The Meaning of The Icon in Early Christian and Byzantine Art - Christian Art History

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Introduction to Early Christian and Byzantine Art

The Meaning of The Icon in Early Christian and Byzantine Art*

For an understanding of Early Christian and Byzantine art it is imperative that the meaning of the concept of icons be briefly explained.

The Greek word eikon means "image", and therefore includes all images and representations, whether they be mosaics, frescoes, ivories, paintings on wood panels or illuminated manuscripts. The significance of the image for the Byzantines differed from the significance it bore in the church of the West. In order to understand this, we must refer to the Iconoclastic Crisis.

The Byzantine veneration of objects - relics and images - which had developed at an early stage, reached a peak in the eighth century. To this image worship there was an inevitable reaction: an opposing school of thought regarded it as a form of idolatry. The origins of this are
often ascribed to the influence of the Jewish and Muslim religions and their prohibition of the graven image. G. Matthew in his Byzantine aesthetics claims however that the struggle between the Iconoclasts and the defenders of icons should also be seen as a struggle between two political factions [having] its roots not in that complete fantasy, a Semitic horror of images, but in sociological and therefore ultimately in economic factors."

The Emperor Leo III, the Isaurian (717-741) and his son Constantine V (741-775) decreed in 730 the destruction of all images in human form of Christ, of his Mother, and of his saints and angels.

To deny the representation of Christ in human form was, for the Iconodules, to doubt the incarnation itself, and with it, the redeeming power of the Passion. It also meant. that all possibility of communication between the celestial world and the world of the senses was being destroyed. Christ was man as well as God, and his depiction was regarded as a symbolical reproduction of the Incarnation.

In 787, when the Iconodule party was in power again under the Empress Irene 1797-8021, a definition of sacred icons was drawn up at the seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. Its binding and ecumenical authority was reasserted in 843 at the Council of Constantinople. It has remained unquestioned ever since.

An icon was to be venerated only in as far as it is the "image" or the magical counterpart of the prototype which existed in the ideological world. It is not the same in essence, but in meaning. No veneration or honour is to be given to the image as an object. As an object it is simply a piece of matter - the honour is paid to the prototype it represents. The honour is the same that is paid to relics, to consecrated things, and to men worthy of respect. An image is a silent sermon, it is the book of the illiterate and it is the memorial of the mysteries of God. In the icon it is the idea that forms the basis for material expression. It partakes in the sanctity of the prototype and is, therefore, worthy of veneration.

According to G. Matthew the conception of the ''wonder working icon" had thus been officially authorised, and now it could be the occasion of miracles not as a relic but as an image; standing beneath it the believer could be healed as the Saint's shadow fell upon him. For just as man's presence can be argued from the presence of his shadow, so the presence of the God Bearer and the Saint, are in some fashion reflected by the presence of their images.

The icon, as depicted in the Byzantine church, has its place in an eternal hierarchy - a hierarchy prevailing in all spheres of Byzantine society. Icons are not created as independent pictures. They are related to each other and to the architectural framework of the church, as well as to the beholder. The icon tries to express a structure of ideas, and it is the picture of a divine world order. What is seen, is not seen from one inhibiting angle only but "with the eyes of God." The Byzantine artist does not attempt to depict the natural world, but as a symbolic representation of the Divine World. There is, for an example, a certain likeness in the persons depicted, but not as we might find in a portrait: individual features transformed into the typical. The status and type of personality is indicated, St Demetrius is depicted (and understood) not only as the father of specific children, but of all children. In Demetrios in Salonika, Greece, he is thus portrayed as the protector, flanked by two children. His image is accompanied by an inscription. Physical beauty, apart from that of the Virgin and
Angels, is ignored. Spiritual beauty is the only beauty recognised. The icon may, therefore, never be divorced from the organic whole of the spiritual structure of which it forms a part. The art of the icon is not merely an art with religious subject-matter; it derives directly from spiritual vision and understanding. It is a liturgical art which gives expression to the spiritual facts that underlie the liturgy, so an understanding of the basic nature of Orthodox liturgy is necessary. Demus compares the liturgy to a Greek mystery play with a series of events leading to a climax, the central mystery, the sacrament of the Eucharist, in which the worshipper partakes. This mystery
play is performed mainly in the sanctuary and represents the symbolic means through which the redemptive activity of the Christian Saviour continues through time.

The Eucharist is the consummation of two main events:

1) the Incarnation, the entry of the spirit into matter: "God became man ..." (celebrated by the eating of bread and the drinking of wine)

2) the Transfiguration, which is the consequence of the incarnation. (This is the sanctification and the spiritualisation of matter: "God became man, so that man might become God".' [The bread and wine are filled with divine grace.]).

*Based on notes compiled by Karin M. Skawran for the University of South Africa.