie subjects, in particular of the representation called “Pater-
11 Moreover, only the way in which the Church understands the Old Testament prophecies
elucidates the antinomian character of the biblical texts about seeing God—texts which seem
contradictory to us: on the one hand, “I am a man...and my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh
Sabaoth* (Is 6:1); on the other, “No man can see me, and live* (Ex 33:20 and Jg 13:22).
378 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

nity.” The Council’s opinion on this would-be trinitarian image is pre­

ceded by a judgment on the portrayal of God the Father “No one has ever
seen the Father in the flesh” and “no one has ever seen the Father in His
Divinity.” The Council did not develop this principle further; limiting
itself to a brief formulation of the argument, it categorically prohibited
any image of God the Father “without an authentic reference,” that is,
having no foundation in revelation. The Council started from a classical
Orthodox premise by contrasting the non-incarnate Father to the incar­
nate Son. God cannot be represented except in the incarnate second
Person of the Holy Trinity. The Council viewed the depiction of the
non-incarnate and therefore invisible Father as a representation of the
Divinity. Basing itself on the apophatic thesis of the inconceivable and
therefore unrepresentable God, the Council essentially translated the
same principle used by the Orthodox apologists in the iconoclastic period.
“Why do we not represent the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?,” the
Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council asked through Pope St Greg­
ory II. “Because we do not know what He is...and if we had seen and
known Him as we have seen and known His Son, we would have tried to
describe and represent Him in art.”12 The Ecumenical Council, as can be
seen, not only rejected “through a direct decision” the icon of God the
Father, as Sergius Bulgakov thought, but it contrasted the impossibility of
representing the non-incarnate Father to the possibility of portraying the
Son of God. It indicated, and this is particularly important, that from the
doctrinal point of view, there can be no image of God the Father.13 The

12 Mansi XII, 963E. Also see the above chapter, “The Iconoclastic Teaching and the Orthodox
Response.*
13 Wc must note here the two radically antithetical attitudes toward this text from the Acts of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council, expressed by two Greek authors of the eighteenth centuiy:
Macarius of Patmos and St Nicodemus the Hagiorite. The first, while attacking Roman
Catholics, asks: “Are they Christians, the ones who in contradiction to the Seventh Ecumeni­
cal Council represent the Father who cannot be seen?* (“Homily on the Day of the Three
Hierarchs,* in the collection The Gospel Trumpet [Euaggelike salpig^ eighteenth cent., 323).
On the other hand, St Nicodemus objects: “The Father without beginning must be repre­
sented as He appeared to the prophet Daniel, that is, as the Ancient of Days. And if Pope
Gregory, in his Letter to Leo the Isaurian states that we do not represent the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, he says this so that we would not represent Him according to His divine nature*
(Pedalion [in Greek] [Athens, 1957], 320).
On this subject, as can be seen, Nicodemus shares the point of view accepted since the
time of Metropolitan Macarius; like him, he moves away from the way in which the Church
understands the prophetic visions. It is true that, for the Church, holiness has never been
The Great Council ofMoscow 379

first Person of the Holy Trinity, who did not become incarnate, is indeed
the bearer of the divine nature, “for the word Divinity means nature,” as St
John of Damascus explained (therefore, an image of the Father, bearing only
the divine nature, would be an image of the Divinity), “and the word Father
means Hypostasis.”14 Representing the one or the other is impossible, “since
no one has seen the Father in His Divinity.” St John of Damascus insisted on
this on several occasions: “If anyone should dare to make an image of the
invisible, formless and colorless Divinity, we reject it as a falsehood.”15 For the
Seventh Ecumenical Council and the Orthodox apologists, the lack of an
image of the Father follows directly from the Incarnation, the latter being the
only basis for the New Testament image and for the possibility of portraying
God. Fbr the Orthodox sensibility, any representation of God, aside from the
Incarnation, is excluded. “I boldly draw an image of the invisible God,” said
John of Damascus, “not as invisible, but as having become visible for our sakes
by partaking of flesh and blood. I do not draw an image of the invisible
Godhead, but I paint the image of God who became visible in the flesh.”16
Although He is the Image of the Father, Christ Himself cannot as such be
captured in matter before His Incarnation; according to His Divinity, He is as
unportrayable as His Father. “Limiting the unincamate Word in space is not
only senseless and absurd.. .It is idolatry,” Theodore the Studite wrote.17

For the Orthodox defenders of icons the image was not only a proof of the
Incarnation, a testimony to the historicity of Christ, it also witnessed to the
reality of the eucharistie sacrament. If such testimony through the image is not
possible, then the sacrament of the Body and Blood itself loses its reality.18
synonymous with infallibility. As Mark of Ephesus, commenting on the subject of the
Origçnism of St Gregory of Nyssa, has stated judiciously: “It happens that someone is a master
and still does not say everything completely accurately. For what need would the Fathers have
of Ecumenical Councils, if none of them could not in anything stray from the truth ?”
(Archimandrite Ambrose, St Mark ofEphesus and the Union ofFlorence [in Russian] [Jordan-
ville, NY, 1963], 128).
14 St John of Damascus, Defide orthodoxa, Bk. I, ch. 9, PG 94 (1): 1028A.
15 De imaginibus oratio II, ch. 11, PG 94 (1): 1293; Oratio III, ch. 9, ibid*. 1322; On the Divine
Images, trans. D. Anderson (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 58.
16 Oratio I, ch. 4, ibid*. 1236; trans. Anderson, ibid, 16.
17 Antirrheticus, PG 99:457D. This certainly does not mean that Christ can be represented only
after a particular historic moment and cannot be represented, for example, in illustration of
the Old Testament (the creation of the world, etc.). What it means is that Christ can only be
represented according to the human nature he assumed, and in no other way.
18 Cf J. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, trans. Y. Dubois (New York: St
Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1987), 190.
380 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The Godhead only reveals itself through the veil of the Body of Christ.
Participation in His Divinity, and knowledge of Him, can only become
real by sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ; and this reality of the
sacrament of the Eucharist excludes any image of God aside from that of
Christ. It is undoubtedly in this context that the Great Council of
Moscow required that “a Cross, that is the Crucifixion”—not an image of
the Lord Sabaoth—be placed on the iconostasis, for the iconostasis dis­
closes the economy of the second Person. It is probably also in the same
context that one should understand the special ruling of the Holy Synod
of the Russian Church in 1722, which ordered that the image of God the
Father on the antimensia be replaced by the inscription of the name of
God in Hebrew, as a testimony to the divinity of Christ.19
In speaking of the image called the “Paternity,” the Council did not
designate it by any name, neither that of the “Trinity” which was sometimes
attributed to it, nor that of “Paternity” (this latter designation is sometimes
applied by scholars to the image called the “New Testament Trinity” or
“Synthronon”). It must be said that to our knowledge the name “Patemitas”
is never found on icons. Its origin is uncertain. Not applying to this image
any of the proper names given to it, the Council only had recourse to
descriptive expressions and exclusively considered the content of this image.

As an alleged image of the Trinity, this composition has no basis either

in the prophetic vision, or in revelation in general. It is not a direct
unveiling of the Holy Trinity as is the apparition to Abraham near the oak
of Mamre. It is an amalgamation of three elements of a totally different
nature: a prophetic vision arbitrarily interpreted as a vision of God the
Father, a vision of the incarnate Son in the form of Emmanuel, and a
portrayal of one of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. This image, one
supposes, was an attempt to “concretize” and give a visible form to the
New Testament revelation of the Holy Trinity. Indeed, all that is known
about the Trinity is known through the Incarnation: “God the Father is
known by us precisely since the Incarnation.. .as Father, as God the Word,
19 N. Pokrovskii, The Gospel in Iconography, Especially Byzantine and Russian (in Russian) (St
Petersburg, 1892), 389. Ref. to the Complete Collection of the Decisions of the Department
of the Orthodox Confession, 2,163-4, no 516. This ruling is repeated in The Clergy's Manual
(in Russian) by S. Bulgakov (Kiev, 1930): “On the antimensia...it is striedy forbidden to
represent the Lord Sabaoth in the form of an old man, and the holy evangelists in the form of
animals* (note, 780).
The Great Council ofMoscow 381

incarnate for us, as Son of God.”20 The Holy Spirit appeared in the form
of a dove above the Jordan. But the three images that form the composi­
tion of the “Paternity" are based on revelations concerning the plan of
economy; but here they refer to the inner life of the Trinity. In other
words, each of the three images was removed from its proper context and
artificially linked with the others to form an image of the Holy Trinity
with the names inscribed above: Father, Son (or Jesus Christ), Holy Spirit.
Furthermore, this representation sought to indicate, aside from the tri­
unity of God, the intratrinitarian relationships: the eternal begetting of
the Son by the Father and the procession of the Holy Spirit. The Council
focused its attention on the first of these two aspects, the begetting. “It is
not in the flesh that the Son of God was bom of the Father before all ages.
And if the Prophet David says, ‘From the womb, before the morning star,
I have begotten you,’ such generation is certainly not corporeal, but
unutterable and unimaginable.” Procreation is the transmittal of the
Father’s nature to the One He begets; this is why the generation of the
Son of God according to Divinity is as unrepresentable as the Father
Himself. Here we are faced with a new contradiction with regard to the
teaching of the Church. The liturgical texts speak as follows: “The inde­
scribable word of the Father [the Son of God in His Divinity] became
describable by taking on flesh from you, O Mother of God...” (kontakion
of the Triumph of Orthodoxy); also: “The One who, being invisible in
the bosom of the Father, is presently resting, describable in your womb,
O All-pure One, clothed in your appearance” (irmos of the seventh ode of
the canon, tone six, Wednesday). Christ possesses the properties of His
two births. As Theodore the Studite explained: “The One who came forth
from the uncircumscribed is indescribable. By contrast, the one bom of a
circumscribed mother is describable.”21 But in the image of “Paternity,”
since the Father Himself is represented in human form, the birth of the
Son is also portrayed by analogy with human birth. The “Uncircum­
scribed” who is “in the bosom of the Father” is described by an image of
the Incarnation: Christ Emmanuel (the name given to the adolescent
Christ), bom of the Virgin, obedient to the laws of human development
in time, is introduced to the bosom of the Father.
20 St Symeon the New Theologian, Critical Edition with an Introduction by A. A. Danouzès
(Paris, 1966), vol. 1,105.
21 Antirrheücus III, ch. 2, PG 99:417.
382 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The portrayal of the second, incarnate Person is here an image of His

generation outside time (according to His Divinity). But “the engender­
ing before all ages of the only-begotten Son of the Father must only be
perceived through our mind. In no case is it proper to paint all this in
images: it is impossible.” Thus, as a trinitarian icon, characterizing the
divine Hypostases and accompanying them with corresponding descrip­
tions, the composition called “Paternity” introduced anthropomorphism
into the mystery of the Trinity. This was done by representing in human
form not only the Father, but also the Son. Finally, the simultaneous
presence of an old man and an adolescent applied temporal categories
proper to the created world to the life of the Holy Trinity, uncreated and
outside the categories of time. This could be misinterpreted as a statement
that there was a time when God the Father had no Son and was therefore
not a Father—which is “worse than all blasphemies,” as John of Damas­
cus wrote concerning a similar rationalization,22 thinking perhaps of the
Arian heresy.

Finally, “the Holy Spirit is not, in His nature, a dove. He is by nature

God. And no one has ever seen God.” These words may seem like strange
caviling on the pan of the Council; indeed, it would never enter anyone’s
mind to identify the Holy Spirit with a dove. However, since the “Pater­
nity” is a “trinitarian” image that has to represent the three divine Persons,
why is the Holy Spirit depicted in one of His manifestations? According
to the wording of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, “the Holy Spirit did
not become incarnate in a dove, but manifested Himself in the form of a
dove.”23 As is pointed out by the Muscovite Council, His manifestations
varied: at the Baptism, He appeared under the form of a dove; on Mt
Tabor, in the form of a cloud; and on Pentecost, in the form of tongues of
fire. This is how His manifestations are to be represented. But one form
of manifestation cannot be the image of a divine Person. The non-re-
vealed Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit is manifested only in its actions. It is
such actions that one identifies with the dove, and this is what was
adopted by iconographie usage. Thus the Hermeneia required that a dove
be painted in the most diverse iconographie subjects, wherever the opera­
tion of the Holy Spirit is shown, even in the ordination of St Nicholas; in
22 Defide orthodoxy Bk I, ch. 8, PG 94 (1 ): 812A.
23 Mansi XIII, 181 A.
The Great Council ofMoscow 383

an icon of Pentecost, together with the tongues of fire, a dove absurdly

doubled the divine manifestation. The Council apparently saw the pres­
ence of the dove on a would-be trinitarian icon as an attempt to fix this
symbolic image as the icon of the third Person of the Holy Trinity, as is
indicated by the inscription “Holy Spirit,” referring to the Hypostasis.24
Thus the portrayal of the incomprehensible, unrepresentable God the
Father was, in the view of the Great Council of Moscow, a representation
of the Divinity: “No one has seen the Father, except the Son, as Christ
Himself says in the Gospel.” These words are followed immediately by a
reference to the prophecy of Isaiah and to the words of St Paul, who
applied this prophecy to the idols he saw in Athens. By means of this
reference, the Council seems to remind us that the portrayal of the Deity
is typical of paganism, not of Christianity. “Paganism,” Sergius Bulgakov
writes, “starts from the immediate conviction, from the evidence, so to
speak, that the Godhead can be portrayed, that it has an image.”25 This is
the reason why Bulgakov viewed the pagan idol as the ancestor of the
Christian image.26 For Orthodox theology, however, the origin of the icon is
not the idol, but the lack of an image in the Old Testament, before the
Incarnation. St John of Damascus states: “In former times God, who is
without form or body, could never be depicted. But now that God is seen in
the flesh conversing with men (Bar 3:31; 1 Tim 3:16), I make an image of the
God whom I see.”27

The radical difference between paganism and Christianity in the por­

trayal of God consists in that, for Christendom, God is represented not
according to “a human concept”—that is, a concept of God, certainly,
but anthropomorphic nonetheless, and not according to an abstract
24 Let us recall that there had already been an attempt to create an icon of the Holy Spirit “in the
incomprehensible form of a bird,” and that this icon had been presented to the council of
1554 (see above, chapter 14, “The Muscovite Councils of the Sixteenth Century and Their
Role in Sacred Art").
25 The Icon and Its Veneration, 9.
26 “...Pagan iconography is, so to speak, the Old Testament of Christian iconography" (ibid.,
10-1). “Paganism bestowed upon Christianity an already articulated concept of the icon"
(ibid, 14). Bulgakov is here in complete agreement with the art historians and in total
contradiction to the way in which the Church understands the origin of the Christian image.
XI De imaginibus oratio 1, ch. 16, PG 94 (1): 1245; On the Divine Images, trans. D. Anderson
(New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 23. Cf Oratio II, ch. 5, PG 94(1): 1288; ch.
7 of the same Oratùr, Oratio III, ch. 4, PG 94(1): 1321; ch. 8, col. 1328; and ch. 24-25, col.
1344.
384 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

idea—but in accordance with the reality of His revelation in the Son of

God. Let us repeat that the Old Testament prohibition keeps all its force.
But God who imposed this ban becomes depictable Himself in the Person
of the incarnate Son, who is “the image of die invisible God” (Col 1:15).
This is not a portrayal of the unrepresentable God: it is the image of God
become flesh. The Council concluded its critique of iconographie sub­
jects depicting God the Father with a categorical prohibition against
painting them: “This is why we decree that from now on such mistaken
paintings cease, born as they are of unsound knowledge.”

Nonetheless, the confused thinking typical of this epoch is apparent even

in this decision of the Council. Indeed, to the injunction not to make an
image of the Father is added: “It is only in the Apocalypse of St John that the
Father can be painted with white hair, for lack ofany other possibility, because
of the visions contained in it” Certainly, the Council had reason to view the
representations from the Apocalypse as illustrations, since they were not cultic
images. But since what was at stake was the possibility or impossibility of a
representation, the Council’s own explanation became self-contradictory. On
die one hand, it interpreted the vision of Daniel as a vision of Christ, Judge of
die Second Coming. On the other, it applied to God the Father the attributes
of the apocalyptic “Son of Man” (white hair and clothing), those of the
Ancient of Days, and of Christ, the Judge of which the Apocalypse speaks.
Moreover, the thought of the Council is expressed in such a general way that
one no longer sees the difference between the two visions, which in the
Apocalypse are deafly differentiated: the first vision, “one like unto the Son of
Man” with white hair (1:13-14), and the second vision, “one who sat on the
throne” (4:2-3), which has no anthropomorphic image. A commentator of
the Book of Revdation explained this second vision as follows: “Since he [St
John] presents the Father in his second vision, he does not apply to Him any
corporeal stamp, as he had done in his preceding vision, that of the Son. He
compares Him to precious stones.” That is, he describes the One on the
throne in a symbolic way.28 The lack of distinction between these two
visions introduces into the evaluation of the Council an uncertainty
approaching a contradiction. Even if the interpretation of the second
28 Commentary on the Apocalypse (Russian edition) (Moscow, 1889), 51, by Andrew, Archbishop
of Caesarea (eleventh century). Another commentator, Arethas, Archbishop of Caesarea,
repeats the former (PG 106: 568).
The Great Council ofMoscow 385

apocalyptic vision as that of God the Father is acceptable, nothing allows

one to give Him an anthropomorphic image, that of an old man. None­
theless, the incongruity in the thought of the Council does not in the least
diminish the significance of its decision concerning the portrayal of the
Godhead in a cultic image.
Despite the outright proscription of the Great Council of Moscow,
representations ofGod the Father continued to multiply; and with the passage
of time they came to be justified, apart from the prophetic visions, by
considerations of a theological and philosophic order. We are thinking espe­
cially of the works of I. N. Bogoslovskii, God the Father, the First Person of
the Holy Trinity, in the Monuments ofAncient Christian Art (in Russian)
(Moscow, 1893), and of that by Sergius Bulgakov, The Icon and its Venera­
tion: A Theological Essay (ya Russian) (Paris, 1937). Bogolovskii’s reasoning
takes as its point of departure the accepted usage in the Church; for Bulgakov,
such usage confirms and supports his philosophical-theological system.
Bogoslovskii does not deny “the doctrine of the inconceivable and incom­
prehensible spiritual nature of God the Father, excluding all corporeal likeness
and therefore not allowing any depiction.” He quotes St Athanasius of
Alexandria: “Let us not assign to the Father a body capable of suffering, like
the one the Son bore for the salvation of the whole world.”29 But despite this,
Bogoslovskii considers the representation of God the Father as entirely
normal. It is acceptable because Holy Scripture and patristic doctrine,
while asserting the truth of the inconceivability of the divine essence,
speak of the vision of God by the prophet Daniel,30 and the Fathers
express the truth about the first Person of the Trinity by resorting to
anthropomorphic language (Father...). In Bogoslovskii’s view, this is
what authorizes art to make such truths “visible.”
Bogoslovskii completes his justification of the image of God the Father
by what he calls “a psychological law,” which is in agreement with the
thought of his time. He says:
Man is in the image and likeness of God, and this is why our knowledge of God
must naturally assume an anthropomorphic character, especially since we do not
know God except in relation to ourselves. Now, as we can see in the real world,
when the son is an adult, his father is usually an old man. At a certain point of
29 St Athanasius, Expositio fidei» PG 25: 203j I. N. Bogoslovskii, God the Father (in Russian)
(Moscow, 1893), 21.
30 “The Ancient of Days seen by Daniel is unquestionably God the Father” (Bogoslovskii, ibid.» 63).
386 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

our intellectual development, we adorn the concept of the fatherhood of the first
Person of the Holy Trinity with such traits, and this all the more since such a
concept is not alien to the divine Word, no doubt because of the psychological
law we have indicated.31
According to this author, three ways of representing God the Father
correspond to the stages of intellectual development:
The ways of representation are: symbolic (the hand from heaven); allegorical (as
when, starting with the image of God the Father which God the Son is, our
mind ascends to the prototype); and lastly, historical?^ direct (when God the
Father is portrayed in the image of an old man or the Ancient of Days).
But if Scripture and the Fathers express the truth in the form of
anthropomorphic concepts, this does not mean that such concepts can be
represented. St John of Damascus says:
If Holy Scripture clothes God with forms which appear to be physical... these
forms are still immaterial in an important sense, because they were not seen by
everyone, nor could they be perceived with the unaided eye, but they were seen
through the spiritual sight of prophets or others to whom they were revealed.33

According to Bogoslovskii’s reasoning, it would appear that since “in

the real world” an adult son has an old man as a father, we receive at a
certain point of our intellectual development (sic!) a concept of God as
father through the image of an old man; in this case, then, the image
would be “historical and direct.” The very concept of historicity is per­
verted here. For Bogoslovskii, the image no longer points to an event that
occurred at a certain moment: it is the expression of a certain concept by
means of traits of our surrounding world. The cornerstone of the theology
of the icon—to witness to the entrance of God in the history of the
world—eludes Bogoslovskii’s thought. For him, there is but one pictorial
expression of “the concept of God.” As for the icon of the Son of God, as
an image of the Father, it is, in relation to the Father, allegorical.
If Bogoslovskii applies a “psychological law” and “stages of intellectual
development” to the knowledge of God, this is the typical result of
scholastic theology infected by Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. In
the realm of the knowledge of God, Orthodoxy is not aware of “psycho­
logical laws”: it only knows revelation, accessible in varying degrees, apart
from all dependence on stages of intellectual development. The Orthodox
31 Ibid, 63.
32 Ibid, 65.
33 De imaginibus Oratio III, ch. 24, PG 94 (1): 1344; On the Divine Images, trans. Anderson, 78-9.
The Great Council ofMoscow 387

theology of the image does not know representations of God through

analogies with “the real world/
One aspect of Bogoslovskii’s work, found also in other authors, must
be noted. He does mention the council of Metropolitan Macarius in
1554, which recognized the image of God the Father “in conformity with
ancient models,” but he says nothing about the Great Council of Mos­
cow, and totally ignores the liturgical texts that deal with the way in which
the Church understood the prophetic visions.
Bogoslovskii’s writing is a polemical work apparently directed against
certain types of protestantizing intellectuals who denied sacred images in
general, and especially that of God the Father. According to these, with
Christianity, the human race has reached a higher stage of its intellectual
development as compared to the sensual concepts of God in paganism.
Consequently, only an abstract concept of God is proper, and every reli­
gious image is excluded. Bogoslovskii attempts to prove the opposite, but he
begins from the same basic principles: it is precisely mankind’s higher
degree of intellectual development which, according to him, allows for a
knowledge of God the Father, as well as His anthropomorphic portrayal.
More serious is the theological-philosophical justification given for the
portrayal of the Godhead in the work of S. Bulgakov. It is part of this
author’s entire theological system and is significantly different, as much
from the concept generally admitted by the defenders of the image of God
the Father as from the teaching of the Orthodox Church. Bulgakov
justifies the representation of God the Father by basing himself neither on
a false interpretation of the prophecies nor on a “psychological law,” nor
on abstract allegorizing. This representation is part of his system and
represents one of its axioms. By making use of generally accepted theolog­
ical concepts and terms found in Holy Scripture, Bulgakov justifies the
possibility of representing the Godhead as such; the image of God the
Father is but a particular instance that confirms his thesis.
In his teaching on the possibility of depicting the Divinity, as well as
on the icon in general, Bulgakov starts, as he says, “not from the apophatic
thesis concerning the invisibility of God, and consequently the impossibil­
ity of representing Him, but from the doctrine ofsophiology, according to
which God has an image to which the world conforms. God has drawn
His image in the creature; consequently, this image of God can be repre-
388 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

jeato/"(italics by Bulgakov).34 In general, Bulgakov views the apophatic

thesis concerning the impossibility of portraying the Godhead as a false
premise which the Orthodox, during the iconoclastic period, borrowed
from their opponents, “inadvertently and through misunderstanding.”35
This is why he paraphrases the eucharistie prayer addressed to God the
Father in the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (“for Thou art God ineffa­
ble, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible”36) as follows: “In relation
to His creature, God is not without image, invisible, unknowable, and
therefore unrepresentable.”37
The teaching of Bulgakov on the possibility of depicting the Godhead
is based on the following reasoning: man is created in the image of God,
and this “concept of man bearing the divine image carries within itself, as
its basis [italics mine], the reverse notion, namely, that the human befits
the image of God.” This “image of God in God is heavenly humanity,”
Sophia, eternal, divine humanity.38 The Godhead is eternally divine­
human, and the image of God is drawn in man precisely because the
human image is proper to God Himself. By this conformity of God to the
creature, the human image of the Creator is known by man; this is why
God revealed Himself to the Old Testament prophets and could be seen
by them in this form. This is also why
in paganism, the concept ofthe unrepresentability ofGod as invisible and lacking
an image was quietly rejected.. .The basis of divinity can be known and repre­
sented by man; because it is, in a certain sense, human.39

Such is, in brief, the main thesis, the starting point, of Sergius Bulgakov.
One should say, first of all, that “the divine image proper to man,
understood as a result of the creation of man in the image of God, is not at all
the same thing as a conformity between the Godhead and mankind.”40 The
fact that man was created in the image of God does not signify the opposite:
that the human image is proper to the Divinity. The divine image of man
means that such an image is characteristic of the human person—not that
34 The Icon and Its Veneration (hereafter, Icon} (in Russian) (Paris, 1937), 82.
35 Icon, 83.
36 See also the Liturgy of St Basil: “Thou who art without beginning, invisible, inconceivable,
indescribable, without change... Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.“
37 Icon, 82.
38 Ibid, 83.
39 Ibid, 9.
40 V. Lossky, Controversy about Sophia (in Russian) (Paris, 1935), 38.
The Great Council ofMoscow 389

the nature of the Divinity and the nature of man define one another in
“Sophia.”
Bulgakovs disagreement with the apophatic thesis concerning the un­
representability of God prompted him often to make very cutting statements
about the Fathers of the iconoclastic period, especially those of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council, for whom this thesis was the basis for all their reasoning.
According to Bulgakov, they thereby took the wrong road in their defense of
the icon and misinterpreted its content The error made by the apologists, he
says, consisted in an erroneous view of the link between the dogma of
Chalcedon (one Person and two natures in Christ) and the image. Thus it is
the image of Christ which is the starting point of Bulgakov’s reasoning about
the representability of the Godhead. “According to His human nature, or
more precisely according to His corporeal essence, Christ has a visible image,
said die defenders of the icon. He can be represented; but according to His
divine nature, He has no visible image and cannot be represented.”41 It is this
thesis of the Orthodox which, according to Bulgakov, resulted from an
erroneous understanding of the dogma of Chalcedon. According to him, the
Divinity can be described precisely in its eternal, divine humanity. “As
God-man, Christ has a human image; in it, He enclosed His human life on
earth.”42 He possesses “doubly an image that is one and the same, according
to His divinity, in a manner invisible to created eyes; according to His
humanity, in a manner visible.”43 The icon of Christ is possible “precisely
according to His human, visible image which, nonetheless, is identical with
His invisible, divine image.”44

It follows that the image of Christ is an image of God, not because it

is the image of the divine Person who “has united the separate natures”
(irmos of the ninth Ode of the canon, tone four), divine and human, but
because Christ is a manifestation of uncreated humanity in created hu-
41 Icon, 94.
42 Icon, 120. According to Bulgakov’s doctrine, the Incarnation itself actualizes the eternal humanity
of the Word (TheLamb ofGod\\n Russian] [Paris, 1923], 211). The possibility, even the necessity
of the Incarnation ofGod, belong? to the very nature of thing?. “God has created the world precisely
for His Incarnation; it is not the world which, through the fall of man, has impelled God to become
incarmte* (ibùL, 139). From Bulgakov’s point ofview, the Incarnation is the purpose of the world’s
existence, and not the means of its salvation. He sees in it the final act of creation: “The eternal
humanity is joined to the earthly humanity, die divine Sophia to the created Sophia* (Icon, 151).
43 Icon, 94.
44 Icon, 95.
390 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

inanity. “For man, God is representable [Bulgakov’s italics] in such human­

ity which is His.”45 Through the created “bodily essence” taken from His
Mother, the eternal divine-humanity was actualized, “became concrete”;
and Bulgakov emphasizes the possibility of representing not the Person,
but the eternal divine humanity. But the Orthodox apologists viewed the
representation of God not in some original and eternal “divine human­
ity,” but in the image of the person of Christ, bearer of the human and
divine natures. “Thus,” Theodore the Studite writes, “Christ is circum­
scribed in respect to His hypostasis, though uncircumscribable in His
divinity; but the natures of which He is composed are not circumscribed.
In fact, how would it be possible to represent a nature which was not
visible in a person?”46 According to St John of Damascus, “a person
possesses what is general, together with distinctive particulars, as well as
an independent existence. Nature, however, has no independent exis­
tence, but is visible in persons.”47 It is the person of Christ that is
represented with His individual features, according to His “bodily es­
sence” taken from His Mother. This concept of the person which, in this
context, is missing in Bulgakov, is a key concept, as much for the dogma
of Chalcedon as for the theology of the icon. In patristic theology, it is
precisely this concept that allowed the solution of the fundamental di­
lemma of the iconoclastic debate by moving beyond it, thereby giving a
solid basis for the veneration of icons.48
If one accepts the thesis that Divinity is representable, then one would
think that each of the three Persons of the Trinity should have a direct,
suitable image. However, according to Bulgakov, the non-incamate Per­
sons (the Father and the Holy Spirit) cannot have a direct image. But
since divine humanity, made concrete in the Son (one of the Trinity), can
be presented in Him, it is possible to represent the humanity proper to the
Trinity itself. Bulgakov states:
If God is sometimes presented in the form of an old man, we find there a human
image of the one, personal, tri-hypostatic God (Elohim). There is no reason to see
in this a distinct icon of the Father.. .As such, this human image in the represen­
tation of God the Creator (outside any direct link to the Incarnation) already
45 Ibid,, 106.
46 AntirrheticusIII, PG 99:405.
47 Defideorthodoxa, PG 94 (1): 1004A.
48 Cf. J. Meycndoiff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, trans. Y. Dubois (New York: St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 188-9.
The Great Council ofMoscow 391

clearly points out that the image of God was drawn in man at his creation, or,
inversely, [Bulgakov repeats], that the human image is proper to God. The
humanity of the Creator’s image is a testimony of eternal humanity, or of Sophia,
divine Wisdom, the eternal divine icon in God himself.49

Thus, according to Bulgakov, one should see in the old man, when He
is portrayed alone, not an image of God the Father (as is usually under­
stood) but of the tri-hypostatic God, that is, of the Holy Trinity. Accord­
ing to the doctrine of Bulgakov, such a depiction of the Trinity in a single
image is possible because “the Holy Trinity is a tri-hypostatic Person”
(sic!).50 Thus, God the Father, being transcendent, has no independent
image; but the Trinity, as a “Tri-hypostatic Person (!),” can have one, and
this image is that of Sophia, humanity eternal and divine. Thus the nature
common to the three Persons of the Trinity is endowed with a personal
principle that has its image: that of an old man, image of the tri-hypo­
static, anthropomorphic God (thus, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, plus the old
man “Elohim”). What does this image mean? A fourth Person of the
Trinity? Certainly Bulgakov rejected the accusation that Sophia was a
fourth hypostasis in God. Nonetheless, if one applies his reasoning to the
image, this is precisely what one arrives at, and this is an essential
distortion of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The fundamental
error of Bulgakov—a confusion between nature and person—is evident in
his teaching about divine nature as a personal principle, Sophia.
Despite all the above, God the Father, according to the sophiology of
Bulgakov, can be represented personally, but only in relation to the Son in
the icon of the Holy Trinity: “the Father is represented here under the aspect
of an old man.” Bulgakov asks: “What does the representation of the Father
in human form mean, although He did not become incarnate?”51 God is
not represented here to witness to the resemblance between Father and
Son. Bulgakov, perhaps thinking of Bogoslovskii, considers such an expla­
nation as insufficient, not justifying the Incarnation of the Father in the
49 Icon, 138. At one time, N. Berdiaev criticized Bulgakov for multiplying the meanings of
Sophia: “She turns out to be everything: the most Holy Trinity, and each of the hypostases of
the Holy Trinity, and the universe, and humanity, and the Mother of God” (N. Berdiaev,
“Sophiology,* Put* XVI [in Russian] [Paris, 1929], 99). Sophia is also the Divinity of God, or
the Divinity in God; and also the eternal icon of God in God.
50 Icon, 45. “God is a tri-hypostatic Hypostasis* (The Lamb of God, 215). “The unity in the
Trinity is not only the Divinity (oonaor Sophia), but also the tri-hypostatic subject, the triune
I* (TheComforted) [in Russian] [Paris, 1936], 42, note).
51 Icon, 138.
392 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

icon. “In that case,” he says,

one should simply avoid any icon of the Holy Trinity. But...this human
representation of the Father points out.. .that humanity is a direct image of God,
as the vision of the Prophet Daniel (Dan 7:9) before the Incarnation, as well as
that of the Prophet Ezekiel (Ez 1, passim), equally state.52
However, this humanity proper to the Holy Trinity is revealed concretely
only in the Son, who already has an individual, human image, that ofJesus, Son
of David, Son of Abraham. The Father has no such [that is, personal, human]
image, other than the through the Son. It is only in relation to this image that
the first Person of the Holy Trinity, as Father of the Son, is depicted. Stricdy
speaking, what is represented is not the human person of the Father: He has
none—but humanity as an image of the Trinity, assumed in a personal way by
the Son. In this sense one can truly say that the icon of the Father is the
representation, in the Father, of the Son He has revealed to man.55

What is the outcome of such convoluted reasoning? In the image of the

Trinity, the first Hypostasis, not having a personal image, can only be
represented in relation to the Son, “as the Father of the Son.” However, since
the Father has no human person (the Son has none either!), the image of the
old man in the icon of the Trinity represents not the Father, but the humanity
of the Trinity, that is, always Sophia. But in relation to the Son, this human
image of the Trinity (Sophia) appears to be the Father (thus, the first Hypos­
tasis nonetheless?), and at the same time “the representation, in the Father, of
the Son He has revealed to man” (as an image of the Father?). But according
to the Orthodox faith, Christ, as an image of the Father, cannot be described
because He is His Consubstantial image according to His Divinity.54
Certainly, the concept of the Son as the Image of the Father implies a personal
relationship. However, what is shown through the Image is not the person of
the Father, but His nature, which is identical in the Son...As eikon, the Son
honors the Divinity of the Father.55

As to the reasoning of Bulgakov, one may conclude that, from the

moment that the humanity proper to the Holy Trinity reveals itself only
in the Son, the depiction of “the Son of the Father” reveals, in concrete
52 Icon. We have, Bulgakov sûtes, “a concealed manifesution of the Father in the divine-human
form, that is to say, resembling that of the Son, precisely in the vision of the Prophet Daniel,
in the manifesution of the Ancient of Days toward whom the Son of Man is led, and also in
the apparition of the three Angels” ( The Lamb ofGod, 190-1).
53 Icon, 138-9.
54 St Theodore the Studite, AntirrheticusWX, PG 99:408.
55 V. Lossky, “La théologie de l’image,’ Messager de l'Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe
occidentale, No 30/31 (1959), 130.
The Great Council ofMoscow 393

terms, the humanity of the Father under the aspect of an old man. Thus
the justification of the image of God the Father by means of sophiology,
as “the internally justified way out of an impasse,”56 does not remove the
impasse. It does not lead to a Trinitarian image since, in order to represent
the Trinity, the image must be a personal one, that is, it should represent
the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or else be a symbolic
image (such as the Old Testament Trinity)—but not an amalgamation of
a personification of nature (the old man), of the person of the Son, and of
an allegory of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Bulgakov considers
such a portrayal of the Holy Spirit in the image of the Trinity as normal.57

Thus the anthropomorphic image of the Godhead aside from the

Incarnation is used as a proof by Bulgakov for his teaching on Sophia-eternal
humanity in God; and one might think that the portrayal of God-Trinity
under the form of “Sabaoth” awaited its justification in his teaching. But in
order to accept the thesis of Bulgakov, according to which the Deity can be
represented, one has to accept his entire teaching about Sophia. However, as
Metropolitan Seigius expressed it, this doctrine “can either replace the doc­
trine of the Church or yield to it, but it cannot be combined with it.”58 This
is why it was condemned by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church as a
doctrine solely derived from philosophic thought and from the author’s
creative imagination.
56 Icon, 139.
57 Proceeding from his doctrine, Bulgakov wishes to see the image of the Holy Spirit “in the faces of
the holy, God-bearing saints,” and, “in an exclusive sense,” in the icon of the Mother of God. In an
exclusive sense, because in his doctrine of Sophia as the eternal humanity in God, he distinguishes
in her two principles, through analogy with created humanity: the masculine principle (the Son)
and the feminine principle (the Holy Spirit). Thus Bulgakov asks the question: Is the icon of the
Mother of God, as the pre-eminent Spirit-bearer, not “a hidden icon of the third Hypostasis in the
human image” (Icon, 140)? A litde further, he replies, “The icon of the Mother of God, especially
if she is without the Child, is the human image of the Holy Spirit.” Further on, it is true, Bulgakov
states a reservation: one should understand by this “that for Him [the Holy Spirit], Her [the
Virgin’s] human face is fully transparent* (ibùL, 151). However, this reservation hardly bring? any
clarity. To understand by “the supreme manifestation” of the Holy Spirit His action in man, the
human being’s deification through Him, is one thing. It is quite another to see in the hypostatic
image of the Mother of God an icon, even a “hidden one,” of the third Hypostasis of the Holy
Trinity, a “human image of the Spirit.” Here again, the concept of hypostasis is erased in Bulgakov,
so that for him the hypostatic image of the Mother of God becomes at the same time an icon, a
“hidden one,” it is true, but nonetheless an image of the third divine Hypostasis. Lastly, it is hard to
understand why an image of the Mother of God without the Child is an icon of the Holy Spirit to
a greater extent than when she is represented with the Child.
58 The future patriarch. Decree (in Russian) of September 7 (1935), 1.
394 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The Great Council of Moscow realized that a custom introduced into

the Church, even validated by a council, does not always express the truth.
As St Cyprian of Carthage said: “A practice that has been introduced
surreptitiously among some cannot serve as an obstacle to the assertion and
triumph of die truth. For a custom without truth is but an inveterate
error.”59 Not accepting the concept of justification through custom, the
Great Council considered the question of the portrayal of God the Father
by basing itself on the truth, on the Orthodox faith. As the comparison of
the Council’s decisions with patristic and liturgical texts has shown, this
decision cannot be viewed as arbitrary or insufficiently supported.
There can be no anthropomorphic image “of the Lord Sabaoth (that
is, the Father).” The old man Sabaoth represents a personification of the
Deity which is identified with the Father and understood as His image.
But there can be no image of the Godhead apart from a person, and the
non-incamate person of the Father cannot have a human image, “because
the Father has no flesh.”
Faithful to the word of the Gospel, “no one has ever seen God” 0n 1:18), the
Church did not demand: “show us the Father” (14:8), so that we might know
Him through our earthly knowledge. The glory of God is to be “God ineffable,
invisible, inconceivable” (anaphora of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom).. .For
the believer this is a sacred reality he can only approach by “taking ofFhis shoes”
(Ex 3:15), having purified himself not only from sin but also from every
perceptible, material image (“the inaccessible darkness of the vision”).60

“God has no outline He is simple. Do not imagine His structure.. .do not
fence in God with your corporeal concepts, do not limit Him through the
measure of your understanding,” said St Basil the Great.61
Likewise, the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father in the bosom
of the Holy Trinity cannot be represented through the image of His
human birth from His Mother.62 It is the thesis of Orthodox dogma that
“The Father, sole principle in the Trinity, who begets the Son and spirates
59 Letter to Pompeius against Stephen's letter about the baptism of heretics, Sancù Caecilii
Cypriani opera (Venice, 1758), Epistola LXXIV, col. 337.
60 Same Decree of September 7(1935), 2.
61 “Premier entretien sur la création de l'homme à l'image* (Paris, 1970), ch. 5,176-9.
62 V. N. Lazarev is wrong in disputing the influence of the image of the Nicopean Virgin upon
the “Paternity” because the content contained in it is supposedly entirely different (“On an
Icon from Novgorod and the Anti-trinitarian Heresy” [in Russian], Drevnerusskaia kultura
[Moscow, 1966], 107-8). The content is not different since it shows the same relationship, in
one case with the Mother, in the other with the Father.
The Great Council ofMoscow y)5

the Holy Spirit, is a hardly perceptible allusion to new mysteries in the

bosom of the Godhead, rather than an attempt to disclose them,”63 much
less to transpose them into an image. It is precisely the apophatic concept
of the utter inconceivability of God that forms the basis of the Orthodox
doctrine on the impossibility of depicting the Deity. This is what essen­
tially characterizes the entire patristic tradition of the Orthodox Church.
In its knowledge and representation of God, Orthodoxy knows neither
“psychological laws,” “stages of development,” nor “conformity between
the Godhead and humanity.” The theology of the icon knows no image
of God apart from revelation, an image-witness to the fact. We can only
agree with H.-J. Schulz, who writes:
A visible representation of what is essentially invisible is, for this theology of
the icon, not merely ostentatious or foolish. It is heresy and sacrilege, because
it is an arbitrary addition to revelation and to the divine economy and, in this
present case, also a heresy asserting an incarnation of the Father and of the Holy
Spirit64

In its discussion on the portrayal of the Godhead, the Great Council

limited itself to only a few iconographie subjects and paid no attention to
other iconographie errors, which were numerous at the time. Nonethe­
less, the basic principle it formulated greatly overshadowed the enumer­
ated subjects. À whole series of subjects which had aroused debate already
in the sixteenth century and, more generally, all subjects that were not
based on the realism of the Gospel (that were “without authentic refer­
ence”) fell under the Council’s ban as a result of its decision of principle.
63 Metropolitan Sergius, the same Decree of September 7 (1935), 3. It seems to us that we cannot
view as positive the mention Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow makes of the “Paternity" while
explaining the iconostasis of the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin to the successor to
the throne: “The series of patriarchs on both sides of the Lord Sabaoth who, from his bosom,
engenders the eternal Word" (as quoted by I. Snegirev, “Memories of the Visit of his Highness
the Dauphin to the Muscovite Sanctuary" [in Russian] [St Petersburg, 1838], and in Monu­
ments ofMuscovite Antiquities [in Russian] [Moscow, 1841], 11). The traditionally Orthodox
utterances of Metropolitan Philaret on the subject of the icons of the Holy Face and of the
Dormition do not allow us to surmise that he, great theologian that he was, did not see the
contradiction between “Patemitas* and the liturgical texts. Here we have to take into account, it
seems to us, that the metropolitan explained the content ofthe iconostasis as a whole, without going
into a dogmatic analysis of the image contained in it. The usage that existed, then, had invaded
minds to such a degree that it had obscured the true understanding of the image; a theological
explanation of “Patemitas* would have been superfluous and could have been confusing.
64 H.-J. Schulz, “Die Höllenfahrt als Anastasis,” Zeitschrift fiir katholische Theologie, vol. 81
(1959), no 1,12.
396 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

42 The New Testament Trinity. 17th-centuty Russian icon.

Korin Collection, Moscow.
The Great Council ofMoscow 397

These were above all the other New Testament compositions depicting
the Trinity which, through their content, are closely related to the “Pater­
nity,” the “Synthronon” or “New Testament Trinity,” (Fig. 42)65 and the
“Throne of Grace.”66 Though the origin and meaning of these images
differ, they falsified the Orthodox faith just as much as the “Paternity.”
Moreover, the image of the New Testament Trinity was later also prohib­
és This iconographie subject was based on an illustration of Psalm 109 (110): "Yahweh declared
to my Lord, *Take your seat at my right hand, till I have made your enemies your footstool.”*
The oldest known illustration is found in the tenth century Utrecht Psalter. Here, as in later
examples, Christ is represented twice, in accordance with the commentary on these words by
St Jerome {Breviarium in Psalmis, PL 26: 1163), as expressing two different conditions of our
Lord: glorious-heavenly, and humiliated-terrestrial. In the West, both the poem itself and the
commentary were used in church doctrine to oppose Arianism; at the feet of the two persons
represented were placed the vanquished enemies, Judas and Arius. However, the transposition
of Jerome’s commentary into imagery led to a personification of the two natures of Christ.
After the East-West schism, already at the beginning of the twelfth century, one of the persons
represented was transformed into God the Father, and a dove was added to the composition.
This is how this illustration became a representation of the Trinity. From the twelfth century
on, this image spread widely in the West in Bibles, Breviaries, Antiphonaries and other
liturgical books. In the fourteenth century, it appears as an independent, pious image (see the
work of W. Braunfels, Die Heilige Dreifaltigkeit [Düsseldorf, 1954]). From the West, this
iconography passed into Orthodox art. The oldest example of it in Russia is the quadripartite
icon in the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow. After appearing in Russia toward the
middle of the sixteenth century, this image "ended up no longer seeming to be ‘a Latin
invention,* but even became one of the important components of the Last Judgment* (L. S.
Retkovskaia, "On the Appearance and Development of the Composition ‘ Pater nitas’ in
Russian Art" [in Russian], Drevnerusskoe iskuutvoXI-XVIvekov [Moscow, 1963], 257).
66 The image of the Trinity in the form of an old man representing God the Father, with the
crucified Christ on his lap, and the dove, is of Roman Catholic origin; in its finished form, it
dates back to the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century. In the West, the
traditional name of this composition is "The Holy Trinity.” But the fact that it is sometimes
accompanied by the opening words of a Latin eucharistie prayer, and that it is also called
"Throne ofGrace,” indicates that its meaning is above all eucharistie, as W. Braunfels explains.
The aim of this image is to show that the eucharistie sacrifice, like that of Golgotha, is offered
to the Father and accepted by Him, effecting the reconciliation between God and man. This
image "gradually moves from the altar, through the cross and the sacrifice, to the Holy Spirit
and the Father” {op. dtp. 42). This subject, so typically Roman Catholic in its translation of
the concept of satisfaction, has variants that are no less typically Roman Catholic. Thus the
dead Christ is sometimes represented without the cross, held up by God the Father, as in the
composition of the "Pieta,” where He is sustained by His mother. This must express the
suffering of the Father, which is analogous to that of the Mother {ibuL, p. 41). In Russia, the
first known example of this type is found agian on the same quadripartite icon in the
Cathedral of the Annunciation. The crucified Christ, in the bosom of His Father, is covered
by the wings of the cherubim (see above, chapter 14, “The Muscovite Councils of the
Sixteenth Century”). Despite its clearly non-Orthodox meaning, the subject of the crucified
Christ became so popular in Russia that it was still represented in the nineteenth century, as
for example in the Cathedral of St Vladimir in Kiev.
398 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

ited in the Greek Church, without theological discussion, simply for

being Latin. In the time of Patriarch Sophronius III, the Holy Synod of
Constantinople (1776) said: “It has been decreed by the Synod that the
icon allegedly of the Trinity is an innovation. It is alien to the apostolic
Orthodox Catholic Church and is not accepted by it. It infiltrated the
Orthodox Church through the Latins.”67
An important question arises concerning these icons of the New
Testament Trinity. On the one hand, accepted practice in the Church
indicates that they exist. On the other hand, the Orthodox rite of “the
Blessing and Sanctification of the Icon of the Most-holy and Vivifying
Trinity” adopted by the Russian Church, and hence constituting an
ecclesial act, does not know such icons either in its enumeration of
Orthodox trinitarian icons, or in the theological content of the prayer of
blessing. The Rite of Blessing mentions the following icons:
As recounted in the Old Testament, Your apparition in the form of three angels
to Abraham, the glorious patriarch; in the new Dispensation, the manifestation
of the Father through a voice, of the Son in the flesh in the Jordan, and of the
Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Also, when the Son, after ascending to heaven
in His flesh and being seated at the right hand of God, sent the Comforting
Spirit to the aposdes in the form of tongues of fire; and on Mt Tabor, the Father
revealed himself to the three apostles through a voice, the Holy Spirit through
a cloud, the Son through a supraluminous light.
Thus the ritual of blessing recognizes four trinitarian icons: one from the Old,
and three from the New Testament—icons ofTheophanies, revelations ofthe
Holy Trinity in the New Testament (Theophany, Transfiguration, and
Pentecost). Only at the blessing of the Old Testament icon is the following
sticheron chanted (tone 8): “Come, O peoples, let us worship God in three
Persons.” At the blessing of other trinitarian icons the troparion and kontak-
ion ofthe corresponding feasts are sung. The events which are represented are,
of course, manifestations of the Holy Trinity in the world, but they do not
show Its image. Aside from the enumerated trinitarian icons, the ritual of
blessing knows of no others. Is this not because in the New Testament it is not
possible to have an image of God “glorified in the Holy Trinity, the One no
mind can reach and no word can express, the One never seen by men
anywhere” (The rite of blessing for trinitarian icons)? A visible image of the
divine Trinity, in whatever iconographie variant, according to whatever
67 Sethad, Bibliothecagraeca medii aevi (Venice, 1872), vol. 3, 317.
The Great Council ofMoscow 399

abstract concept, is impossible.68 Of the three Persons of the Divinity, only

die second hypostasis can be represented in human form in the Son of God
who became the Son of Man. The world only knows God in the Son through
the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, Pentecost is the apex of the revelation
of the Trinity—a revelation not in image but within man himself, by his
deification. Divinisation, then, is “the action of the Spirit.. .through Whom
the Trinity is known.”69 In other words, the dogma of the Trinity is not an
abstract doctrine, a formula or a truth knowable through a process of abstrac­
tion, like a scientific truth. Knowledge of the Trinity is not gained by external
teaching but by an inward, living experience of the Christian life. It is an
existential experience of divine knowledge, of which testimonies are found in
the lives of the saints and in patristic writing?. It is not by chance that it is
precisely in the wake of St Sergius of Radonezh, himself a “dwelling place of
the Trinity” (troparion of the saint), that this image of the Old Testament
Trinity is shown with a new fullness, a new vision and a new theological
content in the icon of St Andrei Rublev. The icon of the Old Testament
Trinity links the beginning of the Church in the Old Testament, the promise
made to Abraham, to the moment at which the New Testament Church was
founded. The beginning of divine revelation is joined to its consummation on
the day of Pentecost, to the supreme revelation of the tri-hypostatic Divinity.
It is precisely in this image that the “action of the Spirit” unfolded to Andrei
the monk the meaning of the Old Testament revelation, a new vision of the
trinitarian life.

This image turned out to be so powerful that, in the words of P.

Florenskii, “among all the philosophical proofs for the existence of God,
what is most convincing is the conclusion: the [icon of the] Trinity of
Rublev exists; therefore, God exists.”70
68 An image of the Trinity can only be symbolic, as, fix example, that of the Old Testament Trinity—a
revelation of the Trinity in impersonal angels, or, as was the case in early Christian art, in the form of a
th rone, a book, and a dove. At the beginning of Christian art, there was also the symbol of the triangle.
69 Ode 7 of the first canon of Pentecost. See also the kneeling prayers at Vespers for the same day.
70 P. Florenskii, “The Iconostasis* (in Russian), Bogoslovskie Trudy 9 (Moscow, 1972), 100. Despite
the opinion ofcertain scholars and theologians for whom the main Person of Rublev’s “Trinity" must
be in the center and the Son at the Father s rigjit (by analogy no doubt with the New Testament
Trinity), it bears repeating that the Trinity of Rublev strictly follows the order of the Creed (from left
to right): Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What seems incontrovertible to practicing painters is not
taken into consideration by the theologians. For neither die symbolism of the colors nor that of the
iconography leaves any room for doubt. We have made a brief analysis of this icon in Der Sinn der
Ikonen (Bem, 1952); The Meaning cflams, trans. G. E. H. Palmer and E Kadloubovsky (New York
400 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Scholars have seen a link between the appearance of images of “Paternity,”

in Byzantium and the Balkans as well as in Russia, and the spread of
anti-trinitarian heresies (Bogomilism, the Strigolniki, and the Judaizers). Ac­
cording to some scholars, the fight against such heresies prompted the search
for new iconographie subjects supporting the trinitarian dogma, “to come to
the aid of anti-heretical writings.”71 The icon of the Old Testament Trinity, it
was felt, was not sufficiently convincing to express the equality and con-
substantiality of the Persons, being too speculative. It was in order to complete
this icon, so to speak, and to express the trinitarian dogma in a more concrete
fashion, that the iconographie subject called “Paternity” appeared as an
antidote to heresy. Rather rare in Byzantium and in the Balkans, this subject
was disseminated particularly in Russia. Here it appeared at the end of the
fourteenth or during the fifteenth century (this, at any rate, is the date
attributed to the first known icon of Novgorodian origin). Rare at first,
this composition became highly popular in the sixteenth-seventeenth
centuries. Its appearance led to a wide dissemination of images of God the
Father on frescoes and icons representing the Trinity or other subjects.
It is certain that the period during which these heresies spread coin­
cides with the apparition of this composition. On the surface, the icono-
St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982). Here we will merely repeat that the garment of the angel
in the center has the colors of the Incarnate Word, to which the very visible clavus on the
himation, a symbol of the message, is related. A certainly less vivid davus is visible in the hue of the
garment of the angel on the right—a symbol of the third hypostasis. As to iconographie symbolism,
this icon illustrates the fundamental ecdesiological thesis, that the Church is a revelation of the Father
in the Son and the Holy Spirit. The edifice, the house ofAbraham, above the angd of the first Person,
is an image of the Church. The oak of Mamie—tree of life and wood of the cross, above the angd of
the second person—indicates the economy of the son of God. Lastly, above the angd of the third
Person, there is a mountain, a symbol of the spiritual ascent. It may be added that the meaning of this
icon centers on the eucharistie cup, the divine Meal. But in the representation of meals, banning
with the first Christian centuries, the main person was placed as a rule not in the middle but to the
right» that is, in relation to the viewer, to the left. There are rare exceptions: certain Serbian frescoes
from the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries, the Last Supper of Simon Ushakov, and some later
representations (see K. Wessd, Abendmai und Apostelkommunion [Recklinghausen, 1964]). As to
the Last Supper on the iconostasis in the Cathedral of the Trinity (Lavra of the Trinity-St Sergius
Monastery), attributed if not to Rublev himsdf then at least to his circle, there is no exception to the
rule: Christ, the main person, is represented, as is customary, to the left in relation to the viewer. It is
useless to refer to the one known exception, as is sometimes done—the image of the Holy Trinity
called “Zyrian," where the angd in the center is accompanied by the inscription “Father." Even ifthis
icon can be attributed, as is conjectured, to the circle of St Stephen of Perm, this exception does not
rescind the rule.
71 See L S. Retkovskaia, “On the Appearance," Drevn. iskusstuo XI-XVI Vekov (Moscow, 1963),
239.
The Great Council ofMoscow 401

graphic content of the image seems to be opposed to heretical statements.

Indeed, all these heresies denied the divinity of Christ, and consequently,
the dogma of God as Trinity. By indicating the eternal begetting of the
Son by the Father, the composition called “Paternity” witnessed to the
tri-unity of God, and served as a clear proof of the divinity of Christ.
Thus, the generally accepted scholarly point of view appears to be sup­
ported by an adequate and convincing argumentation.
However, written documents contain not the least indication allowing
one to Conclude that the Church used this iconographie subject to fight
heresies. (At any rate, none have been discovered so for, despite the abun­
dance of writings devoted to this struggle.) Whether official Church docu­
ments or writings of the most tenacious opponents of heresy, not one of
them mentions this subject by way of argument. In his discussion with
Viskovatyi at the council of 1553-1554, convoked precisely against the
heretics who had denied the divinity of Christ and the dogma of the Trinity,
Metropolitan Macarius himself, while defending the image of God the
Father, nowhere mentions “Paternity” as a means of fighting heresy. Such
an argument would certainly not have been superfluous in supporting his
position. The debate with the heretics dealt not with the iconography of the
Trinity, but with the very dogma of the tri-unity of God. Even if the
Church had wished to fight heresy by means of this image, and to prove the
divine tri-unity, not one iconographie variant, including the “Paternity,”
would have been convincing; this all the more since the icon itself could not
have served as an argument, because the heretics were iconoclasts.
In the polemical writings against heretics and in the expositions of their
anti-trinitarian attitudes, only the icon of the Old Testament Trinity is ever
mentioned. The entire third treatise of the Message to an Iconographer is
devoted to it,72 as is the letter of St Joseph of Volokolamsk to Archimandrite
Vasian concerning the Holy Trinity.73 What is more, the sixteenth-century
Chronicle, an official document, illustrates the victory over heresy by means of
a miniature accompanied by a corresponding text; it uses not the “Paternity,”
but precisely an isocephalic Old Testament Trinity.74 Lastly, the supreme
organ of the Russian Church, its local council, prohibited the image of the
72 Edited by N. Kazakov and la. Lurié» Heretical Anti-Feudal Movements in Russia in the
Fourteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (in Russian) (Moscow-Leningrad, 1955)» 360-73.
73 7^,306-9.
74 Published by L. S. Retkovskaia, 241.
402 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

“Paternity” because it is not possible for the Church to change its own
doctrine. Besides, the ultimate defeat of heresy did not prevent the develop­
ment and dissemination of this iconographie subject
What interests scholars the most is the layout of the “Paternity”—a
portrayal of three in one: “The three Persons are brought so close together
that they form but a single group, framed as they are by the silhouette of
the Father.”75 As soon as the Judaizers denied the image of the Old
Testament Trinity because they considered that Abraham saw not the
Trinity, but God with two angels, some scholars concluded that it was the
“Paternity” that was to show the trinitarian dogma with the greatest
fullness and precision. “In this type of image, the unity and quality of the
three persons of the Trinity have received their clearest expression, one not
allowing any misunderstanding. ”76 But what is the unity that is depicted
here? The heterogeneous figures are unable to show either the equality of
the Persons or the unity of Their Nature. And if this image is understood
as expressing a purely symbolic unity, where then are the persons of the
Holy Trinity, since a personification, or a symbol, is not the image of a
person? The unity of the Trinity, in its Orthodox understanding, is the
unity of Its Nature. But in this composition, there is no natural unity
between the old man, the adolescent, and the dove. For this reason, there
is no equality either.
lb explain this image, L. S. Retkovskaia cites the words of St Joseph of
Volokolamsk: “Let us therefore confess one God and not three; for they are not
separated one from another.. .but together Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each
contained the one in the other [italics by Retkovskaia], without confusion or
separation.” “If we did not know the representations of the ‘Paternity’ painted
well before these words of Joseph of Volokolamsk,” Retkovskaia writes, “we
could have believed that the image of this composition, in any of its variants,
appeared as a literal illustration of the above quotation.”77
However, in his letter to Archimandrite Vasian and in the second
treatise of the Message to an Iconographe^ St Joseph used classical patristic
concepts about the ineffable, unrepresentable Deity. At any rate, he knew
theology well enough so as not to consider the Persons of the Trinity as
75 A. Heimann, “L’iconographie de la Trinité,” L’Art chrétien (Paris, 1934), 39.
76 L. S. Retkovskaia, op. cit., 243.
Tl Ibid.,2^.
The Great Council ofMoscow 403

being portrayable in their Divinity, whether in an anthropomorphic

fashion (as Father and Son) or in a zoomorphic one (as the Holy Spirit).
Joseph’s expression, “the one in the other,” refers to the uncreated,
intra-trinitarian life, but in no case to a plastic art form.

This subject has not ceased to create “misunderstandings,” as

illustrated by the variance between divergent interpretations, beginning
with those of the iconographers themselves, and the periodic discussions
that started in the fifteenth century, continued in the sixteenth and
seventeenth, and still continue today.78
78 The council only considered the image of the "Paternity,” representing the Father, the adolescent
Son in His lap, and the dove between them. However, the information we have indicates that this
iconographie subject was not limited to the variant studied at the council. A study of the
development of the iconography of the "Paternity,” since its apparition, shows that this iconogra­
phy fluctuated over the centuries. It is especially significant that these fluctuations reflect not the
search for a better expression of a well-defined content, but a search for the content itself: Who is
the main person represented? The iconography varies, as do the inscriptions:
1) In certain images (namely the eleventh-century miniature illustrating St John Climacus,
Vaticanusgraecus394t fol. 2; a twelfth-century Greek illustration of the Gospel, in Vienna, Gr.
52, fol. 1), it is the Ancient of Days who is represented with the features of Christ;
2) In other images, the main person is Christ in His conventional appearance of a mature
man: thus in the embroidered veils of Sophia Paleologus (14-49, with the inscription IC XC)
and of Solomonia Saburov (1525, with the inscription "Lord Sabaoth”);
3) Sometimes the old man with the white hair (the Ancient of Days) is represented with the
inscription IC XC (the thirteenth-fourteenth-century fresco at Kastoria carries the additional
inscriptions: Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Alongside these trinitarian representations, there are bi-uni-
tary images with the same iconographie indications and inscriptions (for example, the eleventh
century miniatures of the Codex of Mount Athos, Dionysiou 740, of the fourteenth-century
Serbian Psalter in Munich, for example, of the fourteenth century Bulgarian Psalter of Tomich
in Moscow, and so on). In all such images, bi-unitary as well as trinitarian, the Child Emmanuel
sits on the lap of Christ (in His conventional appearance or with the features of the Ancient of
Days). In certain representations, the two persons carry the cruciferous halo. On the knees of the
Ancient of Days, one sometimes sees not the Child, but the adult Christ in reduced dimensions
(the twelfth century Gospel of Vienna, gr. 52 ; the frescoes of Kastoria and Grottaferrata). In all
these images of Christ, whether He is portrayed in His conventional appearance or as the
Ancient of Days, the Lords Hypostasis is disclosed both iconographically and by means of
inscriptions. What does this image mean? In "Über Herkunft und Entwicklung der an-
thropomorphen byzantinisch-slavischen Trinitäts-darstellungen des sogenannten Synthroni-
und Patemitas Typus,” Festschrift W. Sas-Zaloziecky^Gnz, 1956), 60, H. Gerstinger speculates
that from the moment the representation of the Ancient of Days contradicts Orthodox
doctrine, the images of the super-essential (the Ancient of Days) may be linked to gnostic
heretical circles. If in the Ancient of Days one should see the eternal Word, that is, Christ as
God, in the Child Emmanuel it would be proper to see Christ in His Incarnation. In this case,
it would be a representation of His two natures, separated one from the other, which would be
Nestorianism. But since the Son of God, Gerstinger continues, can be represented only in His
Incarnation, as the eternal Word, He can be depicted only symbolically, in the form of the
404 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The lack of sure documentary evidence and the contradiction between

this image and Orthodox doctrine prevent us from seeing in it a weapon
of the Church against heresies. Simultaneity in itself proves nothing. At
any rate, there is no unanimity among scholars as to the origin of this
image. We note here the work of M. S. A. Papadopoulos about the image
of the “Paternity.”79 True, it is not the author’s intent to discover the
reasons why the image appeared. But in our opinion, his conclusions
represent a better approach to this question. Papadopoulos posits that the
appearance of this subject in Christendom originated in a rite of adoption
which existed in antiquity and which survived in Byzantium until the
thirteenth century. An important component of this ritual consisted of
having the adopted child sit on the knees of the adoptive father. Accord­
ing to the author, this image evidently contradicted Orthodox theology,

Ancient of Days. Now, as we have seen, the Ancient of Days, both in the vision of Daniel and
in the Book of Revelation, is the Christ of the Second Coming and therefore bearer of His two
natures, human and divine, like the Child Emmanuel. Whatever the case might be, and
despite the presence of the dove, no image of the Trinity results from this since the Hypostasis
of the Father is absent;
4) Lastly, the Ancient of Days is understood as the image of the Father, and the inscription
that accompanies it is “Father," “Lord Sabaoth" or “Heavenly Father." (To repeat: nowhere
have we found the inscription “Paternity.")
We see the same fluctuations on this iconographie subject in the West, up to the fourteenth
century. The above-mentioned examples of representations dating back to different epochs make it
abundantly clear that for a long time there was no clear understanding of this iconographie subject.
The incoherence of its iconography, and the lack ofconsistency in the inscriptions that accompany
it, do not permit us to see in it either unanimity or uniformity. In the image of the “Paternity," there
is also fluctuation as to the place of the dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit. In Russia, such variations
continued as late as the seventeenth century. In western iconography, these variations are more
pronounced than in that of the East, and the dove is found cither between the old man and the child,
or in the child’s lap. The Great Council of Moscow speaks only of the first variant, which
Bogoslovskii considers to be the ideal one. Thus he writes, “One could hardly find a more suitable
way of personifying the concept of the procession of the Holy Spirit" (op. dt, 3). At any rate, the
position of the dove reflects the doctrinal concept of the procession of the Holy Spirit. Thus A.
Heimann believes that its place between the Father and the Son “eminently corresponds to Catholic
dogma, which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son" (op. di., 47). If the
dove is placed in the bosom of the Son, this “is in conformity with Orthodox faith, where the Holy
Spirit proceeds only from the Son" (sic!) (ibid., 40). By contrast, L S. Retkovskaia sees the
placement of the dove between the old man and the child as a way of opposing the manner in which
Roman Catholics understand the procession of the Holy Spirit, the filioque. This author believes
that placing the dove in the bosom of the child could be understood as an expression of the filioque.
A. Grabar understands the position of the dove in the same way (Cahiersarchéologiques, vol. 20,
Notes, 237).
79 “Essais d’interprétation du thème iconographique de la Paternité dans l'art byzantin," Cahiers
archéologiques, vol. 18 (1968), 121-36.
The Great Council ofMoscow 405

and he concluded: in the eyes of the Byzantines, this iconographie subject

had to express either a close natural relationship (if the ancient pagan
meaning of this gesture still survived); or an adoption, which, if applied to
the Trinity, would express a heretical concept of the relationship between
Father and Son; or else also a spiritual kinship. Without analyzing these
conclusions, we may say that the image of the “Paternity’’ represents a
lingering vestige of ancient beliefs. According to the conclusion of
Papadopoulos, it is precisely in Russia, where this representation was
widespread and is preserved until our day, that it kept its most ancient,
original name of “Paternity.”
Compositions that falsify Church doctrine usually first appear in
illustrations. In trying to illustrate the text as precisely as possible, so as to
make it more understandable and accessible, a painter may make an error
out of ignorance. But he may also consciously convey his erroneous
concept of the Orthodox tradition. At all times in the history of the
Church, there have been points of view reflecting various degrees of
assimilation to the Orthodox theology faithful to revelation—amalgama­
tions between theology and philosophy. This occurred primarily when,
while dealing with theological concepts and terms, gaps or misunder­
standings remained that could lead to direct contradictions of Church
doctrine. Thus the boundary between what was conceivable and what was
not, between what could or could not be portrayed, was no longer clearly
felt and faded from consciousness.
To believe that it is possible to portray the Deity is a temptation that has
always existed in Christendom. It has never been eliminated, and the question
of the limit of what can be depicted has constantly remained on the periphery
of the ecdesial consciousness. In certain periods, circumstances helped to
nourish this temptation, or rather stimulated it through heresies or remnants
of other beliefe or concepts about the Godhead. Here, it seems to us, is where
one has to look for the origin of images similar to that of the “Paternity.”
The apocryphal texts of early Christianity sometimes contain anthro­
pomorphic concepts of the Divinity. The anthropomorphic representa­
tions of the Deity (extremely rare, it is true) also date back to the
beginning of Christianity. The oldest known representation of the Trinity
in the form of three men is found on a sarcophagus from the end of the
fourth century (Lateran Museum), that is, it dates back to the time of the
406 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

massive influx of pagans into the Church.80 Sometimes a false conception

of the vision of God also emerges—the temptation to view God apart
from His Incarnation. Since the Incarnation not only made God visible,
but gave man the opportunity to contemplate Him, contemplation has
sometimes been confused with prophetic vision.81

The “Paternity” appeared at a time when acrimonious discussions took

place in Byzantium concerning the vision of God. In Orthodoxy, this
vision is not linked to anthropomorphic apparitions; and, in general, the
attitude toward all visions has always been one of caution. But in heretical
Bogomil circles, anthropomorphic visions of the Trinity were viewed as
authentic. The monk Euthymius Zigabenus states in his PanopUa Dog­
matics the Bogomils “say that not only in dreams but also in reality they
see the Father as a bearded old man and the Son as an unbearded
adolescent.”82 Bogomil concepts, their views of the Holy Trinity, were
widespread in the Church and in Byzantine society. Even if one cannot
positively affirm any influence of Bogomil doctrines on the iconographie
subject of the “Paternity,” we can only agree with K. Onasch, who is of
the opinion that the appearance of anthropomorphic portrayals of the
Holy Trinity in Byzantium exactly at this time cannot be accidental.83
80 Moreover, is it possible, as is sometimes done, to attribute to the Church a polemic against the
Arians by means of these images found on sarcophagi destined to be buried and not exposed
to people?
81 M. A. Grabar gives an example: a miniature of the ninth century (thus immediately following
Iconoclasm) at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Gr. 923) which represents an unknown
man contemplating God the Father s sending the Savior into the world (this miniature is
placed near a quotation from St Basil on the contemplation of God in his Homily XV, Defidet
ch. 1 and opening of ch. 2, PG 31: 465). A. Grabar, L'iconodasme byzantin (Paris, 1957),
illustr. 163.
82 Euthymii Zigabeni Panoplia dogmatica, XXVII, par. 23, PG 130: 1320. The leaders of the
Paulicians, the predecessors of the Bogomils, ascribed to themselves the role of the persons of
the Holy Trinity and called themselves Father, Son, and Comforter, as Photius indicates in his
account of the new appearance of the Manichaeans. We find the same thing in the eleventh
formula of renunciation of heresy concerning the reception of Paulicians into the church. See
Travaux et mémoires, 4th extract (Paris: Centre de Recherches d’Histoirc et de Civilisation
byzantines, 1970, 133*4). In addition, Bogomilism was to a large extent sustained by the
apocryphal literature of the early years of Christianity.
83 K. Onasch, “Ketzergeschichtliche Zusammenhänge bei der Enstehung des anthropomorphen
Dreifaltigkeits-Bildes der Byzantinisch-slavischen Orthodoxie,* Byzantinoslavica 31 (Prague:
1970), 231. By contrast, Gerstinger sees in it a visible western influence. Indeed, in the West,
the representation of the first and the third Persons of the Trinity hardly ever met with
opposition. Well before the appearance of the * Paternity,* an analogous representation existed
in the West: it is a miniature made by an Anglo-Saxon monk in the twelfth century. There is
The Great Council ofMoscow 407

Bogomil ideas had penetrated Russia as early as the eleventh century,

through the intermediary of Bulgarian Bogpmils and their literature. Appar­
ently, they were subsequently reflected in the heresies of the Strigolniki and of
the Judaizers. Whatever the case, one may “suppose with a high degree of
probability that the religious and philosophic ideas of the Russian Strigplniki
were basically founded on the same dualistic conception of the world as that of
the Bulgarian Bogpmils.”84 It is not possible to state with certainty that the
image of the “fttemity” derived only from Bogpmilism, whether in Russia or
Byzantium. In the West, where it persisted among the Albigenses and the
Cathars, the anthropomorphic concept of the Deity was more clearly reflected
in art.85 It is significant that, in Russia, the depiction of the “Paternity” first
appeared precisely on the periphery, just as did the heresies, in places where
contacts with the West were particularly frequent: in the region of Novgorod
(the above mentioned icon in the Tretiakov Gallery, the image behind the altar
in the Zverin Monastery [1467], and the “Paternity” in the dome of the Tikhvin
Monastery from the early sixteenth century)—and only later in Moscow.
As we have said earlier,86 the heresies of the Strigolniki and the
Judaizers are not directly reflected in art. This would not have been
possible, since the heretics were iconoclasts. Nonetheless, their unhealthy
and excited religious imagination could not help but contaminate Ortho­
dox consciousness and art. There is an inner kinship between the nebu­
lous and abstruse mysticism of the heretics and the disappearance of every
theological criterion among wavering Orthodox, even perhaps among
certain fervent zealots of Orthodoxy. It is this fertile soil that gave birth to
a great difference in style between this miniature and the Byzantine images, but an equally
great iconographie kinship (op. tit., 81).
84 T. A. Sidorov, “The Fresco of Volotovo ‘Wisdom has Built Herself a House* and its Relation
to the Novgorodian Heresy of the Strigolniki in the Fourteenth Century* (in Russian), Trudy
Otdela drevnerussk. LiteraturylG (Leningrad, 1971), 228.
85 N. Braunfels (op. tit., ix) mentions a western anthropomorphic representation of the Holy
Trinity from the end of the tenth century, in the form of three men standing next to one
another and corresponding perfectly to the Bogomil visions: in this image, the Father is an old
man, the Son an adult, bearded man, and the Holy Spirit, a young beardless man. K. Onasch
conjectures that the appearance of the “three-headed monster,* disseminated in the West since
the eleventh century, is linked to Bogomil concepts of the anthropomorphism of God (op. tit.,
233). This representation was forbidden in Russia by the Holy Synod: “The parish priests will
see to it that in the houses of their parishioners there will be no incorrecdy painted icons, such
as the one representing the Holy Trinity in the form of a three-headed man* (Bulgakov, The
Clergy Manual \\n Russian] [Kiev, 1913], 745-6, note).
86 See above, chapter 13, “Hesychasm and the Flowering of Russian Art."
408 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

images about which there had been “great discussion” since the fifteenth
century, causing some “to refuse to venerate icons, while others were
amazed at the profound wisdom with which the model had been com­
posed.” These “models composed with profound wisdom” were indeed
the result of an excited religious imagination, of a deviation from the
realism of the Gospel, as much in theology as in art. They abolished the
distinction between what is representable and what is not. Moreover, we
should keep in mind that heresies thrived precisely among the clergy and
in the upper class of society (the court of the Grand Prince). Watching
over the purity of Orthodoxy was certainly not on the minds of the
heretics and of their protectors. The result of all this was the simultaneous
expansion both of the Old Testament Trinity as an affirmation of the true
doctrine of the Church—the historian Buslaev is right in explaining this
phenomenon as an attempt by Orthodoxy to oppose the heresy of the
Judaizers87—and of changes in this doctrine through images such as that
of God the Father, different variants of the “Paternity,” and so forth. But
the dissemination of the latter images was caused especially “by general
changes in the world view of large social milieus.”88 As we have seen, these
changes consisted of an infiltration of ideas from a new culture which was
emerging in Russia, new ideas with regard to the Church’s view of the
world and in its art. In the realm of theology, western scholasticism was
taught, under the influence of Roman Catholicism and of Protestantism.
The theological criterion used to evaluate an image was being lost. This
led to a loss of the very meaning of the image, to an abandonment of the
doctrinal foundations of the Quinisext Council and of the Seventh Ecu­
menical Council. A disintegration of the ontological unity between word
and image resulted. It is typical that the same iconographers, on the one
hand, wrote sentences of an apophatic nature on the phylacteries of pagan
gods and ancient philosophers and, on the other, simultaneously repre­
sented God the Father: both appeared in the cathedrals of the IG*emlin,
that is, in the very heart of Russian Orthodoxy. (Thus, in the Cathedral
of the Dormition, Christ is represented in the main dome, God the Father
in another). If some voices were raised to defend the authentic meaning of
the Orthodox image, they were shouting in the desert.

87 F. I. Buslaev, Works (in Russian) (St Petersburg, 1910), vol. 2, 331.

88 K. Onasch, 236.
The Great Council ofMoscow 409

Such a voice was that of the learned monk Euthymius who saw in the
image of the “Paternity” “insolence devoid of judgment, both on the part
of those who paint and of those who commission it.” The general atmo­
sphere was such that there arose no opposition against the dissemination
of abstruse images. What satisfied the faithful was no longer the confor­
mity to the meaning of the word, but to “words” in general, or a
combination of words artificially removed from their context. Such repre­
sentations not only spread like wildfire, but they were accepted and
considered as the norm. The result of this is still felt today. This was due
in part to the fact that church writers and theological works (with rare
exceptions) demonstrated a blind faith in the infallibility of the image as
such, without taking into consideration the consistency or lack of consis­
tency of such images with the Orthodox faith. In our own day, the return
of theology to the patristic tradition is strangely linked to an utter lack of
concern for the theological content of the icon.
As we have seen, the Great Council of Moscow reacted in no way to the
emergence of profound changes that were evident in sacred art, despite the
pressing nature of the problem. But its merit and significance for our time lie
in the fact that it helped to clarify the very basis of Orthodox art—the image
of the Incarnation, as well as the very basis of its alteration—the depiction of
what cannot be represented. Indeed, by losing the criterion of what is repre­
sentable, art gradually also lost the criterion of how the sacred is portrayed, and
the artistic language of the Orthodox icon deteriorated. At a time when the
Orthodox tradition was betrayed, as much in the image itself and in its
conception as in thought, the decision of the Great Council of Moscow
categorically to prohibit any representation of the Deity is an authentically
Orthodox echo of the patristic theology of the icon.
 17

Art in the Russian Church During the

Synodal Period
Jn the eighteenth century, the spiritual decline became progressively
xworse, and allowed the new art to occupy a commanding position.
In Russia, the reaction against the advance of the western confessions
and the deformation of sacred art—a reaction which in the seventeenth
century had been so violent, though somewhat instinctive and disorga­
nized—ceased at the beginning of the next century. The reform of the
state by Peter I did not spare the Church, which was incorporated into the
structure of the government by the suppression of the patriarchate and the
creation of the Synod. During this synodal period, the new art became a
vehicle to express the official piety under the aegis of the state.
In order to better understand the situation, let us briefly recall the main
stages of the life of the Church and of its art during the preceding period.
The quarrel between the Josephites and the opponents of land hold­
ings by monasteries led, within the Church itself, to the question of the
Church’s role and place in the world. The two divergent points of view
with regard to the question of monastic possessions, of heretics, and so
forth, in fact represented a clash between two different views of the
Christian life. There was, on the one hand, the spiritual and contempla­
tive hesychast trend which, among the followers of St Nilus of Sora, was
characterized by a complete detachment from the world. Among the
followers of St Joseph of Volokolamsk, on the other hand, the emphasis
was placed on the social ministry of the Church. The victory of the
Josephites brought with it not only a retrenchment and contraction of the
spiritual life; it also made the awareness of a clear boundary between the
life of the Church and that of the state more difficult. A dichotomy
appeared in ecclesial consciousness. The conception of the Church in its
integrity became less pronounced. A split appeared in sacred art, and the
spiritual level of the image began to sink.

411
412 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Beginning in the sixteenth century, this dichotomy in the conscious­

ness of the Church led to the victory of the social ideal, which is con­
cerned with the domain of morals. This marked the beginning of the new
relationship between Church and state. One hears, as it were, an echo
from the West in the confusion that developed between the Church and
the world. The dream takes shape to organize another ideal Christian
society alongside the Church, a Christian state here below, on earth and
with the help of the secular authorities. A confusion arose in the minds of
the people concerning the very essence of the Church, its reason for being,
its nature and life—human and at the same time divine—as the Body of
Christ. As the concept of Church became progressively less clear, and
changes occurred in die relationships between Church and state, sacred
art likewise deviated from its direct, primordial goal. It began to assume
functions that did not correspond to its essence. While continuing to
express the doctrine and the life of the Church, it gradually began also to
serve social interests and the ideal of a Christian state. The Orthodox
sense of the image faded. Its very creation moved from the inner, spiritual
place to the external: this was expressed by its moralizing, anecdotal
tendencies, by a predilection for ornamentation. A system of outward
rules appeared, governing the moral life of the iconographers. The living,
creative tradition gave way to conservatism.

The seventeenth century witnessed “The atmosphere of western absolut­

ism more and more obviously penetrating into Moscow.” Thus the quarrel of
Patriarch Nikon with the tsar was, in a sense, the equivalent of the western
dispute about the relationship between empire and priesthood.1 The theory
of the two swords, imported earlier by the Dominican Benjamin, penetrated
the minds. There was a general move away from the culture of the Church
and a gravitation toward the secularized concepts of western culture. Despite
the violent opposition of the advocates of traditional art, a dear break with the
Orthodox image and the Orthodox way of understanding it was formulated
in theory and occurred, at least partially, in practice. The advocates of
innovations used elements borrowed from the West, without in the least
understanding their meaning the confessional aspect of art began to lose its
primary importance, giving way to the aesthetic criterion.
1 Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road ofEastern Orthodoxy trans. Lydia Kesich (Crest­
wood: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1977), 331.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 413

The growing confusion between the Kingdom of God and the reign of
Caesar was resolved under Peter I by a brutal destruction, a violation of
the canonical structure of the Church—one that for two centuries would
leave its mark on the life of the Church and its situation within the state.
To the emperor, the reform of the state also meant the reform of the
Church. The political-juridicial concepts he had borrowed from Protes­
tantism carried with them the notion of the primacy of the state over the
Church. In the Church, Peter saw, alongside his own power, another
power which had to be incorporated into the general structure of the
state. By the suppression of the patriarchate, “die Church was decapi­
tated, in the literal, technical sense of the term.”2 A collegial administra­
tion, bearing the Latin name of spiritual “Collegium” was imposed—an
institution which, according to Metropolitan Philaret, divine Providence
and the ecdesial spirit were “to transform into a Holy Synod.”3 At the
head of this Synod was “the tsar’s eye,” the procurator general. But the
supreme power in everything that concerned the Church belonged to the
emperor.4 The state viewed all affairs, including those of the Church, as
its own.5 The state “takes on the undivided care for the people’s religious
and spiritual welfare. Even if the state later “intrusts or reassigns such care
to the ‘clerical order,’ it does so...by its power of delegation,”6 insofar as
the needs and the welfare of the state demanded it. To the emperor, as for
the “Old Ritualists,”7 the Church appeared as one with the political life.
But for Avvakum, the ideal was a sacralized sure, while for Peter it was a
secularized Church. The “Old Ritualists” wished to see a sacred empire
serving the Church; Peter, a Church serving the sate.

2 A. V. Kartashev, Essays on the History ofthe Russian Church (in Russian) (Paris, 1959), 312.
3 IbùL, 377.
4 Until 1917, all decisions of the Synod and of the Consistory carried the seal: “By Decree of
His Imperial Majesty."
5 Creative activity could exist only under the control of the state; only on this condition was it
permitted. The “police state’ which Peter I created in imitation of western absolutism,
“represents the urge to build and regulate a country and a people's entire life—the entire life
of each individual habitant—for the sake of his own and the general welfare* or ‘common
good.' Police pathos, the pathos of order and paternalism, proposes to institute nothing less
than universal welfare and well-being, or, quite simply, universal ‘happiness’" (G. Florovsky,
Ways of Russian Theology, Part One, trans. Robert L Nichols [Belmont, MA: Nordland
Publishing Co., 1979], 115).
6 /W, 115-6
7 We prefer this term to the one generally used, that of “old believers," which seems too
imprecise.
414 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

At the time of Peter I, the struggle against bad icon painting continued,
but it assumed a different character. In the seventeenth century, two trends
had confronted one another in this struggle: that ofcanonical painting faithfùl
to the Orthodox tradition, and the new trend that was budding within the
new culture. During this period, the Church still assumed responsibility for
the quality of sacred art And ifTsar Alexis Mikhailovich, and before him Ivan
the Terrible, had meddled with the domain of this art, their intervention had
clearly been an internal Church matter, aimed primarily at the good of the
Church. But when the Church was incorporated by Peter I into the adminis­
trative system of the state, sacred art became simultaneously the art of the
Church and of the state. The latter assumed responsibility for it, and the
measures concerning it were taken on the scale of the entire state. This is why,
even if a member of the episcopate was charged with overall supervision, the
quality of the art, traditional as well as new, was determined by the legislator.
A decree of Peter in 1707 confided “spiritual management” to Metropolitan
Stephen lavorskii; but the immediate supervision of the painting of icons “in
the entire Russian state” was confided, by a decree of the same year, to the
architect John Zarudnev, “the aforementioned John having to call himself
superintendent.” “For his administration, let a special building be given to
him, several old and young employees from the Amiory palace, guardians and
soldiers from the Moscow garrison, as well as eveiything that is needed for this
task.”8 A decree of 1710 described Zarudnev’s duties in twenty points; in this
text, the emperor was guided by practical considerations for the good of the
state. “For the greater beauty and honor of the holy icons,” Zarudnev had to
take the census of “all those who painted icons in Moscow, in other cities, as
well as of the foreign painters dwelling in His Majesty’s entire Russian
Empire.”9 He had to divide them into three categories, each with its own tax
scale, and was to give them proper certificates. Bishops, priests, and monaster­
ies were forbidden to accept icons from non-certified painters. “Certified
painters had to write on the icon the year, the month, the day, the painter’s
categoiy, his true name and surname.”10 The relationships between the
painter and his apprentices, between clients and painters, were spelled out in
detail.

8 “Materials for a History of Icon Painting in Russia,” collected by P. P. Pekarskii (in Russian),
in Izvestiia Imptrat. Arkheografich. Ob.t vol. V, publication 5 (St Petersburg, 1865), 4.
9 IbM, 22.
10 Ibid., 24.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 415

Thus, the general reform of the state included a rigid administrative

framework that was imposed on sacred art. The following year, 1711, saw
the administration of Zarudnev transferred to the Ministry of Church
Affairs. “The soldiers were taken back by the Ministry of War, the
employees and guardians were dispersed.”11 “But without offices, without
employees, without soldiers, without all that was needed for the Ministry
to function, the affairs in question [namely, the painting of icons] cannot
possibly be administered.”12
From the beginning, the activity with regard to art of the Synod
founded by Peter I can be seen in two decrees, of April 6 and May 21,
1722. The first, to which we referred in the preceding chapter, concerned
the antimensia. Referring to the Great Council of Moscow, the Synod
prohibited the portrayal of Lord Sabaoth “with the features of an old
man,” as well as the use of symbolic animals to portray the gospel writers
and bearing their names. The image of Lord Sabaoth had to be replaced
by “the inscription of the name of God in Hebrew letters.”13
The second decree14 prohibited churches from owning icons carved on
wood or sculpted in stone, “invented by inept or ill-intentioned iconographers.”
Indeed, the decree stated, “we do not have artists chosen by God. Only ignorant
and ill-mannered people dare make such things.” “This custom has entered
Russia through the agency of infidels, especially Romans and our neighbors, the
Poles, who follow them.” In these last words, one can hear, as it were, an echo of
the shifting attitudes toward Protestantism and Roman Catholicism which at
this time marked the ecclesiastical politics of the confidants of Peter I. Thus, the
“latinizing” Stephen lavorskii advocated the Roman Catholic type of sculpture.
But the above decree appeared after Stephen had been replaced by Theofàn
Prokopovich, who favored Protestantism.15
11 ZW,5.
12 Ibid, 6.
13 The Complete Collection of the Decisions of the Department of the Orthodox Confession (in
Russian), vol. 2, Decision no. 516,163-4.
14 Ibid., 293-5.
15 Subsequently, on November 30, 1832, the Synod promulgated a new decree forbidding
statues. Numerous sculptures were destroyed as a result of this decree; others were hidden and
then forgotten. The statues called “Christ in prison,” preserved in great numbers in northern
Russia, date back precisely to the eighteenth century. This subject appeared in the West at the
end of the fifteenth centuiy. Its best known example is an illustration of the Passion of Christ
by Dürer (called “Kleine Passion”), where it is found on the cover. It had undoubtedly been
imported to the north by Russian and foreign merchants through Arkhangelsk. The version
416 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Aside from sculpture, the decree prohibited a whole series of icons

“contrary to nature, to history, and to truth itself.” The list is rather
bizarre. It mentions “the image of the Theotokos in labor during the
Nativity of the Son, with a midwife next to her...; the image of Florus and
Laurus with horses and grooms bearing fictional names,” that is, tradi­
tional Orthodox subjects together with deviations.16
With respect to art in general, the Synod stated that such “ugliness
resulted from a lack of artistic taste.” Proportions were not observed,
images were painted “with human heads that are excessively large, and
other similar things.”
Both decrees mentioned the Great Council of Moscow. But in these
Synodal decrees there was no longer even a trace of any theological
argument—as was still found in the decisions of the Great Council of
Moscow. The Synod’s attitude toward sacred art was based on considera­
tions of propriety and on what “is indicated by regulations and sound
reason,” with the aim of avoiding “mockeries concerning the holy proto­
types” and “reproaches on the part of the heterodox against the holy
Church.” Such were the arguments which, for lack of theological consid­
erations, prompted the decisions of the Holy Synod. In other words, we
deal here with the same principles as those which had served as a spring­
board for the seventeenth-century innovators.
At the time of Peter I, the traditional art of the icon began to coexist
with the new trend (Fig. 43 and 44). The state was not concerned with
tendencies in art: the one important thing was that art be under its
control. It was understood that the essential task of this art was to be
useful to the state, it had to contribute to the religious and moral educa­
tion of the citizens. This is how Peter I viewed art in the general frame­
work of his reforms.
The notion that traditional art represented a bygone era prevailed
found in History ofRussian A rt (Moscow, I960, vol. 5,432, note 2) does not explain why this
image became widespread precisely in the north.
16 Thus, the martyr St Christopher with the head of a dog; the Mother of God called “with three
hands,* no doubt with three natural hands instead of a pendentive; the image of the burning
bush; “the image of the Wisdom of God in the form of a young gid; the image of the creation
of the world in six days by God, in which God is represented reclining on cushions...; the
image of Lord Sabaoth in the form of an elderly man with his only Son on his lap and between
them the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove," that is, the “Paternity"; the Annunciation with
the Father blowing from His mouth, a crucified cherubim, and so forth.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 417

43. Deesis. Russian icon.

Beginning of the 18th century. Collection M. Martens, Antwerp.
418 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

44. The Coronation ofthe Virgin.

Russian, from 1773.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 419

more and more. Indeed, was such art not a component of the old Russia
that was doomed to disappear? Already at the time of Peter I,
the old traditions had been forgotten to such an extent that when Antropov was
named administrator of iconography, succeeding Zarudnev, he admitted that
he no longer knew ancient iconography. As is clear from his reports to the Synod,
he often protested against ancient images, considering them to be incorrect, and
prohibiting their circulation among the faithful.17

The rationalistic trend gained an increasing hold on the minds of the

people and obscured their understanding of the meaning of the cultic
image. For a long time, this tradition obliterated the boundary line
separating Orthodox from heterodox art.
The eighteenth-century manuals of iconography—the Russian
podlinniki as well as the Greek hermineia—presented a hodgepodge of
Orthodox and western iconography. The great majority of the iconogra-
phers still kept to the traditional art (especially in the north, during the
eighteenth century), but the modern trend became dominant. The theo­
ries of the seventeenth-century innovators, and new artistic views based
on the concepts of a secular culture, penetrated deeper and deeper into the
awareness and were no longer actively opposed. From the eighteenth
century on, the new trend in art followed the same path taken by official
religious policy.
Faced with the threat of Protestant iconoclasm, the Orthodox turned
to latinizing, anti-Protestant literature. “In order to strengthen the faith
and keep it from Lutherans, Calvinists, and other iconoclasts,” one author
wrote in 1724, “one should print as many copies of the book [by Stephen
lavorskii] The Rock ofFaith as necessary.”18 While neither this author not
the others were advocates of latinism in the field of doctrine, the manual
Alphabet which the same author (Posochkov), in the wake of Ushakov,
proposed for the instruction of the iconographers was nonetheless entirely
naturalistic and inspired by western models.19
17 N. Pokrovskii, Essay on the Monuments of Christian Iconography and Art (in Russian) (St
Petersburg, 1900), 371.
18 I. T. Posochkov, The Book ofPoverty and Wealth (in Russian) (Moscow, 1951), 27.
19 It is advisable to begin with the image of a middle-aged man, standing straight and naked,
with an indication of the precise measurements from the heel to the top of the head and of
other proportions also. “On the other sheets one should begin the alphabet; a new-born baby
should be painted on the first sheet, a year-old child on the second, a two-year-old on the
third. One should then paint it one year after the other up to the age of twenty; after which,
420 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Another eighteenth-century document is equally characteristic,

namely the Pedalion, composed by St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain
(d. 1809). It is a typical example of the evolution that was taking place. St
Nicodemus’ understanding of sacred art is permeated with western ratio­
nalism. For him, there is no difference between an Orthodox and a
Roman Catholic image. In his view, if “the Latins act improperly,” it is
only because they “no longer write the names of the saints on top of their
icons.” This is the only difference he sees between their art and that of
Orthodoxy. The seven reasons for the veneration of icons he enumerates
lack all theological significance, and the essential one—to witness to the
Incarnation—is missing. Certainly, St Nicodemus refers to the Seventh
Ecumenical Council; but for him, the very basis of this council’s argu­
mentation—the correspondence between word and image—is limited
merely to the illustrative aspect. As was the case earlier with Vladimirov,
what is of decisive importance is the mere fact, stripped of its evangelical
significance. Thus, he writes that to represent the Apostle Paul on icons of
the Ascension and Pentecost, and Christ on that of Mid-Pentecost, as well
as other traditional Orthodox details, is “contrary to the Gospel and out
of place.” As for the Orthodox icon of the descent into Hell (Anastasii), he
is of the opinion that it should be replaced by the Roman Catholic image
of Christ rising from the tomb because, he says, only the soul of Christ
made the Descent into Hell, while His body remained in the tomb. St
Nicodemus views all such aspects of Orthodox iconography as so much
“ineptness,” “invented by iconographe» because of their lack of knowl­
edge and bad habits...All this is to be eliminated. We should do every­
thing in our power so that iconographers become skilled and
dexterous.”20 Within the context of the general concepts of St Nicodemus
and those of his time, this means: replace the traditional Orthodox artistic
language by the language proper to Roman Catholicism.

In the eighteenth century, as in the seventeenth, the latinisation of the

Orthodox world continued. In the Near East as well as in Russia, Roman
Catholics and Protestants vied with one another to impose their own
between twenty and thirty, two years should be added, and five years between thirty and
ninety—this entire alphabet should depict naked subjects. Then begin another alphabet,
depicting the subjects clothed, upright and seated, as well as in all sorts of different aspects’*
(ibid., 145-6).
20 Pedalion (in Greek) (Athens, 1957).
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 421

influence in the cultural and religious domains. This influence was exer­
cised through the embassies of western countries and through the Jesuit
order, who attempted to augment their role in the leading circles of
society by all means.21 On the one hand, avant-garde concepts of a
secularized culture entered Russia while, on the other, and on the strictly
religious plane, non-Orthodox views proper to the western confessions
were implanted.
Of all the Orthodox countries, thanks to Dositheos, Patriarch of
Jerusalem, only Romania was able to neutralize Latin influence by creat­
ing a center of authentic Orthodox culture, together with printing houses.
Romania became a stronghold of Orthodoxy, and throughout the eigh­
teenth century it alone stood firm. It is through Romania that a renewal
of the Russian spiritual life came into being at the close of this century.
In the words of a church historian, the secularization carried out in
Russia by Peter I by political means amounted to a “transfer from the
West of the heresy of sure and custom.”22 But this “heresy” was more
far-reaching: it brought with it a direct influence of western ideas, both
Protestant and Catholic, on the relations of Church and state, on the
general level of religious education and sacred art, as well as of culture.
This confessional influence by means of western culture occurred all the
more easily since this culture presented itself as “Christian,” even though
it derived from a changed and truncated Christianity which, during the
Renaissance, had resurrected a type of pagan world-view. Separated from
the Church, this culture still wore a mask of truth, and therefore insinu­
ated itself into the dulled awareness of the people who, having lost the
criterion of authenticity, were afraid of being “censored by the heterodox”
for “not discerning the truth.”
In the process of the genesis and formation of this secular Russian
culture, and in light of this democratized culture, elements not belonging to
it were no longer viewed as culture. Consequendy, “a large number of
21 See A. Kartashev, Essays on the History ofthe Russian Church (in Russian) (Paris, 1959). vol. 2,
409. In Constantinople, the western embassies, using political and financial means, intervened
decisively in patriarchal elections, and there were numerous instances of depositions. Thus in
the eighteenth century, over a period of seventy-three years, forty-eight patriarchs succeeded
one another on the see of Constantinople.
22 E. Golubinskii, as quoted by G. Florovsky, Ways ofRussian Theology, Part One, trans. R. L.
Nichols (Belmont: Nordland Publishing Co., 1979), 114.
422 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

people blindly accepted that the Church was hostile to culture, and that
what was of the Church had to be separate from culture.”23 Cultured
society, that is, the entire nobility reformed by Peter I to buttress the empire,
broke away from the Church and from the people, from its past, from its
history.24 The Age of “Enlightenment,” ostentatious, dreaming, and con­
fused, could tolerate only a “rationalized” faith, the very same faith con­
veyed by a so-called “Christian” culture. From this perspective, the Church
began to look like a body that was estranged from, even hostile to, culture—
a type of nursery of superstitions and obscurantism to be combated as much
by die state as by enlightened society. “Under Peter’s successors, such state
proteaion of the Church became in time an outright and tormenting
persecution justified on the grounds of state security and the need to
struggle against superstition”25—a persecution marked by the direa influ­
ence of Protestantism. “Prior to Elizabeth’s reign, government authority and
even state law extended a certain special and preferential protection for
Protestantism.”26 “It was a methodical terror applied by the state.. .It took
on the catastrophic aspea of a foreign invasion.”27
The reign of Elizabeth marked a period of reprieve in the life of the
Russian Church. As for Catherine II, named “most-Orthodox,” she was
convinced that Orthodoxy in no way differed from Lutheranism, except
in the domain of worship, which had become vital because of the back­
wardness of the people. It was precisely during her reign that the
procurator-general Melissino, the “pre-eminent subduer of religious ob-
23 Ibid,
24 “Ancient in its family origins and belonging to the military estate, new as a social class, [the
cultivated society] claimed the entire treasure of the new culture, absorbing it for itself alone
and confining it to its circles, closing in on itself through this new, almost external, force* (A.
Khomiakov, “The Opinion of Foreigners about Russia,* Selected Works [in Russian] [New
York, 1955], 94).
25 G. Florovsky, Ways, 120.
26 ZW, 127.
27 A. V. Kartashev, Essays, 398. In 1742, on the feast of the Annunciation, Archbishop Dimitri
(Sechenov), while speaking of the reign of the Empress Anna (1730-1740) in a homily
delivered in the presence of the Empress Elisabeth, said: “Above all, what persecutions of the
defenders of piety, of the celebrants of the holy Mysteries! The clergy—bishops, priests, and
monks—were tortured, executed, defrocked. Unceasing deportations by land and sea! To
where? Why? Monks, priests, and pious men were sent to faraway Siberian cities, to Okhotsk,
Kamchatka, and Orenburg. This caused such a fright that the pastors themselves, the preach­
ers of the word of God, kept silence and no longer dared open their mouth to speak of piety.
Indeed, it is true: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The grace of martyrdom is not
given to everyone* (ibid, 423).
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 423

scurantism,”28 submitted a project to reform the life of the Church which

was fortunately stopped by the Synod and thus had no further conse­
quences. The content of this project is so characteristic of the “Age of
Enlightenment” that of its thirteen points we will mention a few that are
most typical. Thus point 5 was intended “to purify the Church of
superstitions and false miracles associated with relics and icons. In order
to study this problem, a special committee is to be formed made up of
various people not blinded by prejudice.” Point 7: “The prolonged
Church rituals” are to be shortened “in order to avoid pagan prolixity in
prayer.” “The high number of stichera, canons, troparia and so forth,
composed in recent decades, are to be eliminated.” “Numerous superflu­
ous feast days should be abolished; instead of Vespers and Vigils, short
prayers are to be prescribed with sermons useful to the people.” Point 11:
“Would it not be more responsible to eliminate altogether the custom of
reciting prayers for the dead?” Point 13: “One should not allow commu­
nion to children under ten years of age.”29 It was with such a mix of
disparate elements taken from Protestantism and Roman Catholicism
that he intended, through administrative means, to reform the Russian
Church.
This enlightened society, fighting prejudices and superstitions, alienated
from the Church, hunted for something to feed its religious sentiments and
found it above all in the Masonic lodges. “Toward the end of the 1700’s
freemasonry swept through nearly the entire educated class.”30 At this time,
people read a great deal, but without discernment: they read certain authen­
tic Fathers of the Church side-by-side with the Spanish mystics, but partic­
ularly Jakob Boehme. In churches built at this time we find Masonic
symbols, even on the iconostasis. At the end of the century, the Church was
invaded by a sentimental religiosity that suffocated its teaching.

The pressure on the Church exercised by Protestantism and Roman

Catholicism had particularly unfortunate repercussions in the spheres of
religious education and sacred art.
28 A. Kartashev, ibid, 485.
29 Ibid., 485-7.
30 G. Florovsky, Ways, 149. At the same time, the second half of the eighteenth century was the
age when “All the basic Russian sects—the Khlysty, Skoptsy [eunuchs], Dukhobors [spirit­
wrestlers], and Molokans [milk-drinkers] developed” {ibid, 155). They were persecuted at first,
but under Alexander I they infiltrated the upper layers of society and were protected by them.
424 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

In the schools of theology, which were established on the western

model, scholasticism took firm root, and for a long time. Beginning at
this time, the breach between the patristic tradition and the taught
theology widened. “Those circumstances became so complex that the late
of Russian theology in the eighteenth century was resolved in an extended
debate between the epigoni of western post-Reformation Roman Catholic
and Protestant scholasticism.”31 The transposition onto Russian soil of a
school that was Latin in language and spirit
signified a break in the church’s consciousness: a breach separating theological
“learning” from ecclesiastic experience. The rift could be felt all the more keenly
when one prayed in Slavic and theologized in Latin. The same Scripture which
rang out in class in the international language of Latin could be heard in Slavic
in the cathedral.32

Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow wrote (before the subsequent reforma­

tion of the theological schools) that
priests knew Latin pagan authors well, but hardly knew religious and Church
writers. They could speak and write in Latin better than in Russian. With their
exquisite phrases in a dead language, they were more able to shine in a circle of
scholars than illuminate the people with the living knowledge of truth.33

Paisii Velichkovskii remembered the school of theology in Kiev, which he

had left, “where I often heard of Greek gods and goddesses and pious
tales, and heartily despised such teaching.”34 The scholastic theology
taught in these schools caused distaste and a profound boredom. This
boredom was dangerous for the faith and prepared a soil fertile for
atheism. Those who attended theological schools often lost their faith:
they learned formulas whose spirit was alien to them, and which corre­
sponded neither to their spiritual experience nor to their piety. Their eyes
were opened to contemporary culture, but were turned away from the
Church.
In this system of education given to the clergy—a system in which all
31 G. Florovsky, ibid., 139. The Jesuits founded a school in the capital for the sons of the
Muscovite high nobility. Jesuit influence was felt most strongly at the beginning of the
nineteenth centuiy. “For a short time, from 1811 to 1820, the Jesuits even managed to achieve
the creation of a special educational distria for their schools within the empire. The Polotsk
Academy served as its administrative center. To the south, Odessa became a hotbed of Roman
proselytism” (ibid., 170).
32 ZW, 134.
33 ZW, 210.
34 Ibid., 160.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 425

creative thought was governed not by the Orthodox faith and life, but by
Latin and Protestant scholasticism—there was no longer room for the icon,
and this is quite natural. Just as for the “enlightened” man of this era, for the
clergy instructed in these schools, their ecdesial sense disabled by scholasticism,
the “Christian” image in its Roman Catholic form became more intimate, more
understandable than the Orthodox icon. Not that the icon had become alien to
him; but its Orthodox content had gradually and systematically been deleted
from his awareness. This is why western art forms were imposed, if not with the
complicity of the clergy, then at least because of their passive attitude in the face
of interventions by official authorities—interventions which, by contrast, were
very energetic.35
In 1767, Catherine II issued a decree prohibiting the painting of icons
“with unusual, scandalous features.” What she understood by this is not
clear. We do, however, have some idea about her attitudes, because it was
she who ordered that the iconostasis of Andrei Rublev be removed from
the Cathedral of the Assumption in Vladimir, to be replaced by one in the
Baroque style, with her own image on it as an icon of St Catherine. In the
eighteenth century, only Lomonosov showed interest in the ancient icons,
perhaps foreseeing what lay in store for them. In 1760 “he addressed
himself to the government, and proposed to have copies made of the best
ancient icons in order to save them for posterity.”36

As the new culture, a class culture, gained ground, the break with the
Orthodox image deepened. From the very beginning of this new trend,
the traditional image was brought into question as “an antiquated cus­
tom,” as “blindness to the truth.” Already in this period, as we have seen,
35 The following is a typical example of the attitude toward traditional Orthodox art, in a
cultivated hierarch on the one hand and, on the other, artisan iconographers. The reference is
to a letter written by Archbishop Simon of Kostroma (1760-1782) to the archpriest of the
Cathedral of the Dormition in that city: “Father Archpriest John! On this 6th day of June,
when I visited the cathedral church of the Dormition where the wall frescoes are being
renovated, I noticed that the faces of the saints are painted by the artisans with much darkness,
which resembles what the schismatics who fell away from the church because of their
superstitions, praise...But I had already recommended to the painters that in their painting
they accommodate for the resemblance to nature and stories, as well as for the appropriate
beauty, but they find false pretexts to defend themselves" (Lebedinsky, “The Measures of the
Russian Government for the Improvement of the Painting of Icons* (in Russian), Dukhovnyi
Vestnik (Kharkov, 1865), vol. 12, 59-
36 A. I. Zotov, The National Foundations ofRussian Art (in Russian) (Moscow, 1961), vol. 1,13.
No action was taken on this proposal.
426 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the general concept of art was gradually differentiated into “fine arts” and
“simple things” (see the Writing of the three patriarchs, 1688). In the
eighteenth century, the very concept of art was definitely and exclusively
reserved for the new trend, and the icon was excluded from it As the
attitude toward the Church changed, so did the attitude toward its
traditional art: separated from the culture, the Church could not have any
art that could respond to the demands of an enlightened society. “Even to
recall the Byzantine arts was shameful—pictorial art moved forward and
occupied the first place.”37 In the leading circles of society, the very word
“iconography” became pejorative; neither art nor the artist has anything
more to do with the Orthodox icon or the iconographer, “that pious
dauber.” The fascination with the new culture of which the West was the
herald (and, in the realm of art, Italy) exercised its pressure on the
painter’s consciousness. The traditional art of the Church was replaced by
painting that was secular but had religious subjects, and which became a
“genre” among others. Because of the premises underlying this culture,
this art acquired an autonomous life, independent of the Church, and
already depending entirely on the painter. Together with architecture and
sculpture, this new religious art entered the mainstream of western art,
alongside all secular art. Adapting itself to the cultural demands of society
and to the paths taken by religious and philosophic thought, it passed
through all the main stages of contemporary western art: the Baroque,
Classic, Romantic, and so forth.
Thus the art of the icon was, quite naturally, almost totally replaced
among cultivated circles by fashionable religious salon painting, an imita­
tion of western models, of little worth. This art was called “icons in the
Italian style” or “according to Italian taste,” as corresponded to the taste of
the age and seemed flattering to enlightened society. A bishop of the
Russian church wrote:
This century [the eighteenth] has witnessed how as a result of trying to cater to
the popular taste, painting and architecture in Russia became humble imitators
of Italian painting and architecture, servile most of the time and sometimes
ridiculous; and this to such a degree that, whatever their artistic merit, they lost
all value if they did not resemble Italian works.38

However, had the painters gone to the heart of the matter, the author
37 Sakharov, A Study on the Russian Painting ofIcons (in Russian) (St Petersburg, 1849).
38 Archbishop Anatolius, On the Painting ofIcons (in Russian) (Moscow, 1845), 38.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 427

sadly continues,
they would have found errors in the famous works that were hailed as master­
pieces of the Italian schools—flaws so unforgivable that these models would have
appeared to them as so many products of the pitiful excitement and of the
unhealthy imagination of the Italian painters.39

The nineteenth century was an age in which national Russian culture,

a culture of synthesis, was in full development and enriched the artistic,
creative life. It was an epoch that was extremely rich, but also self-contra­
dictory and confused.
The concept of a universal Christianity, proclaimed by Joseph de
Maistre, spread widely. The “religion of the heart,” popularized by the
advent of Freemasonry at the end of the eighteenth century, was trans­
formed, at the time of Alexander I, into a new type of mysticism, usually
called “inner Christianity,” indifferent to all confession, and in reality a
denial of the Church.
While “the Petrine sure subordinated the church from without, and in
the name of a secular cause, ‘the common good,’ extorted toleration for
secularized life,” by contrast, “During Alexander’s reign, the state once
again conceived itself to be holy and sacred, proclaiming religious leader­
ship and imposing its own religious ideas.”40 According to this conceptu­
alization, the Church seemed to be a “worn out garment” covering the
true, “inward” Christianity. It is in the direction of this “inward Christi­
anity,” of such a “religion of the heart,” that efforts were made to reform
Russia as well as the Church. On the administrative level, a new level, a
new step was taken in the development of the Church reform begun by
Peter I. A new organism, called “the double ministry,” was created. Under
the supervision of the Over-Procurator of the Holy Synod, the Ministries
of National Education and of Confessions were combined. This “com­
bined ministry was to join, if not unite, all confessions or ‘churches,’ not
only in a common task but with a single inspiration.”41
The spirit that prevailed at the time of Alexander I may be illustrated
in a striking way by the initial project of the Church of Christ the Savior
in Moscow, a project chosen from among many by the tsar. Its author, the
39 7W, 60.
40 G. Florovsky, Waji, 168.
41 Ibid., 168.
428 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Freemason A. Vitberg, proposed that this church was not to be “merely

Orthodox,” but should express “a universal idea.” Vitberg wrote: “That
this temple should only satisfy the demands of the Greek Russian church
seemed unsatisfactory to me. It should meet the needs of all Christians
because its consecration to Christ has indicated that it belongs to all of
Christendom.”42 It is true that circumstances did not permit the construc­
tion of the church according to Vitberg’s project.43 But a review which
appeared in the Journal ofthe Ministry ofNational Education indicates to
what degree such ideas ruled the minds. The project was described as a
“living, inspired, perfect expression of the trend which then prevailed in
Russian society.”44 Such efforts to unify all religions were made at the
expense of Orthodoxy, at the expense of the Church, which was in danger
of being dissolved into a vague confession, some type of “eclectic Christi­
anity,” and this in the name of “general” religion. “Dogmas, and even the
sacraments, are less important than this life of the heart.”45 Anyone who
tried to defend Orthodoxy was persecuted, because “under the pretense of
defending the outer church, he attacks the inner one,”46 as Over-Procura­
tor Golitsyn wrote about the author of such a book
In 1813, during the construction of the Cathedral of Our Lady of
Kazan in St Petersburg, the sculptor Martos presented models of statues
representing the four evangelists, destined for this cathedral, to this same
Golitsyn. The procurator of the Synod had enough good sense to refuse
these models. The reason for his refusal is revealing. Unquestionably,
Golitsyn said, connoisseurs and art lovers
would be thrilled at the sight of such statues. But all types of people enter a church of
God. It is possible that someone who has no idea about elegance in art might be
offended on seeing the evangelists completely naked and in such awkward positions.47

At the time of Tsar Nicholas I, the projects of Peter I in the realm of

church reform were completed. The state organized church administra­
tion into one “department” among others. “Henceforth (and until the
end of the Synodal period), the Church was known as the ‘Department of
42 The periodical Starye Gody (February 1912): *A. Vitberg and his Project of the Church of
Christ the Savior on the Mount of Sparrows’* (in Russian), 8-9.
43 The church was built in 1839-1883 according to the plans of the architect Ton.
44 Starye Gody, op. cit., 3. Ref. to the Journal of the Ministry of National Education (1859).
45 G. Florovsky, 171.
46 Ibid, 186.
47 The Masters ofArt on Art (Moscow-Leningrad, 1937), vol. 4,70, note.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 429

Orthodox Confession.’”48 The change of the administrative organization

of the Church into a public department transformed its sacramental and
ritual life into an obligatory state service; and any non-compliance was
considered as a lack of political loyalty.
The bondage to which the Church had been reduced, the anti-canon-
ical order which had been imposed upon it, the lack of freedom and of
independence of its spiritual power, all this led the Church to resemble a
mere ritual institution. The educated circles thus moved away from the
Church, seeing in it a hotbed of obscurantism and superstitions, an
obligation imposed by the state. A true betrayal of the Church took place,
beginning with the upper classes of society, followed by the majority of
the educated and “free-thinking” population. An educated man “is
ashamed of being a believer,” wrote Leskov; “In this past century, the
entire history of the Russian intelligentsia was marked by a religious
crisis.”49 This crisis was often externalized by a movement from passionate
faith to atheism, and a fight against God that was equally passionate. The
absence of faith in educated circles and their indifference contributed to
the spread of sectarian movements among the people, movements that
often showed the earmarks of a struggle against the Church and its rituals.
It was a period of disintegration, divisions, of imbalance and distress.
But neither the massive exodus from the Church nor the yoke of the
state that weighed upon it destroyed its inner, spiritual life. The sacra­
mental essence of the Church could not perish; as much in Russia as in
the East, the liturgical life was the core that preserved its vital forces. In
reaction to its official condition of humiliation and powerlessness, the
Russian Church of the Synodal period responded with unprecedented
missionary activity among non-Christians, not only within the Russian
empire to the extreme north and the extreme east, but also beyond its
borders.
Concurrent with indifference and the absence of faith, a rebirth of the
spiritual life took place. It began during the second half of the eighteenth
century among the Athonite monks, and entered Russia via Romania.
The end of this century and the beginning of the nineteenth were marked
by the restoration of numerous monasteries (among which were those of
48 G. Florovsky, Ways, 239.
49 Ibid.,291.
430 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

St Barlaam, St Cyril of Beloozero, and others) and the foundation of new

ones. A great, if not decisive, role in this spiritual renewal was played by
the Russian translations of ascetical works (the Philokalia), made by the
elder (starets) Paisii Velichkovskii.50 This flowering of the spiritual life
occurred in the very heart of the Church, within its canonical framework,
even if, at the beginning, it remained outside the official piety, outside the
theology of the schools infected by heterodoxy. This was not an abstract
doctrine which could be taught in a school: the renewal marked “a return
to the living sources of patristic theology and thinking about God,”51 to
the living Orthodox experience. The tradition of spiritual direction resur­
faced and was revived. A center of spiritual culture, a great school of
Orthodoxy, was created at Optina Pustyn. The translations of the Fathers
made there were widely disseminated. But this renewal was far from easy
or painless. The monks of Optina, as well as other ascetics, St Seraphim
and earlier Paisii Velichkovskii, had to endure accusations of heresy, even
persecution on the part of certain “enlightened” bishops who upbraided
them for practicing inner prayer and spiritual direction. “The prayer of
the heart has been destroyed and derided as a pestilence and a ruination,”
Metropolitan Philaret stated.52 Despite all this, the unity of the people
was being restored, as much in Optina as around the elders in other
centers.
The spiritual life of the startsy was so intense that all social and cultural
barriers fell before them. Men and women of all walks of life and cultural
levels, separated in their daily lives, found togetherness around the startsy
in monasteries; they sought, and found there, the meaning of their lives.
The startsy of Optina directed the elite of Russian culture (Gogol,
Khomiakov, Dostoevskii, and many others). With personages like Metro­
politan Philaret, Khomiakov, and others, theological thought likewise
experienced a certain renewal.

Nonetheless, even though an authentic spiritual renewal had taken

place, it was not directly linked to the traditional Orthodox image, the
icon. The break between art and the Church, and the fact that art
belonged in the realm of secular culture, had become so deeply anchored
50 During the nineteenth century, the Philokalia was reprinted seven times in Russia.
51 G. Florovsky, Ways, 160.
52 7^,206-7.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 431

in society’s awareness that the painter could not imagine how his art could
be linked to spiritual direction and inner prayer, nor was the ascetic starets
aware that his inner spiritual activity could have a link with the creation
of an image. Such was the outcome of the path that had been traveled
since the time of Master Dionysius and of the Message to an Icongrapher.
The nineteenth century witnessed a series of reforms in the theological
schools, one of which was the replacement of Latin by Russian as the
language of instruction. Nonetheless, even if the Orthodox tradition was
gradually re-emerging despite the use of Roman Catholic and Protestant
textbooks in teaching, the schools still remained under the sway of
western scholasticism.53 In the theological academies, Christian archeol­
ogy was taught. But when
one of the first pioneers of academic Christian archeology introduced a section
on Christian iconography in his course, he received, upon examination, a severe
reprimand from Metropolitan Philaret, who pointed out to him that he had been
appointed to teach Church archeology, not the painting of the icon.54

Such was the character of the epoch.

There is a remarkable mid-century document which not only has not
lost any of its importance, but seems to be especially timely for our age.
This document, the Encyclical of the Patriarchs of the East (1848),55
addressed to all Orthodox Christians, was a reaction to the appeal of Pope
Pius IX. Did the pope consider Orthodoxy sufficiently weakened to be
ready for union? Or was he afraid, on the contrary, that the spiritual
awakening might contribute to this emancipation from Roman Catholic
influence? Whatever the case, Pius IX had addressed the patriarchs of the
53 Only in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth were
initial efforts made to become emancipated from western scholastic theology. But even in
1915, Archbishop Hilarion (Troitskii, the future archbishop), in a discourse to the Moscow
Theological Academy, spoke of the tasks imposed by the struggle for freedom in the domain
of theology: *1 consider it my duty to call upon you to combat the harmful Latin-German
enterprise and its sad fruits in our theology* (Archbishop Basil [Krivochéine], “Les textes
symboliques dans l’Eglise orthodoxe,* Messager de ÏExarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe
occidentale, no 50 [1965], 75). At the Council of 1917-1918, one of the participants, Bishop
Anthony of Volynia, said: “It is the organization of our institutions of theological education
which, as far as it has been inherited from the world of western heretics, degrades our schools
of theology to the highest degree of the scandalous* (Florovsky, Ways, 479).
54 D. K. Trenev, “The Preservation of Monuments of Ancient Russian Iconography,* (in
Russian), IkonopisnySbomikX (St Petersburg, 1907), Appendix, 18.
55 “...The text of which seems to have been approved in advance by Metropolitan Philaret of
Moscow* (J. Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church, trans. J. Chapin [New York, 1962], 99).
432 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

East, proposing that they unite with Rome. The Encyclical is an answer to
this proposal. This document, which appeared in a period of extremely
difficult circumstances in the life of the Church, deeply impressed the
entire Orthodox world. Khomiakov wrote:
One can never guess where something might come from. The Encyclical.. .is a
superb example of this. It has turned our church world upside down. Who would
have expected such a phenomenon? Who would have believed that the instinct
for ecclesial truth would have brought such lucid awareness in a poorly educated
clergy, seriously damaged by external circumstances and its scholastic learning?
What no one dared say or could say or publish openly has been proclaimed to
the entire world.. .and this with such simplicity, such undeniable assurance that
anyone who hears this language must recognize at once all the unfettered, inner
life of Orthodoxy, unless he willingly blinds himself.56

In the critique of Roman Catholicism, the starting point, the crux of

the Encyclical was the fiUoque and its consequences. It is precisely this
doctrine which, originating in western churches, “had progressively
brought with it other innovations,” and “had falsified the entire ancient
apostolic ritual of the celebration of almost all the sacraments and all the
institutions of the Church.” “In its very essence and in all its characteris­
tics, such a doctrine has all the marks of a non-Orthodox doctrine.”
Referring to both eastern and western Fathers, the patriarchs wrote:
This is why the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.. .proclaims once more,
this time in conciliar fashion, that this newly introduced doctrine, according to
which the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son is in truth a heresy
[italics in the original], and its followers, whoever they might be, are heretics.
The sod eties they form are heretical sodeties [italics everywhere in the original],
and any liturgical and spiritual communion of the Orthodox children of the
catholic Church with them is an iniquity.
The Encyclical sûtes:
Among us, neither the patriarchs nor the coundls have ever been able to
introduce any novelty whatsoever because with us it is the very body of the
Church, that is, the people, who are the guardians of piety. They always want
to keep their faith unchanged, and in harmony with that of the Fathers.57
56 A Khomiakov, Letter to Samarin ofMarch 1, 1849 (in Russian) Selected Works (New York,
1955), 394-50.
57 Encyclical Message ofthe One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church to AU the Orthodox Christians
(Russian trans., St Petersburg, 1850), 7-8, 36-8. However, Rome did not lay down its arms.
In 1894 Pope Leo XIII made a renewed attempt at union by addressing himself to Constanti­
nople and modifying the conditions. The Orthodox can keep their faith, and the union would
consist “only* in recognizing the Pope as “the supreme spiritual and temporal head of the
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 433

At this time, when efforts were being made to “unite all the confessions
and churches,” the Encyclical ofthe Patriarchs was an important proof of
the vital strength of Orthodoxy which, at the needed moment, was
capable of showing “an instinct for ecdesial truth” from the depth of its
awareness as a Church.
In Russia, an interest in the nation’s past, its history, emerged at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Particular attention was paid to
everything old, including the icon. A series of studies devoted to the icon
were published. Nevertheless, the icon was viewed apart from its religious
context: it was an inheritance of the past, and the main criterion of
evaluation was the aesthetic one. The norms of Antiquity and of the
Italian Renaissance, viewed as a model for all artistic creation, were
applied to it. But some writers had a direct, spontaneous perception of the
spiritual beauty of the icon, and were overwhelmed by it. An obsequious
imitation of the West was not always satisfactory. In 1846, Khomiakov
wrote: “We are beginning to realize more and more that all imitation lacks
power and is sterile, whether it be patently servile, that is, tied to any
school, or free, that is, eclectic.”58 A marked opposition to the ascendency
of western art even arose in certain levels of society, and this opposition
assumed an anti-Roman, confessional character. While in the eyes of the
advocates of western art, traditional iconography represented an obstacle
to creative freedom, “the zealots of Orthodoxy began to move away from
everything that was picturesque. They viewed all innovations as a moving
away from the Church.” Such “picturesque” innovations were regarded as
the outcome of a deliberate action by Rome. “Those who came from the
West to teach us,” the author continued,
and to enlighten the Russians in matters of art, have repeated for the past one
hundred years that the painter’s hands should not be tied, that one should leave
entire church spread over the world, and as the vicar of Christ on eaith, the dispenser of all
grace." The Patriarch of Constantinople, Anthimus, responded in 1895. He again denounced
the Latin errors, including the new dogmas: that of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and
that of papal infallibility (1870). For union to be realized, he demands above all a common
faith. But if the Latins prove that before the ninth century the Eastern church acknowledged
the filioque, Purgatory, the Immaculate Conception, the temporal power and infallibility of
the Bishop of Rome...“Then we would not have anything to say* (The Patriarchal and
Synodical Encyclical Message of the Church of Constantinople regarding the Encyclical of Pope
Leo XIII about the union of the churches, dated April 20, 1894 [from the Russian trans. (St
Petersburg, 1896), 4, 8].)
58 A. Khomiakov, The Opinion ofthe Russians About Foreigners (in Russian), Selected Works, 133.
434 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

him his freedom.. .The foreign hosts acted in accordance with the design of
Catholicism. They were here only to promote opinions elaborated in Rome,
aiming at the destruction of Byzantine iconography?9

As the interest in the national heritage became generalized, there

began, in this context, a search for a type of art that would be at the same
time national, morally edifying, and capable of fostering an aesthetic
sense. The government, as well as the Slavophile party and the Church
were preoccupied with this search. An effort was made to create “a new
iconographie style that would replace the barbaric, unrefined Byzantine
style.” Painters were sought out who could decorate churches and cathe­
drals with scenes of a more contemporaiy, “improved” style, which would
correspond to the power and the spirit of the state.60

At the very moment when art, severed from the roots which had
nourished it, had become a class art, attempts were made to discover and
impose upon the people a “national character,” dictated from above, to
replace the natural, spontaneous expression of its faith and life. Beginning
with the end of the eighteenth century, “a struggle began for the creation
of a theoretical program of national, Russian art”61 (sacred and profane),
founded on the vast popular masses. Traditional art had never intended to
be “national” or “purely Russian”: it simply was that, reflecting all the
complexity of the spiritual, social, and political life of the people, and
giving it meaning. It made no efforts to educate the people’s aesthetic
taste, but gave expression to it. At present, however, an art that was
deprived of its organic foundation had to fulfill a series of demands: it had
to be “natural,” “purely Russian,” and had to express “spirituality,” “the
power and the spirit of the state,” and so forth. Traditional art, shaped
over the centuries in the depths of the catholic experience of the Church,
had always been one of the elements that unified the various levels of
society. It was understood by the aristocrat as well as by the common
man, by the educated as well as by the unlettered, because it expressed a
faith common to all. It conveyed beauty as the people understood it, as
59 Sakharov, op. cit. At this time an effort was made to combine the traditional art of the icon
with modern painting, but such efforts were not viable. For a cultivated person, such a blend
was neither necessary nor sufficient; for a man of the church, it was neither needed nor
adequate, although for different reasons.
60 A. Grishtcnko, “The Russian Icon as Pictorial Art" (in Russian), Voprosy zhivopisi III (Mos­
cow, 1917), 11.
61 A. I. Zotov, The National Foundations ofRussian Art (in Russian) (Moscow, 1961), vol. 1,116.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 4V5

much on the aesthetic as on the spiritual level. Moreover, these two planes
were not separate, even when their expression operated on different
spiritual and artistic levels. Icons were differentiated by a style that was
more or less elevated, and by a greater or lesser wealth of ornamentation,
but not by the very character of their art.
Now, however, the situation was entirely different. Not only was a
peasant, for simple economic reasons, unable to acquire an “icon” created
by a fashionable artist, the very psychology of the people had to be turned
inside out in order to make them accept what they had not created—an
individualized work, in addition imitative, one that was alien to them on
the confessional level. In the 1840s Botkin wrote: “See whether there is
nowadays any sympathy between the painter and the people. They are
strangers to one another. The one does not want to know about the
other.”62 It could not have been otherwise. “The painters of our time,” an
historian said, “always have before their eyes the Pantheons and the
Madonnas. How then can they understand what a Russian image, an
icon, is?”63 As a result of having their imagination enslaved by “Pantheons
and Madonnas,” the painters were no longer able to see the difference not
only between a portrait and an icon, but even between mythology and the
Gospel. Archbishop Anatolius wrote:
It is especially painful to the Christian sensibility to see in the workshops of our
artists a mixed collection of paintings representing sacred and mythological
subjects: a representation of Christ next to one of Bacchus, that of the Theotokos
next to a Venus, and so forth. Have our painters become so wise that they
combine all beliefs? Where will this lead? To what end?64

Clearly, images of Venus and of Bacchus were not put in churches; but
such confusion, that is, a total loss of any sense of reality, is typical of the
epoch. Sometimes the link of the image to the religion was limited to just
the inscription of a name which did not correspond to the person por­
trayed. This insensitivity in the face of a lie was such that it sometimes led
to direct blasphemy.65 In the upper classes it was highly regarded to order
62 History ofRussian Art (in Russian) (Moscow, 1964), vol. 8, Bk 2,37.
63 Cited by Shtckotov, The Painting of Icons as Art, Collection “Russkaya Ikona” 2 (St Peters­
burg, 1914), 130.
64 Archbishop Anatolius, “On the Painting of Icons,* 109.
65 This is used in our time by atheistic literature. See, for example, L I. Emela, The Origin of
Religious Rituals (in Russian) (Leningrad, 1959). The tradeswoman Chikhacheva is repre­
sented with a halo, rays, and the inscription MP 0Y (p. 45). On the order of Minister
436 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

an “icon” from a well-known, fashionable painter, while this painter, as

the historian Buslaev points out, did not even know how to represent
sacred objects, yet would not deign to talk to iconographers.66 “Icons”
were painted according to living models, or based on the painter’s im­
agination, and this continued until the end of the Synodal Period. Indeed,
despite his influence, even the great Philaret could merely stigmatize this
situation in a rather strongly worded sermon: “The audacity of painting
icons according to the painter’s imagination is the outcome of the capri­
ciousness of modem times.”67
The efforts to create a “genuine Russian painting,” and
the nationalistic tendencies generated, as always happens, numerous strange and
contradictory phenomena. The painters given commissions, the majority of
whom had studied at the German school or at the renewed Roman-Bolognese
school, had to make the government s fondest wish a reality. They had to restore
sacred art to its ancient splendor, power, and momentum.68

The decoration in the great churches of the capitals—the Cathedral of St

Isaac in St Petersburg (1818-1858); in Moscow, the Church of Christ the
Savior (1838-1883)—was done in collaboration with a group of Roman
Catholic and Protestant painters, professors and students of the Imperial
Academy of Fine Arts: Brullow, Semiradski, Bruni, and von Neff.69 It was
to them, and to others, that the task of creating a national Russian art was
entrusted, “to replace Theophanes the Greek, Rublev, Dionysius, and the
great number of anonymous masters of the ancient icon. While deeply
disdainful of the precious monuments of ancient Russian art, the new
"sublime’ iconographie style gave satisfaction, and not only in official cir­
cles.”70 As an example of what was produced, Grishtenko, the same author
just referred to, mentions the admiration of the Slavophile Shevyrev (indeed,
the Slavophiles had enthusiastically welcomed the new religious painting):
Arakcheev, his concubine was depicted by a painter as the Mother of God, and this image was
put in the church of the village of Gruzino (p. 44).
66 See F. I. Buslaev, General Concepts of the Russian Painting of Icons (in Russian), Works (St
Petersburg, 1908), vol. 1,406.
67 “Sermon for the Assumption” (1846) (in Russian), Works (Moscow, 1882), vol. 4, 157.
68 A. Grishtenko, “The Russian Icon,” 11.
69 Two years before the consecration of the church, the art historian Gnedich, then a student at
the Academy of Fine Arts, gave the competent authorities a declaration saying that this
decoration, although made by his professors, was “a scandal for Russia.” He suggested that it
be scraped away and replaced by another.
70 A. Grishtenko, op. cit., 12.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 437

For his Madonna, Bruni manages to find a new image and a new position. He
has portrayed her with the features of a maiden. In these dreamy, languorous
eyes, in the paleness of the coloring, in the ethereal lines of the body, in this not
yet developed youthfulness which had even been censured as a vice—you see the
features of a northern, I would say Russian, Madonna, the concept and the image
of which were bom on the banks of the Neva.71
Indeed, this mixture of sublimated eroticism and vulgar triteness had
replaced the icon. A contemporary wrote:
What an abyss separates this Madonna from the banks of the Neva from the
great image of the Mother of God bom on the shores of the Hellespont. And
how difficult and almost impossible it was for men in the 1840s to cross this
abyss and return to the beauty of ancient times!72

From the Message to an Iconographer, we know that at the time when

the art of the icon flourished, what guided the iconographers in their
work was the spiritual direction of the elder (starets) in the ways of inner
prayer. Where then did one go now to receive directions on how to paint
“icons”? To the Academy of Fine Arts73 and also abroad, in order to obtain
“originals.” Pobedonostsev, Procurator-General of the Holy Synod
(1880-1905), regularly placed orders with the German bookseller Grote
in St Petersburg for printed models reproducing western art works. He
then distributed them to monasteries to guide the monks in the painting
of “icons.” He had a strong preference for the art of the Nazarenes in
Düsseldorf.74
In this context, it is not easy to read without indignation and bitterness
the decision made by the Holy Synod (March 27-April 14, 1880):
In order that church painting, while faithfully preserving the tradition, may also
meet the requirements of art and thereby exercise considerable influence on the
development of an elegant taste in the masses, in addition to its religious
significance, the Holy Synod views as very useful the mediation of the Imperial
Academy of Fine Arts between the clients and the painters when iconostases,
71 Ibid., 12-3.
72 N. Shtekotov, “The Painting of Icons as Art” (in Russian), Collection “Russkaia Ikona" (St
Petersburg, 1914), 130.
73 Ini 856, a course in “Orthodox iconography" was introduced at the Academy of Fine Arts. It
was “Orthodox" in name only. In actuality, it represented “an eclectic mixture of academic
classicism with an imitation of Byzantine painting" (History of Russian Art [in Russian]
[Moscow, 1965], vol. 9, Part One, 31).
74 In his time, Goethe had called their painting “the new devout anti-art” (neue frömmelnde
Unkunst). See P. Hauptmann, "Das russische Altgläubertum und die Ikonenmalerei, "Beiträge
zur Kunst des christlichen Ostens. Erste Studien-Sammlung (Recklinghausen, 1965), vol. 3,34.
438 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

icons, and their frames are to be made.75

This decision reflects the profound tragedy of Russian art: a people

possessing one of the greatest artistic cultures in the world, the creator of
an art unequalled in its greatness, found itself faced with the necessity of
“developing an elegant taste”—and this in order to accept and understand
an art that was foreign to it.
The Orthodox icon, which had expressed the faith and life of the
people for almost a thousand years, was assigned to oblivion by the
educated classes; and this to such an extent that when Goethe, after seeing
the icons made by the iconographers of Palekh in the Orthodox Church
at Weimar, was struck by the Byzantine traditions preserved by contem­
porary painters and asked for information about such painting no one
could give him any: neither the circles close to the court, nor the local
authorities, nor the historian Karamzin, not even the Academy of Fine
Arts.76 P. Muratov writes:
Everything that had been accumulated over the centuries was dissipated in a few
decades. Baroque or Neo-Classie iconostases replaced ancient Novgorodian or
Muscovite ones, wherever possible. The ancient icons were piled up in church
basements or in bell towers. Repainted and disfigured, they survived only in
forgotten churches in obscure little towns, or in the wooden churches in the
areas of Olonetsk or Vologda, which had know neither the proximity nor the
solicitude of the landed gentry.77

In 1907, the historian Trenev made it dear that “the main reason for
the deterioration and destruction of our ancient icons still lies in the
indifference with which our enlightened Russian society and the Ortho-
75 S. V. Bulgakov, The Clergy Manual (in Russian) (Kiev, 1913), 746, note. There were cases
where the church authorities themselves were obliged, out of opportunism, to give their
support to traditional painting, despite the dominant trend. Thus, in 1888, the Synod
declared: “Given the prejudice of the Old Ritualists against icons done in the new Italian style
of painting, the parish priests must see to it that in Orthodox churches, especially in Old
Ritualist areas, icons be close to the Greek originals in their painting.* In the same decree, one
finds the same attitude towaid liturgical chant: “Given the antipathy of the schismatics toward
singing in parts, the parish priests must see to it that in Orthodox churches, especially in areas
with a schismatic population, the singing come as close as possible to the ancient church
melodics* (ibid., 742).
76 Sec the History ofPainting (in Russian) (Moscow, n. d.), vol. 6, 5, note. (Published before the
Revolution).
77 P. Muratov, “The Ancient Russian Icons in the Collection of I. S. Ostroukhov* (in Russian)
(Moscow, 1914); cited in the Catalog of Ancient Russian Painting in the Tretiakov Gallery
(Moscow, 1963), vol. 1,11.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 439

dox clergy treat them.”78

Icon painting was a great art while Russia was being built by the beneficent power
that resided in the church.. .Afterward, things changed. The corrupting influ­
ence of secular grandeur affected the church, enslaving it and gradually turning
it into a subordinate instrument of the temporal powers. The royal splendor, in
which it had a part, eclipsed the life-giving relations of the church, and its role
as sovereign eclipsed its role as community, as sobor. Its image faded in our
religious consciousness and lost its andent colors. The icon ’s darkened face is
the very image of the church as prisoner of earthly magnificence.79

All this was one aspect: the other was the official art of the Church which
expressed “the power and the spirit of the state.” The Orthodox icon was
accused of being “old-ritualist,” while the “humble imitation” of Roman
Catholicism was accepted as Orthodox and, as such, is obstinately de­
fended even now by many members of the hierarchy and the faithful.

It should be noted that Russian old-ritualism contributed in an im­

portant, if not very obvious, way to the neglect of the icon. That it played
an important role in preserving the ancient icon is true: this, in itself, is its
great merit. Nevertheless, “the schisms made the ancient times lose their
prestige by causing a revolt against the Church in their name, and,
consequently, against the sure that was linked to it.”80 It was this revolt
that played a crucial role in the antipathy toward the icon. While one
segment of Russian society, influenced by the West, fully adopted the new
vision of the world and the new art, another sector of this society,
remaining faithful to the Church, allowed itself to become profoundly
indifferent toward the heritage of the past, which for the old-ritualists
represented the ideal; moreover, it saw the dangers of such a blind
allegiance to the past. In the eyes of the state, the schism was a revolt;
consequently, everything that had caused it and continued to play a role
in it was under suspicion. In the eyes of the Church, every attitude, even
one that was correct in itself, was compromised by the veiy reality of the
78 “The Preservation of Monuments of Ancient Russian Iconography,* (in Russian) Ikonopisnii
Sbomik (St Petersburg, 1907), 2. The following reservation, however, ought to be made: the
entire clergy did not share the attitude toward the icon that was rampant among the cultivated
classes; there were numerous priests in the churches and monasteries who endeavored to
preserve ancient icons, often in opposition to their learned parishioners and the churchwar­
dens.
79 E. N. Trubetskoi, “Russia and her Icons,* in Icons: Theology in Color, trans. G. Vakar (New
York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 95-6.
80 V. Kliuchevksii, Works (in Russian) (Moscow, 1957), vol. 3., 318.
440 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

schism, by the fact of breaking away from the Body of the Church.
Finally, for a great number of people, the two principles could coincide,
and thus arose in society an antipathy toward what the old-ritualists
defended. This led to a total lack of interest.
From the first half of the nineteenth century, interest in the icon
increased, as did the number of scholarly works devoted to it. The second
half of the century witnessed the birth of a science of ancient Russian art.
“In our enlightened times, justice had finally been done to the unpolished
art of the high Middle Ages,” Buslaev wrote.81 This period is marked by
the publication of a whole series of valuable works of the so-called
“iconographie school.” Nonetheless, since the general concepts of art had
been modified, the icon was no longer viewed as a work of art and was
studied only from an archaeological perspective. Its main interest lay in
the tradition of the Church which was preserved in the subjects portrayed.
Icons were, it is true, given some credit: with regard to the religious
content, “our ancient iconography presents undeniable advantages over
western art.”82 But on the artistic plane, the ancient iconography was the
outcome “of the stagnation of ancient Russia until the seventeenth cen­
tury in the literary domain and, more generally, the intellectual.”83 “It was
appropriate for a population of hardened villagers...a down-to-earth
people almost unacquainted with the inventions of the mind.”84 It “be­
longed to a state of the art that was extremely undeveloped, technically
poor, and unaware of the essential conditions of an artistic tastes educated
by a study of nature and by models from the fine arts.”85
A curious situation arose: the demands of a modem, enlightened
society were not met by the artistic level of the icon. Where indifference
was not the rule, “people spoke of it as of something ugly, bizarre,
outmoded.”86 Western influences were viewed as a positive factor in the
development of crude Russian art. But at the same time the imitation of
western models led to discontent and disapproval. In the second half of
the century, such imitative art and the “pronounced sentimentality” of
81 F. I. Buslaev, General Concept! ofthe Roman Painting ofleant (in Russian) Warbt (St Peters­
burg, 1908), vol. 1, 31.
82 Ibid, 10.
83 /W, 29.
84 Ibid.,4\.
85 Ibid., 21.
86 K. Trenev, “The Preservation of Monuments,” 33-4.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 441

academic painting prompted a severe judgment: “The Russian painters of our

time are faced with a difficult task: to get rid of the absurdity and the bad taste
handed down by the eighteenth century.” Sacred art had to be separated from
secular art. The painters must “strictly differentiate church painting or ico­
nography from historical painting or the portrait” On this path,
the enviable fate awaited them of becoming completely original creators by
applying to the national needs all the benefits not only of a developed art but
also of science, so that the church art of our age, as in times gone by [that is,
during the time of “stagnation,” L. Ouspensky] may not only lead to prayer but
also teach by its concepts.87

The widely accepted idea that before Peter I, Russia had been intellec­
tually stagnant produced a most curious result: the conviction that one
understood Christianity better if one was enlightened by the new culture.
The church historian E. Golubinskii expressed this in plain language:
“The St Petersburg period [in the history of the Church] is one during
which true civilization was introduced among us, and with it self-evi­
dently, a more perfect understanding of Christianity.”88 Such a view of
the role of civilization on the spiritual plane leads to a conclusion that is
not less paradoxical on the level of art. An “enlightened” painter,
equipped with a “developed artistic sense,” thereby understands Christi­
anity better; better than an uneducated monk iconographer, he is there­
fore able to create a Christian art that is more perfect. From this
enlightened painter one expects an art that can combine “religious inspi­
ration,” similar to that of the past, with “fidelity to nature.” The headiness
of this “discovery” of fidelity to nature enthralled the educated Russian for
three centuries, and turned him away from the icon.

In their appreciation of art and in their search for new ways, the
scholars and theoreticians of the second half of the nineteenth century
and of the early twentieth century always base themselves on the same
theories as in the seventeenth century. For them, the “feeling for divine
beauty” was kindled in the Russian painter “only in the eighteenth
century under the influence of western models,” which “gave a definite
European orientation to the best painters of that time.”89 These scholars
87 F. I. Buslaev, General Concepts, 67.
88 E Golubinskii, Readings in the Imperial Society ofHistory and Russian Antiquities (in Russian)
(Moscow, 1901), xxi.
89 F. I. Buslaev, General Concepts, 423*4.
442 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

45. The Holy Face. Painted by Simon Ushakov.

Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 443

46. Christ the All-PowerfiiL 18th-century.

47. Christ the Savior. 19th century.

444 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

usually view the work of Ushakov and his group as the beginning of the
renewal of Russian sacred art. Trenev writes:
Had our Russian Orthodox iconography continued to follow the same road of
perfection after the seventeenth century, then, by perfecting its artistic forms
more and more, and by uniting them so brilliandy to the qualities of its religious
inner content, it would have reached the hoped for level of development that
would have allowed it, on the artistic level, to satisfy the most demanding and
most developed taste of the contemporary enlightened Russian. But the way of
this perfection...was interrupted by the historical development that followed,
the reforms ofPeter I and the all too abrupt turning of Russia toward the West.90

In reality, however, the problem was not the reform of Peter I, it was a
question of the perfectly logical path followed by the new artistic trend,
the sources of which go back to the second half of the sixteenth century.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this trend progressed
along the direction given to it in the seventeenth century. The abrupt
changes under Peter I only accelerated the process of desacralization
championed by Ushakov and Vladimirov, to which the entire “progres­
sive” literature of their time testified on the theoretical level. In the words
of N. Kondakov,
this entire literature, together with the devices of the iconographers, Simon
Ushakov, Joseph the Zoographer and others, only points to one thing: the
complete collapse of iconography and, I am afraid, of the entire art of Muscovite
Russia [Figs. 45,46,47] ?

Taken to its logical conclusion, “the way of perfection,” following in

the wake of the West, proved to be in sacred art die worthy inheritance of
the “Age of Enlightenment”: “absurd and in bad taste”—for some on
account of its grossly imitatory character, for others because of its aban­
donment of the Orthodox tradition, and its “unification of all beliefs.”
Thus, neither the mimesis of the West nor the ancient icon gave satisfac­
tion, especially on the aesthetic plane. The first was “the ultimate limit of
poor taste,”92 and lacked independence, being an imitation which was, in
addition, meaningless; the second, the icon, was still in its infancy on the
artistic level and therefore also lacked independence.
If it is strange to present the works of Russian sacred art as works of art, it is still
90 D. K. Trenev, Russian Iconographie Art and its Desirable Development (in Russian) (Moscow,
1902), 9-10.
91 N. P. Kondakov, The Russian Icon (in Russian) (Prague, 1931), Part One, 48.
92 F. I. Buslaev, General Concepts, 26-7.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 445

more unjust to demote them to the lowest level of artisanry, and recognize the
art of iconography as artistic artisanry, an artistic occupation, like all art that has
not freed itself from service to the Church and has not yet risen to the level of a
completely free creation. Thus, in our opinion, iconography is an art of the
Church and for this reason is not an entirely free art. The iconographers are
painters of the Church and are therefore not free painters.93
Thus, as long as such art “has not freed itself from the service to the
Church,” it cannot “ascend” to the level of an entirely independent
creation, because free creation is a privilege of culture. In the Church,
iconography cannot “free itself” as art because “it is fettered by the
dogmas of doctrine.”94
Let us note that all this was written by believing Orthodox persons
who loved the icon and who devoted their lives to its study, people who
sincerely tried to resurrect an art that would be ecclesiastical in the proper
sense, to sketch the paths it would have to follow. But this being said, such
art had to be “free”—free precisely from the Church and its dogmas, and
from nothing else. Is this not what St Seraphim of Sarov said: “Under the
pretext of light we have entered into such darkness that we find inconceiv­
able that of which the ancients had such a clear concept.”95

The painter Polenov, invited in 1888 by the painter Vasnetsov to help

with the decoration of the Cathedral of St Vladimir in Kiev, replied
negatively. He explained his refusal as follows:
The dogmas of Orthodoxy are outmoded and now belong to the domain of
scholasticism. We do not need them.. .It would be to rehash the commonplace,
which was expressed back when religion was indeed a living force, when it guided
man and supported him.96

Such an attitude toward dogma was not a break with the past: it was a
severing of the living link with the fullness of the life of the Church, with
the fullness of its knowledge. For, in truth, dogmas are as many “divine
testimonies of the human mind about what is contemplated and lived,
about the data in the catholic experience of the faith concerning the
93 G. Filimonov, Simon Ushakov and his Epoch in Russian Iconography (in Russian) (Moscow,
1873), 1.
94 F. I. Buslaev, General Concepts, 71. Didron’s discovery, made in the 1840s, that sacred art is
“paralyzed by dogmas and church doctrine,* was totally swallowed by Russian scholars and
remains the principal refrain of their writings up to our day.
95 “Entretien avec Motovilov,* I. Gorainoff, Séraphin de Sarov (Bellefontaine, 1973), 194-5.
96 Cited in History ofRussian Art (in Russian) (Moscow, 1965), vol. 9, bk 2,110.
446 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

mysteries of life eternal revealed by the Holy Spirit.”97 When dogmas, as

expressions of the concrete experience of this faith, cease to be perceived
and lived existentially, when they “imprison”—this means that the faith
which they express has ceased to be a living force. It was with such an
attitude toward the Church and its faith that one attempted to create a
sacred art that would “lead to prayer” and “teach by its concepts”!
Certainly, the historians of the period did not know, even in a vestigial
way, all the richness of the icon we know today. But this is not where the
problem lies. What is important is that their opinions about the freedom
of the painter and on the Orthodox icon characterized an entire age, that
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even the twentieth—an
age that had adopted criteria that were alien to the art it judged. Entire
generations, raised on a world view desacralized by a secular culture which
had destroyed the integrity of the Christian view of the world, showed
themselves to be incapable of seeing the fullness of Orthodoxy, the unity
of its teaching, of its spiritual life and artistic creation.

Trenev writes: “In order to perfect the contemporary painting of icons

and to paint the saints as we wish, in the spirit of true Orthodoxy, there
can for the moment be no other way than a conscientious study of the
ancient monuments of our past.” Only after this can the iconographer be
ready “for his own free creation.”98 Beginning with the nineteenth cen-
tuiy, a group of painters, students at the Academy of Fine Arts, attempted
to recreate sacred art precisely by starting from a study of ancient iconog­
raphy, with the help of “a developed artistic sense and learning.” They
were Solntsev, Vasnetsov, Nesterov, and Vrubel. They sought to realize
the dream of an art that would be at the same time religious and “purely
Russian.” In Russia, it was the art of Vasnetsov that was, and still is, the
most popular. In the 1890’s Nesterov spoke of his work in the Cathedral
of St Vladimir in Kiev in the following terms: “The dream lives there, the
dream of a ‘Russian Renaissance/ a rebirth of the wondrous and long
forgotten art, that of Dionysius and of Andrei Rublev.”99 By way of
information for those who admire Vasnetsov’s religious art, let us cite here
his own view about his effort to resurrect the art of the Russian icon—his
97 G. Florovsky, “The House of the Father,” (in Russian) Put', no 7 (Paris, 1927), 79.
98 D. K. Trenev, Russian Iconographie Art, 13.
99 A. Mikhailov, M. N. Nesterov. Life and Work (in Russian) (Moscow, 1958), 90.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 447

own definition of his work. Let us note the sincerity and the great courage
of this celebrated, admired painter. In 1925, in the midst of a circle of
friends, Vasnetsov raved about the ancient frescoes in the monastery of
Therapontes, the Church of the Savior in Nereditsa, and others. One of
those present remarked, “But your icons? Your frescoes? They are master­
pieces. They show a deep understanding of the religious spirit in the their
interpretation of Russian painters, one could even say, of the entire
Russian Church!” Vasnetsov strongly protested:
Oh no. One could speak this way as long as the ancient Russian icon had not
yet been discovered. In my demented pride, it seemed to me that I, I alone, and
perhaps also Nesterov, though somewhat differendy, had understood the spirit
of ancient painting. But when the ancient paintings, these frescoes in the
monasteries were restored, and when the pre-Nikonian and even more ancient
icons were discovered, an entirely new world appeared, a wondrous world of
deep inspiration, of knowledge of the laws of nature—an amazing interaction
between colors and painting techniques appeared. Bound by tradition and by
certain forms, did these ancient painters not create authentic painting, true in
the most profound sense of the concept, that is, a play of color? They were not
draughtsmen as we are now: they were real creators, real painters. Russia should
not pride itself on its contemporary painting, that is, the painting after Peter I,
because we are generally only imitators, original imitators, it is true, in our own
fashion. And yet, why hide it, we lag behind Europe. But we should be proud
of our ancient iconography, of our ancientpainting. No one surpasses us there.. .1
myself thought that I had understood the spirit of the Russian icon, had
expressed the ancient painter’s inner world, had mastered in my pride the ancient
techniques. I was seriously wrong in this. The spirit of the Russian icon turned
out to be much deeper than I thought. The inner world of ancient painting was,
spiritually speaking, so much richer than the spirit of our time, be it mine,
personally, or that of Nesterov. We are far from achieving their technique, from
their effects as colorists. My painting is but a pale and saccharine reflection of
the extremely rich world of the ancient Russian icon.100

We can do nothing better here than to quote the following observation

by Khomiakov: “The possibilities ancient, ‘unsophisticated’ Russiagave to
art are far from being actualized by modern, ‘cultivated’ Russia.”101 When
compared to the icon, the art of Vasnetsov (Fig. 48 and 49), though based
on a study of ancient iconography, is but a saccharine reflection, linked to
German romanticism, that is, a sort of misinterpreted “Byzantine art.” As
100 S. Makovskii, “ Iconographe rs and Painters" (in Russian) Russkaia zhizn (3 November 1965),
no. 5940,4.
101 A Khomiakov, The Opinion of the Russians About Foreigners (in Russian) Selected Works, 134.
448 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

48. The Konun Mother ofGod.

Russian icon, 16th century.
Art in the Russian Church During thç Synodal Period 449

49. A Virgin. Painted by Vasnetsov.

450 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

P. Muratov has said, “despite all his attachment to the theme of national­
ism, Vasnetsov remained a painter with a German turn of mind.”102 For
him, the ancient icon was a subject of external study, not the result of an
existential entry into the living texture of the Tradition of the Church.
The starting point of his art was not the depth of the Orthodox spiritual
experience, but the premises of this same desacralized, secular culture.
In the realm of sacred art, this culture turned out to be sterile. If, on
the cultural level, a synthesis between Russia and the West was possible, it
could not be achieved where a profession of faith was the issue: a dena­
tured Christianity could not give rise to a synthesis with authentic Chris­
tianity. The incontrovertible fact is there: the application of the principles
of western art to sacred art, even the creation, on the basis of such
principles, of a “national” art founded on a study of ancient iconography,
did not produce sacred art. In other words, “the unification of beliefs” (to
use Archbishop Anatolius’ phrase)—here we are certainly faced with such
unification and confusion—turned out to be incompatible with Ortho­
dox doctrines and practices. This is why transplanting the Roman Catho­
lic image onto Orthodox soil only contributed to the gradual divorce
between the Church and the awareness of its members.
As we have seen, the spiritual decay first atrophied the awareness of the
doctrinal dimension of the image. Then, in general, the importance and the
responsible role of the image in Orthodoxy were no longer understood.
Carried away by western novelties, educated society easily accepted the substi­
tution of the Orthodox icon by an imitation of the Roman Catholic image—
which is to say that it showed an utter indifférence toward the fact that the
latter image originated in a spiritual experience entirely different horn the
Orthodox, in dogmatic premises that were different from those in Ortho­
doxy. If in seventeenth-century Russia there was still an attempt to oppose this
foreign image (though the reaction was rather instinctive, and only in the
domain of spiritual experience), in the eighteenth century this question not
only did not arise, but it lost all its meaning. Indeed, was it not accepted
without question that the Christian culture “borrowed” from the West
brought with it an image that was equally Christian? Moreover, when faced
with the iconoclasm of militant Protestantism, both Roman Catholicism
and Orthodoxy certainly confessed the dogma of the Seventh Ecumenical
102 P. Muratov, “Concerning the Icon" (in Russian), Vozrozhdenie {27 January 1933).
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 451

Council concerning the veneration of icons. Indeed, at the decisive mo­

ment when the catholic awareness had perceived a Christian, universal
truth, the West and the East confirmed die revealed truth of the venera­
tion of icons, in harmony and mutual agreement. Even if the West did not
follow the East in its theological reasoning, the image and its theology
were common to both East and West, as long as the latter was joined to
the Body of the Church. Nonetheless, this theology remained a dead
letter for the West: it was not incorporated into the liturgical life of the
Church, it was not assimilated into the ecclesial awareness. Was the
almost simultaneous appearance of two concepts, of two attitudes toward
the icon that were mutually exclusive, the result of mere chance? By
allotting only the artistic aspect of a work to the painter, the Seventh
Ecumenical Council viewed the Holy Fathers as the true iconographers,
because it was they who considered and revealed what was appropriate to
represent. The council based the art of the icon on the Tradition of the
Church, “for it comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells there” (oros of the
council). In the West, at the same moment, the Libri Carolini under­
mined the very foundation of sacred art. They pulled it away from the
Tradition, from the catholic experience of the Church, by delivering it to
the painter’s capriciousness, while at the same time confirming the
filioque™ When Rome separated itself from the catholic Body of the
Church, it was precisely this doctrine that determined the direction of the
ecclesial life in the West, and hence its culture. Is it a matter of mere
serendipity that the icon subsequendy became the patrimony only of the
peoples of Orthodox confession, regardless of their geographic situation,
regardless of the national or racial group to which they belonged, just as the
Roman Catholic image came to be reserved to the people of Latin confession?
Let us recall that the western Church, by moving away from the East,
rejected Canon 82 of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (among others), a
ruling that abrogated the symbols replacing the human image of Christ.
Thus this church remained in the perspective of the “images and shad­
ows” of the Old Testament. Having kept the Old Testament symbols, the
West thereby reduced the significance of the image that corresponded to
103 On its part, the Council of Frankfurt, as is known, considers the image to be only a church
ornament and a reminder of the works accomplished in times past; this remains the official
attitude of the Church of Rome up to our time. Let us recall that Luther too shared the point
of view of the Libri Carolini and of the Council of Frankfurt.
452 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the Christian revelation, that of the Person of Christ, Image and Word of
the Father. This insensitivity toward the personal image, this deficiency in
the understanding of it, became the basic flaw of Roman Catholic art—a
flaw which was later to be confirmed by scholastic theology.
If no image can be understood apart from the surroundings that created it,
this is all the more true when one deals with a Church image. The very basis
of the Church and of its art must be the starting point for an understanding
of it For Roman Catholicism as well as for Orthodoxy this basis is the
confession of the Holy Trinity. It is of decisive importance for the entire life of
the Church: its canonical order, the nature of its theological thought, its
spirituality and artistic creation. Indeed, “the Son and the Holy Spirit sent by
die Father have revealed the Trinity to the Church, not in an abstract fashion,
as an intellectual knowledge, but as a very rule of its life”104—a. life that is
precisely in the image of the Trinity. This is why any change, any dogmatic
error in the doctrine of the Trinity can only have corresponding results in the
entire life of the Church, and therefore in its art It is precisely when the
fiUoque became a theological system that the desacralization of the sacred
in the western Church began. This question certainly requires a special
study. In our context, we will limit ourselves to a few words about which
consequences of the filioque caused a change in Orthodox art.
Two levels that correspond to two distinct aspects in the life of the
consubstantial Trinity are expressed directly in art, or, more precisely,
determine its content and character. They are: the level of the intra-trini-
tarian life, that of theology properly speaking; and that of the divine
economy, that of the action of God in the created world.
Like all Christian dogma, that of the Trinity can be based only on
revelation, the manifestation of one God in three Persons. But the manner
in which this revelation is received and understood is not the same in
Orthodoxy as in Roman Catholicism. It is this divergence that produced
two different triadologies, as well as the difference between Orthodox art
and that of Roman Catholicism.105 For Orthodox theology, the starting
104 V. Lossky, “Du troisième attribut de l’Eglise," Messager de l’Exarchat du Patriarche russe en
Europe occidentale, nos 2-3 (1950), 65.
105 In the East, Revelation has always been understood as the road to salvation; only on this road
can contact with God and knowledge of Him as participation in the divine life, an existential
communion, even possibly be conceived. The deification of man is the path to divine
knowledge, and the very core of the patristic teaching on salvation. This ascent toward God
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 453

point in the confession of the Holy Trinity is the person—the essential

mystery of the Christian revelation: the person as possessing the divine
nature in its fullness. Consequently, the person is of crucial importance as
much for the theology of the icon as for the image itself. It is precisely on
the concrete, incarnate person of one of the Holy Trinity that the dogma
of the veneration of icons is (bunded. It is the concept of the person, of the
one who is represented, that allowed patristic theology to solve the basic
dilemma of the iconoclastic controversy, as we have seen. In the relation­
ship established by the image between the human person and the divine
person, Orthodox theology sees the beginning of a vision “(ace to face.”106
Only a personal image creates a way that leads to its prototype, whether
the latter be the person of God become man or that of a human being
deified by the uncreated grace of the Holy Spirit.
If prayer in the West, as in the East, is addressed to the person, for
western theology, by contrast, it is not the Person but the divine nature
that is the starting point. This theology receives a clearly delineated form

corresponds diametrically to die descent of God toward man: “The way to divine knowledge
ascends from one Spirit through the one Son to the one Father*—to use the words of St Basil
the Great (On the Holy Spirit [New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980], 74-5).
By contrast, in its knowledge and assimilation of Revelation, the West did not choose the
road of living and concrete experiences. Roman Catholic triadology takes as its suiting point
a transposition of the temporal divine economy to the level of the intra-trinitarian life, outside
of time; if the Holy Spirit is sent into the world by the Father and the Son, this means that in
the bosom of the Holy Trinity He proceeds from the Father and the Son, as Hypostasis.
Tertullian, who is viewed as “the founder of the language and thought form of Latin theology*
(see J. M. Garrigues, O. P., “Procession et ekporèse du Saint-Esprit,* Istina, nos 3-4 [1972],
345), already linked the order by which the Persons manifested themselves in their economy
to their procession in eternity. Beginning with him, such a transposition of the economy into
triadology has remained the norm in western theological thought, due particularly to the
prestige of St Augustine, who definitely transformed the analogy into a logical correspondence
between the two plans. “This analogy,* Berdiaev states, “was to be of prophetic importance for
the knowledge and understanding of God. This is particularly evident in the system of
Thomas Aquinas. God is known through analogy with the natural world and natural objects.
He is like a supreme natural object, endowed to the highest degree with all qualities. God is
certainly 'supernatural,* but this 'supernatural* ultimately turns out to be a superlative degree
of the 'natural* (the 'natural* being more important than the 'super*). The analogy of God with
the power of a natural world is not a Christian analogy. It is on this foundation that theological
naturalism was created, which is an inheritance from pagan theological thought. The Church
is understood in the same way, through analogy with the state, with the kingdom of Caesar... *
(“Thoughts on Theodicy* [in Russian], Put*, no 7 [1937], 56).
106 V. Lossky, The Vision ofGod, trans. A. Moorhouse (New York: St Vladimir*s Seminary Press,
1983), 168.
454 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

with the insertion of the fiUoque (“the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Father and the Son) into the official confession of faith, especially with
the subsequent specification, “as from one principle.”107 The hypostatic
character of the persons becomes of secondary importance; in the Holy
Trinity, Its unity, Its nature is the only absolute. As for the Trinity of the
Hypostases, their very being becomes relative. They are no longer viewed
as possessors of Their nature, but depend on it as Their manifestation.
They are understood as "subsisting relations” within this nature. That is,
the relationship between the persons is understood not as Their character­
istics, but as the persons themselves. As V. Lossky has clearly indicated,
“Such diminution of the hypostatic principle constitutes the basic flaw of
the theological speculation regarding the filioque”™* “by the introduction
of the (Aristotelian) category of relation into the divine being, the dogma
of the Trinity was rationalized.. .”109
But if, in the Holy Trinity, the person (hypostasis) is not as absolute as the
nature and represents a certain abstract concept, then it loses its absolute,
decisive importance also in the image. Whether it be in the divine person or a
human being created in the image of God, it loses its predominant meaning
as the possessor of its nature. In the image, the person is no longer necessarily
the prototype and can be replaced by a symbol, an abstract arrangement, by
another person, or by an invention of the painter. The abstract concept of the
person, and the failure to understand the personal image, explain why in the
West the representation of the unrepresentable (the anthropomorphic images
of God the Father and of the Holy Spirit) hardly ever met with opposition. It
107 The natural powers to engender and cause to proceed (spirare) are attributed to nature. “From
the Father-essence is bom the Son, consubstantial to the Father; from the Father and the Son,
as from one essential principle, proceeds the Holy Spirit* (V. Lossky, “On the Question of the
Procession of the Holy Spirit* [in Russian], Messager de l’Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe
occidentale, no. 25 [1957], 58). In other words, if the Father, as essence, is the cause of the Son,
the cause of the Holy Spirit is a certain impersonal principle or a non-pcrsonal essence, joining
the Father and the Son. The equality of the Persons in their Divinity is thereby violated.
Indeed, the Father is the divine nature, having the power to engender and bring forth; this
same nature, not having the power to engender but having the power to cause to proceed, is
the Son. As to the Holy Spirit, He is of the same nature, but not having the power either to
engender or to cause to proceed, He is understood as “the bond of love* between the Father
and the Son, that is, as a certain function inside the Holy Trinity.
108 V. Lossky, “On the Question of the Procession of the Holy Spirit,* ibid.
109 V. Lossky, Cours d’histoire du dogme, ch. 5, 32, as quoted by Olivier Clément, “Vladimir
Lossky, un théologien de la personne et du Saint-Esprit,* Messager de l’Exarchat du Patriarche
russe en Europe occidentale, nos 30-31 (1959), 197.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 455

could not meet with any because abstract concepts can only be transposed
through invented images, devoid of a real foundation.
As we have seen, the change in Orthodox sacred art began precisely
with the representation of the unrepresentable, by a “lessening of the
glory of the economy in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as was said in
the sixteenth century. When the so-called “mystical-didactic” icons ap­
peared, the realism of the Gospel was placed side by side with its abstract
commentaries. The image conveying a concept, an abstract idea, was seen
as having the same witnessing power, it was placed on the same level as the
image of the concrete person of the incarnate Word, and thus the latter
lost its exclusivity. Such a lowering of the hypostatic principle in the
image was a flagrant departure from Orthodox doctrine (as expressed in
particular by the Sixth and the Seventh Ecumenical Councils).
The next stage in the change of Orthodox sacred art was the introduc­
tion of the “likeness to real life,” on the pretext that the iconographie style
“did not recognize the truth.” This was another consequence of the
filioque, but in the domain of the divine economy.
The theology of the filioque excludes the Orthodox doctrine of the
divine energies—the radiance of God outside His essence, the Giver of
which is the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are identified with
their Giver by the transposition of the temporal plane into the extra-tem­
poral being of the Holy Trinity. Since the Holy Spirit is understood as a
relationship defined as “the bond of love” between the Father and the
Son, there is no room left for grace as deifying gift,110 and the Holy Spirit
appears as the gift which He bestows. Thus the Holy Trinity is, as it were,
enclosed in its essence, limited by it; everything outside the Godhead is
viewed as belonging to the created world. There is the divine nature, and
there are the “supernatural,” but always created, results of His action.111
This is why, in the theology of the filioque, there is no deification in the
proper sense of the term, and the creature is, in turn, enclosed in its
created being. The possibility of acquiring revelation as a road to salva-
110 The monk Hilarion, “Réflexions dun moine orthodoxe à propos d’un dossier sur la procession
du Saint-Esprit publié récemment," Messager de ['Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe
occidentale, nos 81-82 (1973), 25.
Ill According to Roman Catholic doctrine, such created grace only enables the human being to
perform “meritorious acts." Thanks to such “merits," the human being will after death have
the possibility of contemplating the very nature (essence) of God.
456 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

tion, the deification of man, the acquisition of the Holy Spirit which,
according to the Fathers, constitutes the very essence and aim of the
Christian life—all this has no place in this system.112 The Holy Spirit is no
longer the source of man’s deification. He is no longer, through His
divinity, the “witness of the truth,” that is, of the divinity of Christ. Hence
the focus on the humanity of the Lord, as much in western theology and
spirituality as in art. This “cult of the humanity of Christ that makes
abstraction of His Divinity, such devout concentration on His humanity
alone, strikes the Orthodox as being 'spiritual’ Nestorianism.”113
The image of Christ was divided. On the one hand, He seems exalted
because He overshadows the other Persons of the Trinity. On the other
hand, the glory of God, manifested in His deified flesh, is dimmed,
hidden by His “aspect of a servant.”

Through the abstract system of the filioque, theology was transposed

from the level of a lived experience of grace to that of philosophic,
rationalistic speculations, and this rationalist conception was called
“metaphysical triadology.”

The Orthodox Church preserves the image of Christ not only in its
historical remembrance but also in the charismatic memory of its faith—
in the Tradition of the catholic Church, for “it is of the Holy Spirit who
dwells in it.” Such charismatic remembrance is the testimony which the
Spirit brings to the truth—the incarnation of God and man’s deification,
since the grace that sanctifies both the humanity of Christ and the body
of a deified man is the same. This is why in Orthodox art their represen­
tations are done in the same manner. The intrusion of Roman Catholic
art with its cult of the non-sanctified flesh, flesh which has not overcome
decomposition, resulted not in a “discernment of the truth,” as the
seventeenth-century innovators thought, but in a distortion of the truth,
a modification of the Orthodox doctrine of salvation.
112 The examples of holiness in Roman Catholicism, when such sanctity approaches Orthodoxy,
are at odds with the theology and are outside the official doctrine of their Church.
113 Archbishop Basil (Krivochéine), “Quelques mots supplémentaires sur la question des
stigmates,* Messager de l'Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe occidentale, no 44 (1963), 204.
Hence the emotional intensity in the contemplation of the passion of Christ—an emotion
which occasionally may lead to a literal imitation in stigmata; hence also the series of
“anatomical,* so to speak, feasts in the Church of Rome: the Sacred Heart ofJesus, His Body,
His Blood, and so forth.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 457

The Roman Church has revealed itself incapable of assuming the full­
ness of Revelation as a path to salvation. It developed the qualities of human
nature that were directly tied to the activity of the mind and will. Having
placed faith itself under the control of reason, it assured the development of
what may be called “humanism.” But the road taken by such “humanism”
was not only extra-ecdesial but also anti-ecclesial, and led to disintegration.
That such “humanism” which emerged from Roman Catholicism is not a
true Christian anthropology is dear. The inability to partake fully of the
Revdation cut the path which Christ himself had opened up to man for the
fulfillment of his destiny. It destroyed the initial meaning of man’s exis­
tence: to cooperate with God in guiding the created world toward the
fulfillment of its history—its transfiguration.
The powerful stream of western art invaded the Church, certainly, but
it did not destroy Orthodox art. This art “has lived in Russia for a long
time, and still lives since the beginning of the eighteenth century, under
the form of artisanry and craftsmanship,” N. Kondakov writes.114 The
icon existed alongside the official art and in spite of it, despite the tastes of
cultivated society. As before, it was nurtured by the liturgical life and the
perpetually living stream of popular devotion. During the period when
spiritual life was in decline, ignored or despised, and the icon was forgot­
ten, the role of preserving the proclamation of Orthodox faith and
spirituality in the image fell precisely on this artisanry. The manuals of
iconography (podlinniki) preserved the traditional iconography. Icon
artisanry had to protect and transmit the traditions of the ancient tech­
niques to our times. Let us note, moreover, that during the centuries of
decadence, the work of iconographers often rose above the level of mere
artisanry. The power of the tradition was revealed in such a way that even
on the lowest level of artisanry the icon reflected the grandeur and the
beauty proper to it. It was not unworthy of the totality of great art in the
Orthodox Church.
However, during the second half of the nineteenth century, even this
artisanry was overwhelmed by the general trend of industrial develop­
ment, which was first concentrated in large enterprises. The end of the
century witnessed an invasion of printed “icons,” as well as their importa­
tion from abroad, which was disastrous for artisanry.
114 N. P. Kondakov, The Russian Icon (in Russian), Part One (Prague, 1931), 3.
458 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The unending complaints of the iconographers and the discontent

among the faithful prompted the creation of a Committee for the Protec­
tion of Russian Iconography (1900), which received the approval of the
tsar himself. The circumstances under which the activity of this commit­
tee evolved are a revealing page in the history of Russian iconography.
The committee undertook an eneigetic, resolute struggle against the
mechanical production of “icons.” In this struggle, the committee ran
into opposition from the Holy Synod and from the Ministry of Finance,
as well as against the interests of large monasteries, which were the chief
disseminators of such productions. Unfortunately, the committee de­
fended the icon not on the doctrinal level, but as a national artisanry, as a
traditional enterprise. In other words, for this committee, the art of the
icon did not transcend the boundaries of folklore. The activity of the
committee was marked by half-measures, which were characterized by
lack of precision and clarity in their ecclesial orientation. A request to
prohibit the importation of “icons” printed abroad and to limit their
production in Russia—a request presented by the committee and ap­
proved by the tsar, after it had been submitted to all the Ministries,
including that of National Defense—met with strong opposition when it
arrived at the Ministry of Finance and the Synod. The first was worried
that the needs of the faithful would not be met and recommended all
types of half-measures. The second, in the person of Pobedonostsev, the
Procurator General, contested all the points contained in the request. He
was of the opinion that the prohibition against importing printed images
from abroad to replace the icon “did not depend on the spiritual authori­
ties, who had no ecclesial reason for this, but on the legislative power.”115
According to Pobedonostsev, the whole matter ultimately fell under the
jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance. Despite the emperor’s support, the
efforts of the committee failed completely. After four years of effort, “the
problem of restricting the mechanical production of icons still remained at
the same point,” as N. P. Kondakov, one of the most active members of the
committee, attests.116
Nonetheless, in spite ofthis failure in the domain of mechanical production,
the activity of the committee turned out to be useful and of great relevance to
115 Collection Ikonopimii SbornikX (St Petersburg, 1907), 13.
116 Minutes of the March 20, 1907, Meeting of the Committee (in Russian), Coll. Ikonopisnii
Sbomik3(St Petersburg, 1908), 32.
An in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 459

the age, especially in the realm of published manuals. It caused numerous

and varied echoes. In general, at the dawn of the twentieth century, a series of
circumstances contributed to a re-evaluation of the attitude toward the icon.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, intellectuals began return­
ing to the Church. “After the stormy experiences of nihilism, apostasy,
and neglect,” there occurred “a meeting of the intellectuals with the
Church,.. .a return to the faith.”117 The desire was expressed openly to see
the canonical norms, freedom, and conciliarity reestablished in the
church, to see the Church freed from the control and protection of the
secular power, and from the task imposed upon it by the state. Particularly
after 1905, these questions were debated with passion. A pre-conciliar
commission was formed; the question of reestablishing the patriarchate
was raised.
In the domain of art, a reversal of values could be detected, a true
revolution in knowledge. Byzantine art was rehabilitated, first in the West
(G. Millet, Ch. Diehl, Dalton, and others), then in Russia (P. Muratov,
Shtekotov, Anisimov, et al). H. Matisse, who came to Russia in 1911,
expressed his opinion about the ancient Russian icons in this way:
The Russians have no idea of the artistic treasures they possess. Your young
students have here, at home, art models that are incomparably better than those
from abroad. French painters should come and study in Russia. In this field,
Italy offers less.118

More and more, the clear superiority of traditional art in the spiritual
domain encouraged an understanding of the meaning of the icon; and
even when such understanding was still limited and superficial, it none­
theless opened a way for the “discovery” of the icon. In educated circles,
117 G. Florovsky, Ways. Having broken with the Church, the intellectuals who returned expected
reforms from it: at all times, it is the temptation of reformers to renew the church. “Psycholog­
ically, this is where the point of concentration was... In his time, S. N. Bulgakov spoke of this
quite correctly. Intellectual heroism, decked out in Christian garb, and sincerely viewing its
intellectual emotions and customary impassioned emphasis as true. Christian anger shows
itself most easily in an ecclesiastic attitude of revolt; in the contrast between its fresh, new
holiness, its new religious awareness and the injustice of the 'historic* church. It is so easy for a
christianizing intellectual, often unable to satisfy in a suitable manner what is normally
expected of a member of the 'historic* church, to identify with Martin Luther or, rather to
view himselfas the bringer of a new religious awareness, called not only to renew the life of the
Church but also to create new forms for it, one might even say, a new religion** (G. Florovsky,
Ways).
118 Catalog ofAncient Russian Painting in the Tretiakov Gallery (in Russian), op. cit. 21.
460 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

“official” art gradually lost its support and its dominant role. The taste for
authentically traditional Orthodox art and architecture returned. In vari­
ous places in Russia, some churches were built following the traditional
architecture, with canonical wall decoration, and iconostases composed of
ancient icons. The conscious movement back to the Church, the growing
number of scholarly studies, the opening of old-ritualist churches, the
establishment of private collections, the restoration of an ever-growing
number of icons—all this led a segment of Russian society to a complete
réévaluation of the icon. The icon exposition of 1913 was a true revela­
tion to the larger circles of society. “It is as if a veil had suddenly dropped
from the eyes of those who visited this exposition,” V. N. Lazarev wrote.
They discovered that “this art was one of the most perfect creations of the
Russian genius.”119 On the other hand, as P. Muratov attested, with
people for whom the icon was something new and who venerated Fra
Angelico and Simone Martini, one observed
a curious, slight disappointment with the icon (but only at first sight). No doubt,
these people were sincere, even ardent Orthodox. But during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, Russian Orthodoxy had moved away from its initial
historical dimension to such an extent that at present it sometimes did not
recognize itself from this perspective [of the traditional icon].120

For contemporary culture, the art created during the “fallow” period
turned out to be of an inaccessible height, even on the artistic level. As for
the spiritual plane, what was clear and evident to a religiously cultured
person was an enigma for the person of modem culture. Indeed, An­
isimov wrote in 1914,
we will understand it [the icon] only when we will have ceased requesting from
the icon what it never requested from itself, have stopped seeking in it what it
never sought, evaluating it not according to what it has but in terms of what it
does not, and could not, have.121

During this epoch, not only art critics but even religious philosophers
such as, for example, Florenskii, occasionally saw in the icon a consonance
with Platonic ideas and the Aristotelian concept of form, all this mixed with
a certain “Christianity.” The end of the Synodal period was marked by a
living and truly ecdesial approach to the icon, even if it was tainted by a
119 V. N. Lazarev, The Art ofNovgorod (in Russian) (Moscow-Leningrad, 1947), 20.
120 P. Muratov, “Concerning the Icon" XI (in Russian), Vozrozhdenie (Paris, February 1933).
121 A. Anisimov, “Study of the Iconographie Art of Novgorod," (in Russian) Journal Sofia 3
(Moscow, March 1914), 12.
Art in the Russian Church During the Synodal Period 461

certain romanticism, notably in the works of E. Trubetskoi, who was the

first to become aware of and to fathom the meaning of the Orthodox icon.
This is a significant phenomenon of the epoch: the culture which had
rejected the icon, and in the name of which the icon was rejected, now
adopted a diametrically opposed attitude toward it. It moved from a
denial of the icon to its veneration, as much on the artistic level as on that
of its content, this independently of whatever confessional attitude, or of
its absence, independently also of any national attachments. This culture
had prompted Orthodoxy away from the icon; this culture of fragmenta­
tion and disintegration reached its own decomposition, and, in its art,
reached a professed iconoclasm, the image of disincamation, an abstrac­
tion, an insubstantial image.
 18

The Icon in the Modern World

of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century is the icon, as much

from the artistic as from the spiritual point of view. Let us recall that the
discovery occurred on the eve of the great historic upheavals: the First World
War, and the wars and revolutions that followed it. In 1916, Eugene
Trubetskoi wrote that mankind was at the dawn “of a long turbulent period
in world history that will bring horrors unseen and unheard of before.”1 It
was precisely during this “turbulent period” that the icon appeared as the
supreme treasure of human art. For some, it represented the precious
inheritance of a distant past. For others, it was an object of aesthetic delight.
Still others began dimly to perceive the meaning of the icon, and in its light,
the significance of contemporary events. We cannot help but believe that
the long process of this progressive discovery had to emerge providentially
in our own time. Indeed, if spiritual decline manifested itself in a neglect of
the icon, the spiritual renewal prompted by catastrophes and upheavals leads
back to and encourages man to learn its language and meaning, and to
become truly aware of the icon. It is no longer viewed as something from
the past: it is reborn in the present. New expressions are found to describe
the icon. A slow appreciation of the spiritual meaning of the icon has arisen;
a spirit discovered in the icon that is infinitely more uplifting than ours, the
product of our civilization. The icon no longer represents only a cultural or
spiritual value: it is a revelation of the Orthodox spiritual experience through
artistic means, a “theology in images,” demonstrated already in the past, in
times of disaster and catastrophe. It is precisely in times of disaster that one
glimpses the meaning of modern catastrophes in light of the icon’s spiritual
power. “The icon, silent for centuries, has begun to speak to us, in the
language in which it spoke to our distant fathers.”2
1 “Two Worlds in Old-Russian Icon Painting,” in Icons: Theology in Color, trans. G. Vakar
(New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 69.
2 E. Trubetskoi, “A World View in Painting,” in ibid., 35.

463
464 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

We notice here how

Again the fate of the ancient icon coincides with that of the Russian church. In
life as in painting, the same thing happens: the darkened face is freed from
age-old layers of gold, smoke, and tasteless, unskilled overpainting. The image
of the world-embracing church that shines for us in the cleaned icon is miracu­
lously revived in the real life of the church. In life as in painting, we see the
undamaged, untouched image of the church-sobor?
Having been freed from the “secular splendor” and from the comfort into
which it had sunk, the destiny of the Russian Church is now leading it on
the way of the cross and of tribulations.
The arrival of Soviet power imposes a new world-view bom of a culture
alienated from the Church—a culture which, at present, rejects its mask of
Christianity. This new conception of the world is that of the state. In its
eyes, all beliefs, including that of the Church, are subsumed into the general
concept of “religion.” This religion, then, is viewed as “a reactionary
ideology,” “an illusion,” “the opium of the people.” This last formula “is the
cornerstone of the Marxist attitude toward religion.”4 The Church is
viewed as a foreign body within the state, since it embodies a world view
that is “hostile” to it. The state takes upon itself to watch over not only the
material well being of the people, but also its education, “the formation of
the new man.” Thus, on the one hand, “Soviet legislation on the freedom
of conscience is permeated by the desire to guarantee its citizens the right to
confess the religion of their choice or to confess none”;5 yet, on the other
hand, “an uncompromising struggle against religious convictions which are
incompatible with the materialistic view of the world, with scientific and
technical progress, is a crucial, decisive condition for the formation of the
new man.”6 Thus the struggle against religion is carried on in the very name
of freedom of conscience. And such freedom assumes the form of a whole
series of prohibitions, such as the one forbidding all contact with religion
outside of church services, a contact which is viewed as religious propa­
ganda. Likewise, “the teaching of the doctrines of the faith to persons under
the age of eighteen is forbidden in churches, chapels or private homes.”7
The Church and the icon are entering a process of purification:
3 E. Trubetskoi, * Russia and her Icons/ ibid, 98.
4 A Sedulin, Legislation on Religious Cults (in Russian) (Moscow, 1974), 6.
5 Ibid., 46.
6 Ibid, 41. See also V. Zots, Groundless Pretensions (in Russian) (Moscow, 1976), 135-6.
7 Su RSSU1922, no 49» art. 729» quoted by A. Sedulin, 32.
The Icon in the Modem World 465

everything that was linked to the Church by way of ritual obligation is

being removed. Likewise, everything that has been superimposed on the
icon is disappearing, including its mechanical production, which neither
the leaders of the committee nor the tsar himself were able to stop.
Businesses for the painting of artisanal icons or for their mechanical
reproduction have been liquidated.
Because religion is understood as belonging to a bygone past that has
no place in the new society, everything that has been created in this past
is accepted only as a cultural inheritance; it is preserved and studied only
as such. Everything the churches contained, including the icons, became
the property of the sure, which has assumed responsibility for it since
1918.8 The state has created restoration workshops, has nationalized the
private collections of icons, and organizes expositions. At the same time,
the hostility of the prevalent ideology toward religion extends to every­
thing associated with it, including the icon. If, in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, vandalism arose out of indifference and incompre­
hension, the contemporary massive destruction of churches and icons is
the result of ideological causes. From the perspective of the official ideol­
ogy, the work of the iconographer becomes not only useless, but also
harmful to society.

Thus, after centuries of neglect and disdain, nowadays the icon is, on
the one hand, being destroyed while, on the other, its discovery extends
well beyond the confines of the Orthodox world and reaches a world the
culture and heterodoxy of which had driven the icon into oblivion even
among the Orthodox. The immense labor done by the restorers who have
brought the ancient icon back to life is accompanied in our day by an ever
increasing number of illustrated publications in various languages, theo­
logical and scientific publications by Orthodox, non-Orthodox and even
atheist authors. The icon itself is infiltrating the world of western culture
in a massive fashion: icons are exported from Orthodox countries, they
are seen in museums; private collections and expositions multiply in
numerous cities of the western world. The Orthodox icon attracts believ­
ers and unbelievers alike. It generates various types of interest. There is
8 “Decree on the Recording, Inventory, and Protection of Ancient Art Monuments." See V. I.
Antonova and N. E. Mneva, Catalog ofAncient Russian Painting (in Russian) the Tretiakov
Gallery (Moscow, 1963), vol. 1, 26.
466 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

certainly the infatuation for everything that is old, and the passion for
collecting in general. But there is above all the attraction on the religious
plane, a desire to understand the icon, and through it, Orthodoxy. “For
our markedly visual epoch,” E. Benz writes, “the appeal to the eye, to the
contemplation of images is recommended. To understand the Eastern
Orthodox Church such an approach is all the more appropriate as the
exposition of the world of the saints through images occupies a central
role in it.”9 A little further we read: “The importance of the icon in
Orthodox piety and its theological basis open the way to the crucial
domain of Orthodox dogmatics. Indeed, the concept of the icon is one
that is dogmatically central and is found in all aspects of theology.”10
Most non-Orthodox believers view the icon either consciously as a wit­
ness to Orthodoxy or, absent a conscious confessional context, as an
expression of authentic Christianity on the level of prayer with the help of
art. Contrary to the degradation of this aspect in the image within Roman
Catholicism, the icon “invites to prayer.” “In icons, everyone will find rest
for the soul. They have a great deal to tell us, westerners; and they can
arouse in us a holy orientation toward the supernatural.”11 The age of the
icon is not that important; people are interested as much in the ancient
icon as in the more recent and even contemporaiy one, which while still
remaining within the canons, is frequently of an eclectic character.12
Indeed, whatever its artistic or even anisanal quality, the Orthodox icon
is the only art in the world that discloses the imperishable meaning of life,
the need for which is presently felt in the world of contemporary western
culture.
It is precisely in this context that the question of the icon has been
raised on a more official level by Anglican representatives inquiring about
the importance of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. During their meet­
ing with the Orthodox in Rymnik (Romania) in July 1974, the Anglicans
put this question in its true theological context. They were hopeful that
9 E. Benz, The Eastern Orthodox Church: its Thought and Life, trans. R. Winston (New York,
1963),!.
10 Ibid, 21.
11 Review of L. Ouspensky and V. Lossky, “Der Sinn der Ikonen,” in La pensée catholique, nos
75-76 (14 February, 1953).
12 In France, in Paris alone, there are four schools for icon painting, some of which have existed
for twelve years, including the Jesuit school. This is all the more significant because it was
precisely the Jesuits who formerly made great efforts to destroy traditional icon painting.
The Icon in the Modem World 467

the dogma of the veneration of icons would be explained by the Orthodox

as it applied to contemporary reality, because “a deeper understanding of
the principles of icon painting that reveal the truth and consequences of
the Incarnation of the Word of God can in our day help Christians better
to understand the Christian doctrine about man and the material
world.”13

This way of posing the question already illustrates how, in “our

markedly visual epoch,” the need arises for Orthodox and non-Orthodox
alike to become aware of the meaning of the dogma of the veneration of
icons for contemporary Christianity. In the West, the dogma of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council never permeated the consciousness of the
Church; as for the Orthodox world, the understanding of the icon
became blurred, and the awareness of its crucial importance evaporated,
so to speak, during the period of decadence of the icon itself, when the
meaning of its theological content was lost. Indeed, were entire genera­
tions of Orthodox not raised in the presence of an art which, though it
justified itself through the dogma of the veneration of icons, did not
correspond to it in reality? Let us recall that, from the seventeenth
century, everything related to the confessional content of the image was
excluded from the Russian text of the Synodicon of the Triumph of
Orthodoxy. In our own time, only rarely does one hear a sermon which
addresses the connection between this feast and the icon. Through its
dogma on the veneration of icons, the catholic consciousness of the
Church condemned iconoclasm as a heresy, and the image thus kept its
place in the life of the Church. Nonetheless, the vital significance of the
icon is no longer perceived in all its fulness, and this has caused indiffer­
ence toward its content and role.14
13 Report of the Sub-committee on “the Authority of Ecumenical Councils," see Messager de
l'Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe occidentale, nos 85-88 (1974), 40. This question was
further discussed by the same subcommittee in 1976, in Moscow.
14 Thus, to the question of a Protestant theologian on the meaning of the veneration of icons, an
Orthodox bishop replied, “We are in the habit of doing it." Since the eighteenth century, the
painting of icons has become the domain of secular painters who are not bound by the dogmas
of the Church. Later, the study of the icon was handed over to a science, which was likewise
unattached to dogma. The one thing that was left for the faithful was the pious habit of
praying before an icon. But even worse things happen. In a private conversation, an Orthodox
bishop said, “To hear you talk, one might think that without icons there could be no
Orthodoxy." A Protestant pastor, J. Ph. Ramseyer, wrote that “the image belong? to the very
essence of Christianity" (La Parole et l'image [Neuchâtel, 1963], 58). As we can see, the roles
468 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

To understand the meaning of the veneration of icons in our time is to

understand the icon itself, not merely as a church ornament or as a help
in prayer. It is also to understand its message, its significance for modem
man, to be aware of its spiritual witness transmitted from the depths of
Orthodoxy, the meaning of the Christian revelation.
There is, however, a point of view, not only among non-Orthodox but
also in certain Orthodox circles, which falsifies the understanding of the icon,
even when it arises from the best of intentions. This viewpoint may be
summarized as follows: the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which formulated
the dogma of the veneration of icons, did not define the character ofthe image
to be venerated, and “the theology of the defenders of the icon gives no
information on its style.” In other words, the Church has not canonized any
“style” or artistic genre. For someone educated within the modem culture,
who often lacks a clear awareness of the Church, this point ofview allows him
to consider, or even to state, that alongside the canonical icon, supposedly
linked to a certain epoch and to a given culture, there can be other genres or
artistic styles in the Church, reflecting other periods.
This attitude is largely the result of contemporary science which has
decreed that icon painting, a product of the Middle Ages and of its specific
view of the world, ended in the seventeenth century. As the medieval culture
of the icon disappeared, the icon too was relegated to the past. Such a view
defies the evidence; nonetheless, this view prevails in the contemporary
scholarly world, as it did in the nineteenth century, and it sees in the icon a
certain stage (Byzantine, Russian, and so forth) in the development of culture.
It is interesting to note in passing that the “new world view” is considered as
being entirely different, a break with the old; while the new art, the product
of this conception of the world, is seen (for what inexplicable reason?) as the
organic development of ancient art, from which it apparently derived natu­
rally. Scholarship disconnected from dogma has inserted the icon into the
general trend of art as such, and defined its creation as belonging to the
domain of general culture, thereby separating it from the Church. It must be
acknowledged that, since the “Age of Enlightenment,” the Church has
itself surrendered to this view and has passively accepted the opinion that
arc sometimes reversed: what one would expect to hear from the mouth of an Orthodox
bishop is expressed by a Protestant pastor, and vice versa. Thus the centuries-old absence of the
icon has led a Protestant pastor to an Orthodox conception of it, while the distortion of the
image, also centuries-old, led an Orthodox bishop to a Protestant attitude toward it.
The Icon in the Modem World 469

artistic creation is not in its domain, thereby surrendering it to secular

culture.15 But if the icon has survived the last three centuries and contin­
ues to live in our day, it is certainly not because of any attachment to
medieval culture: it has survived as an expression of faith.

For centuries the Church was creative, a bearer of culture. As theology

dominated all aspects of life, faith was shared by all; life itself was guided by
this faith, and found meaning in it Art expressed this faith, that is, the
revelation carried by the Church, which prompted a corresponding view of
the world, thereby producing an ecclesial culture. Revelation, however, has
not changed; our faith, likewise, has remained the same. An ecclesial culture
also continues to exist. But the content of the icon, the message it bears,
does not depend on a culture, even if it is ecclesial. Only the artistic,
historical-ecclesiastical aspect of the image depends on culture. It is typical
that the orosof the Seventh Ecumenical Council puts on the same level “the
Gospel book, the image of the cross, painted icons, or sacred relics of the
martyrs.” But the Gospel, the cross, and the relics of the saints have nothing
to do with culture. Thus, the icon is viewed as a sacred inheritance, arising
out of the depths of the catholic consciousness of the Church. “The
painting of icons...is an approved institution, a tradition of the catholic
Church” (oros). The issue in the bitter struggles of the iconoclastic period
was not merely the right to represent God and His saints; the central issue
was precisely the image, bearing and revealing the truth; that is, precisely a
certain “style” of art which corresponded to the Gospel. What was at stake
was the same truth, translated either in words or through images, for the
expression of which the confessors suffered martyrdom. Fashioned progres­
sively by the Church, the artistic language of the icon was from the
beginning proper to all Christian peoples, regardless of any national, social
or cultural differences, because its unity resulted not from a common
culture of administrative rules, but from a common faith. At the time of
the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the artistic language of the Church was
identical to that of the preceding epochs, even when it was not sufficiently
purified, or focused on its goal. For a thousand years, the “style” of the
icon was the common heritage of all of Christendom, whether in the East
15 Over the past centuries, it is true, the Orthodox hierarchy was completely freed from the need
to know anything at all in the domain of sacred art: all things were decided by the secular
authorities and by the Academy of Fine Arts.
470 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

or the West. There was no other. The historical course of this artistic
language is epitomized by periods of greater precision and purity or, by
contrast, of decay and deviation. Indeed, this “style” and its purity depend
on Orthodoxy, on an assimilation of revelation that is more or less
complete. This language is thus necessarily subject to change, and what
we see along the two millennia of its history are changes within this iconic
“style,” or, more precisely, within the iconographie canon.
It is partly by reason of a conception of the icon as a mere inheritance
from the past or as one of the possible art forms in the Church, that for
the majority of the faithful, clergy, and bishops, there has been no
“discovery” of the icon. One must also say that from the point of view of
the Church there was indeed nothing to “discover”: icons have remained
in the churches (generally repainted, though some were not), and people
prayed before them. It is therefore more correct to speak of a “return” to
the icon. The veneration of the icon has remained the same; its place in
the liturgical life of the Church has not changed. But alongside it, there
exists a “religious” art that is venerated in the same way. The doctrinal
aspect of the icon, expressed in conciliar decisions, patristic writings or the
Liturgy, has disappeared from the general awareness, together with the
Orthodox link between the image and revealed doctrine. This is why the
doctrine of the Church is applied to any image, provided it has a religious
subject. This attitude, proper to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
has become congealed in its rigidity, just as another epoch became con­
gealed in ancient ritualism. People have fallen into the habit of not seeing,
even of not being interested in, the image itself and its Orthodox aspect.
After centuries of decadence, the return to this image is taking place
slowly, particularly in ecclesiastical circles, however paradoxical this may
seem.16 The slowness of this process reveals the depth of the gap that exists
16 Christian archeology is taught in seminaries and academies. But the doctrinal content of the image
has up to now not been taught* In 1954, a course on iconology as a theological discipline was
introduced (for the first time) in the seminary of the Exarchate of the Patriarchate of Moscow in
Western Europe, located in Paris. The clergy have to draw their knowledge about the content ofthe
image from scientific works on the history of art, which sometimes contain unexpected “theologi­
cal” digressions. Far be it from us to deny the importance of scientific works for the knowledge of
the icon. On the contrary, we see in them a valuable contribution to the education of the clergy.
Nonetheless, they are for them only a secondary source. The dogmatic content of the image must
be the foundation of the clergy's knowledge. No one is under the obligation to know art history,
but to know one’s faith, and to discern whether the image before which one prays expresses this
faith or not, is the duty ofevery believer, and all the more of the clergy.
The Icon in the Modem World 471

between us and the icon. A letter received from Russia states:

Meanwhile, the Orthodox believers who belong to the Church are searching
feverishly for psychological and other means that would give them a better
approach to Orthodoxy—in El Greco, Chekhov, just about anybody. Provided
that they do not have to concentrate on the fulness ofthe Church.

Indeed, this is where the shoe pinches. Such insensitivity toward the icon
as the image of an existentially integrated revelation is due to an equally
deep insensitivity toward the Church. The Church is misunderstood: for
many, it is only one “cultural (or spiritual) value” among others, some
type of appendage to culture; and it has to justify its existence by serving
as a stimulus to artistic activity, to the advent of social justice, and so
forth. In other words, the issue here is the same temptation about the
“Kingdom of Israel” (Acts 1:6), to which the apostles gave in.17

For the educated person today, the awareness of the Church and of the
icon follow the same path. In both cases we see the same stages of trial and
error, and finally the revelation (a theology in image). Paraphrasing
Alexander Schmemann, we may say that in order to sense in the icon
something more than a work of art or an object of personal devotion, “it
is necessary to see and sense the Church as something more than a society
of believers.’”18 Even when attracted by the icon, the believer sometimes
hesitates: he is not sure that it is the icon, and not a naturalistic image,
that expresses his faith. He sees icons in museums, and it seems to him
that if a church is decorated with nothing but icons, it becomes a
17 If. in the nineteenth century, an intellectual “was ashamed of being a believer," in our time.
“the modern intellectual is ashamed to enter the church. There's much that needs to be
cleaned up in the church, much to be renewed and reoiganized if she is to become accessible
to the modem mind” (Dmitri Dudko. Our Hope, trans. Paul D. Garrett [New York: St
Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1977], 183). An intellectual might be a believer, but for him, the
Church should adapt itself to “the modern mind.” He does not want to understand the
Church but to make it conformable to his own lack of understanding, thereby to save it. It
must be said that this desire to “renovate and restructure,” to approach the needs of the time,
of which we have already spoken (see the preceding chapter, note 118), is far from being
unique to our time. Toward the end of the fourth century or the beginning of the fifth, St
Vincent of Lérins wrote: “They are not satisfied with a traditional rule of faith, received from
antiquity. From day to day, they desire what is new, always what is new. They are dying to
add, change, suppress something in religion* {Çomrmnotorium, ch. 21, Commentary on 1
Tim [Namur, I960], 97). Thus, “If there is one thing of which they say, 'Look! This is new,’
such a thing already existed in the centuries that have preceded us” (Ec 1:10).
18 Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, trans. A. Moorhouse (New York:
St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 13.
472 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

museum. (We ourselves have heard this.) Moreover, the difference be­
tween an icon and a naturalistic religious image is frequently defined
precisely as a difference in “style,” whether ancient or new, or rather
old-ritualistic or Orthodox.
In addition to the point of view according to which the icon represents
one possible “style” among others in sacred art, let us note another, which
serves as a basis, as a justification for the first. It is so widespread that it has
even been expressed in the discussions of the pre-conciliar Commission.19
The attitude expressed there is one of pastoral and doctrinal concern.
“The icon is an expression of Orthodoxy with its moral and dogmatic
teaching...a revelation of the life in Christ and of the mysteries of the
divine economy for the salvation of man.” It would be difficult to state it
better. However, a little further, we read: “The realistic trend in art is
spiritual milk for the simple people.” This prompts several questions.
First, it is strange, even incomprehensible, to classify the people in the
Church in cultural categories. Is it not the task of the Church to reveal the
mysteries of the divine economy to all its members, educated or not? Does
revelation not address itself to man, regardless of his cultural level? It is
also independently of the latter that one assimilates this revelation and
grows spiritually.20
On the other hand, since the icon “reflects Orthodoxy most fully,
most exhaustively, and with all possible depth and breadth,” this means
that the “realistic trend in art” does not do this. The “realistic trend” is
therefore not a “revelation of the life in Christ,” or at the least it truncates
it. Would the mysteries of the divine economy for the salvation of man
not be intended for “the simple people”?21 Has the Church ever dimin­
ished or lowered its doctrine in order to tailor it to the mind of any
particular layer of society? Does it initiate people into the mysteries of
salvation to a greater or lesser extent? The “realistic” trend in painting, the
outcome of an autonomous culture, expresses the existence of a visible
19 See Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, no 1 (1961).
20 It is interesting to note that if, in the past, the icon was linked with the lack of culture among
“the simple people," at present, by contrast, it is precisely the icon that is intended for the
cultivated wodd, while so-called “realistic" painting is viewed as “milk for the simple people."
21 If, during the course of its history, the Church followed a certain progression in the initiation
into the mysteries of the divine economy, this had nothing to do with the concept of “the
simple people": it addressed itself to catechumens, people preparing themselves to receive
baptism.
The Icon in the Modem World 473

world which is independent of the divine world; it evokes life “according

to the elements of this world,” even if such life is idealized by the painters
personal piety. Thus art, as indeed any art that limits itself only to the
humanity of Christ, cannot possibly reveal the life in Christ or show “the
way of salvation.” This way of salvation for man and the world certainly
does not consist in accepting their actual condition as normal and in
representing it through art; it consists in showing how the fallen world is
removed from the divine plan, where man’s salvation lies and through it,
that of the world. “For if a saint [as portrayed by the trend of ‘realism’]
resembles [the believer] in everything, wherein does his power lie? How
can he come to the aid of man sunk deep in worries and grief?” The
author of these words, an art historian, reasons on the practical level with
a logic that informs her correct point of view (even though, in her eyes,
the icon is a “legendary image,” “an invention”).22 She understands the
difference between an icon and a “realistic” image much better than many
faithful and members of the clergy. One could argue that logic is one
thing and faith another: the icon is made not for God but for the believer,
and simple logic does not contradict this. When St Basil, for example,
said, “The one who picks up someone who has fallen must necessarily be
higher than the latter,”23 this is nothing but simple logic, and yet it can be
applied precisely to the spiritual life. The “realistic” image is the result of
a “free” creation not bound by the dogmas of the Church, a creation the
seventeenth century innovators demanded so doggedly.
If, on the doctrinal level, the work of a non-Church related painter does
not express the teaching of salvation, his creation—based on the concept the
painter has of the spiritual life, that is, based on his imagination—runs the risk
of being spiritually destructive. Let us listen to someone more competent in
this field than I—Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov):
The power of imagination is developed especially in passionate people. It
operates in them in accordance with its own rules and transforms everything that
is sacred into something passionate. Scenes by famous, but passionate, painters
in which sacred events and people are depicted may convince us of this. These
painters have tried to imagine and represent holiness and perfection in all their
aspects. But permeated by sin, they portray sin—only sin. A refined voluptuous*
22 K. Komilovich, Toward a Chronicle of Russian Art (in Russian) (Moscow-Leningrad, I960),
89.
23 Homilia in martyrem Julittam, PG 31:257B.
474 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

ness radiates from the image through which the brilliant painter wanted to
represent a divine love and a chastity unknown to him.. .The works of such
painters enchant passionate viewers, but to people imbued with the spirit of the
Gospel, such works of genius inspire sadness and revulsion, marked as they are
by blasphemy and the stain of sin (Fig. 50).24

P. Florenskii adds that the painter, in the modem understanding of the term,
“by presenting a divine love and a chastity unknown to him,” can even be
motivated by pious intentions and devout feeling?. But in depending only on
a semi-conscious remembrance of the icon, such painters
confuse canonical truth with their own freewill. They take upon themselves the
highly responsible work of the Fathers. But not being Church Fathers them­
selves, they act as imposters and false witnesses. Such a contemporary icon is
nothing but a false witness publicly proclaimed in the Church.2*

The reference here is not merely to the person of the painter: it is to art
itself, borrowed from the West—an art that is alien to the dogmatic
teachings and the spiritual experience of Orthodoxy, one that applies its
powers of expression in a domain where they are not applicable, to
something they cannot transmit.26 Such art, introduced into Orthodoxy,
was the outcome of spiritual decay, not the result of any change in
doctrine. As compared to the doctrine, it remained a borrowed element, a
foreign body with no link to the Tradition, and thus to the spiritual
inheritance of the historic Church. It is this art, the product of a
dechristianized culture—an art which not only cannot be justified by the
Seventh Ecumenical Council, but which totally disagrees with its conclu­
sion—that one proposes to legitimize by conciliar action in the Church,
under the guise of “spiritual milk,” on the same basis as the icon.
There is, however, a more serious argument in favor of the “realistic
style” alongside the icon. This is the existence of miraculous images:
24 Works ofBishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, vol. 3, Ascetical Essays (in Russian) (St Petersburg,
1905), 287.
25 P. Florenskii, “The Iconostasis,* (in Russian), Bogoslovskie Trudy, no 9 (Moscow, 1972), 107.
This is how the author characterizes the painting of Vasnetsov, Nesterov, and Vrubd.
26 Let us note an amusing attempt to present the transplantation of Latin art into Orthodoxy as
“a progressive transformation of Byzantine art.* It claims that baroque and rococo art “were
immensely popular among a large part of the Russian population in the eighteenth century,*
and that by expressing a Christianity of the Franciscan type, the Russians “nevertheless did not
go outside the accepted Orthodox tradition.* This instructive excursus into art history ends
with the advice: “Begin to learn from an age favored by grace* (that of the “Enlightenment*?
from Franciscans?). J. P. Besse, “Affinités spirituelles du baroque russe,* Contacts, no 91 (Paris,
1975), 351-8.
The Icon in the Modem World 475

50. St Barbara. Russian “icon” of the 18 th century.

476 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

“Both genres of sacred art are acceptable to express the Christian truths in
Orthodoxy by virtue of the miracles that have appeared in these two types
of ecclesiastic, iconographie creation.”27 Thus, if the “realistic style” does
not express the fulness of the truths of salvation, this is somehow compen­
sated for by the existence of miraculous images.
This argument raises a basic question, one of principle: is it possible to
consider miracles as the guiding principle in the life of the Church,
whether it be in its entirety or in one of its manifestations (in this case,
art)? Are miracles a criterion? As we have seen,28 this question arose
already in the seventeenth century, but in an opposite sense: miracles were
rejected as a criterion in canonical iconography, precisely by the advocates
of the new, “realistic” trend in art.
In a miracle, “the order of nature is overcome”: for the salvation of
man, God makes the order He established stand still. The divine mercy
sometimes works miracles within the framework of the commandments
and canons, sometimes by suspending the divine commandments and the
canons of the Church. God can also perform miracles apart from icons,
just as He sometimes acts through unworthy people and through the
forces of nature. But a miracle, by definition, cannot be a norm: it is a
miracle precisely because it is outside the norm.
The entire life of the Church is certainly based on a miracle, the
miracle par excellence that gives meaning and structure to this life—the
Incarnation of God and man’s deification. “The amazing miracle in
heaven and on earth is that God is on earth and man in heaven.”29 It is
precisely this miracle that is the norm of the life of the Church, a norm
fixed in its canon, one which the Church places against the actual condi­
tion of the world. The entire liturgical cycle of the Church is defined by
this: its annual cycle is based on the stages, the aspects of this fundamen­
tal, decisive miracle—and not on various specific miracles, even those
worked by Christ himself. The Church lives not by what is passing and
specific, but by what is immutable. Is this not the reason why, for the
Church, miracles have never been a criterion in any domain whatsoever?
27 Documents of the preconciliar discussion, Journal du Patriarchat de Moscou, no. 1 (1961).
28 See ch. 15, entided, “The Art of the Seventeenth Century: an Art Divided. The Tradition
Abandoned.*
29 St Abbas Thalassios, “To the Priest Paul, on Love, Abstinence and the Spiritual Life" (in
Russian), par. 98, Philokalia, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1888).
The Icon in the Modem World 477

Its life has never been ruled by them.30 It is significant that the conciliar
decisions ordain that icons be painted not based on miraculous models
(indeed, the miracles performed by an icon are an external, temporal
manifestation, not an enduring display), but in the same manner in which
the ancient iconographers painted, that is, according to the iconographie
canon. What is at issue, we must emphasize, is the Orthodox, canonical
image, that is, the unchanged expression “of the mysteries of the divine
economy for the salvation of man.”
As for the “realistic style,” how can an image that does not express the
teaching of the Church and does not bear “the revelation of the life in
Christ” become a message of the Church? How can this image, through
miracles, become acceptable to express “the Christian truths in Ortho­
doxy” on the same basis as the image that expresses these? Nonetheless,
such an image can sometimes serve as the starting point for a new type of
canonical icon and can be introduced into the canon of the Church, if its
subject does not contradict Orthodox doctrine, that is, if it is not hereti­
cal, and provided the miracle be authentic.
At present, the dogma of the veneration of icons is important not only
on the doctrinal level vis-à-vis the non-Orthodox, but also from an
extra-religious perspective. Indeed, the encounter with Orthodoxy and
the return to the sources of Christianity so typical of our age are, on the
one hand, also a true encounter with the icon, and thus with the original
fulness of the Christian revelation, expressed by word and image. On the
other hand, the message of the Orthodox icon is an answer to the
problems of our times precisely because these problems are clearly of an
anthropological nature. Man is the central problem of our age, man led to
an impasse by secularized humanism.
A civilization in disarray and a whole series of scientific and technical
revolutions confront the world with the question: how to preserve the
human in man? Further, how can the human race itself be preserved? The
goal of scientific and technical progress is the well-being of man especially
30 Let us keep in mind that the qualitative range of miracles is wide. In addition to the authentic
miracles, there are “miracles* that result from psychological neuroses, or credulity; some are
known to be mere deceptions; finally, there are also miracles of diabolical origin (see Mt
24:24; 2 Th 2:9; Rev 13:13-14; 19:20; cf. 16:14). Lasdy, the true, that is, salutary miracles
have most often been performed by Christ not upon His disciples but on strangers, just as now
they often occur outside the Church.
478 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

by freeing his creative energy, and such progress enjoys a success unknown
in the past. But in this world where science and technology have under­
gone dizzying degree of development, in this world where contemporary
ideologies are likewise directed toward the good and the progress of man,
one notices, paradoxically, an irresistible tendency toward savagery, both
outward and inward: the spiritualization of man’s animal life is replaced
by a bestialization of his spirit.
Man is turning into a means of production; his essential value lies not
in the person, but in his function. Our daily life is dominated by what is
false, fifth-rate, and also by a fragmentation that leads to decomposition
in all areas. The result is a loss of physical and spiritual harmony, a search
for “artificial paradises,” including drugs.
The humanity which we observe and which we are seems to be a broken
humanity, broken first of all in each of us.. .Here we are, “ass up in the air,” with
no center where everything is reconciled. Separated from ourselves, we are also
separated from one another.31

In our modern world, then, this broken, divided human being is “the
measure of all things.” As Schmemann has noted, this elevated position of
modem humanity coincides paradoxically with a distortion of our voca­
tion, and of God’s plan for us. Our epoch is anthropocentric; but man,
the center, is insignificant, a dwarf. The autonomous man of our contem­
porary, humanistic culture denies his resemblance to the Prototype. He
has not accepted the image of glory, revealed in the humiliated body of
Christ. Our civilization began precisely with the refusal of this ineffable
image of glory—it began with what should, by theological analogy, be
called “a second fall.”32 By mutilating his nature, man has violated the
hierarchy of being. He has thereby adulterated his role in relation to the
surrounding world. Instead of submitting to the will of God, he submit­
ted to the world of matter which he was called to dominate. Having
refused God the Creator, and declaring himself creator, man has created
for himself other gods more eager for human victims than the pagan gods
were.
On the spiritual level, this struggle against God, whether open or
secret, leads paradoxically to faith. Fragmentation and disintegration lead
31 Olivier Clément, Questions sur Phomme (Paris, 1972), 7.
32 Alexander Schmemann, “Can One Be a Believer, Being Civilized?* (in Russian), Messager de
PACER, no 107 (Paris, 1974), 145-52.
The Icon in the Modem World 479

to a quest for unity; the false and the artificial, to a taste for what is
authentic. Man searches for the meaning of existence when the question
arises in this fragmented world of how one can believe, why, in whom,
and in what.
Here the destinies of the Orthodox Church and of the icon coincide
once again. If during the Synodal period the leading role fell to the Russian
Church, linked to a powerful state, none of the local churches presently
finds itself in such a situation. The rapid growth of a desacralized culture has
limited the means of action the Church once had at its disposal.
It is when Orthodoxy is oppressed by militant atheism and other
religions, weakened by schisms and confusion, that it reaches out to the
world outside. In our day, the leading role in this mission does not belong
to any particular local church, but to Orthodoxy, as a manifestation of the
revelation which is the Church. The nature of the mission has also
changed: it is no longer only a question of preaching Christianity to
unenlightened peoples but, above all, of presenting it as an alternative to
the dechristianized world, whose culture is in total disarray. This culture,
marked by fragmentation and artificiality, is confronted by Orthodoxy as
its antithesis, as truth, unity and authenticity, because the very nature of
the Church, its catholicity, represents the opposite of separatism, dis­
unity, discord, and individualism.
Christian revelation brings a momentous reversal to the relationship of
fallen man with God on the one hand, and on the other, with the world
in its actual condition: it announces that God’s design had been re-estab­
lished. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways” (Is 55:8-9).
Christianity does not address itself to any particular category of peo­
ple, to any particular class, society, organism, national or social group; it
is not an ideological expedient to improve the fallen world, to establish
“the Kingdom of God” on earth. It reveals the Kingdom of God not in
the external sphere, but within man.33 In the preaching of John the
Baptist, “repent,” that is, “change your purpose” (metanoietè), in the
33 For the Judaic tradition, the coming into the world of the Messiah proved to be a “scandal”
precisely because the promised Kingdom of God turned out to be not a kingdom of this world
but a kingdom within man; and because the way that leads to it passes through the cross.
480 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

literal sense of the term, requires that one refuse to walk the path followed
before, and that one adopt a new path, the opposite of sin. “Therefore, if
anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old has passed away. Behold,
the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). The entire preaching of the Gospel (the
parables of the Kingdom of God, the Sermon on the Mount, and so forth)
points in a direction opposite to the ways of the fallen world. As an
expression of the very essence of Christianity, the evangelical perspective
gives the lie to the attitude that considers the disunity and disintegration
present in the world as natural. As reality, truth, and way of salvation, it
represents the opposite of the law of “the prince of this world,” that
unhealthy condition which is generally called “normal,” natural, proper
to creation (“such is nature”—is the most current rationalization). But the
world as created by God is good and beautiful. Sin, division, decay,
disintegration are not natural: they are a condition imposed upon nature
by man. Inherent to Christianity is not the denial of this world, but on the
contrary, its healing, through the intermediary of man. Man is called to
bring himself and the surrounding world into union with and in the
Creator. The image of a world transformed in the humanity of Christ
(such is the meaning of its existence from the perspective of this ultimate
destiny) is contrasted to a world ruled by evil, violence, and bitter discord.
In our day, with the advent of Orthodoxy in this “upside-down” world,
two completely different orientations of man and of his creativity confront
one another: the anthropocentrism of a secularized, a-religious humanism,
and Christian anthropocentrism. In this confrontation, the icon plays a
leading role. The essential meaning of its “discovery” in our epoch does not lie
in the fact that it is now appreciated and understood to a greater or lesser
extent, but in the witness it offers to contemporary man: a witness to the
victory gained by man over all discord and disintegration, a witness to another
way of life that puts man in a totally different perspective in relation to his
Creator and radically reorients his attitude toward the fallen world, gives him
a different understanding, another vision of the world.

Returning to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, we should say that it

proclaimed nothing essentially new. It merely defined the significance of
the Christian image, as it had been from the beginning. Here we will
briefly mention only those major themes that are directly related to
various aspects of present-day problems.
The Icon in the Modem World 481

In its oros and in its judgments, the Council linked the icon above all to
the Gospel, that is, to theology understood in its elementary sense, made
visible, in the words of St Gregory Palamas, “by the Truth itself which is
Christ Being God above the ages, He has become for us also a theologian.”34
We are here in the presence of the Christian concept of the image and
its meaning in theology, and hence in the life of man, created in the image of
God.
If man is logikos.. .if he is “in the image” of the Logos, everything which touches
the destiny of man—grace, sin, redemption by the Word made man—must also
be related to the theology of the image. And we may say the same of the Church,
the sacraments, sanctification, and the end of all things. There is no branch of
theological teaching which can be entirely isolated from the problem of the image
without danger of severing it from the living stock of Christian tradition. We
may say that for a theologian of the catholic tradition in the East and in the West,
for one who is true to the mainline of patristic thought, the theme of the image
(in its twofold acceptance—the image as the principle of God’s self-manifesta­
tion and the image as the foundation of a particular relationship of man to God)
must belong to the essence of Christianity.35

Through the Incarnation, which is the fundamental dogmatic fact of Christian­

ity, “image” and “theology” are linked so closely together that the expression
“theology of the image” might become almost a tautology—which it is, if one
chooses to regard theology as a knowledge of God in His Logos, who is the
consubstantial Image of the Father.36

Thus, since it is the one, divine hypostasis of Jesus Christ who in the
Incarnation reveals the Word and the Image of the Father to the world,
theology and the icon together express the same revelation—by work and
through the image. In other words, theology in word, and theology in
image constitute an ontological totality, and thereby one and the same
instruction for man: they guide him as he assimilates the revelation. They
are the path of his salvation.37 Being one of the basic truths of revelation,
34 As quoted by Arch imandrite Amphilochius (Radovic), To Mysterion tes Hagas Triados kata ton
Gregorian PdZomm (Thessalonika, 1973), 144.
35 V. Lossky, “La Théologie de l’image,” Messager de l'Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe
occidentale, nos 30-31 (1959), 123.
36 Ibid, 129.
37 When the word no longer corresponds to the visible image, a break between them results: two
different ways of expressing the same truth become disunited; their ontological fullness which
corresponds to the unity of truth itself disintegrates at the expense of the fullness of revelation.
Thus the expression “theology in image,” which has been traditionally applied to the icon, is
acceptable only when it corresponds to theology in the patristic sense, as the concrete
482 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the image is therefore one of the components of the doctrinal fullness of

the Church.
By grounding the icon on the Incarnation, that is, on christological
dogma, the Council insistently (and repeatedly) referred to the veneration
of icons as unbroken since the time of the apostles, that is, to the
uninterrupted succession of the apostolic tradition. It is true that modern
man (with his faith in the infallibility of science) may be skeptical about
this statement, all the more since references to antiquity have often been
used as proofs of authenticity without sufficient reason. But in the case
before us, the Fathers of the Council based themselves not on data used
by contemporary science but, as we have seen, on the very essence of
Christianity, on the appearance in the created world of “the image of the
invisible God, the first born of all creation” (Col 1:15—pericope read on
the feast of the Icon of “Christ not Made by Human Hands,” the Holy
Face). “When the Word of God became flesh,” Irenaeus states, “He
showed forth the image truly, since He himself became what was His
image; and He reestablished the likeness—by rendering man altogether
similar to the invisible Father.”38 It is this image of the invisible God,
imprinted in matter as a witness “of the true, non-illusionary Incarnation
of God the Word” (oros of the Council) which, on the one hand, is
contrasted to the absence of any image of God in the Old Testament, and,
on the other, to the false image in paganism, the idol. Faced with this false
image of God created in the image of man, Christianity raises the image
of Christ before the world. Christianity shows the prototype according to
which man was created, but which is now hidden because of his sin. This
image lives in the Tradition, which is the charismatic or mystical memory
of the Church, its inner life. Above all, this Tradition is “the unity of the
Spirit, the living and interrupted link with the mystery of Pentecost.”39
Hence the insistence on apostolic tradition in the references of the Coun­
cil Fathers.40 Since the Christian revelation was, at the beginning, given to
knowledge of God, leading to direct contact with Him. If not, then the patristic terminology
is in danger of being applied to the image by virtue of a mere combination of words; we have
seen this happen in the seventeenth century.
38 Contra Haereses, V, 16, 2 (Paris, 1969), vol. 2, 217.
39 G. Florovsky, “Theological Fragments* (in Russian), PmA no 31 (Paris, 1931), 23.
40 Both the word and the image live only in the Tradition. Outside the latter, the Gospel
becomes, as we see today, a historic document from the first centuries of our era; the Old
Testament, the history of the Jewish people and the Church fades into the general concept of
The Icon in the Modem World 483

the world in a twofold manner, by the word and through the image, “by
following the teaching of the Holy Fathers and the tradition of the
catholic Church” (ahm), the Council confirmed that the image has existed
from the beginning; not only is the image necessary, but it belongs
organically to Christianity, because it derives from the Incarnation of a
divine Person. This is why iconoclasm—despite its antiquity that dates to
the beginning of Christianity, and even though its opposition to the
image is based on the Old Testament prohibition and is nourished by
spiritual trends of an Origenistic tendency—came up against an insur­
mountable obstacle, and only served to clarify and make the revealed
truth still more manifest.
For our epoch, the significance of the Seventh Ecumenical Council lies
above all in the fact that by its response to an open iconoclasm, it has
proclaimed for all time that the icon is an expression of the Christian
faith, an inalienable attribute of orthodoxy. Thus the dogma of the
veneration of icons is an answer to all heresies—iconoclasm being “the
sum of numerous heresies and errors,” according to the council—that
undermined and continued to undermine, openly or secretly, a certain
aspect of the divine humanity and this Divine-Humanity in its totality,
and therefore Christian anthropology. Through the dogma of the venera­
tion of icons, the Fathers of the council defended Christian anthropology,
that it, the relationship between God and the human being revealed in the
Person ofJesus Christ. They saw its center of gravity not in their theolog­
ical pronouncements but in the concrete experience of holiness, and in
the image. Indeed, “if the Incarnation of God the Word, as a realization
of the perfect man, is above all an anthropological event, His indwelling
in man is also an anthropological event.”41 This is why in the victory over
iconoclasm, the catholic consciousness of the Church confirmed the icon
as a triumph of Orthodoxy, as a witness by the Church of the revealed
truth. Indeed, Christian anthropology found its most direct and clearest
expression in the Orthodox icon. Does the icon not show “the truth and
consequences of the divine Incarnation”? Does it not illustrate with the
“religion.” Indeed, “to refuse the image of the Tradition is essentially to repudiate the Church
as the Body of Christ, to belittle it” (G. Florovsky, “The House of the Father’ [in Russian],
Put\ no 27 [Paris, 1927], 78).
41 From a summary in German of the book of Archimandrite Amphilochius (Radovic), To
Mysterien tes Hagios Triados (Thessalonika, 1973), 231.
484 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

utmost fullness and depth the Christian doctrine about the relationship
between man and God, and between man and the world? To exclude the
image from Christian anthropology is thus not only to exclude the visible
image of the Incarnation of God, but also to renounce a witness of the
likeness to God acquired by man, a realization of the divine economy. It
is to endanger the Orthodox witness of the truth.
Since the icon is above all the representation of a person (be it the
divine Person of Christ or a human being) indicated by his proper name,
its truth is conditioned by its authenticity: a historic authenticity, because
an “image is of like character with its prototype,”42 and a charismatic
authenticity.43 God, indescribable in His divinity, is joined “without
confusion or separation” (dogma of Chalcedon) to describable humanity.
Man unites his describable humanity to the indescribable Divinity.

We have already noted that the image of the person of Christ, as a

witness of His Incarnation, was for the defenders of the icon also a witness
to the reality of the eucharistie sacrament.44 Thus the authenticity of the
image, its content, is seen in its conformity to the sacrament. The faith of
the Church is distinguished from all others by its concrete, physical
communion with its object. Through such contact, faith becomes vision,
knowledge, and community of life with Him. This common life is
42 St John of Damascus, De imaginibus oratio I, 9, PG 94(1): 1240C.
43 Let us note here a rather original commentary on the icon and the cross of the oros Seventh
Ecumenical Council in the book, The Year of Grace: A Scriptural and Liturgical Commentary
on the Calendar ofthe Orthodox Church by a Monk of the Eastern Church, trans. Deborah Cowen
(New York: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1980), 132: “Here, we will touch on the fundamental
ideas that concern icons. First of all, an icon is neither a representation nor a resemblance.*
However, according to patristic teaching the icon is precisely a portrait reproducing the resem­
blance of the prototype, from which it is distinguished by nature. If the icon is “neither a
representation nor a resemblance,” how then, according to the author, can its theme be “the Person
of Christ [or] the Mother of God” or other saints? Further down, the author endeavors to convince
the reader that the role of the icon in Christian piety ought not to be exaggerated. “The church has
never made it obligatory for believers to have icons in their homes or to reserve for them a special
place in their prayers or personal devotions” (p. 153). But the Orthodox Church never makes
anything “obligatory* (the concept of “obligation” belong? to Roman Catholicism, not Ortho­
doxy). For the good of its members, the church makes decisions. This is precisely how this is said in
the oros of the council: “We decide...that in the holy Church of God, on vessels and sacred
vestments, on walls and boards, in houses and on the roads, precious holy icons be placed...; they
should be honored with a kiss and a bow ofveneration.”
44 See the chapter, “The Great Council of Moscow and the Image of God the Father,” and J.
Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought» trans. Y. Dubois (New York: St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1987), 190.
The Icon in the Modem World 485

realized in the Eucharist The prayer before communion is addressed to a

concrete person because it is only by addressing a person in a relationship,
that it is possible to partake of what the person carries within, of what
subsists in Him. But this contact requires an image, because man does not
address himself to an imaginary Christ or an abstract divinity, but to a
person: “In truth, You are the Christ...; this is Your Body...” (the image
on the chalice). In the Eucharist, through the action of the Holy Spirit,
the bread and wine become the divine Body and Blood of the risen and
glorified Christ (Christianity does not know a “spiritual resurrection”
outside the body): salvation has been and is still being accomplished
through the body.45 “The Eucharist itself represents for us salvation
precisely because it is ‘Body’ and ‘humanity’”4^The image of the person
of Christ only corresponds to the sacrament if it represents a body over
which death no longer has dominion (Rom 5:8-9), that is, the Body of
Christ in glory. Thus the reality of the glorified Body of Christ in the
sacrament of the Eucharist is of necessity linked to the authenticity of His
personal image, for the Body of Christ depicted on the icon is this same
“Body of God resplendent in divine glory, incorruptible, holy, life-giv­
ing.”47 As a witness to the Incarnation, the image is linked here to
eschatology, because the glorious Body of Christ is His Body of the
Second Coming and of the Judgment (see the prayer before communion).
Hence the warning in the third canon of the Council of 869-870: “If
someone does not venerate the icon of Christ the Savior, let him not see
His face at the Second Coming.”48

In other words, only the twofold realism of the image—a realism that unites
the representable with the non-representable—can correspond to the sacrament
of the Eucharist This link between image and sacrament excludes any image
that merely shows “an aspect of the servant,” or even an abstract concept
45 Not only does Christianity not dematerialize matter, but on the contrary, it is resolutely
"materialistic.* From its inception, it did not content itself with the rehabilitation of the body:
it affirmed that it is salutary. It professes the transfiguration of human nature and its
resurrection in the body, in matter. “I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter
who became matter for my sake...who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I
cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation!* (St John of Damascus, On the Divine
Images, First Apology, 16, trans. D. Anderson [New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980],
23; see also, SecondApology, 14, ibid.).
46 J. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, op. cit.
47 Seventh Ecumenical Council, Acts, Sixth Session, Mansi XIII.
48 See ch. 11, “The Post-Iconoclastic Period.*
486 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Just as for the icon of Christ, the authenticity of the icon of a saint
consists of its correspondence to its prototype. The personal experience of
deification, then, is the union of representable humanity with the un­
representable divinity when, in the words of St Ephrem the Syrian, man
“having purified the eyes of his heart, always discerns the Lord in himself,
as in a mirror,”49 and “transforms himself into the same image” (cf 2 Cor
3:18). A saint is thus represented not according to the appearance of his
corruptible flesh but according to that of the glorified body of Christ.
Here we must make a proviso. Unlike philosophy, theology does not
deal with abstract concepts. It has to do with concrete facts, the data of
revelation, facts that transcend human means of expression. Iconography
is in the same situation, faced with the same facts. As the Christian
revelation is beyond words as much as images, no verbal or artistic
expression is in itself able to express God, or give an adequate and direct
knowledge of Him. In this sense, the one and the other are always
“failures,” since they must transmit the inconceivable by the conceivable,
the unrepresentable by the representable, express in the created what is
beyond it and of a different nature. But their value consists precisely in
that both theology and the icon reach the height of human possibilities,
while realizing their inadequacy. But does God not show by the cross that
He himself is the supreme “failure”? It is precisely through this “failure”
which is proper to them that theology and the icon are called to witness
to God, to make the divine presence perceivable—this presence which, in
its reality, is accessible in the experience of holiness.
In this area there are, in both theology and sacred art, two heresies that
may be contrasted to one another, as V. Lossky indicated in his courses.
The first heresy is “humanization” (“making immanent”), the lowering of
the divine transcendence to our human conceptions. The period of the
Renaissance may serve as an example for art; for theology, it is rationalism
which lowers the divine truths to the level of human philosophy. We have
then a theology without “failure,” and an art without “failure.” Such art is
beautiful, but it limits the humanity of Christ and does not in the least
point to the God-Man. The other heresy is to surrender to failure from
the start, a rejection of the image. In art, it is iconoclasm, the denial of the
immanence of the divinity, that is, of the Incarnation itself. In theology,
49 The Psalter or The Reflections on the Divine (in Russian) (Moscow, 1904), ch. 51,107.
The Icon in the Modem World 487

it is fideism. The first heresy results in an irreverent art, in impious

thought; in the second, impiety is concealed behind an apparent piety.
These two positions, opposite in their manifestations, are based on the
same anthropological presuppositions. “In the eastern patristic view, partici­
pation in divine life is what makes man to be a man, not only in the ultimate
fulfillment, but, since his creation, at any moment of his life.” By contrast,
western theology will traditionally take for granted that the very art of creation
supposes that man is not only of a different nature, but that he has been given
an existence which is, as such, autonomous: the vision of God is perhaps the
“goal,” or the individual experience of a few “mystics,” but it is not a condition
of man’s being truly man.50

Here we find two radically different views of man’s destiny, of his life and
creation. On the one hand is Orthodox anthropology, understood as the
acquisition by man of his resemblance to God—a resemblance that is
made manifest existentially, in a creative and living manner, and which
therefore determines the content of the Orthodox image. On the other
hand is the anthropology of the western confessions that assert man’s
autonomy in relation to God: certainly, man is created in the image of
God, but since he is autonomous he is not really correlated to his
prototype. Hence the development of humanism with its anthropology
that is independent of the Church and dechristianized, where man is
distinguished from other creatures only according to natural categories:
he is a “rational animal,” a “social being,” and so forth.
As we have noted in the preceding chapter, the introduction of the
filioque and the resulting diminution of the principle, together with the
introduction of the doctrine of created grace, led to a non-Orthodox view
of the relationships between God and man, and between man and the
world. Man’s autonomy in relation to God implies the autonomy of his
reason and of his other faculties. Thomas Aquinas already acknowledged
the total independence of natural reason from faith.
It is precisely to Thomas Aquinas that dates back the break between Christianity
and culture...a break that turned out to be fatal for all Christian culture in the
West.. .the tragic sense of which is presently made dear in all its magnitude.51

50 J. Meyendorff, “Philosophy, Theology, Palamism and Secular Christianity,* St Vladimirs

Seminary Quarterly, no 4 (1966), 205.
51 B. Zenkovskii, The Foundations of Christian Philosophy (in Russian) (Frankfurt-am-Main,
I960), vol. 1,9,11.
488 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Contradicting the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the Libri Carolini

dissociated artistic creation from the catholic experience of the Church;
they considered art to be autonomous and thereby determined its future.
To see the icon as a path to salvation equivalent to the word of the Gospel
(as the Council Fathers had done) was utterly inconceivable and therefore
unacceptable to Charlemagne’s theologians. Theoretically, the Roman
Catholic Church recognizes the Seventh Ecumenical Council and con­
fesses the veneration of icons. But in practice the position expressed in the
Libri Carolini remains the official position until today.

If, in the twelfth century and partly in the thirteenth, the image in the
West was still linked in some way to Christian anthropology, a slow
disintegration gradually led art to a definite break with it. Being autono­
mous, such art limits itself to an expression of what does not transcend
man’s natural faculties. Since the creature is no longer permeated by the
uncreated, grace, as a created reality, can only improve man’s natural
powers. What Christianity had rejected from its art since the beginning,
the illusionary portrayal of the visible word, became a goal in itself. The
moment the unrepresentable was conceived in the same categories as the
representable, the language of symbolic realism disappeared, and the
divine transcendence was lowered to the level of everyday concepts. The
message of Christianity was truncated, adapted to human thought. Yield­
ing to the temptation of “success” (the opposite of “failure”), the “ mimesis
(imitation) of life” invaded art in the period of the Renaissance. Together
with an infatuation with antiquity, the cult of the flesh replaced the
transfiguration of the human body. The Christian doctrine concerning
the relationships between God and man moved in the wrong direction,
and Christian anthropology was undermined; the eschatological perspec­
tive of the synergism between God and man was thereby suppressed.
To the degree that the human takes over in art, God is removed from it.
Everything is lowered and becomes secular. What was a means of adoration has
become an object of idolatry; what was revelation is now content to be illusion.
The mark of the sacred has been erased. Art has become nothing but a means of
enjoyment and comfort. Man has met himself and worships himself in his art.52

“The image of this passing world” has replaced the image of revelation.
The falsehood of any “imitation of nature” does not merely consist of the
52 J. Onimus, Réflexions sur l'art actuel (Paris, 1964), 80.
The Icon in the Modem World 489

substitution of the traditional image by a fiction, but also in the preserva­

tion of religious subjects while blurring the limits that separate the visible
from the invisible. The distinction between them disappeared, and this
led to a denial of the very existence of the spiritual world. The image lost
its Christian meaning, which eventually led to its rejection, to open
iconoclasm. “This is how the iconoclasm of the Reformation was justi­
fied. Justified and relativized, because the issue was not sacred art, but its
degeneration in the medieval West.”53
In this art, which confirms the existing cosmic order, the laws of
optical or linear perspective were worked out. These laws came to be
viewed not only as the normal, but as the only scientifically correct way to
depict space, just as the visible condition of the world was in itself
considered to be normal. As P. Florenskii has indicated, this perspective
appeared.
when the religious, stable view of the world disintegrated, when the sacred
metaphysic of the common awareness of the people was eroded by the individual
judgment of the particular, isolated person with his individual point of
view...This is when the perspective so typical of the isolated awareness ap­
peared.54

This is what happened in the West at the time of the Renaissance, and in
the Orthodox world during the seventeenth century. This perspective, in
turn, disappeared when in our time the humanistic world view that had
emerged from it disintegrated, and together with it its art and culture.
In Roman Catholicism, sacred art is viewed as depending on the artist
who, in turn, is subordinated to periods and trends.
The [Roman Catholic] Church has not adopted any particular style of art as her
very own; she has admitted fashions from every period according to the natural
talents and circumstances of peoples, and the needs of the various rites.55
“There is no ‘religious,’ no ‘church’ style.”56 In relation to art, the Church
is only a patron, just as in other cultural domains. The result of this is that
53 Olivier Clément, “Un ouvragç important sur Tart sacré,* Contacts, no 44 (1963), 278.
54 P. A. Florenskii, “Reverse Perspective* (in Russian), Trudy po znakovym sistemam III (Tartu,
1967), 385.
55 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, General Principles for the Restoration and Promotion of the
Sacred Liturgy, ch. VII, par. 123, “Sacred Art and Sacred Furnishings,* trans. The Documents
of Vatican II(New York: Guild Press, 1966), 175.
56 “Com me nuire de la Constitution sur la Liturgie,* La Maison-Dieu, no. 77 (Paris, 1964), 214.
When western art was adopted in Orthodoxy, this attitude, as we have seen, was likewise
adopted.
490 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

the meaning of the image as an expression, by the catholic experience of

the Church, of the Christian revelation has remained foreign to the
western confessions. The Seventh Ecumenical Council, as we know,
attributed the institution of the painting of icons to the holy Fathers,
guided by the Holy Spirit. “The Saints.. .have left the description of their
life for our own well-being and salvation, and have transmitted their
works to the catholic Church by means of artistic representation.”57
These “works transmitted for our salvation” are an existential expression
of the equivalence of the icon to the preaching of the Gospel. It is this
testimony of the holy Fathers, “the authority and the right to express or
formulate the experience of the faith of the Church,”58 that gives the icon
the power to teach. During a reception for American painters, Pope Paul
VI said, “You, artists are able to read the message of God and translate it
for the people.”59 Thus it is in fact sufficient for man to develop his
natural talents (in this case, that of painting) to become a bearer of “the
message of God.” Here we are confronted with the same situation as in
the orientation of present-day theological thought. For in the West,
modern theology is essentially concerned with discovering Gods presence in the
human experience as such. And this concern leads it to “humanize” God, and it
then immediately finds itself at odds with the patristic intuition.60

In our day, Roman Catholicism welcomes modem art as a result of this

basic attitude. It adapts itself to the fashions of an autonomous culture,
just as during the Renaissance it had accepted the “mimesis of nature.”
Having repudiated the ancient universe of forms and concepts, this art has
arrived at a fragmentation that results in disintegration, sometimes blas­
phemy.
Modem art conveys to us the image of a world swept along toward a new destiny,
a world as if consumed by a longing to deny in order to speed up its movement
toward the future... [It is] the enticement ofthe void and the fear ofsuch nothingness
which, to our minds, is the absurd; these two thus echo themes found in modem
philosophy, especially that of existentialism, in particular Jean Paul Sartre s.61
57 Acts, Sixth Session.
58 G. Florovsky, “Theological Fragments’* (in Russian), Put, no 31 (Paris, 1931), 25.
59 L'Aurore (Paris: 27 July, 1975).
60 J. MeyendorfF, “Philosophy, Theology, Palamism,” 206.
61 R. Huyghe, “Nous vivons l’époque du point zéro de l’art," Arts, no 848 (20-26 December,
1961). The result of this is that, in order to return to the so-called “simplicity of the first
centuries" and to obligatory “poverty," one reaches extreme manifestations of it: the churches
have become totally empty and perfectly resemble Protestant temples. “A regrettable confix-
The Icon in the Modem World 491

At the moment when such art and the environment from which it
sprang are irrevocably shipwrecked, the icon enters this world of fragmen­
tation and decay, like a banner of Orthodoxy, a message that is addressed
to the free will of man created in the image of God. By pointing to the
Incarnation, the icon pits the authentic, Christian anthropology against
the distorted anthropology of the western confessions and against that of
the contemporary, dechristianized culture.
Instead of expressing the faculties, even the highest, of the spiritual,
psychic and bodily composite of autonomous man, the icon, like the
word of the Gospel, fulfills a constant task, which has been that of
Christian art from the beginning: to reveal the true relationships between
God and man. Just as in the beginning the upheaval ushered into the
world by the coming of Christ in the flesh had been a “stumbling-block”
and “folly” (1 Cor 1:23), so in our day the icon enters the world which
“did not know God through wisdom,” a world of illusion and deceit, by
the “folly of what we preach” (1 Cor 1:21). To this disoriented world the
icon brings a testimony of the authenticity, of the reality of another way
of life, of other norms of existential relationships brought about in the
world by the Incarnation of God and unknown to man enslaved by
biological laws. The icon conveys a new message about God, man and
creation, a new attitude toward the world. It specifies the calling of man
and what he must become; it places him in a different perspective. In
other words, the icon decries the paths followed by man and the world,
but at the same time it appeals to man: it suggests other paths for him to
follow. In the icon, the perspective of this visible world stands opposed to
the perspective of the Gospel; the world lying in sin, versus the world
transfigured. The entire structure of the icon is directed to bring man in
communion with the revelation Christianity gave to the world, to show
him, by means of visible forms, the very essence of the reversal introduced
by Christianity. To express this reversal, the image must have a very
special structure, particular means of expression, a distinct “style.”
In this structure of the icon with its so-called reverse perspective, “what
sion,” D. von Hildebrand writes, “which suppresses the basic distinction between thing?, is
apparent also in the American and French practice of replacing the painted images of saints
and of Christ Himself with photographs of women, children, victims of wars, of misery and
social injustice” {La Vigne ravagée [Paris, 1974], 109, note). Eventually, the church itself is
remodeled for various uses: conferences, dances, theatrical presentations.
492 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

strikes one above all is an entire series of particularities of forms that

sometimes have the appearance of an insoluble enigma”62 to man of
contemporary European culture. This is why such forms are usually under­
stood as so many distordons. But this “distortion” is such only in relation to
the eye accustomed to linear perspective, and to a view of the world
presendy considered as normal, that is, in comparison to the forms that
express the vision of the world proper to our time. In reality, however, we
are dealing here not with a “distortion,” but with a different artistic lan­
guage, that of the Church.63 This “distortion” is natural, or rather indis­
pensable to express the content of the icon. For the traditional
iconographer, both in the past and in our day, this structure of the icon is
the only one that is possible: it is indispensable. Deriving from the liturgical
experience of the Church, along with other art forms, it puts the catholic
experience of the Church in opposition to “the individual point of view” of
autonomous man, to the painter’s personal experience and his “solitary
awareness.”
Neither the linear perspective nor light and shadow (clair-obscur,
chiaroscuro) are excluded from the icon, but here they no longer serve to
create an illusion of the visible world;64 they are inserted into the general
structure in which the “inverted perspective” dominates (Fig. 51). We
should first point out that in this widely accepted technical term, the
word “inverted” is not completely accurate, since there is no inversion
pure and simple; it is not a type of inverse reflection, as in a mirror. There
is no system of inverted perspective that corresponds to the system of
linear perspective. Against the latter’s rigid law is set another law, another

62 L. F. Genin, The Language ofPainted Work (in Russian) (Moscow, 1970), 36.
63 Hence the difficulty of a scientific analysis of this language. An explanation of the icon which
would be only aesthetic or rational is impossible because the Christian revelation which
constitutes its content, the experience of the divine life given to man, is not open to scientific
analysis. Only the domain which is peripheral, so to speak, is accessible to science and is in its
competence. This is limited, as we have seen, to the artistic aspect of the work, its social and
historic context, the structure of the image, influences, borrowings, and so forth. This is why
science limits itself to bringing out the parallels between the icon and folklore, saints* lives and
secular literature. But when science tries to explain the very essence of the art of the Church,
while remaining within its own appropriate boundaries, this results in inept comments about
“the painter's devout imagination,” “the dematerialization of the visible world and of the
human body,” and so forth.
64 The Greek word skiagraphia refers both to an image in optical perspective, a representation in
chiaroscuro, and to an illusion.
The Icon in the Modem World 493

principle of composing an image, one that derives from its content. This
different principle entails a whole series of procedures that create a repre­
sentation that is either opposite (inverted) in comparison with illusion or
entirely different from it (according to the meaning of what is repre­
sented). This extremely varied and flexible system secures the painter’s
complete freedom; it is nonetheless applied in a consistent and uniform
manner, in conformity with its proper orientation.65
According to contemporary scholarship, “it turns out that we do not
see nearby objects as Raphael represented them...We see everything that
is nearby as Rublev and the ancient Russian painters depicted it.”66 Let us
clarify this statement somewhat. Certainly, Raphael drew differendy than
Rublev, but he saw in the same way as the latter did, since both are subject
to the same natural law of visual perception. The difference lies in the fact
that Raphael submitted the natural vision of the human eye to the control
of his autonomous reason, and thereby distanced himself from this vision.
The iconographers, by contrast, did not move away from this vision,

65 A most interesting result of modern scientific studies on the way of dealing with space in the
icon may be noted here (P. Florenskii, “Reverse Perspective1* [in Russian], Trudy po znakovym
sistemam III; E. Panofski, “Die Perspektive als symbolische Form,* Vorträge der Bibliothek
Warburg [1924-1925]; Aufsätze zur Grundlagen der Kunstwissenschaft [Berlin, 1964]; L. F.
Gegin, “The Language of Painted Work“; and above all, B. V. Rauschenbach, Spatial Struc­
tures in Ancient Russian Painting [in Russian] [Moscow, 1975]). These studies note if not the
superiority of the structural principles of the icon to those of modem art, then at least their
equality. It turns out that the richness and the diversity of the procedures of representation in
the icon are clearly superior to those used in modem art. Such studies also maintain that the
structure of the image, in an art which was viewed as “barbarian’* not so long ago, needs, in order
to be deciphered, a mathematical apparatus even more complex than the deciphering of a
Renaissance painting, which is allegedly equipped with “the only scientifically valid method of
representing the visible world.“ It is significant—and scientific works often note this—that no
system of reverse perspective has ever been taught, and that no handbook speaks of it. One may
suppose that it was transmitted by tradition. But tradition can only transmit the structure of the
icon in its general aspect, otherwise one would find a mechanical repetition of one identical
form of perspective, which is not the case. It is always applied in a different manner and to
varying degrees, even in identical subjects, and is also combined with optical perspective.
Certain elements of reverse perspective which are found in other art forms are sometimes viewed
as a proof that this system is not connected to the Christian content of the image. This, it seems
to us, proves nothing. Indeed, the halo, for example, as an expression of light, appears in various
contexts. The revelation of light was partially known in non-Christian religions. One could
therefore conjecture that non-Christians likewise had a partial awareness of structures analogous
to that of the icon. What is important, however, is that this principle of spatial structures
became a consistent and well attuned system only and precisely in Christian art.
66 Questions ofLiterature (in Russian), no 9 (1976), 40.
 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON
494

51. St Luke the Evangelist

16th century Russian, Novgorod.
Icon Museum, Recklinghausen
The Icon in the Modem World 495

because the meaning of what they were representing not only did not
demand it, but did not even allow them to go beyond the natural
perception of the foreground to which the structure of the icon is limited.
Let us try to illustrate the correspondence between the structure of the
icon and its content by some examples.
What is particular about the representation of space in the icon is that,
even though it is three-dimensional (iconography is not a two-dimensional
art), the third dimension is limited by the surface of the panel, and the
representation is oriented toward the real space in front of the image. In
other words, compared to the illusory representation of space in depth, that
of the icon shows the reverse. If a painting, composed in compliance with
the laws of linear perspective, represents another space that has no relation­
ship with the real space where it is located, in the icon we see the opposite:
the represented space is included in the real space—there is no break
between them. The representation is limited to die foreground. The per­
sons depicted on the icon and those before it are united in the same space.
Since the revelation is addressed to man, the image is likewise ad­
dressed to him.
The configuration of depth is cut, as it were, by a flat background, “the
light,” in the language of iconographers. There is no focus of light: the
light suffuses everything. Light is a symbol of the divine. God is light, and
His Incarnation is the advent of the light into the world: “You have come
and revealed Yourself, O Light unapproachable” (kontakion of Epiph­
any). According to St Gregory Palamas, then, “God is called light not
according to His essence, but according to His energy.”67 The light is this
divine energy; consequently, we can say that it is essential to the content
of the icon. Indeed, it is this light that is the basis of its symbolic language.
Here we have to be precise: the background of the icon symbolizes light
independent of its color, though its most suitable expression is gold. By its
very nature, gold is unrelated to colors, and does not harmonize with
them; but the use of other colors for the background-light does not
contradict its meaning, though it reduces its meaningful range. Gold is a
type of key for discerning background as light.
67 Contra Acyndinum, PG 150: 823, quoted by V. Lossky, The Vision of God, trans. A. Moor­
house (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1983), 160.
496 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

The radiance of gold symbolizes the divine glory. This is neither

allegorism nor an unfounded imagery, but an expression that is quite
adequate. Indeed, gold radiates light, but at the same time it is also
opaque.68 These properties correspond to the spiritual domain gold is
expected to express, to the meaning of what is should translate symboli­
cally—the attributes of the Divinity. “God is not called light according to
His essence,” for His essence is unknowable. “We say,” St Basil the Great
writes, “that from His activities we know our God, but His substance
itself we do not profess to approach. For His activities descend to us, but
His substance remains inaccessible.”69 The inaccessibility of the Divinity
is called “darkness.” “The divine darkness is this ‘inaccessible light’ (1 Tim
6:16) God inhabits, as it is said.”70
Thus, “the inaccessible light” is “the light that is more luminous than
light,”71 blinding and therefore impenetrable. Gold, which combines a
radiating luminosity with opacity, adequately expresses the divine light—
an impenetrable light, that is, something essentially different from natural
light, the opposite of darkness.
This light is God’s activity, His manifestation to the outside, the energy of
His essence by which the represented object is surrounded. “He who partici­
pates in divine energy becomes in some way light in himself,”72 because “the
energies bestowed upon Christians by the Holy Spirit no longer appear as
exterior causes, but as grace, an interior light, which transforms nature in
deifying it”73 According to St Symeon the New Theologian, when such light
illumines the whole person, “Man is united to God spiritually and physically,
since the soul is not separated from the mind, neither the body from the soul.
By being united in essence, God is united with the whole man.”74 In turn,
man becomes a bearer of light to the world outside.
68 Sec S. S. Averintsev, “Gold in the Symbolic System of Byzantine Culture* (in Russian),
Collection in Honor of V. N. Lazarev, Vizantiia, luzhnye Slaviane i drevniaia Rus. Tj/pad^jg
Europa. Iskusstvo i Kultura (Moscow, 1973), 43-52.
69 St Basil the Great, Epistola234, adAmphilochium, PG 32:868AB, The Letters., vol 3, trans. R.
Dcferrari (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 373.
70 Dionysius the Areopagite, Epistola 5, PG 3:1073A.
71 Dionysius the Areopagite, De mystica theologia, ch. 2, PG 3: 1025A.
72 St Gregory Palamas, quoted by V. Lossky, The Vision ofGod, 164.
73 V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology ofthe Eastern Church (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1976), 220.
74 St Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses, "Discourse XV,* par. 3, trans. C. J.
DeCatanzaro (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 195.
The Icon in the Modem World 497

Thus light and its action are knowable and can therefore be repre­
sented; what remains unutterable and inaccessible is the source itself,
concealed by the impenetrable light-darkness. Starting from the meaning
and content of the icon, we may state that this particular feature of the
background-light must be understood as a symbolic transposition of the
very principle of apophatic theology—the ultimate impossibility of
knowing the divine Essence, which remains utterly inaccessible. This
background is the boundary beyond which a creature cannot venture into
the knowledge of God. The divine Essence always surpasses human ways
of knowing. The understanding of such a limit does not arise from
dialectical speculations, but from a lived experience of the revelation, an
existential sharing in the uncreated light.

According to the teaching of the holy Fathers, man’s greatness does not
consist in being a microcosm, a little world inside the large one; it is
inherent in his destiny because it is his calling to become a great world in
the little one, a created god. This is why everything in the icon focuses on
the image of man. Faced with man who would be autonomous in relation
to God, with man closed in upon himself, the integrity of whose nature is
lost, the icon presents man who has achieved his divine likeness, who has
overcome fragmentation (in himself, in humanity, in all of visible cre­
ation).7’ In contrast to the small human being lost in an immense and
hostile world, to the man who has lost a sense of unity with the rest of
creation, the icon sets a great human being surrounded by a world that is
small in relation to him, one who has re-established his sovereign position
in the world and has transformed his dependence upon the world into a
submission of the world to the Spirit who dwells in him. In place of the
terror man arouses in creation, the icon shows that its hope of being set
free from “its slavery to decay” (Rom 8:21) has been fulfilled.

The divine energy, this light that gives form and unity to everything,
triumphs over the lack of unity between the spiritual and the corporeal,
75 If people who are not saints are represented in the same manner as saints, there is no
contradiction here: the human being is created in the image of God and, for the Church, there
does not exist, potentially, a sinner who cannot not repent. According to St Maximus the
Confessor, even someone who has become the devil’s dwelling place retains the potentiality of
conversion, by virtue of his freedom (Philokalia, [In Russian], vol. 1 [St Petersburg, 1877],
149). Moreover, the sinner in the icon is not alone: like everything else in the icon, he is linked
to the represented saint, that is, in the radiance of his holiness.
498 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

even between the created world (both visible and invisible) and the divine
world. The world represented in the icon is permeated by the power of
this uncreated light. Creation is no longer closed in upon itself, but there
is no confusion between the created and the uncreated world. The dis­
tinction between these worlds is not abolished (as it is in the art of optical
illusion); on the contrary, it is clearly emphasized. By means of various
procedures, forms and colors, the visible, depictable world is demarcated
in relation to the divine world, which can be conceived only by the mind
but cannot be represented. The nature of the uncreated light differs from
that of the created light; when it permeates the latter, temporal and spatial
categories are transcended. Unified by this uncreated light, what the icon
represents is included in another existence, different from the one ruled
by the conditions of the fallen world. It is “the Kingdom of God come
with power” (Mk 9:11), a world that communes with eternity. It is
neither an extra-terrestrial nor an imaginary world; what is depicted is our
terrestrial world, but reestablished in its hierarchical order, renewed in
God because it is permeated, let us repeat, by the uncreated, divine light.
This is why the procedures according to which an icon is composed, both
in their totality and in the details, exclude all that is illusory, whether it be
the illusion of space, that of the natural light, or that of human flesh.76
From the believer’s point of view, there is neither distortion of space nor
a distortion of the perspective; on the contrary, the perspective is restored
because the world is seen here not according to the perspective of an
“isolated awareness” or from the multiple viewpoints of the autonomous
painter, but according to the one point of view of the Creator, that is, as
an execution of the divine plan.

What is shown in the icon becomes reality, as first-fruits, in the

eucharistie essence of the Church. “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” is the exclamation with which the
eucharistie Liturgy opens. This Kingdom differs from that of Caesar: it is
the opposite, the reverse of the kingdom of “the prince of this world.” In its
Liturgy, the Church enters a new time, becomes a new creation, where
time is no longer broken up into past, present, and future; spatial and
temporal categories give way to another dimension. As the space repre-
76 In the image, illusion is as intolerable as in the spiritual life, asceticism, and prayer. It is called
"the preeminent trap," and represents not only an obstacle to prayer, but its very opposite.
The Icon in the Modem World 499

seated in the icon is united to the real space in front of it, so the depicted
event which took place in a time past is united to the present moment.
The action represented by the icon and the one accomplished in the
Liturgy are united in time (“ Today the Virgin gives birth to the Super-Es­
sential,” “ Today the Lord of creation and the King of Glory is nailed to the
cross”). The present is linked here to eschatological reality: “Of Thy
mystical supper.. .accept me today as a communicant.” There is no discon­
tinuity either in time or in space between the depicted communion of the
aposdes and the communicants in the church. By communion with the
Body of the risen and glorified Christ, that of His Second Coming, the
Body shown by the icon, the visible and the invisible Church are united; in
a multitude of persons, living and dead, the unity of their nature trans­
formed by grace is actualized, a unity in the image of the Trinity.
The content of the icon determines not only its structure but also its
techniques and the materials used. As P. Florenskii has noted,
Neither the technique of icon painting nor the materials used can be accidental
in relation to worship...It is difficult to imagine, even in formal aesthetic
analysis, that an icon could be painted with anything on just any surface, and
by just any methods.77

Indeed, just as the authenticity of the image is linked to the Eucharist, so

is every material that becomes part of the worship. “Thine own of thine
own, we offer unto Thee...” These words are taken from the prayer of
David over the materials presented for building the temple: “For all things
come from You, and we have given You what has come from Your hand”
(1 Chr 29:14). The Church has retained this Old Testament principle
which acquires its fullest meaning in the Eucharist, as we have seen.
Matter redeemed by the Incarnation participates in the worship of God.
This is why in the icon, what is important with regard to its material is not
only substance and quality, but above all authenticity. The icon enters
into the totality of what man offers to God, into all that the Church uses
to accomplish its work, that of sanctifying and transfiguring the world
through man, of healing matter sick with sin, making it a path to God, a
means of communion with Him.78
77 P. Florenskii, “The Iconostasis’* (in Russian), Bogoslovskie Trudy, no 9 (Moscow, 1972), 115.
78 The traditional technique, developed over the centuries and used in the painting of icons,
includes a selection of materials that represent the most complete participation of the visible
wodd in the creation of an icon. In it, we see “representatives’* of the vegetable world (wood),
500 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

We have attempted to show with the help of some examples that it is

the meaning of the icon which, on the one hand, explains its vitality and,
on the other, defines its structure in perfect conformity to its goal, and
also determines the materials to be used.
Icon painting is at the same time an effort of artistic creation and a religious
effort full of prayerful fervor (this is why the Church recognizes a special order
of holiness, that of the iconographers; art as a means of salvation is thereby
canonized in them).7?

Since this means of salvation is an existential participation in the depicted

reality, we can affirm that it is precisely this participation that assures the
superiority of the icon over modern art in the richness of its means of
expression and in its method of composition, even though it is elaborated
by painters who knew nothing of the laws of visual perception or of the
geometry of multi-dimensional spaces.
Only the Orthodox icon fully reveals the trinitarian economy, because
knowledge of God in the incarnate Word who is the Image of the Father, that
is, the economy of the second person, is only achieved in the economy of the
third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, in the light of the mystery of Pentecost.
It is toward this witness that the entire artistic creation of the Church is
directed, a testimony that reached its culmination in hesychasm.

Even until today, the artistic creation of the Church has been viewed
by art historians as “fettered” by the dogmas of the Church, subject to an
inflexible canon. This canon is understood as the sum total of the external
rules imposed by the church hierarchy, of conciliar rulings, manuals and
so forth, that subjugate the painters creation and demand of him a
of the animal (glue, egg), and mineral worlds (chalk, colors). All this is gathered in its natural
sate, purified, and brought to partake of worship through the work of man. When matter
brought by man as an offering to God loses its organic link to the totality of matter created by
God, because of modern technical developments, it becomes an obsrade. Thus the use of
man-made materials, for example plastic, which is lifeless and has no character of its own, is a
perversion. “Plastic matter is a manifestation of the human being’s emancipation from nature,
from God’s creation, from all His works destined to glorify Him* (Cornelia Schubarth, “Über
den Glauben der Väter—und seinen Verrat: Neo-Häresie,* in Orthodoxie Heute, nos 34/35
[1971], 12). 'Fhe limit between what is acceptable and unacceprable in the domain of matter
is crossed when matter loses its authenticity and character, when it gives the appearance of
being other than it is, when it too creates a deception. “Everything that is consecrated to God,*
writes Gregory the Theologian, “must be natural, and not artificial* (Homilia 35, PG
35-.996C).
79 S. Bulgakov, The Icon and Its Veneration (in Russian) (Paris, 1931), 107-8.
The Icon in the Modem World 501

passive obedience to existing models.80 In short, the free art of painting is

set against an iconography “tied to canons.” However, if we speak of rules
and ordinances, the opposite is rather true; it is until recently in “realistic”
painting that a whole set of rules has had to be strictly obeyed. These rules
were taught in academies, and painting had to comply with them (per­
spective, anatomy, treatment of the light and shadow, composition, and
so forth). It is interesting to note that this system of rules was not in the
least resented by painters, or considered as a constraint or a submission:
they adhered to these rules in their “free” creation, through which they
attempted to serve the Church.81 But the iconographie canon knows no
such rules, or even any analogous concepts. Nonetheless, it was precisely
from this canon that painters sought to be “freed.” Mesmerized by the
West, the progressive painters viewed the canon as a hindrance to their
creative freedom, even as a yoke. We have seen in the preceding chapter
that they in fact tried to free themselves from the Church and its dogmas:
it was from catholic, that is, universal, creation that they wanted to be
excluded at all cost. They sought to break away not so much from the
faith as from the “ascendency” of the Church. For the autonomous

80 What is more, the anti-Christian ideologies try hard to impose their own views, their specific
value system into the domain of ecclesiastical creation. They take pains to prove that art and
religion are incompatible: "Christian mythology, with its denial of the world, its devaluation
of the human being, its hostility toward culture, its depressing ideas about the punishment to
come, about sin being inherent to existence, did certainly not offer a suitable terrain for artistic
activity properly speaking” (B. Mikhailovskii and B. Purichev, Essay on the History ofAncient
Russian MonumentalPainüng[\n Russian] [Moscow-Leningrad, 1941], 7).
See also A. Zotov, The National Foundations ofRussian Art (in Russian) (Moscow, 1961),
vol. 1, 53. In the foreword by I. Volkov to the work of L Lubimov, The Art ofAncient Russia
(in Russian) (Moscow, 1974), we read: "The essential function of religion is the spiritual and
physical repression of human freedom” (pp. 6-7). Indeed, this view of creation in the Church
and of Christianity in general is hardly inspiring. But where is the connection to Christianity?
All this could equally be applied, for example, to socialism, and would be equally false. And
yet, until recently, one could hardly find a scientific work on sacred art that did not contain
such statements: these works are, in fact, only one of the forms of the attack on religion, doing
their share in distorting the concept of icon in believers and giving unbelievers a caricature of
Christianity.
81 It is true that modem culture, in its artistic expression, has swept ail this away in the name of
the painter’s right to self-expression, thus sinking to an extreme individualism. "Freedom” has
turned into what is arbitrary, not the anarchy seen in the various “isms,” in "op art,” “pop art,”
and so forth. Such art visibly reflects the lawlessness which has taken over in a society that had
been governed by principles and all kinds of moral regulations. In other words, we are faced
either with a system of rules ör with their total absence and disavowal, always in the name of
the same freedom of creation.
502 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

painter it was the Church, its canon (unwritten, let us note), and its view
of freedom that had become a yoke imposed from the outside. The
painters’ creation became individualized and thereby isolated. And since
they had begun to represent the beyond in categories of the visible, the
content of the canonical icon became incomprehensible its symbolic
language and creation had become unintelligible, alien.
In our day, in contrast to the chaotic innovations of modem art trends
with their culture of incoherent novelties, the icon offers the traditional form
of Orthodox art. Against the isolated creation of the autonomous painter it
sets down another principle of artistic creation; against the individual, it sets
the universal. In the Church, everything is defined not by “style,” but by the
canon: every creation, to be ecclesial, inevitably includes itself in the canon.
“What is canonical is ecclesial, and what is ecclesial is catholic,” Florenskii
states.82 In other words, revelation is not a unilateral action of God performed
on man. Revelation necessarily presupposes man’s cooperation; it makes an
appeal not to passivity, but to an active effort of knowing and of assimilation.
In what he creates as a co-worker with God, created in the image of God, man
is esteemed only if he conveys and fulfills the divine plan. The creation of man
is accomplished in the union of his will with the divine, in the synergism of
the two activities: the divine and the human. From this perspective, the
character of the artistic language of the Church, as an expression of the
Christian faith, is determined by a norm created by the catholic wisdom of the
Church—the iconographie canon, in the proper sense of the term.
This norm is the most adequate form found to express the revelation,
the very form which the creative relation between God and man takes on.
The canon presupposes not isolation, but precisely incorporation into the
catholic creation of the Church. The painter’s personality is actualized in
this catholicity not when he affirms his individuality, but when he surren­
ders the self, its highest manifestation consists in moving beyond what
separates him in relation to others.
The concept of freedom, too, is included in the same evangelical
perspective. The Church does not know freedom as an abstract concept;
in general, abstraction is alien to it. There is no such thing as freedom as
such, freedom in general, only a deliverance from something concrete.
For the Church liberation consists of freeing itself from being dominated
82 P. Florenskii, “The Iconostasis* (in Russian), 109.
The Icon in the Modem World 503

by the wounds the fall has brought to human nature. Instead of being
enslaved to nature, the human being rules over it, “master of one’s actions,
and free.”8384 From this perspective, canonical creation is understood by the
painter not as an expression of the personal view he holds of the world and
of the faith, but as a transmission of the faith and life of the Church, as a
ministry of service (diakonid).** He expresses the life in which he shares,
which means that he includes his life and creation in all the other aspects
of the life of the Church guided by the canon. To be authentic, his
creation must be attuned, become organically linked to them.85 “The
Church speaks many languages. However, each of them is ‘the language of
the Church’ only inasmuch as it is consistent with the other true expres­
sions of the Christian faith.”86 In the various aspects of church life and
artistic creation, the canon is the map with which the Church directs the
path of man’s salvation. It is in the canon that the iconographie tradition
fulfills its function as the artistic language of the Church.
Thus, the iconographie canon is not an unbending law, nor is it an
external prescription or a rule: it is an inner norm. It is this norm which
places man before the requirement to partake of what the represented
carries within.87 This participation is fulfilled in the eucharistie life of the
Church. The unity of the revealed truth is closely linked to the multiplic­
ity of personal experiences one has of this truth. Hence the impossibility of
circumscribing the canon by means of a definition. Thus the Hundred-Chap­
ters Council limited itself to ordering that the iconographers follow the example

83 St John of Damascus. Defide orthodoxy Bk. 2, ch. 27. PG 94:961.

84 In this service (diakonid}, the creative thinking of the painters has never wilted. They have
never felt, nor do they feel in our age, that the iconographie canon is a burden, a restriction
imposed upon them from the outside. On the contrary, this is made apparent by the very art
of the icon throughout its history.
85 Hence the need for faithful participation in the sacramental life of the Church. Hence also, in
times of decadence, the moral demands made upon the iconographers.
86 J. Meyendorff, “Philosophy, Theology, Palamism and ‘Secular Christianity,”* 207.
87 This is how the conciliar decisions concerning sacred art guide the iconographer toward a
more faithful expression of Orthodox teaching, and how they correct errors that enter
iconography, which is always a possibility, if only because of ignorance. As for artistic creation
as such, not only do such decisions not restrain it; they do not even deal with the questions
that bear upon it. If the iconographie canon curbs anything, it certainly is not creation; but as
any canon generally docs in all areas of Church life, it harnesses the subjective whim, the free
will of individuals, at whatever hierarchical level they are found. The conciliar decisions of the
Church are valid for the hierarchy as much as they are for the other members of the Church;
both conform to them, regirdless of their situation and function in the Church.
504 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

of the ancient painters and the rules of morality. This canonical norm
assures the faithful transmission of truth, whatever the artists degree of
participation, even if such participation remains formal. This norm is followed
by the creative painter as well as by the artisan, both in times past and in our day.
This is why the canonical icon witnesses to Orthodoxy, independently of the
frailty of those who bring the truth, the Orthodox themselves. Let us repeat: it
is precisely the canon that protects the icon from such imperfection. Whatever
the painter’s spiritual and artistic level, even if he is a third-class artisan, the
canonical icon, ancient as well as new, witnesses to the same truth. By contrast,
regardless of the painter’s talent, the segment of the art that “freed” itself from
the canon has not only never reached a high artistic level, not to speak of the
spiritual level of the icon, but completely ceased being a witness to Orthodoxy.

We have already noted that the seventeenth century proclaimed noth­

ing new; in the dogma of the veneration of the icon, it merely clarified the
faith of preceding councils. Indeed, at the heart of the christological and
trinitarian dogmatic discussions of the past always lay the essential ques­
tion of the relationship between God and man, and thus of Christian
anthropology. For Orthodoxy, the dogma of the veneration of icons
represents an enduring truth of the Christian faith and teaching, a truth
promulgated by an ecumenical council. We should see in the icon what
the Fathers and the councils saw: the triumph of Orthodoxy, a testimony
of the Church about the truth of the Incarnation. But we should also see
in iconoclasm what the defenders of the icon saw: not a mere denial of the
image or its destruction, but a war against Christianity, a “Christo-
machia,” to use the expression of St Photius the Patriarch. Indeed, if
ancient iconoclasm was rooted in a Hellenization that had not been
entirely overcome, as Florovsky has indicated, its very essence did not
simply lie in the particular issue of the struggle against images. “Not only
the destiny of Christian art was at stake, but Orthodoxy itself,” that is, the
Church.88 Open iconoclasm, which was the outcome of the heresies of
the christological period, had an opposite effect: the canonical conscience
of the Church condemned it as a heresy of “disincarnation” and ratified
the veneration of icons.89 After the Triumph of Orthodoxy, this appar-
88 G. Florovsky, “Origen, Eusebius, and the Iconoclastic Controversy," Church History 19, no 2
(1950), 96.
89 As is known, the iconoclasm of the eighth-ninth centuries made war not against art in the Church
but against the image of the revelation as a witness to the Incarnation of God. However, having
The Icon in the Modem World 505

ently extinct heresy continued to fester during the following centuries, some­
times breaking out violently; it also took on other forms and changed masks.
Indeed, iconoclasm does not have to be open and premeditated; through
incomprehension and indifference it can also be unconscious, even pious.90
Moreover, did not the ancient, open iconoclasm supposedly fight for the
purity of the Christian faith, as Protestantism did later? As we have seen, the
distorted Roman Catholic image has led Protestants to a “devout” refusal of
the image, to the “image without substance,”91 that is, to a refusal of the
visible, material witness of the Incarnation. In its own way, this “insubstantial
image” has contributed to the present-day evacuation of God even in Christi­
anity itself. In our time, “.. .in the ‘liberal’ camp of Protestantism, many hold
as indifferent for the essential Christian kerygma whether Christ was God or
not, whether his Resurrection was or was not a historical fact.”92 Such a
situation led quite naturally to a “God is dead” theology, that is, to evident
non-sense, as much for the believer as for the artist.

begun with the destruction of icons, iconoclasm led to the dis incarnation, the desacralization
and denial of the Church.
90 Such pious iconoclasm is apparent, among other thing?, in the fact that some see in the icon an
obstacle to prayer; they invoke the ascetic rule which, during prayer, forbids access to the mind
of any image whatsoever. A rather widely accepted opinion maintains that this rule also applies
to the icon. This is a misunderstanding indeed, because the ascetic rule deals with images created
in the mind by the imagination—images which on no account could be identified with the
icon, the image of reality, "of the true, non-fictional Incarnation of God the Word.” As such,
the icon is not only incompatible with an image created by the human imagination, but is in
direct contradiction to it. If it were otherwise, it would be inconceivable that the Church,
gathered in an ecumenical council, could have confirmed and dogmatized the veneration of
something that was in danger of becoming an obstacle to prayer or of leading it in the wrong
direction. Moreover, it is typical that the most tenacious defenders of icons were monks, that is,
people who had devoted their entire life to prayer. We have the testimony of one of the greatest
mystics of the church, St Symeon the New Theologian: “[One day] I went to reverence the
spotless icon of her who bore You. As I fell before it, before I rose up, You yourself didst appear
to me within my poor heart, as though You had transformed it into light; and then I knew that
I had You consciously within me* (The Discourses, "Discourse xxvi,” par. 11, trans. C. J.
deCatanzaro [New York: Paulist Press, 1980], 376).
This is because the icon is "a beneficial help for the one who prays, so that in its search for
the presence of God, the mind would not fall into imaginary representations, so that thoughts
may be concentrated and preserved from distraction. The holy image of God which makes
Him visible in His flesh is presented at the same time to the bodily eye and to spiritual
contemplation. The icon collects the thoughts and the outer and inner feeling? in the same,
one contemplation of God* (Choix de sermons et discours de S. Em. Mgr. Philarète, vol. 3 [Paris,
1866], 230).
91 J. Ph. Ramseyer, La Parole et Limage, 78.
92 J. Meyendorff, Orthodoxy and Catholicity (New York, 1966), 138.
506 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

52. StSilouan
Icon painted by Leonid Ouspensky
Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
The Icon in the Modem World 507

53. St Spyridon
Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug
Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
508 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

In Orthodoxy’s past relationship with heterodoxy, it was the image that

proved most valuable. The lack of understanding and the indifference to its
content were such that during the Synodal period, the Orthodox icon came
to be removed from churches and destroyed as “barbarian,” only to be
replaced, it is true, by imitations of a non-Orthodox, “enlightened,” western
art. The so-called “realistic trend,” made Orthodox, so to speak, by a “half-
conscious remembrance of the icon,” introduced “the false testimony” of
which Florenskii speaks—a. lie about Orthodoxy. This false witness could
only confirm the unbelievers in their unbelief. Among believers, it falsified the
understanding of Orthodoxy and helped to deform their ecdesial conscious­
ness. Let us recall that during the same period and for the same reason, the
spiritual praxis that had nourished icon painting in its heyday was persecuted,
branded as heretical, and “exterminated like an infection, a plague,” as
Metropolitan Philaret wrote.
Thus all iconoclasm in any form, open or secret, even pious, contributes to
“disincamate” the Incarnation, to undermine the economy of the Holy Spirit in
the world, to destroy the Church. It is therefore a question of Orthodoxy itself
The struggle for the image has never ceased: it has become more acute in our day
because iconoclasm no longer shows itself only in the deliberate destruction of
icons, or in their rejection by heresies of a protestantizing type. Encouraged by
various economic, social or philosophical ideologies, it manifests itself in a
tendency to destroy the image of God in man.
The present situation of Christianity in the world is often compared to
that of the first centuries of its existence. “Is the atheistic, unbelieving
world of our day in a sense not precisely this pre-Christian world emerg­
ing once more in this amalgam of pseudo-religious, skeptical, and atheis­
tic trends—all strongly opposed to God?”93 But if, in the first centuries,
Christianity stood before a pagan world, the world it faces today is a
dechristianized world, the outcome of apostasy. It is before this world that
Orthodoxy is “called to bear witness,” to give evidence of the truth. It
does so by its Liturgy and its icon. Hence the need to regain awareness of
the dogma of the veneration of icons and to express it in conformity to the
needs of our present life, to the problems and questions of modern man.
This is why an awareness of this dogma and an understanding of the
image as an expression of our faith are above all an awareness of Ortho-
93 G. Florovsky, Ways.
The Icon in the Modem World 509

doxy itself, that of the ecclesial unity given in Christ. As an expression of

the faith and communal life of the Church, the icon transcends the
divisions which empirically exist in the life and activities of the Orthodox.
A visual testimony of this unity is important, not only towards the
non-Christian world but also towards the heterodox, because a merely
verbal expression of Orthodoxy proves to be insufficient to answer the
problems of our time. “Now more than ever, the Christian West has
widened its perspective: it stands as a living question mark before Ortho­
doxy.”94 This question, then, is above all the search for a way out of the
impasse in which the Christian West, especially Roman Catholicism,
finds itself. In the words of the prelate Dr. K. Gamber,
The Roman Catholic Church will eradicate its present errors and will arrive at a new
renaissance only when it is able to incorporate the fundamental strengths of the
Eastern Church: its mystical theology based on the great Fathers of the Church, and
its liturgical piety.. .One thing seems beyond doubt: the future does not lie in a
reconciliation with Protestantism, but in an inward union with the Eastern Church,
that is, in a steadfast spiritual contact with it, with its theology and piety.95

On our part, we are deeply convinced that the dogma of the veneration of
icons, as well as the introduction of the icon into the heterodox confessions,
would help overcome the basic flaws of the western confessions and their
essential divergence and disagreements with the Orthodox Church: the doc­
trines of created grace and of the filioque. Indeed, the icon presupposes both
the Orthodox understanding of the person and the Orthodox confession of
the economy of the Holy Spirit, and therefore Orthodox ecdesiology. It is
certainly not by chance that in our day the icon is entering the non-Orthodox
world. It has begun to affect the awareness of western man, and if western art
in its Roman Catholic form had formerly influenced Orthodoxy, at present,
by contrast, the icon—witness of Orthodox dogma, expression of the Chris­
tian faith, and way of salvation—is penetrating Roman Catholicism and
Protestantism. “The Christian,” G. Wunderle writes,
must be deeply engaged with the realism the icon offers him; if not, he will never
approach its mystery and it will for him only be a design without a soul. And for
him to whom it is given to contemplate God in the holy icon, it becomes an
unerring path toward a transfiguration in Christ.96

94 Ibid,
95 Bishop K. Gamber, “Zum Streit zwischen dem Papst und dem Erzbishof Lefèvre aus
elcumenischer Sicht,” Orthodoxie Heute, no. 57 (1976), 21-4.
96 Georg Wunderle, Um die Seele der heiligen Ikone (Würzburg, 1947), 78.
510 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

54. St John the Evangelist

Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug
Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
The Icon in the Modem World 511

55. St Nicholas and St Genevieve

Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug
Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
512 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

In the Christian believer, independent of his confessional allegiance, the icon

prompts a direct reaction on the level of prayer. Because of its clarity, it does
not, like a sacred text, need to be translated into another language.
But what is of crucial importance is a renaissance of the icon within
Orthodoxy. Such a renaissance is a vital need for our time. However, as was
true for the “discovery” of the icon, it is presently taking place without
connection to theological thought97 and liturgical piety, and thus outside its
immediate context If theology is experiencing a slow emancipation from
scholasticism, the attitude toward the image is, by contrast, still dominated
by the inheritance of past centuries. As for liturgical piety, this heritage from
the past seems particularly insurmountable. Indeed, is the tradition of the
Church not associated by many faithful with mere conservatism?98
Let it be said again that the renaissance of the icon is a vital necessity for
our time. However important the works that led to the discovery of the
icon, what is revealed in the icon only takes on life in its practical applica­
tion. In the Church, everything rejuvenates itself, including the icon.
Always alive and creative, the Church does not in the least seek to defend ancient forms
as such, nor does it set them against new forms as such. For the Church, art, whether
now, in the past, or in the future, means the same thing: realism. What this means is
that the Church, pillar and herald of truth, demands only one thing the truth?9

Not only can the icon be new, it must be new (when we differentiate
between icons of various epochs, this means that they were new in relation
97 Since the time of decadence, one no longer sees in the image a witness of Orthodoxy
equivalent to the word. The concordance between the icon and theology is no longer seen or
understood; the link between them is on occasion even denied. In other words, the image has
lost its significance as a means proper to Orthodoxy for the expression of revelation. Many of
the faithful no longer see any connection between the image and the truth of Orthodoxy.
98 In our time, such conservatism is aggravated by the pressure of atheism. People are beginning
naively to view any object as “sacred,’’ provided it stems from the pre-atheistic period. Such origin
is sufficient to have the object not only preserved and venerated but also imitated. A typical example
of such pious conservatism is the work edited by the so-called “Synodal" or “Karlovtsy" group in
New York, entided The Miraculous Icons of the Mother of God in Russian History (in Russian)
(1976). We learn from it that “the reason for the origin of the veneration of icons* is neither
revelation nor the need to bear witness to the divine Incarnation and the deification of man, but “the
aptness of human souls to ascend by thought and heart toward beloved being? by looking at their
representations" (p. 60). In conformity with such a concept, the work reproduces, in the same way as
Orthodox icons of the Virgin, an entire series of representations that imitate western images with the
sentimentality so typical of them. In a word, the same conservative attachment of this group to the
synodal period of the Russian Church, which expresses itself in its anti-canonical situation, b
conveyed by a predilection for the past and for miracles, which replaces the Orthodoxy ofthe image.
99 P. Florenskii, “The Iconostasis" (in Russian), Bogpslovskie Trudy, no. 9 (Moscow, 1972), 106.
The Icon in the Modem World 513

to the preceding periods). But the new icon must express the same truth.
The contemporary renaissance of the icon is neither an anachronism, nor
an attachment to the past or to folklore, nor an attempt to make the
sacred image be “bom again” in a painter’s studio. It is a more intense
awareness of the Church, of Orthodoxy, a return to the authentic transmis­
sion in art of the patristic experience, of a true knowledge of the Christian
revelation.100
As in theology, such a renaissance is contingent upon a return to the
tradition of the Fathers, and “fidelity to the tradition is not fidelity to
everything that is ancient, but a living link with the fullness of life in the
Church” (Figs. 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57),101 with the spiritual experience of
the Fathers. This renaissance is an indication of a return to wholeness, to the
consonance of doctrine, life and creation, that is, to an integrity so indis­
pensable today. As an expression of the unchanging, revealed truth, the
icon, whether modem or old, witnesses to the salvation “prepared before
the face of all people.” It bears witness to the existential actualization of the
sudden change brought about by die creation in the world of the Church,
“a light to lighten the nation and the glory of thy people,” the new Israel.
Addressed to mankind, this revelation is given to the Church and is realized
by it. Indeed, it is the Church that is the revelation “before the face of the
world.” The image of the revelation the Church brings to the world is that
of die glorified Body of Christ, itself an image of the Church, the authenti­
cation of its faith and holiness, die witness of the Church about itself. This
is why the specific character of the Orthodox icon, and the entire structure
proper to it, designate the possibilities, the means, as well as the limits of
Christian knowledge, so as to reveal to man the significance of his life in
history, his destiny, and the paths that lead him to the ultimate goal. The
icon opens an immense vision that embraces the past and the future in an
enduring present. Human creation, however impoverished its means, serves
the Church as a language to reveal to the world the mystery of the age to
come.

100 This renaissance is taking place within the structure of the iconographie canon. It is not a
question of eclecticism, but of an authentic creation of the icon in conformity with our time,
for it is the canon that ensures the freedom of artistic expression. An example of this is the art
of the monk Gregory (Kroug).
101 G. Florovsky, “Theological Fragments’* (in Russian), no. 31 (Paris, 1931), 23.

513
514 THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

56. St Photius the Great

Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug
Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
The Icon in the Modem World 515

57. St Seraphim ofSarov

Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug
Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
 Index
A Aristode 237, 339, 365
Abereins, Saint 72 Arius 85,149, 225, 396-397
AbgarVUkhama 51 Arnobius 36
Acorninatos, Nicetas 232 Asterius of Amasea 103, 149
Agobard of Lyons, Bishop 143 Athanasius the Great, Saint 18, 84, 155,
Ainalov, P. 329 385
Akyndinos 234, 240, 260 Athenagoras, Saint 39
Albigensians (Cathars) 105, 119, 227,407 Augustine, Saint 18,70,103, 453
Alexis, Metropolitan 260 Averintsev, S. S. 496
Alexis, Tsar 301,331,414 Avvakum, Archpriest 330-331, 336,
Alpatov, M. 220, 292, 303 349-351,353-354,413
Amiranchvili, Ch. 237
Amphilochius of Iconium, Saint 103 B
Amphilochius, Archimandrite 481, 483 Barbel, Joseph 375
Anastasius of Jerusalem, Patriarch 99 Barlaam of Calabria 234, 237-239,
Anastasius the Sinaite 104 241-242, 246, 260
Anatolius, Archbishop 373, 426,435, 450 Barlaam, Saint 83, 347, 430
Ancient of Days, the Bashkin, Matvei 304, 316
See God the Father, representation of Basil I, Emperor 212, 220
Andreev, N. 289-290, 296, 303, Basil the Great, Saint 8, 20, 25-26,
311-313,316,318, 321 82-84,127,132-133,138,140,260,278,
Andrew of Crete, Saint 22, 63-64 314,339,343,347,394,406,473,496
Andrew, Archbishop of Caesarea 384 Basil, Archbishop of Gortyna 99
Anisimov, A. 459-460 Beck, H. G. 140,145
Anna, Empress 422 Benjamin, Archbishop 24
Anthimus, Patriarch of Constantinople Benjamin, friar 288, 412
432 Benz, E. 466
Anthony of Volynia, Bishop 431 Berdiaev, N. 391, 453
Anthony the Great, Saint 82, 177, 180 Besse, J. P. 474
Antonova, V. I. 465 Bobbio, phials of 81
Apocalypse, representations from 372, Bodianskii, O. 303
384 Boeh me, Jakob 423
apocryphal texts 405-406 Bogomils, the 105,227,262,400,
Apostolic Constitutions 20 406-407
Aquinas, Thomas 453, 487 Bogoslovskii, I. N. 373-374,385-387,
architecture 30, 35, 188-189, 243, 256, 391
325, 426 Bolotov, V. 144
classical 220 Boris and Gleb, Saints 254
Orthodox 218, 220-223, 460 Borromeo, Charles 185
western 223 Braun, F. M. 66
See also church building Braunfels, W. 396-397, 407
architecture in the icon 189-191 Bréhier, L 37, 86, 143
Arethas, Archbishop of Caesarea 384 Brianchaninov, Bishop Ignatius 176, 473
Arians, Arianism 105, 131, 363, 382, Brusov, G. 362
396-397,406 Bulgakov, Sergius 373, 378, 383, 385,
Aristarchos 211 387-393, 407, 438, 459
518 THE THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Buslaev, F. I. 408,436,440-441, 444 445 175-176,178,184,250,325,341,399,

447,495,499
c Constantine of Nacolea 121
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Emperor
Cabasilas, Nicolas 240
Cabrol, F. 37 52
Calecas, Patriarch John 262 Constantine V Copronymus, Emperor
Callistus, Patriarch 260 63,110-112,114-116,121,128,134,
catacombs 19» 73, 76-77 341
catacomb art 38, 65-67,72-76, 80, Constantine, Saint 20-21,65,81
187, 245 Constantinople 231-232,260
catacomb of Callistus 38 fidlof 53,231,250,288
catacomb of Priscilla 73 Cosmas of Maiu ma 22
catacomb of St Sebastian 73 Council in Trullo
catacombs of Do mit il la 67 See Quinisext Council
Cathars, the 105 Council of843 208, 251
Catherine II, Empress 422,425 Council of 843 212
celestial Church, the 23 See also “Triumph of Orthodoxy"
Chatzidakis, M. 220 council of 869-870 211-215
Chekhov, A. 471 council of 879-880 215
Cheremukhin, P. A. 229, 232, 240 council of 1062 228
Christian anthropology 483-484, council of 1156 229, 244
487-488,491, 504 council of 1157 229, 244
Christian art 39, 41, 65, 78-80,86-87, council of 1341 234, 260
89,146,166,187, 207, 253, 257,373, council of 1347 234-235
398,441,491,493, 504 council of 1351
origins 35, 37,87 See Council of Constantinople
See also sacred art, secular art, sacred image council of 1352 238
Christian state, the 7, 51, 412 Council of 1553-1554 303,357,387,401
christological basis of the icon 95, 100, Council of 1917-1918 431
120-121, 133,148,152, 207, 217, 224,
Council of Constantinople 234, 251
482, 504
Council of Elvira 40
Christopher, Saint 416
Council of Ephesus
church building 18, 22, 24, 28, 30,40,
See Fourth Ecumenical Council
220, 223
Council of Frankfurt 143-144,451
See also architecture
Council of Laodicca 85
iconography of 28
symbolic significance 17, 22, 24, 33 Council of Nicaea 86
the narthex 22, 24, 26-27 Council of Paris 143-144
the nave 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 275, 279 Council of St Sophia 141
the sanctuary 22-24, 26-28, 275, 279 Council of Trent 9,164,185, 363
Church of the New Testament 24, 26, Crithinus, Theodore 212
276, 375, 399 Cyprian of Carthage, Saint 394
Church of the Old Testament 24,29, 276 Cyprian, Archimandrite 281
Claudius of Turin, Bishop 143 Cyprian, Metropolitan 260
Clement of Alexandria 36, 38-40, 69-70 Cyril (Constantine), Saint 211
Clement VIII, Pope 185 Cyril of Alexandria, Saint 376-377
Clément, O. 243, 249, 454 Cyril of Beloozero, Saint 430
Cognat, R. 223 Cyril ofJerusalem, Saint 17, 66-67
color, use of in iconography 11, 170,173, Cyrus and John, Saints 277
Index 519

D Epiphanius the Wise, Saint 131, 149, 261

Dalton, O. 459 Eudoxia, Empress 63
Daniel-Rops, H. 217 Eusebius of Caesarea 20-22,36,38,
Cyril (Constantine), Saint 211 58-60,131,146,149, 275
Euthymius of T movo 260
Darrouzès.J. 160,171,235
de Maistre, Joseph 427 Euthymius the monk 330, 336, 355,
deification 29,49,60,146,157-158,181, 357-360,409
Evagrius 52,149
187,189,207,233-234,239,248-251,
Evdokimov, Paul 142
270,272,399,452,455-456,476,486
See also transfiguration Evert-Kappcsova, H. 227
Demus, O. 217 Ezekiel 48,67,376, 392
Diadochus of Photice 156
Didascalia 20 F
Didron, M. 374,445 fall of Adam, fall of man 29,45,155,
Didymus 149 187, 222, 230, 503
Diehl, Ch. 37,107,116,144,220,459 Fifth Ecumenical Council 36, 91, 148
Diocletian 111 figurative art 7, 96, 124, 274
Dionysius of Phouma 374 Filimonov, G. 275, 330, 342, 355, 358,
Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint 160, 176, 360,445
260, 313, 372, 496 First Ecumenical Council 85, 99
Dionysius, master 261, 264, 272, 309, fish symbol 39, 70, 93, 96
311,362,431,436,446 Florenskii, P. 285, 399, 460,474,489,
divinization of man 493,499,502,508, 512
See deification Florovsky, G. 108,129,131,136,
Djuric, J. 328 145-146,148,177,216, 245, 265, 279,
Dmitriev, G. N. 334-336, 338, 345, 350 307, 315-317, 321,327,330, 349,359,
Dobschütz, V. 64 361, 365,413,421-424,427-428,
Doctrine ofAddai, The 52 430-431» 446,459,482,490, 504, 508,
Dombrovskii, O. I. 107, 225 513
Dorotheus, Saint 181,260 Fourth Ecumenical Council 60
Dositheos, Patriarch ofJerusalem 421 Freemansonry 423,427
Dostoevskii, F. 430
Duchesne, M. 289, 297 G
Dudko, D. 471 Gabriel of Serbia, Metropolitan 351
Duitsev, I. 226 Gambcr, K. 509
Dvornik, F. 208,210-211,215 Garrigues, J. M. 453
Gegin, L F. 492-493
E Gennadius, Archbishop 288, 318, 321
Ecdicos, Elias 227 George of Antioch, Patriarch 99
Eighth Ecumenical Council George of Cyprus, Saint 63, 111-112,
See council of 869-870 120, 146
El Greco 471 Germanus of Constantinople, Saint
Elijah 47 22-24, 28,63-64,96,99,109-111,
Elizabeth, Empress 422 120-121
Emela, L I. 435 Gerstinger, H. 403-404, 407
Encyclical ofthe Patriarchs ofthe East Gibbon, Edward 36
431-433 Gnosticism 321
Enlightenment, the 422-423, 444, 468, God the Father, representation of 13,
474 154, 244, 294-296, 305-308, 318-320,
520 THE THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

322,356-357,371-387,391-394, “Prophecies of the Hellene Sages’*

400-401,454 363-364
as the Ancient of Days 305, 310, hellenistic art 74,87-88
372-373, 376,384,386,404 See also Greco-Roman art
Gogol, N. 430 hellenistic iconography 88
gold, symbolism of 496 heresy 7-8, 85, 96,101-102
Golcizovskii, N. K. 242, 261, 263-264, See also iconoclasm
268, 272-273, 294-295, 301 hesychasm 232, 234-235, 245-246, 257,
GorainofF, I. 160, 175 260-261, 263-264,267, 269-270,
Grabar, A. 37,52-53, 80-81,91,105, 272-275, 283, 287-288, 301, 323, 326
116, 208, 210, 218-225, 231-232,243, See also hesychasts
273, 278, 297,303, 325, 329,404 hesychasts 234-235, 237-243, 245-250,
Grabar, I. 303, 329 261, 263-264, 267,273, 287, 411
Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete 12 hieratic nature of the icon 192
Great Council of Moscow 13,154, 307, Hilarion, Archbishop 431
330, 332, 335,349,355, 357, 371,373, Hilarion, monk 455
377, 380,383,385, 387,394-395,404, Hilary of Poitiers 375
409,415-416 Holl, K. 131
Greco-Roman art 80, 86 humanism, humanists 210, 232, 234,
See also hell istic art 237-238, 240-246, 250, 457
Gregory Dialogos Hundred Chapters Council 11, 289-292,
See Gregory I, Pope 294-297, 299-303, 305-307,310,315,
Gregoiy I, Pope 64,132, 213, 371 331-333, 357, 372, 503
Gregory II, Pope 99,109-110,120, 133, Huyghe, R. 490
140, 154, 378
Gregory III, Pope 110,116 I
Gregory IV, Pope 116
lavorskii, Metropolitan Stephen 414-415,
Gregory Nazianzen, Saint 23,161, 180,
419
241, 292,499
iconoclasm 7-8, 36, 64,103, 105-110,
Gregory of Nyssa,'Saint 82-84, 133,
114-117,119-122,128-131,134,137,
156-157,177,241
141,143-146,148,150-151,210-212,
Gregpry of Sinai, Saint 235, 260
215-219, 249, 262-263, 266, 283,338,
Gregpry Palamas, Saint 159, 185, 214, 341, 390,419,450,453,461,467,483,
234-235, 237-242, 246-247, 249, 251,
486, 489, 504-505, 508
260, 263, 266, 274, 282,481,495-496
See also iconoclastic period
Gregory the Great
iconoclastic period 14, 22, 27, 52,95,
See Gregory I, Pope
108,110,112,114,116,132,151,218,
Gregory the Theologian, Saint 243, 278, 282, 378, 388-389
See Gregpry Nazianzen, Saint
See also iconoclasm
Grishtenko, A. 434, 436
iconographie canon, the 97, 170, 297,
Guy, Saint 117 470,477, 501-503, 513
iconographie manuals 297, 299, 330,
H 344-345, 364, 374,419,457,459
Hadrian I, Pope 99, 112, 132,141-143 iconostasis 8, 244,275, 279, 281-285,
Héfélé, K. 99,110,125,142,143,211, 363, 380,423
212, 215, 216 iconography of 275-278
Heimann, A. 402, 404 the Holy (Royal) Doors 8, 28,
Helena, Saint 117 278-279, 281
hellenism 228, 234, 237,243, 246, 504 icons of angels 7, 45, 214
Index 521

icons of Christ 7,49,51,53,58,60,65, Irene, Princess 339

67,74,116,130, 268 Isaac the Syrian, Saint 189, 227, 260
Christ Pantocrator 28 Isaiah of Kiev, Metropolitan 365
the icon “not made by hands” 51-53, Isaiah, Saint 82, 180
57, 266 Isaiah 48, 307, 309, 371, 374-377, 383
icons of saints 7,49,116,129,167,170, Isidore, Patriarch 262
214, 268, 291, 373 Istomine, Karion 330
the four evangelists 28 Italian Renaissance 101, 328,433
icons of the Virgin 7, 28, 41,49, 51, Italos, John 228, 237
60-65,73-74,86,97,116,120,128, Ivan the Terrible, Tsar 289, 414
172, 214, 268
Hodigitria type 61-63
Umileniexype 60,62,274 Jerome, Saint 70, 396-397
Ignatius of Loyola 348 Jerusalem temple 19
Ignatius, Patriarch of Constantinople Jerusalem, art of 87-88
208, 210, 212, 218 Jewish art 373
image, the 7-8,10,12-16, 18, 32, 35-41, Joachim of Moscow, Patriarch 330-331,
44-45,47,49-50,56-58,74,78-79,83, 336, 352-355,358-359, 364
85, 91,96,98-99, 102-103, 110,121, Joasaph of Moscow, Patriarch 330
123-124,138,140-142,144,146,148, John Chrysostom, Saint 18, 20, 82-84,
151,156,166-167,170,173,177,181, 133, 260, 278, 312
185, 190-193, 207, 212-213, 216-217, John of Damascus, Saint 14, 22, 29, 42,
226, 229, 243, 246-247, 249, 264, 44-46,48-49, 52,55,57,63,99,104,
266-268, 283, 285, 287-288, 301, 109-111,120,123,127-131,137,145,
311-312, 317, 322-323, 330, 336,340, 173-174,193, 237, 266,293-294, 308,
342, 344-345, 348-349,355, 361-363, 340, 371, 375,378-379,382-383,386,
367-368, 379, 389,391,408-409, 390,484, 503
411-412,450-451,453-455,457, John ofJerusalem, Saint 63
467-471,477,481-485,488,490,493, JohnofSinada 121
495,499, 504-505, 508, 512 John ofThessalonika, Bishop 120
images of creatures 44-46 John the Grammarian 114-115
imagination 13,44,103, 142, 154,162, John Tzimisces, Emperor 105
170, 238, 283, 291, 297, 299, 302, 308, John VIII, Pope 100
316, 323,343,369, 393,407-408,427, John, Bishop of Thessalonica 104
435-436,473,492, 505 Joseph of Volokolamsk, Saint 261,
Incarnation, the 7, 18, 36, 40-41,49, 53, 264-265, 287, 321,401-403,411
60,67,93,95,98,101-102,105, Judaism 36-37, 105
121-122,124,133-134,138,145-146, Justin, Saint 39
149,151-153,155,157,159,161,207, Justinian I, Emperor 74, 88
210, 216, 247, 249, 266, 268,276-277, Justinian II, Emperor 92
279, 283,293,307-311,317, 340,359,
363, 368, 374,376-377,379-381,383, K
389-393,406,409,420,467,476, Karamzin, N. 438
481-484, 505 Kartaschev, A. 317
Innocent III, Pope 100 Katznelson, R. 221
“inverted” perspective 492-493 Kazakova, N. A. 263-266, 268, 364
See “reverse* perspective kenosis 152
Irenaeus, Saint 149, 482 Khomiakov, A. 430,432-433,447
Irene, Empress 109,112,114, 132 Mauser, Th. 37-38,79,131
522 THE THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Klibanov, A. I. 263 Macarius of Patmos 378

Kliuchevskii, V. O. 327-328,339,342 Macarius, Metropolitan, Saint 264, 289»
Koch, P. Lucas 146 296, 299,303-304,308-309,311-313,
Kondakov, N. P. 62-64,170,301, 331, 315-317, 321-322,357,372-373,379,
444,457-458 387,401
Kornilovich, K. 473 Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch 326, 330,
Krivochéine, B. 174, 227, 234-235, 238, 351
242,270,327,367,431,456 Maikov, LN. 330,333,335
Makovskii, S. 447
L Mâle, E 9,185
Lactantius 36 Malitskii, N.V. 292
Ladner, G. 146 Manichaeans, Manichaeism 321, 406
lamb, symbol of 67,72-73,92-96, Mansvetov, I. 320-321
99-100, 240, 358 Mark of Ephesus, Saint 379
Lazarev, V. 37, 65, 86, 218, 220-221, Mark, Saint 82, 152
227, 229,232,243-244,253, 256, 261, Mary of Egypt, Saint 189
273,394,460,496 Mastulevich, L 321
Lazarus, Saint 115, 218 Matisse, H. 213,459
Le Guillou, J. 216 Maximus the Confessor, Saint 22-23, 26,
Lebedev, Y. A. 304,322,373 184, 248-249, 260, 292,497
Lebedinskii, la. 322,425 Maximus the Greek, Saint 264, 288, 318,
Leclercq, H. 18-20,70,99 321,338,364
Lemerie, P. 220, 231 Medard, Saint 117
Leo III the Isaurian, Emperor 104, Melito of Sardis 71
107-110,112,121,128,140,154, 378 metaphysical triadology 456
Leo IV, Emperor 112, 222 Methodius, Patriarch 115, 208, 218
Leo V the Armenian 114 Meyendorff, J. 131,141, 234, 237-238,
Leo XIII, Pope 432 240, 242, 245, 247, 274,282-283,379,
Leo the Great 343 390,431,484-485,487,490,503, 505
Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis 104 Michael I, Emperor 208
Levchenko, M. V. 231, 254, 260 Michael II, Emperor 115
Libri Carolini 141-144, 369,451,488 Michael III, Emperor 115,208, 211, 221
light, use of in icons 185, 192,463, Michael VIII Paleologus, Emperor 231
492-493,495-498, 501 Michael, King of Bulgaria 211
Likhachev, D. S. 260, 273 Michelangelo 185
Loesch ke, W. 373 Michelis, P. 220
Loggin, priest 341 Mikhailovksii, B. 501
Lossky, V. 53,127, 136,155,171, 213, Millet, G. 459
234, 237,241,293, 388,392,452-454, Minutius Felix 36
466,481,486,495-496 Mitrofan of Voronezh, Saint 13
Louis the Pious 115 Mneva, N. E 297,304,465
Loukaris, Patriarch Cyril 338, 362 Monotheletism 92
Lubimov, L 501 Monza, phials of 81
Luke, Saint 172, 283 Moravscik, G. 226
icons attributed to 60, 62-64, 266 Moses 19, 24,44-47, 56,70,94,133,
Lurié, la. S. 263-266, 268, 401 174,176,193,213,240, 276, 292,346,
375
M Mount Sinai 19
Macarius of Egypt, Saint 82 Muratov, P. 438,448-450,459-460
Index 523

Murkos, G. 326 Onimus, J. 488

mythology, ancient Greek and Roman 66,69 Optatus of Mileve 71
Optina Pustyn 430
N orans (orante) position 28, 77
Namenyi, E. 46 Origen, Origenism 36,70,148-149, 378,
Nekrasov, A. I. 291, 297, 317 483
neo-Platonism 237 Ostrogorsky, G. 63,99,105,107-108,
See also Plato, Platonism 111, 114-115, 120,123-125,131,133,
Nesterov, M. N. 446-447 146,148, 231-232, 295-296, 301
Nestorians, Nestorianism 105,124,166, Ouspensky, L 136, 223, 356, 466
225,403,456 Ouspensky, Th. 164, 230-232
New Testament 9, 29, 32, 44-47,49, Ovchinnikova, E. S. 342, 344, 369
55-58, 66,70, 81,84, 86,93,122,130,
133,155,161,166, 337, 396-399 P
“New Testament Trinity" pagans, paganism 7-8, 19-20, 36, 67,70,
See Trinity, images of the 73, 89,101,103-104, 253, 262, 338,
Nicephoros I, Emperor 114 340, 345, 363,365,383,387-388,
Nicephoros Phocas, Emperor 52 405-406,408,421, 423-424,482, 508
Nicephoros, Patriarch 111, 114,123,131 Paisius of Alexandria, Patriarch 330
Nicetas, Archbishop of Novgorod 170 Palestinian iconography 88
Nicetas of Constantinople, Patriarch 208 Panchenko, A. M. 364
Nicholas I, Tsar 428 Panselinos, M. 242
Nicodemus the Hagiorite, Saint 378-379 Papadopoulos, M. S. A. 404-405
Nicolas I, Pope 211 Pascal I, Pope 116
Nikon, Patriarch 349, 351-353, 365, 412 Patarini, the 105
Nikonov, V. 294 “Paternity," the
Nilus of Sinai, Saint 84,133 See Trinity, images of the
Nilus of Sora, Saint 264-265, 272, 411 Paul I, Pope 112
Paul IV, Pope 185
o Paul VI, Pope 490
Ochse, M. 79 Paul of Aleppo, Deacon 326,329, 334,
Okunev, N. L. 245 336, 351
Old Believers, the Paul of Constantinople, Patriarch 99
See Old Ritualists Paul of Obnorsk, Saint 189
Old Ritualists, the 354,413,438-440,460 Paulicians 105,406
Old Testament 14, 18-19, 29-30, 41-42, Paulinus, Saint 84
46-47,49,55-58,66, 81, 84, 86, 93-95, Pedalion ( The Rudder) 299, 420
97, 110, 122,134, 263, 266, 283, 292, Pekarskii, P. P. 330, 414
296, 307-310, 337, 373-374, 377,379, Pepin the Short 117
383, 388, 399, 482 persecutions 110-112,114-116,145,422
prohibition of images 36, 38, 41 -42, early Christian 19,40,76
44-45,50,55-57,104-105,121,130, of Diocletian 40,76
133,148, 266, 308, 384,483 Peter Chrysologus, Saint 71
Old Testament préfigurations 19-20, 29, Peter I (Peter the Great) 288, 327, 411,
42, 45, 47-48, 55-56, 58,70, 240, 243, 413-416,419,421-422,427-428,441,
246, 279, 308, 374-377,398,451 444, 447
“Old Testament Trinity* Peter Moghila, Metropolitan 362-363,365
See Trinity, images of the Peter of Alexandria, Patriarch 99
Onasch, K. 220,406-408 Philaret of Moscow, Metropolitan 136,
524 THE THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

159, 214,294,323,395,413,424, 452,457,488,509

430-431,436, 508 and sacred art 9-10, 185, 341,369,
Philotheos, Patriarch 260 420,423,452,456,489-490
Philothcus of Sinai 227 and the image 10, 144, 342, 348, 355,
Photius, Patriarch (Saint) 208, 210-212, 420,450-451,466, 505
214-215, 218, 220-221,224-226,253, Roman Empire, art of 89
260, 504 Romanesque period 228
Pitra,J. B. 131 Romanus I, Emperor 52
Pius IX, Pope 431 Royal Doors
Pius XII, Pope 10 See iconostasis: Holy (Royal) Doors
Plato, Platonism 148, 237, 340, 365,460 Rublev, Andrei, Saint 261, 264-265, 273,
See also neo-Platonism 283,287,291-292,362,425,436,446,
Pleshkovich, John .341-342, 346, 493
350-351, 356 icon of the Trinity 291-292, 399
Pliny 337 Russian sects 423
podlinniki
See iconographie manuals s
Pokiovskii, N. 39, 290-292, 301, 304, Sabellianism 321
315-316,353,380,419 sacred art 7-16, 46, 65, 70,74-76,79-80,
Polenov 445 83, 85-87, 91-92,96,98,100-101,104,
Poppe, A. 228 112,140,144-145,148,167,171,180,
Pososhkov, I. T. 419 184,188-189, 207, 212, 214, 218-219,
pre-iconoclastic period 27 225-227, 229, 231, 235-237, 242,
Proclus 237 246-247, 249-250, 254, 257,261-264,
Procopiou, A. 242 275, 287-288, 290,299-300, 302-303,
Prosper of Aquitaine, Saint 71 305,316-317, 323,325-326,329-333,
Protestants, Protestantism 13,38,41, 335-337, 339-342,349-350,352,
116,119,125,137, L44,166, 317,335, 354-355, 360-364, 367,373,409,
338-339, 363, 367,386,408,413,415, 411-412,414-416,420-421,423,436,
419-425,431,436,450,467, 505, 509 441-444,446,450-451,455,469,472,
Purichev, B. 500 475-476, 486, 489
Pyrrho 337 See also sacred image, secular art
sacred image, the 10, 14-16, 31, 35,
Q 40-41,78,92,96,103,114,116,119,
Quinisext Council 91-93, 95-100, 102, 121,139-142,145,166,192, 254, 257,
120-121,131,133-134,138,149,161, 343, 348,353,367, 387, 513
164, 218, 245,308,310, 321, 408 See also sacred art, secular art
Sakharov, F. 426,434
R Sava, Saint 235, 242
Ramseyer, J. 85,467, 505 Sawatii the monk 342
Réau, L. 37 Schmemann, A. 287, 326, 412, 471,478
Reformation, the 107,119, 250,338, 489 scholasticism 253, 327, 349, 386, 408,
Retkovskaia, L. S. 323, 397,400-402,404 424-425,431-432,445,452
“reverse" perspective 88, 492-493,495 Schubarth, Cornelia 499
Riabushinskii, V. 314 Schulz, H.-J. 222,395
Rice, D. Talbot 86 Sebastian, Saint 117
Roman Catholic Church 10-12,99,141, Sechenov, Archbishop Dimitri 422
232, 302, 316,326,367, 386,408,415, Second Council of Nicaea
420,423-424,431-432,436,439,450, See Seventh Ecumenical Council
Index 525

secular art 10,12,15, 30,89,101, 219, Sventsitskaia, V. 329

340, 360-361,426,441 Sychev, M. 329
secularization 14 symbolism 17,19-22,27,29,32-33,
Sedulin, A. 464 75-76,79,96-97,149,192,240,245,316
Seraphim of Sarov, Saint 13,159,172, Symeon of Polotsk 301, 330-333, 335,
174,178,189,445 339, 342, 349, 364
Serenus, Bishop of Marseille 106 Symeon of Thessalonica, Saint 11, 173
Sergius of Radonezh, Saint 189, 256, Symeon the New Theologian, Saint 33,
260-261, 399 227, 229, 235,260,270, 381,496
Sergius, Metropolitan 393, 395 Synod of 861 211
Sergius, Patriarch 102 Synod of Bari 228
Sergius, Pope 99 Synod of Constantinople 228
Seventh Ecumenical Council 7-8,49, 52, “Synodal" or “Karlovtsy" group 512
99-100,104-105,109-112,116,123, “Synthronon," the
127,129-132, 136,140-144, 148,154, See Trinity, images of the
157,159,161-162,164,173,193, Syrian art 86-87
211-213, 215-216, 308, 313, 323, 340,
352, 363, 369, 373, 378-379, 382,389, T
408,420,450-451,455,466-469,474, Taboric light, the 238-241, 250, 267
480, 483-484,488,490 Tarasius, Patriarch 100, 105, 112-114,
Shtekotov, N. 435,437,459 132-133, 167
Sidorov, T. A. 348,407 terrestrial Church, the 23
“sign” versus “symbol* 17 Tertullian 36, 70-71,149,453
Simeon of Thessalonica, Saint 22-24 Thalassios, Saint Abbas 476
Simeon the Stylite, Saint 104 Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards 81
Simon of Kostroma, Archbishop 425 Theodora, Empress 74, 115, 208
Sixte Scaglia 71 Theodore “the Reader" 63
Sixth Ecumenical Council 91-92, 116, Theodore the Marked, Saint 115
321, 323,455 Theodore the Studite, Saint 114-115,
Snegirev, I. 395 123,125,128,130, 153-154,161,167,
Solntsev 446 213, 266, 299,379,381, 390, 392
Sophia image 245,359,389, 391-392 Theodosius II, Emperor 63
Sophia of Kiev, image of 359 Theodosius of Trnovo, Saint 235, 243,
Sophia of Novgorod, image of 359 245-246, 248-250
sophiology, doctrine of 387-389, 391-393 Theodosius, Bishop of Ephesus 111
Sophronius, Patriarch ofJerusalem, Saint Theodotus of Ancyra, Saint 132
22-23, 277, 282, 397-398 Theognostos, Metropolitan 260
Soviet era, the 464 Theophanes the Greek 242, 261, 273,
Specieris, K. 245 283, 436
Speranskii, N. A. 364 Theophanes the Marked, Saint 115, 151,
Spiridon, Archimandrite 192 218
Stephen II, Pope 112 Theophilus, Emperor 64, 115-116
Stephen III, Pope 112 Thomas of Claudiopolis 121
Stephenof Perm, Saint 400 Tikhon of Zadonsk, Saint 13
Stephen, Bishop of Bostra 104 Time of Troubles 327
Stoglav Tradition 8,10-12, 22, 30-31,41, 51,
See Hundred-Chapters Council 134-139,166,170,172-173, 297,299,
Strigolniki, the 262-263, 400, 407 302, 323, 328,350,354, 356, 358,361,
Suzumov, M. 107 448-451,456,474,482
526 THE THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Transfiguration, the 44,73,153,159, Vitbcrg,A. 428

162,166,172,174,240,273,346,398 Vladimir, Saint Prince 31
transfiguration 60,86,157-160,162,181, Vladimirov, Joseph 301, 330-335, 337,
184,193,241,368,457,485,488,509 339,341-352, 354-356,360,362,420,
Trenev, D. K. 431,438,440.442-444, 444
446 Volkov, I. 501
Trinity, images of the 265,267-268, 276, von Hildebrand, D. 490
279, 281, 291-297,304,307,309-310, von Schönbom, Ch. 58,131,148-149
374, 377,380-381.383,390-393, Voronin, N. 85
396-398,408 Vrubd 446
“New Testament Trinity” 294-295,
372,374,380, 396-398,400 w
“Old Testament Trinity" 267, Walter, Julian 285
294-296.310,372,398-399,401-402, Weitzmann, K. 229, 275
406,408 Wessel, K. 400
the “Paternity* 357, 372, 374,378, word and image, correspondence between
380-382,394.396-397,400-409,416 8,10,47-48, 340, 408, 420
See alto Rublev, Andrei, Saint Writing ofthe Three Patriarchs of1668, The
“Triumph of Orthodoxy* 8,15, 52, 116, 330-332,335,337,339,344
150-151, 208, 212,217-218,237-238, Wunderle, G. 509
251,308,363,381,467,504
See alto council of 843 z
Trubetskoi, E. 188-189,222-223,257, Zacharias, Pope 112
439,'461,463-464 Zarudnev, John 414-415, 419
Tsamblak, Gregory 262 Zenkovskii, B. 487
Tyciak,J. 282 Zeno of Verona, Saint 71
Zenobius of Otnia, monk 264, 318-321,
u 323,355, 357
Urban IV, Pope 53 Zhdanov, I. N. 296
Ushakov, Simon 330-331,335,337-338, Zotov, A. I. 425,434,501
341-342, 344-345,347-350, 360,362, Zots, V. 464
399,419,442-445
Uspenskii, N. D. 302,365
Uspenskii, Th. 330
Ustrialov 317

V
Valdemar, Prince of Denmark 339
Vasiliev, A. 107, 210, 216, 228
Vasnetsov 445-450
Vassiliev, M. 103
Velichkovskii, Paisii 424,430
veneration of icons 7,9, 13, 40, 60, 213,
216, 218,249-250,253, 265, 268,338,
353,420,451,453,467-468,477,
482-483, 488, 504, 508-509
Veronica, legend of Saint 53, 344
Viskovatyi, John 303-305,307-322,356,
372, 401
 List of Plates*
Plate 1, p. 25 Plan of an Orthodox church.
Plate 2, p. 43 St John ofDamascus.
Plate 3, p. 54 Holy Face. Wall-painting, Paris. Icon painted by the Monk Gregory Kroug.
Holy Trinity Church, Vanves, Paris.
Plate 4, p. 59 Vladimir Mother of God, 16th c. (Eleousa type). Photo: Temple Gallery,
London.
Plate 5, p. 61 Smolensk Mother of God, 16th c. (Hodigitria type). Photo: Castle De Wijen-
burgh, Echteld.
Plate 6, p. 68 Christ and the Samaritan woman. Fresco from the Roman Praetextatus cata­
comb (2nd c.).
Plate 7, p. 71 Eucharistic symbol.
Plate 8, p. 75 Bottom of a vase from the catacomb of St Agnes representing the Virgin in an
orans position according to Garucci.
Plate 9, p. 75 Virgin and Child with a prophet. Fresco from the Priscilla catacomb (2nd c.).
Plate 10, p. 77 Daniel in the lions den. Fresco from the Cimetcro dei Giordani (4th c.).
Plate 11, p. 82 A phial of Monza.
Plate 12, p. 113 The Seventh Ecumenical Council.
Plate 13, p. 126 St Theodore the Studite.
Plate 14, p. 147 Christ Pantocrator (Al 1-powerfiil/al mighty). Russian icon of the 16th century.
Photo: Temple Gallery, London.
Plate 15» p. 163 Transfiguration ofChrist. Russian icon, 16th century.
Plate 16, p. 168 St Peter. Fresco from the Roman catacomb of Domitilla (4th c.).
Plate 17, p. 169 St Peter. Russian icon, 20th c. Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug.
Plate 18, p. 175 Sketches of halos.
Plate 19, p. 179 The head ofSt George the Martyr (deuil). Novgorod School, about 1400. Coll.
Dr. Amberg, Kölliken, Switzerland.
Plate 20, p. 182 The Virgin with Child 16th-century Russian icon.
Plate 21, p. 183 Madonna del Graduca by Raphael.
Plate 22, p. 186 St Basil the Blessed 20th-c. Russian icon pained by Leonid Ouspensky.

Plate 23, p. 188 St Blaise and St Spyridon, protectors ofanimals. 14th c. Russian icon.

Plate 24, p. 190 The Annunciation. 16th c. Russian icon. Icon Museum, Recklinghausen.

Plate 25, p. 209 & St Photius the Great. 20th c. by Monk Gregory Kroug. Photo: Andrew
*Plate 56, p. 514 Tregubov.
Plate 26, p. 233 St Gregory Palamas. Byzantine icon, 14th c.

* Asterisks indicate color plates.

527
528 THE THEOLOGY OF THE ICON

Plate 27, p. 236 St Sava. Serbian fresco, ca. 1225. Monastery of Milesevo.

Plate 28, p. 248 The Entombment ofChrist. 12th c. Serbian fresco from Nerezi-Skopje.

Plate 29, p. 255 St Sergius ofRadonezh. Russian icon, 1940’s.

Plate 30, p. 258 St Clement of Rome. Russian icon, ca. 1400. Collection Vander Elst-de-
Gruyter, Anvers.
Plate 31, p. 31 The Archangel Gabriel. Russian icon, 15th c.
Plate 32, p. 271 Deuil of an icon by Master Dionysius.
Plate 33 (insert) Portable iconostasis, mid-16th c. Collection: Dr. John Sinsky.

Plate 34 (insert) Diagram of a church iconostasis.

Plate 35, p. 280 A 16th-century Russian Holy (or Royal) Door.
Plate 36, p. 284 Christ in Gloryt 15th c. The Metropolian Museum of Art, New York, No.
44.101.
Plate 37, p. 286 St Cyril ofBeloozero. 16th-c. Russian icon. A. Rublev Museum, Moscow.
Plate 38, p. 298 Page from painters’ manual.
Plate 39, p. 306 The four-part icon from Cathedral of Annunciation, Moscow.
Plate 40, p. 366 The Meeting ofOur Lord. 17th-c. Russian icon. Korin Collection, Moscow.
Plate 41, p. 370 “The Paternity." 15th-c. Russian icon. Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.
Plate 42, p. 396 The New Testament Trinity. 17th-c. Russian icon. Korin Collection, Moscow.
Plate 43, p.417 Deesis. Russian icon. Beginning of the 18th c. Collection M. Martens, Antwerp.
Plate 44, p. 418 The Coronation ofthe Virgin. Russian, from 1773.
Plate 45, p.442 The Holy Face. Painted by Simon Ushakov. Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.
Plate 46, p. 443 Christ the AlLPowesfid 18th c.
Plate 47, p. 443 Christ the Savior. 19th c.
Plate 48, p.448 The Korsun Mother ofGod Russian icon, 16th c.
Plate 49, p. 449 A Virgin. Pained by Vasnetsov.
Plate 50, p. 475 St Barbara. Russian “icon" of the 18th c.
Plate 51, p. 494 St Luke the Evangelist. 16th-c. Russian, Novgorod. Icon Museum,
Recklinghausen.
•Plate 52, p. 506 St Silouan. Icon pained by Leonid Ouspensky. Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
•Plate 53, p. 507 St Spyridon. Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug. Photo: Andrew Tregubov.
•Plate 54, p. 510 St John the Evangelist. Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug. Photo: Andrew
Tregubov.
•Plate 55, p. 511 St Nicholas and St Genevieve. Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug. Photo:
Andrew Tregubov.
•Plate 56, p. 514 See plate 25 above.
♦Plate 57, p. 515 St Seraphim ofSarov. Icon painted by Monk Gregory Kroug. Photo: Andrew
Tregubov.