CHRISTIAN IMAGES: ICONS

The inclusion of images in the Christian church led to a common pattern of meditation and worship, common especially in the churches of the eastern Roman ("Byzantine") Empire after the sixth century:  the veneration of icons.  The word "icon" literally means "image" or "picture."  A religious icon would be a portrayal of a saint, or Jesus, or the Virgin Mary.  A Christian would contemplate this icon as a form of prayer to God through the intercession of Mary or the saint (or Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity).

Icons often had a stereotyped quality:  They were not meant to be artistic or realistic, but rather indicate the profound connection between matter and spirit that characterized the connection between God and humanity in the incarnation of Jesus.

These two icons of Jesus are from centuries apart:  the one of the left is an early Byzantine icon from the monastery of Saint Catherine's in Egypt; the one on the right is a modern Greek Orthodox icon of Christ. The Greek on the top gives Jesus' initials:  JS XS; the Greek of the halo reads "he who is"; the Greek around Jesus' shoulders reads "he who gives life"; the book, closed in the Saint Catherine's icon (perhaps representing the book of judgment) is open in the modern icon to a passage from the Gospel of John (5:26):  "I am the resurrection and the life and he who believes in me, although he will die, he will live... and whoever believes in me will never die."  Despite the very standardized imagery of icons, there remains some room for adaptation.

In the eighth century CE, some Byzantine Christians became uncomfortable with the custom of venerating icons of saints and Jesus.  They claimed it was "idolatry" (the worship of false images); they gained the sympathy of a Byzantine emperor who outlawed icon veneration and commanded that all icons be destroyed (for this reason, we have very few icons from the early Christian period).  This ban on icons was known as "iconoclasm" (literally, "icon smashing").  Eventually, by the ninth century, the practice of venerating icons ("iconodulism") was restored, and remains common among Orthodox Christian churches today.

This illuminated manuscript from the Byzantine period portrays the period of iconoclasm (negatively).  Below is pictured an icon-smasher, getting ready to desecrate and destroy an icon of Christ.  To the right we see Christ on the cross, identical in appearance to Christ in the icon.  The implication is that the iconoclasts were crucifying Christ anew when they smashed icons of him.  Once icon veneration was restored by a Byzantine empress, the defeat of the iconoclasts was celebrated in Constantinople as a feast day.

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