Guidelines for Online Participation

July 28, 2021
Samson of Dol

Brothers and Sisters,

Greetings in the Name of the Lord.

I’m writing to let you know about some up-coming changes in our online educational opportunities. Most of these changes will involve St Thomas School, but they will also have an impact on The Fall Theological Seminar and The Pascha Book Study.

Throughout the recent public health crisis, a few hard-working volunteers have made it possible for us to offer an online option for each of those groups. However, the reality is that those volunteers now need a break. Also, since we re-started Fellowship Hour in May, and we will do the same with Church School in September, it’s time for us to get back to meeting face to face for adult education. So, to facilitate those transitions, starting September 1, we will be adopting new guidelines for online participation in those three groups (The Thursday Night Bible Study will not be effected by these new arrangements):

• If you live in Austin, Pflugerville, Round Rock, Georgetown, Cedar Park, Leander, Jonestown, Liberty Hill, or Georgetown, we will be asking you to get in the car, drive to the parish, and attend the group meetings in person. This will make it possible for all of us to get to know each other better; it will facilitate actual discussion (which tends to be minimal during online meetings), and, on Saturday, it will allow folks to participate in Great Vespers following St Thomas School.

• If you live in Bastrop/Elgin, Kerrville/Marble Falls/Burnet, Killeen/Harker Heights/Temple/Jarrell then you will be eligible to participate in these groups online. However, each week, you will need to reserve an online slot at least 48 hours prior to the meeting: All you will need to do is send an email to remote.meetings@theforerunner.org, by Monday evening for the Wednesday night meetings, and by Thursday evening for the Saturday afternoon meetings. This will require you to plan ahead, but it will make it possible for us to know who will be attending the meeting online and whether or not we will need any of our tech volunteers to be available. 

• If you will be participating online, we will be asking that you be prepared to turn on your camera and allow the other members of the group to actually see you. Talking to a blank screen is just not very conducive to healthy interaction.

• If you live within easy driving distance of the parish, but participating online is easier for you due to age, health concerns, or any other issues, just get in touch with me, and we will be happy to work something out.

Change is never easy, but we’ve been through a whole lot of changes in the past year and a half, so we should be able to make all this work without too much trouble. After all, our goal is to enhance life in our community and to allow the members of our parish to get closer to one another and to the Most Holy Trinity.

Just let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks to each of you, and May the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bless you all.

an unworthy priest
aidan

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp11: Early Christian and Byzantine Church Singing

Music is a part of human nature. The spirit is stirred by the sounds of music toward an action or end. All cultures have music, whether it’s whistling, humming, throat singing, singsong and tonal languages, or the long retelling of epic stories. A lament, a memorial, an account of heroic deeds, and tragedies are types of music that begin to approach the essence of prayer. 

Early Christian music and Byzantine church music are two main sections in this chapter. Icons and manuscripts often only survive in fragments and some melodies from Jewish worship have survived in Christianity and in some Yemenite Jewish communities. Holy tradition and scripture witness to singing hymns or hymnizing (Gk. humnesantes), psalms, and spiritual odes (Mt. 26:30, Col.3:16, Eph.5). These form the three broad groups of Christian music. In ancient Greece, hymns were songs in honor of ancestors, heroes, and gods; traditionally, the generational songs of older cultures are usually in connection with tribe, family, and the forming of peoples. For Christians, these three types of singing connect us to the saints who came before us, and it joins us with the Holy Trinity as sons and daughters of God. There are boundary stones to guide Christian worship from Apostolic origin, but how systematic that music became depended on where Orthodoxy took root. From Carthage, the Roman province of northern Africa, Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, 2nd – 3rd c. AD) who wrote in Latin teaches us that there was a tradition of reading the psalms and “improvised praises from the heart.” The Greeks preferred to intone the liturgical texts and Gospels in a style that was reminiscent of Hellenic antiquity. The Papyrus Oxyrhynchus found in 1786, for instance, uses the Dorian mode and letter notation for voices, and it may have been used in the liturgy. 

Many types of Eastern instruments are mentioned in the Psalms. Some interpret them allegorically and others literally, and that justifies the use of the organ, guitars, tambourins, and drums at some Christian assemblies. The human voice literally can encompass the major categories of man-made instruments: wind, percussion, and string. At the same time, words can be sung with the breath, the beat and the vibrating chords of voices that sing in unison during the Orthodox divine liturgy. In this way, instruments can be understood as both literal and allegorical. There are many other reasons. For many Greeks, instruments were viewed suspiciously as pagan, emotional, and meant to support voices that are already weak, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa. St. Clement of Alexandria viewed playing instruments generally as “delusion” and “irrational” that “corrupt man’s morals” and disturb our thinking. St. Basil the Great called the stringed lyre “obscene.” The harsh criticism about instruments stems partly from the immoral Greek culture of paganism and mostly from principles of form and function of these instruments and sounds that interrelate with human nature and prayer. Often the lyre was an instrument that the wealthy used to train female slaves to play seductively at parties. In the 4th c., Arnobius also criticizes secular instruments because they produce many passions. For this reason, even outside of the Church, many of our holy fathers cautioned against instruments as Plato warned of its effects on the morality of youth. The spoken word also conveys the real spiritual seeds of truth that enter our heart. What the liturgical texts say and seek to implant into us take precedence over instrumental sounds, which usually blunt the mind from capturing the speech of the liturgy. So, instruments were not rejected so much based on principle, but on the style and forms that affect the feelings of people during prayer every day. Like the Books of the Bible, the Church’s wisdom makes “conscious choices” and gives us rules about what to listen to as well as what to read, not based on fragments of philosophy or fashionable fads, but on the spiritual principles of life. Canon 75 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council set down that music is morally energized and that a code of ethics and behavior should be followed. Care and godly sorrow are awakened in our heart best by choral singing or voices in unison, the traditional music of Judaism and early Christians. 

St. Clement of Alexandria taught the allegorical understanding of instruments in the holy scriptures. The zither symbolizes the mouth, the shofar symbolizes the call to resurrection, the strings the sinews and nerves of the body, the psaltery symbolizes the tongue. Essentially, our bodies are the instruments of God’s song. Just as the Jews worshipped with all twenty-nine different instruments and King David wrote the psalms with instruments to accompany the voice, Orthodox Christians worship with all the heart, mind, and soul to produce a sacrifice of praise to the Holy Trinity from the heart, not from the bass, guitar riffs, or drumming of the hands. There is the assumption that the mind, the heart, and the body all have specific purposes. Instruments, because of their form and ends, are tools that have ethical consequences. The chanting of voices works to enliven the 

“cold” and “stiff” parts of our human nature because of passions. King David was a shepherd, and he understood that songs can be calls to the sheep to return on the path as well as slings for the giants in life. The stringed psaltery or harp is unique because it’s the only musical instrument whose sound comes from the top part of it and descends from there. The spiritual principle reflects how the Holy Spirit comes with grace on Christian sons and daughters of the Holy Trinity. The form guides the function of the psalter toward higher awareness of God and humility; it’s the way to heaven for the soul that requires discipline and harmony. Because of this, our holy fathers don’t disapprove of the psaltery. When these ethical and musical principles aren’t followed by Christians, a spirit of secularism enters and fragmentation on all levels slowly breaks apart the universal voice. The opposite of fragmentation is connection. In the East, they perceived the whole in one voice singing or choral singing through neume notation and a kind of deduction, while the West in general followed letter notation from the bottom up so that the primacy of exactness and “disconnected points and moments” dominated church music. Orthodox music has an ethos, ‘’a salutary power,” and a moral effect because sound is a part of human nature. The next chapter discusses Russian Church music and its treasure of znamenny chant and its conflicts with this fragmented approach to music that still dominates much of the secular and Christian world.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 10: Music in Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece

Part Three has two major sections. The first section focuses on the many spiritual and historical aspects of liturgical singing and the second on the unique tradition of bell ringing. That covers a range of five chapters. 

In chapter 10, Metroplitan Hilarion highlights the parallels and differences between the musical traditions of ancient Israel and Greece from a religious and theoretical perspective. He mentions the belief among the Hebrews in “the salutary power of music.” The Hellenes also had an enduring cultural connection to this strong effect of music and poetry. For example, Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were didactic and transformative for the audience, and Greek tragedies too were performed like the epics in communal and religious ways that spilled over into the poetical traditions of ancient Rome. Similarly, the Psalmist David composed hymns and poems that were accompanied by various kinds of instruments that were meant to enhance the singing voice, as Metropolitan Hilarion explains. Just as the Hellenes incorporated musicians into their honor of the deities, like Dionysius, Apollo and Artemis, so too the Hebrews recruited a certain number of priests from the Levites to worship God in the temple through music. The psalms often contain the phrase “call upon his name” and so there is a connection to the divine names of the Old Testament and its later development among the holy fathers of the Church and relationship between the name, the image and the first image in the principles of iconography. 

The Psalms were the distinguishing structure of ancient worship in Israel as it does in the Orthodox Church today. There were different forms of song and instruments used by King David. Instruments included the categories of wind, string, and percussion; there were twenty-nine names of different instruments mentioned in Hebrew so that these words are only a rough translation into the English, Russian, or Greek. The purpose of instrumental music was to accompany choral singing in Jewish tradition to strengthen the human voice. Israelite worship is founded on how different human voices sing as one voice. The Orthodox Church still uses this kind of “intoned reading” or “psalmodic cantillation” during the divine liturgy and choral singing. Improvisation and ornamentation were a few of the characteristics of Jewish psalmodic worship. According to Metropolitan Hilarion, secular music didn’t exist. The melody for the Hebrews in a “single voice” structure of singing in unison did not have large stock of sounds to use. 

The ensemble of chanting into “one voice” is also shared by the ancient Hellenes. They also used a similar stringed kitharaand lyre like the ancient Israelites, which originally were plucked with four strings that would become the basis of the tetrachord (four-string). The alternation between voices, antiphonal singing, was also accompanied by dancing. Rhapsode means a song is stitched together or woven by a reciter. It is seen in the Odes of Pindar, which contain lyrical poems to be recited. The rhapsodist made sonic icons for the ears. The Panhellenic games gathered all the different Hellenic peoples into one place, at Olympia, Corinth, Delphi, or Nemea. There they recited rhapsodes, celebrated deities and victories, and both men and women competed in many games and musical processions. It encapsulated Hellenic communal identity that stretches as far back as the Neolithic times of Old Europe to the philosophy of Plato’s classical idea of the common good, and it is argued to be at the root of the communal Greek spirit. The Greeks developed musical theory that influenced St. Augustine and Boethius much later in history. From the verb teino, to pluck, stretch, pull, we get the word tone. The tonos or tone became the basic unit of Greek music, which referred to the tension of string on an instrument. Plato taught that “all harmonies [symphonia] are formed from four sounds.” His philosophy was interested in music in so far as it produced a good soul and a morally strong person. Plato was not bogged down by the details but he was interested in how music affected the emotions and actions of people. From this the principle of the tetrachord emerged as a symphony or harmony of sounds in consonance. The tetrachord is made up of four different sounds around each other in a similar way that different voices form one voice in a choir. Tetrachords can be grouped together to form other systems such as the octave. Two tetrachords equal an octave. The grouping based on octaves instead of tetrachords forms the basis of western European musical tradition. Evgeny Gertsman argues that modern European cannot sense the difference between the tetrachord symphony and the octave system, and this split in music had contributed to their separation from the cultures of antiquity and Russian civilization. Europeans and Russians do not share the same basis in musical theory. Gertsman also explains that there is a functional relationship between sounds and how “the content of the work” moves forward. The closest western counterpart to that relationship of sound and the work itself is the Latin epic of the Aeneid by Virgil that divides lines of poetry into dactylic hexameter like the Homeric epics.

The modern system of music in the West relies on the range of two tetrachords. The widest range for the Greeks was five tetrachords from the highest to lowest sound because of the aesthetic descent. Metropolitan Hilarion also explains that unlike the European system today, there is no “absolute pitch” in Greek musical tradition because each instrument and human voice is different; the lowest sound is unique to the individual. But to create a “smoothness” a group of instruments or voices shared the lowest sound in harmony. Not all tetrachords joined together are created equal, according to Plato and other Greek philosophers. Plato ascribed certain ethical characteristics or an ethos around each grouping of tetrachords. The Dorian mode, or kind, was considered noble-spirited, but others were called effeminate, ecstatic, festive, brave, peaceful or licentious. The pagan Greeks understood the moral results of using certain instruments and arrangement of voices and tones. The principle of music in ancient Israel and Greece is the same: the human voice is strengthened by other human voices by singing in unison. The holy fathers of the Church and the canons were aware of these ethical implications of music and the powerful way it could draw us into worshipping the Holy Trinity in spirit and in truth. The next chapter discusses early Christian and Byzantine singing in the Church. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 9: The Meaning of Icons

The different meanings of icons encompasses the whole person, all mankind and what has been revealed to us in the Holy Orthodox Church. The first image, the archetype of created images, is God. Metropolitan Hilarion reminds us that the icon of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, is “an icon of God,” a theosikon. The holy fathers like St. John Chrysostom and John of Damascus have outlined how an icon can bear the image of the first image through the name. From the beginning, the incarnation of Christ works to save the whole of mankind. Anthropology is a scientific field that studies human behavior and society by assuming that methodical observation and formal analysis reveals the deepest truth about our nature. The Church, however, teaches us that humanity’s nature is reversed and improved because God became man – the ultimate revelation of God. Icons reveal our transfigured nature and our relationship to the saints and the Holy Trinity. 

To better understand iconography’s primary purpose and working principles, the previous chapters have built on the foundations of the creation account in Genesis, the theological distinctions laid out in the writings and councils of the church fathers and the history of Russian iconography. The veneration we give to the type passes to the archetype in a real and symbolic way. What is seen in various forms on earth relates to the divine realm and to the Holy Trinity by participation. The word icon comes from the Greek verb meaning “to be like, to befit,” eiko. What was made good on earth is like what exists in the heavens. Images also call to mind thoughts so that icons can help Christians remember our relationship with God in our heart and mind and body. The Orthodox iconographer, Baker Galloway, reminded us in his presentations that images are never neutral. We continually contact them through daily encounters with our eyes or with our memories and thoughts, our inward eyes. St. John of Damascus taught that “an image is a reminder.” 

The Seventh Ecumenical Council sums up the theological meaning of icons that many have tried to grasp and articulate later in the Orthodox Church: The uncircumscribed Word of the Father became circumscribed, taking flesh from thee, O Theotokos, and he has restored the sullied image to its ancient glory, filling it with the divine beauty. 

The restoration of all things, the great reversal of deification and repentance, the gifts of asceticism are all focused on making the image beautiful again through Jesus Christ, and the Most Holy Mother of God helps to save us through Her Son. The resurrection reveals our anthropology because Christ’s defeat of Hades now deifies us and resurrects us after we die in our body. Icons teach us what to believe and think. Even though the resurrection of Christ is a dogma of the Church, there is no traditional icon called “The Resurrection Icon” or “The Harrowing of Hades.” Even “The Descent” only tells half of the story. There is an anthropological way to paint this event and name this dogmatic icon. Based on Church tradition and the liturgical services of the Octoechos and Lenten Triodion, the proper title should be “Christ’s Departure from Hades.” These words describe how we worship mystically and what we believe about paradise and hell. With inscriptions, words, chant, and paint, the liturgy teaches us that Christ left Hades as the Conqueror, that the victory was given to all people, that all might be saved. 

In 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave a speech at Harvard warning that Western cultures have forgotten God like the Soviets did in Russia. He warned that disasters would follow if forgetfulness continued on its own path. Icons help Christians not to forget who God is and who we are and where we are all going in the end. When we venerate icons, we also pray to God and request help from the saints and the Theotokos. Metropolitan Hilarion points out that “icons are incarnate prayer” (Zenon, Conversations, 22). To inherit transfiguration, the Church gives us ascetical disciplines that are circumscribed on the icons of the saints. They point the way to life like St. John the Forerunner points to Christ. The iconographic human body of Orthodox saints employs a range of light and illumination unlike those of ordinary paintings or Renaissance arts that show a much more realistic, naturalistic, and oily kind of flesh that still finds its main resources and inspirations from this earthly orientation. There is a degree of skill, virtuosity, and natural elegance involved in Renaissance paintings, but its morality and mystical elements have been occluded from our view with the result that transcendence cannot be nourished through self-denial and prayer. Eventually people lose sight of spiritual symbolism while all the focus is funneled into the materiality of existence and a rationalism that ever approaches the peripheral. Humanism has a different anthropology than iconography; humanists tended to emphasize the image over the archetype. Orthodoxy teaches that a Christian will receive his or her body back, the image given by God, but we will be in “the semblance of light.” The humanistic philosophies do not strive for this divine light to transform the body or soul together in the same way. The Enlightenment was not the Light of the Holy Trinity that is given graciously through asceticism, repentance, and prayer. The Age of Reason has had its own justifications, methods, and consequences. If our thoughts, our memory, our degree of indulgence or asceticism, our view of humanity and the cosmos are interrelated fundamentally to the enlightened lessons of iconography and miraculous veneration of holy icons, then to exchange that truth visually and conceptually for some other image and idea will influence morality and the ability to discern mystery and wonder in life. It will influence the assumptions we make about the universe and its purpose. It will establish whether we see sacredness in our own bodies and in our neighbors. Orthodox music during liturgical worship relies on our bodily sacredness, primarily the human voice, not mechanical instruments. The next section investigates the common tradition of singing and chanting in the Orthodox Church. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 8: Russian Icons

Iconography in Russia developed from Byzantine artists who came and painted churches and icons between the 11th and 13thc. Many of them lived in Novgorod and they were influential on the churches there. Theophanes the Greek settled in Novgorod, northern Russia, in the 14th c. Local artistic traditions in major cities such as Novgorod, Pskov, Rostov-Yaroslavl, Tver and Moscow arose together with these spiritual and cultural centers of lands of the Rus’. Byzantium passed down the spiritual and technical traditions of iconography to the Russians. But Russian iconographers did not copy blindly what their Greek masters taught them in a lifeless form of rigid exactitude. They began painting in a style that is unique to their culture and spiritual gifts, but still within the canon of the Orthodox Church. The Church of the Holy Transfiguration on Il’yn Street and the Moscow Kremlin Cathedral of the Archangel were painted by Theophanes the Greek. It also depicts the Hospitality of Abraham of the Old Testament, a real event. The three angels symbolize the Holy Trinity, and Theophanes wrote an inscription over the angel seated at the middle of the table, who represents Christ, with omicron-omega-nu. These Greek letters represent the phrase “He Who Is” or The Being (Ho On). Over the whole scene is written the inscription “The Holy Trinity.” An important distinction to be made is that iconographers are not depicting the being or essence of the Holy Trinity, what they really are or looked like, but a symbolic icon of the Holy Trinity. Abraham and Sarah are also depicted while the Three Angels symbolize “the pre-eternal council” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Byzantine iconographers tended to paint fierce ascetical figures and scenes. For example, Saint Macarius of Egypt is depicted naked with no eyes, lips, ears; his body is covered with white hair and his hands are outstretched in symbolic gesture of prayer and supplication. He represents a rejection of the illusions and the vanity of this world in boldness and sanctity. This kind of icon reminds us that our bodies are earthen vessels and that by practicing asceticism we are lifted by God’s grace toward the Light of the World. It also shows us that Christians should incorporate these symbolic and bodily gestures in worship, which have been much lost in modern Christianity. The icons of Theophanes the Greek connect us also to the hesychasts who taught about receiving the divine gift of experiencing the energy and light of the Holy Trinity through ascetical disciplines and the Jesus Prayer. Metropolitan Hilarion explains how Theophanes uses light in his iconography. It can be painted with many kinds of brush strokes and used to illuminate the face, body, and background of the image. Most importantly, Theophanes does not make light “a means” but “a power” that comes from the inner transfiguration of a person into a saint. Silver, gold and white paint is often used to depict what ascetics and mystics have seen and felt in the grace of prayer. The Transfiguration of the Lord (1403) in the Tretyakov Gallery symbolizes divine illumination as the purpose of the cosmos and creation. 

The Venerable Andrei Rublev (c.1360-1427) lived at a time when large, multi-tiered iconostases were built in Russian Orthodox temples and wooden architecture was also common. Rublev painted the first “Russian Christ” icon. He does not use the ascetic intensity and boldness of the Greek style. Instead, Christ looks calm and harmonious in his facial expression. Rublev is also recognized for his famous icon of the Holy Trinity at the Trinity Lavra at St. Sergius Monastery. It is an ancient Orthodox scene that can also be found in the Roman catacombs of the 2nd – 4th c., at Santa Maria Maggiore in the 5th c., and San Viale in Ravenna in the 6th c. This icon draws out more symbolism from the Hospitality of Abraham than merely representing a story from the Bible. It contains the inscription, a canonical feature of iconography, “The Holy Trinity” and their “equal” natures are highlighted. The cross-in-halo of one of the central angels represents Christ. Together with Rublev’s Trinity and the cenobitic monastery of St. Sergius of Radonezh, Metropolitan Hilarion explains that the Holy Trinity became “the absolute spiritual-moral reference point of his community.” It is also a “eucharistic” icon that is related to every person in an Orthodox temple and the central place we find communion, community, and co-salvation. 

After this high point of Russian iconography around the 15th c., the canons became lax and depictions of God the Father became prevalent and other unprecedented compositions were painted. Naturally, these relaxations led to the Church making pronouncements about iconographical standards. The Stoglav Council of 1557 reestablished the norms, boundaries, and expectations for iconographers. It seems to be a common thread running through Russian history that inspiration comes from the East and shortsightedness arrives from the West. Some of these influences on the departure of canonical iconography in Russia came from the western styles that also attempted to paint God the Father during the Italian Renaissance and later with the European Enlightenment. That classical rebirth of learning in Europe inspired emperor Peter of Russia to make changes in society that determined a course for the westernization of Russian culture and religion toward Roman Catholic forms and ideas as well as an emphasis on “academic” iconography.  The “academicians” were groups of artists. Some painted icons like a copyist in a dead form by trying to reach for exactness as a goal like the Old Believers. Others painted icons academically by treating icons in a sentimental and purely conceptual way like the Renaissance artists of western Europe. Oils became more common than the traditional tempera technique for icon panels. This scholastic approach characterizes much of the post-Petrine period of icon painting in Orthodox churches in Russia. Icons are infused by the ascetic work of the iconographer. Metropolitan Hilarion explains that the academic style of the west tends to oppose the ascetic foundation of iconographers of the past. He also says that “a copy is a dead product.” But there have been iconographers who have always been inspired and attempted to follow the Old Russian traditions of iconography, sometimes in a fresh and unique style. Leonid Ouspensky criticized this western movement in art. He saw in westernized icons a “sublimated eroticism” and “vulgar triteness.” There was an overall sentimentality and romanticism that had lost hope on symbolism and transfiguration of the human soul and body. People’s feeling toward the universal and transcendent truths could no longer guide their reason and intellect on the path of transformation by divine illumination. Feeling without transcendent forms is empty and vane. Russian iconographers continued during the “Red Terror” of 1917 and after the Revolutionary period. “Two Russias” emerged. Some Russians stayed in the homeland and became prisoners of the Soviet Union. Other Russians fled abroad, mainly to Paris and founded schools and intellectual movements. When USSR was dismantled in the 1990s, these two Russian communities reunited through iconography. Sister Juliana, Gregory Kroug, Archmandrite Zinon and many more artists and intellectuals and clergy came together. They tried new forms and sought to keep the traditions. But they understood that “in the sphere of faith there are truths which are not subject to change.” Many creative works and writings arose out of the sufferings of the immigrant Russian communities in the west and their relatives under the Soviets. The experiences that they have left us in icons and books bore much fruit in rediscovering the meaning of icons not just in Russia but for the Universal Orthodox Church. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 7: Iconographical Tradition in Byzantium

Byzantine Mosaics and Frescoes of the 9th – 14th c. (pp.159-172); Book Miniatures (pp.179-184)

Byzantine Mosaics and Frescoes.

After the persecution of iconodules and holy images, iconography flourished. An example from the 9th c. in the Hagia Sophia Church in Thessalonica shows the Ascension. Christ wears a blue Hellenic himation (mantle), He gestures with a blessing, and He conveys “an expression of easy concentration” and this icon impresses on us “the sensation of presence.” A recurring and central theme of iconography types and subjects include the Ascension, the Annunciation, Christ Pantocrater (Almighty), the Theotokos Orans (Praying) and the Theotokos with Christ. Other scenes that are not found in the Gospel are taken from liturgical texts. The saints and hierarchy are depicted by rank and identified by their vestments. These iconographic scenes center our universe on Christ and the Theotokos. That source of life radiates out into the saints and creation, and that message is seen inside church frescoes and mosaics. Christ Pantocrater is an icon that portrays “the presence of the heavenly power in the life of man.” These icons not only taught the Holy Scriptures visually, but they also mainly focused on the liturgical calendar and the feast days of the Church, rather than “the sequence of the Gospels.” 

Byzantine iconography has roots in the Orthodox temples of the West. Some of the earliest frescoes are preserved at Castelseprio in northwestern Italy’s Lombardy region. From the 12th – 13th c., Italy’s Byzantine mosaics flourished in places such as Cefalù, Monreale, Palermo, Venice, and Rome. The Ravenna Exarchate also formed an enclave of Byzantine Orthodoxy in the Italian peninsula as well as the southern territories called Magna Graecia in ancient times. Metropolitan Hilarion comments that Latin Christianity coexisted harmoniously here in Italy with Byzantine iconography and theology. The mosaics of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice from the 11th – 14th c., for example, were made by Greeks and were also modeled after the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Orthodox iconography in a variety of places such as Kosovo, Macedonia, Cyprus, Italy, or Serbia, all share a common feature: that Christ is placed in the center of all things. The canonical criteria of the Church for making icons were also followed in these diverse places. 

Book Miniatures.

Although most of the earliest icons are frescoes and mosaics, icons can also be made from wood painted panels, metal work, bas-reliefs, embroidered cloth, and manuscript illuminations. Book miniatures are manuscripts that are illumined with artwork, drawings, and decorations of religious themes. The holy scriptures and patristic texts could be illustrated, unlike icons, and not necessarily tied to liturgical calendars. In this way, these artistic codices could be original in iconographic content by exploring new themes. A few examples of miniatures occur in different languages and alphabets for reading the scriptures. The 9th c. Vienna Boniface Codex (Codex Vindobonensis 751) in Carolingian miniscule script, and these styled letters were also used to write Jerome’s Vulgate Bible. The 6th c. Rabula Gospels were written in an east Syriac script known as Estrangela with notes below the text in red ink. Pictures of the Ascension, Pentecost and Crucifixion can be seen as well in this kind of textual tradition. Iconoclasts would have been likely these Christian codices along with mosaics, frescoes, and painted icons. There is also a mingling of “antique and Byzantine Christian” themes. For example, the psalmist David is pictured alongside a personification of “Melody” and “Night” in classical Greek clothing. Some “liturgical orations” on certain saints and their depiction are found in the Saint Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai. Homilies, the Menologion, and hagiography also formed part of book miniatures. Icons, murals and illustrated books all work in different ways to “fight for souls,” the Orthodox faith, and all Orthodox Christians. To continue in this similar vein of thought, the next chapter discusses the history and style of Russian icons that also faced its own iconoclastic battles that extended into the modern age. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 7: Iconographical Tradition in Byzantium

Iconoclasm and the Veneration of Icons; Decorative Painting of Byzantine Churches (pp.135-158)

The Mandylion, also known as the Image Not-Made-By-Hands, is an icon of the face of Christ and His image represents the defense of venerating icons in the Church. It shows us that justice and beauty always overcome violence and death. In 721 AD, Arab Caliph Yazid prohibited icons in his territory. Also, Emperor Leo III the Isaurian from Syria promoted this “mentality” against holy images in worship. The violent forces within and outside of the Church were opposed specifically to representing Christ Jesus and the Holy. So, the incarnation and resurrection of Christ became strongly involved in the debates about iconography’s place in worship. 

Metropolitan Hilarion calls iconoclasm the “first reform movement” in the history of Christianity. Critics and iconoclasts seem to have feared that an “exact” image of Christ will replace Christ Himself as an idol and the wood itself become a god. Icons do not aim to be exact but follow canonical measures that allow artists to portray Christ in terms of beauty, theology and how that symbolic meaning can bring us closer to the Holy Trinity. Other critics may have feared that Greco-Roman arts were too pagan in flavor. If we deny that physical objects can become holy, then how we can become holy is in doubt, and we are close to protesting the incarnation of Christ. If we deny that Christ can be depicted in a holy and canonical way as a human like us, we come close to rejecting Christ’s divinity in his flesh. What replaces Christ, whenever his holy icon is removed, is man’s nature, the type, separated from its prototype, Christ Himself. Nature itself becomes the icon instead with art that depicts “shoots of plants and swarming cranes, ravens and pelicans.” It is a picture of the natural world and man without a God in the middle of it all and who is one of us in form. The Dome of Rock at Jerusalem and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus have such naturalistic beauty without the Risen Christ proceeding in hierarchical order and in relationship with all creatures and the cosmos, as we often see in Byzantine mosaics, frescoes, and icons. Orthodoxy presents us with an integral worldview.

The Arian view that Christ’s resurrected flesh “becomes a casual detail” or the Muslim and Protestant view that Christ’s depiction and veneration is idolatry fails to understand the incarnation and the Eucharist. The consequence of these ideas leaves humanity and Christ separated from each other without a relationship to God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and so the flesh never has a chance to become deified through Christ’s flesh, the Eucharistic communion we share together. By protesting icons, Christ’s body only becomes an “instrument.” By refusing that divinity can dwell in a body, Christ only becomes a great prophet or teacher. Iconoclasts much like the Bolsheviks and certain militant, Protestant reformers revolted against the processional hierarchy that brings us into a relationship with the Holy Trinity. The misguided zeal of rulers, philosophical reasoning, and false prophecies have had a part in fighting against icons. But Christians of the 4th c. did not share this Arian teaching, even though the veneration of icons had not yet formulated rules for artists and for what symbols could be used for Christian doctrines, Eusebius of Caesarea explains. A canonization of icons, then, occurred in the 6th c., perhaps in a similar way that writings and scripture were later codified within the Church as well. Exodus 20:4-5 is often used to prove that icons are prohibited by Christian doctrine. But that passage would also prohibit the natural decorative arts often found in the Abrahamic faiths that include birds, fish, plants, animals, vines, all things of the earth. The “image of the invisible God” was made flesh so that what remains invisible can become visible, which mediates for us to access the Holy Trinity (Colossians 1:15) The end of iconoclasm only smashes one image and replaces it with another one. The revolt only substitutes one hierarchy for another. It only establishes one kind of veneration for another kind. To idolize anything is to see something besides God in what is represented to us, not to see the symbolic reality in holy images, but bare materiality, a lack of Christ in creation. Materialism, rationalism, scientism, fanaticism then can fill in the spaces emptied of holy icons. But Christ’s incarnation has transformed everything so that physical fountains of life can pour out for us. The incarnation is our deification. 

St. John of Damascus distinguishes two kinds of reverent honor in Orthodox worship. Latreia (adoratio, Latin) is an inner attitude that only offers worship to the Holy Trinity, not any creature. Honor or doulia (veneratio, Latin) is a term that designates the inner disposition of honoring someone higher than oneself, such as a parent, elder, pastor or ruler. Honor is a principle within the hierarchy of nature and in the divine realm as well. Making a metania or pyrokinesis (to prostrate, bow and kiss), making the sign of the cross and bowing down to the ground, is a common gesture of latria-worship and doulia-veneration in Orthodox temples. That the outward form may not differ very much from these distinctions in terms was not discussed by Metropolitan Hilarion. St. John of Damascus’s treatises formed in the 8th c. the standard view of iconodules (icon-venerators). He also has good definition of an icon, “an image is a likeness of the archetype.” He explains that the connection between the image and the archetype (a prototype or first image) is the name that they share. But the two images are different in essence or in other ways not the same. So, the image carries the name of the archetype, and that name also brings “divine grace to material objects.” Stuff doesn’t have grace in themselves, but only in connection to the name of the archetype. For example, the name of the saint sanctifies the image of the saint painted on wood because they share the same name, though they are different. In a way, this also mirrors Christ’s incarnation and our relationship to the Holy Trinity in our likeness. Iconography, then, opposes the camp of nominalist philosophy that rejects the inherent connection between name and image or objects.

Richard M. Weaver describes the philosopher of the Middle Ages. He says “the philosophic doctor” was someone who centered himself on humble wisdom and who had mastered all things; this philosopher stood at the center of things, not a striving backward in time nor by striving forward into the future; the wise are not bound by constraints of history. Icons show us that Christ has returned humanity and all things back to eternal “center.” The sections on Decorative Painting of Byzantine Churches (pp.148-158), Byzantine Mosaics and Frescoes of the 9th – 14th c. (pp.159-172), and Book Miniatures (pp.179-184) show us how physical nature works with divine nature, since the image bears the name of first image (archetype). What is often central in these iconographical scenes is Christ Ascended and Resurrected, the Communion of the Apostles with Christ sitting at the center, and Christ with the Most Holy Mother of God. Byzantine culture had found its “center” of all things in Christ Jesus, and in His Holy Name and Image. Icons fought for the doctrines of our salvation so that the Holy Trinity becomes the foundation and driving principal of our lives. Icons fight for the incarnation of Christ, His resurrection, His ascension, and our deification along with the whole cosmos. Icons teach us that we are only saved when we find the center of all in Christ and in our neighbor. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 7: Iconographical Tradition in Byzantium

The Iconographical Tradition in Byzantium and the Canonical Image of Christ (pp.115-134) 

This section covers two parts in chapter seven, the Iconographical tradition in Byzantium and the Canonical Image of Christ. The encaustic icons of Sinai during the 6th – 7th c. were made by melting beeswax with a mixture of various colored pigments and letting it dry onto a wooden panel. For example, the icons of Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai uses this technique. The realistic Fayum mummy portraits are an example of this kind of image that influenced the style of making icons in the 6th – 7th c. These images of Egypt had a “monumental” purpose that sought to capture the beauty of the face before a loved one’s death, and later placed the portrait over the head of the mummy for burial. They sought immortality through pictorial representation. Christ Pantocrater (Omnipotent) is another early icon that later became the canonized version of the central icon of Christ in Orthodox temples. In this period, Christ appears more realistic. He wears a Greco-Roman chiton of dark blue color. He holds a jeweled book in his left hand, and He gives a blessing gesture with his right hand. Christ sits enthroned and there is a golden halo, the Divine Light, around His head. There seems to be a gradual change in purpose from Roman and Hellenistic monumental images to memorial icons of the martyrs and saints, Christ and the Theotokos. Orthodox Christianity rooted and fulfilled in Judaism “baptizes” the Mediterranean gentile cultures into purity and enlightenment, as Baker Galloway, St. John the Forerunner’s iconographer explains this “tense dialogue between paganism and Christianity.” Many early icons, then, have this Romanesque expression, vestments, and bodily shapes, and fuller, hierarchical compositions that include Christ, the Most Holy Mother of God, the angels and saints, Old Testament righteous and scenes begin to surface in temples. Early depictions of Christ have the antique type of painting that portrays Christ as a younger, Roman, beardless man who wears a poncho-like garment, that is shown in the earliest crucifixion icons in the 8th c. in Sinai. The later canonical icon of Christ – also known as Christ Pantocrater – appears more Palestinian in features with longer hair, a full beard and more mature in age. This type has been preserved the longest not because it is really more ancient but because of its connection to tradition in literary accounts of the Teaching of Addai in the 5th c. and the Acts of Thaddeus in Greek in the 7th c. These stories tell us that King Abgar of Edessa asked for healing by Christ. Khannan the archivist was sent to paint Christ’s face by the king. It became too difficult for him to depict Christ’s face, and so He wiped his face on a cloth, and that imprinted on it His face. That image became known in Byzantium as acheiropoieta, the Image Not-Made-By-Hands, or mandylion. The fight for Abgar’s health was also a fight for his soul and others. Another king from Persia, Khosrou, in the 6th c. also asked for an image of Christ to save his city and people from a destructive storm. The real face of Christ Jesus on this cloth came to Constantinople from Edessa in the 10th c. and later it was taken to Europe by the Crusaders in 1204 and it finally rested at Turin, Italy. There it became known as The Shroud of Turin. The two images turn out to be very likely the same picture of Jesus, as many scholars have discovered over the years. The shroud shows the more Semitic appearance of Christ rather than the young Roman with a tunic. Here he looks Jewish. He has longer hair, a full beard, and he appears to be more mature.  The true imprint of his face is made from Christ’s sweat and blood, from which is the source of all holiness and nourishment. So, the Pantocrater at Sinai became the first canonical icon of Christ, who is the central figure in iconic scenes and compositions of later Orthodox temples. Metropolitan Hilarion argues that this antique style probably was used because Roman Christians weren’t aware of what Jesus looked like in Rome. The process of painting the icon of Christ is like the saints. There is a real person, with sweat and blood, and miracles begin to happen. There are writings, oral stories, and witnesses. People paint them after their death and more miracles and gifts and graces pour forth from their images, who are painted by human hands. But in reality Christ has painted them into the archetypal, true, living icons in paradise. That relationship takes places bodily through our senses and experiences.

There are several reasons why not many icons from this period are preserved. The icons are very old, and there were not enough of them to commonly hang on walls. In fact, for iconoclasts who opposed specifically “holy images” in Orthodox worship, there were not an abundance of icons in circulation and veneration compared to later times. Iconoclasm from within Byzantine Christianity and ideas from the Islamic world influenced this “first reformed movement” that stamped out and destroyed many painted icons, mosaics, and frescoes. In this way, like Irina Yazykova has argued in her book, Hidden and Triumphant, icons in Christianity were mostly a hidden phenomenon. 

Metropolitan Hilarion, as well as Irina Yazykova, have explained that icons “fight for souls” and the Orthodox faith. The term iconoclast only comes from the 18th c. The older word used was iconomachy, and that Greek word literally means icon-battle. It was a real spiritual warfare over the incarnation of Christ that leads to the deification of humanity and creation; it was a fight for keeping our relationship with the Holy Trinity close to the senses and hearts of all Christians. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 6: Early Christian Painting

Part Two begins in Chapter 6 with the veneration of icons in Early Christian Painting. Icons in Byzantium and Russia have an important historical and theological development for iconography today. Lastly, the Meaning of Icons in Chapter 9 summarizes the content of icons. Symbolism has always existed in religions across the world and in philosophical traditions. Symbolic representation is foundational for human thought. The meaning of icons in its theological, anthropological, cosmic, liturgical, mystical, and moral aspects can be linked directly to symbolism. Some symbols were given by God Himself in the Old Testament, when certain images of angelic cherubim were built onto the ark of the covenant, Moses’ bronze serpent was ordered to be made, and the cross shaped tabernacle emerged from its major items that run west to east. The former was forbidden to be touched; the latter God commanded to behold for healing just as certain liturgical objects are not casually touched by anyone and others are meant to be touched and tasted for healing in the Orthodox Church. There are differences in how we offer veneration or what we venerate, or put more simply, to give our utmost honor to holy symbols that help us worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Jews didn’t define all images as fundamentally “graven.” Extreme positions like that have been held most closely by some Protestant and Muslim groups. Solomon’s Temple, for example, included images of plants, angels, and the astronomical zodiac. How we look at other bodies, the earth’s plants and animals, the constellations matters because what we represent in our minds finds symbolic meaning in physical things; it is a matter of how we discern the means from the ends. 

Although Metropolitan Hilarion takes one of his starting points with what he terms “Greco-Roman painting,” a better term that captures the diverse flavor of the times would be Hellenistic culture. The Hellenistic age began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and arose with the death of Cleopatra, with Egypt having come into the Roman Empire around 30 BC. Hellenism was a mixed culture of Roman, Greek, and Semitic peoples like Levantines, Egyptians, and Jews. Some historians argue that this blended Mediterranean environment continued when Constantine the Great moved his capital to Constantinople. The hyphenated word Greco-Roman implies a monolithic civilization and it is useful for some styles inherited from those peoples, such as Roman frescoes in the Christian catacombs. But places like Fayum, Egypt represent this mixture well, where specific stylistic techniques, like melting beeswax and mixing different colored vegetable paints, were fused into the iconography of the Church along with Roman frescoes in the catacombs. In the Fayum mummy portraits, one sees the noticeable European and Semitic features of the people living there with Roman dress and Greek adornments. The portraits were made while the individuals were alive and were very realistic like a modern photograph or portrait. But they are unlike the more idealized depictions of ancient Egypt or Greece. The images were kept around the household until the death of that person and placed on the tomb. Iconography in painting and frescoes share with these Egyptian mummy portraits, which only lasted from the 2nd to the 3rd c. AD, the idea that ordinary people desire to memorialize the dead. What’s different between them is that icons represent transfigured humans in the next life whereas the mummies portray humans as they were in this life. To have a glimpse into paradise now is a unique perspective of Christians. In fact, studies on the Fayum portraits show, though they are well-known for their captivating beauty, that some of the bulging of the eyes, also known as exophthalmos, the cross-eyed expressions, and the noticeable facial asymmetry of some of them was probably not stylistic in purpose. After the discovery of skulls in graveyards that match the individuals in the paintings, researchers and artists have discerned diseases and deformities on the faces that were known to ancient medical practices of Egypt and the Greeks. Icons do show some important distinguishing features of the saints, but the overall meaning is to convey a universal transformation of the body and soul that can happen even in this life. The path of deification and transformation that many Christians have taken happened in the Roman catacombs, where the tombs and frescoes memorialized the saints and martyrs. Icons of saints are painted after their repose, unlike in Fayum, because Christians have trampled down death by death and Christ bestows life upon those in the tombs.