Rethinking the

origins of the
Byzantine Icon - an
artist’s perspective.

by Ian J.A. Knowles

Principal of the Bethlehem Icon School

BETHLEHEM ICON CENTRE

2018
Introduction
Until the mid 1950s Byzantine icons, like the rest of Medieval
paintings, were dismissed as primitive and of no scholarly or artistic
interest. This was part of a wider disparagement of Byzantium from
the time of the Enlightenment, when it was written off as a
“disgusting picture of imbecility: wretched, nay, insane passions,
stifles the growth of all that is noble in thoughts, deeds, and persons.
Rebellion on the part of generals, depositions of the Emperors by
means or through the intrigues of the courtiers, assassinations or
poisoning of the Emperors by their own wives and sons, women
surrendering themselves to lusts and abominations of all kinds.”1

However, thanks to the work of people like Andre Grabar and Kurt
Weitzman the appreciation of the depth and significance of Byzantine
art gained a respected place in the fields of art criticism and history.
Through scholarly publications and notable exhibitions, such as that
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Age of Spirituality, in 1977/8,
Byzantine art in general and iconography in particular has come to
be appreciated for its sophistication and grandeur of its spiritual
vision.

However, he and others followed the assumption, current in general

historical circles at the time, that Byzantium was really an empire
under total dominance of its capital. "Constantinople, the greatest
city in the world, to which Byzantine art owes not only its supremacy
but also its homogeneity.”2 This is a view which fifty years later is
still being generally held by even the most eminent of Byzantine art
historians. Robin Cormack neatly summarises this view: ”Byzantine
art spans more than 1000 years and was centred on a Christian
society based in Constantinople, which was dedicated in 330, and

1 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History.

2 Byzantine and Early Mediaeval Painting by M. Chatzidakis and A. Grabar. 1965

was the capital of the Christian Empire until 1453 when its religious
landscape and art became Islamic.”3

This is all based on the assumption that nowhere at any time during
the existence of Constantinople could any place compete with it for
cultural and spiritual creativity. This is an easy assumption to make.
By the 10th century it was a glittering jewel in contrast to the
decrepit state of the West, including Rome which had been sacked
three times between 387 and 455AD. It had also eclipsed the ancient
cities of Antioch and Alexandria as well as, while Jerusalem, long the
spiritual jewel in the imperial Christian crown, had long succumbed
to Islamic conquest.

Given this assumption, its not surprising that these same scholars
jump to the conclusion that nowhere else could possibly produce art
of such depth and importance, the art form which is the distinctive
spiritual art of the entire Byzantine world.

Yet, awkwardly for this school of thought, there are just a few
fragments of stone carved icons from before 8th century to be found
in the city, and what attributions there are to Constantinople are mad
eon the assumption that nowhere else would have the sophisticated
resources to produce them.

In other words there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that

Byzantine iconography emerged from Constantinople. As a result of
this complete dearth of evidence it isn’t surprising that Cormack
concludes that "It is not possible to define the precise moment when
Byzantine painting was born."4

But if not Constantinople, then where and when?

3 Robin Cormack, the Oxford History of Art: Byzantine Art. 2000

4 ibid.p.3
In the beginning…
The art historical method of establishing the age and provenance of a
piece of art operates by comparing it with other examples that show
some similarity, by which they establish a proposed date and place of
origin. However, applying this to the emergence of Byzantine
liturgical icons presents a huge problem for the simple reason that
very few examples of early icons exist.

In fact only 70 panel icons survive from before the iconoclastic

controversy, which raged across the Byzantine empire between the
8th-9th centuries, though to that we can add a number of mosaics on
church walls in Italy. To make things even more restricted in terms of
comparisons, those icons are found in just two locations: St
Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, and Rome. In other words looking to
surviving examples of early icons cannot reliably give us any clear
idea as to their origin. Hence why people such as Grabar and
Cormack simply make the assumption of Constantinople: the icons
themselves give us little clue, and given the assumption that all great
things come from Constantinople then from Constantinople they
must have come.

The reasons for this paucity of sources are fairly straightforward.

     A) icons were painted on fragile wooden panels which are
vulnerable to the elements, accidents, and to normal wear and tear of
portable use, or placed permanently on walls, which don't survive
earthquakes, fire or general destruction.
     B) the ideologically driven imperial policy of the destruction of
images during the iconoclastic controversy.
     C) the loss of documentation and the poor quality of by Byzantine
record keeping.

This lack of examples makes comparison impossible and so

conclusions highly speculative at best. We therefore need to look
beyond this dearth of evidence and find something more reliable and
evidence based. We need to broaden our horizon to the context of
their use: to archaeology and contextual writings of the period. Icons
have a very particular theological as well as practical place in the life
of the eastern Churches today, and we can trace a clear theological
understanding about them back to the 9th century, which shaped their
use and their content. Prior to that things are more obscure as they
emerged as specific liturgical items only over time, and were the
subject of fierce disagreement within the Church itself. This
exploded in a virtual civil war in the Byzantine empire that lasted, on
and off, for 150 years during which much blood was spilt.

While this primarily affected the east, the west remained on the
fringe of the debate until its own period of conflict at the
Reformation when again the issue of the use and nature of imagery in
the Christian liturgy became a vividly live issue as it remained until
the latter part of the 20th century. English speaking scholarship was
heavily influenced by the Protestant context of British and American
society, with its hostility to the place of imagery within Church life,
and this was read back into the earliest sources, minimising their
place and significance.

The conclusion was quite simply that the earliest Christians, being
Jews, would have had no place for any sort of imagery and that the
emergence of their eventual use was slow and the result of partly
converted pagans with a poor education and prone to superstition.
Where images were to be found their significance was reduced to
simply teaching by pictures, their theological power as embodiments
of the sacred being assigned to a much later, more superstitious, era.

Art historians such as Grabar and Kitzinger relied on these

conclusions for their own research, and their conclusion that it was
“a process whereby the icon replaced the relic as the principal object
of devotion in the Greek Orthodox Church”.5 However, this
Protestant led view has recently been credibly challenged by
revisionist historians, just like the view of the role of Constantinople

5
in the early period has been, and again this has significantly altered
how we now see the development of imagery in Christian worship.

The evidence strongly points to Christian images, in both personal

and cultic contexts, being a part of Christian life from the very
beginning of Christian history. There is no evidence that there was
ever a time when imagery wasn’t used in Christian worship, though
the nature of how that was used and understood is a question we
need to consider in more depth later. The dominant Protestant
interpretation of the Old Testament prohibition on the use of idols as
applying to Christian images just can’t be sustained from the
evidence as being a tenet of early Christianity.

Indeed, archaeological evidence in Israel is very clear that even in

the Jewish synagogue imagery of animals, figures of the Zodiac and
even of people was accepted in the pre-Christian period and after,
and the excavations of the synagogue at Dura Europa from the early
3rd century show an elaborate pictorial schema covering almost all
the wall space, much more extensive than that found in the
neighbouring church! Whatever the ups and downs in the
understanding of imagery in the Hebraic context, from temple to
contemporary synagogue, at the time of the emergence of the first
Christian communities in Roman Palestine there is every indication
that at that time the use of imagery in the synagogue was widespread
and uncontroversial.

Given the long use of imagery in the Jewish temple, with its carved
figures of the cherubim on the ark itself, it is difficult to assume that
Christian converts from Judaism would have suddenly developed an
aversion to its use.

Written evidence also testifies to a continual use of imagery even

from apostolic times, even if not without some controversy as to how
that use was to be understood. The earliest written evidence comes
from the second century Acts of John.6 This is an account of
‑

Lykomedes, one of the disciples of the Apostle John living in

Ephesus, having an image made of the saint on a wooden panel such
as was the case among pagans at the time. First it was drawn, then
coloured with paint. It was then placed in a place of honour, dressed
with flowers, lamps and a small altar. It is clearly a religious use of
the image, not simply a memorial or decoration.

Lykomedes is playfully reprimanded by the apostle, but his defence

is given in full: “He alone is my God who raised me up from death
with my wife, But if besides that God we may call our earthly
benefactors gods, it is you, my father, whose portrait I possess, whim
I crown and love and reverence, as having become a good guide to
me.”7 John responds not by destroying the image as an idol, but by
allegorising its meaning. This might all sound a bit odd, not least as
the icons we see used today are all for those who are dead, but at the
time images of the living emperor, who was seen as a semi-divine
figure, were treated in just the same way. Lykomedes had the image
made after John had performed a significant miracle, in other words
as a recognition of the Divine power of Jesus the Saviour at work in
him, something which John’s allegorical response seeks to underline.

This episode in the Acts of John suggests a nuanced and thoughtful

understanding as to how images can be used in the context of
Christian prayer, with colours and the creative process have
allegorical meaning, an approach common in the early Christian use
of Old Testament Scriptural episodes to the Person of Jesus. It
certainly does not in any way suggest they are anathema, forbidden
as were sacrifices in pagan temples or, according to the teaching of St
Paul, the eating of meat offered to idols. Their use is accepted but
their meaning is being pushed to something which embraces the
Christian way of seeing beauty and creation in relation to salvation.

6See Thomas F. Matthews and Norman E. Muller, The Dawn of Christian Art, Getty,
2016, chapter 4.

7 ibid. p.131
They are not magical charms which somehow capture divine powers,
but a source of inspiration and beauty.

Another early source of information about images in Christian usage

is the second century bishop of Lyon, Ireneaus8 . He discusses two
pseudo-Christian sects who make use of images. The first are the
Simonians, a Christian Gnostic cult founded by the Palestinian
Simon Magus who had images of their founder and his consort
Helena made to look like the pagan images of Jupiter and Minerva.
He implies that these images were a sort of magic, consistent with
other of their practices such as the use of charms and incantations.
The other group, the Carpocratians, were based in Rome and had an
image of Jesus they believed to have been made by Pontius Pilate
and which they ceremonially crowned and placed among images of
the great philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, a pagan practice
attested to by Pliny. He records how they claimed their image was
authentic because it was made by an eye-witness, Pontius Pilate.
These images were not just paintings but also made of other
materials. In referring to these two religious groups on the fringes of
Christianity their use of images is not condemned as such, but the
way in which they are made, again suggesting that images in the
context of worship was accepted use.

A later episcopal writer also spoke about images. “In the 4th century,
Eusebios (Historia ecclesiastica VII, 18, 4) expressed his displeasure
about portraits of Christ that were circulating among otherwise
mindful Christians, but he did not deny the validity of the portraits.
Indeed, he had seen with his own eyes “images of the apostles Paul
and Peter and indeed Christ himself preserved in painting;
presumably, men of olden times were heedlessly wont to honor them
thus in their houses, as the pagan is with regard to saviors.” Eusebios
also criticized followers of Simon the Sorcerer for worshiping his

8 See ibid. p.134.

painted image (Letter to Constantia: PG 20, 1545ff).”9 Here he
recognises how old the tradition of having images is within the
Church, and that the images had a real likeness, carefully preserved,
from the time the saints were alive. Like the Carporcratians, it was an
important that people knew these were not later speculations but
accurately drawn from real life encounters (which could include
experiencing visions), a principal which endured and wrote itself
deep into the canonical iconographic tradition of the Orthodox
Church.10

Archaeological evidence is non existent for any places of Christian

worship until the early third century, but the two examples we then
have, the catacombs of Rome and the church of Dura Europa in
eastern Syrian, both attest to the use of imagery in decorating the
place of assembly of the community for prayer. However, during the
following century leading up to the public rehabilitation of
Christianity with Rome a series of common themes can be found
within the catacombs and in domestic and funeral objects that have
survived. There are images that draw directly from common pagan
images and use their conventions as a way of depicting the God of
the Christians as the Good Shepherd, which resembles the god
Apollo, and even one Christ in a chariot with a halo and rays
resembling the sun god11 . These we could group with the reference to
the Simonians and their ready use of motifs, styles and features
drawn from pagan sources. The Good Shepherd image also appears
not just in Rome, for example not just on the third century
sarcophagus of Santa Maria Antiqua but also at Dura Europas, on the
very fringe of the Roman world, at around the same early date,

9Portraits and Icons in Late Antiquity, Katherine Marsengill, in Transition to

Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd–7th Century AD, ed. Transition to Christianity:
Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd–7th Century ad, p61.

10See Cyril Mango, The Icons of Their Bodies, Princeton University Press, 1996
chapter 1, p.5ff.

11 Mosaic in the tomb of Julius Tarpeianus, Rome, Le Necropolli Vatican.

suggesting that certain themes were part of a universal Christian
visual language. This also included Jonah and the whale, the ‘orans’
praying figure and Daniel and his companions in the fire.

Another example of this established corpus of visual themes is that

of Jesus as the Philosopher-teacher, as we referred to above in
relation to the Carpocratians. Examples of this mode of showing
Jesus exist well into the fourth century, so we can see that it had an
enduring pedigree which resonated well with the communities that
commissioned them. There is even evidence from a non-Christian
source that the author had an image of Jesus as a philosopher housed
alongside images of Abraham, Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana12
which suggests that this was an image attractive to more than simply
Christians themselves, testament surely to the power of that image
within the Christian community itself. “These developments in the
iconography suggest a parallel theological development concerning
Christ himself as the philosopher/teacher rather than the more
general presentation of the Christian faith as true philosophy. Artists
of the later, post-Constantinian era showed Jesus also surrounded by
his disciples, holding a scroll and making a gesture of speech – the
image described above and commonly known as the traditio legis,
the “giving of the New Law” (Figure 33).51 Like the orant or the
shepherd, this iconography first passed from the wider religious
environment and carried with it a commonly understood significance,
even as it appeared in a Christian setting. The teacher/philosopher
type, however, subsequently developed, changing over time so that it
came to be uniquely Christian.”13

The ubiquity of these types of image suggests we should be cautious

in trying to identify any one place where iconography as we know it

12 See Matthews, op.cit. p135.

13Jensen, Robin Margaret. Understanding Early Christian Art (p. 46). Taylor and
Francis. Kindle Edition.
could emerge. Certainly Rome has provided much of the
archaeological evidence, but the written sources are from across the
empire and what little archaeological evidence is from beyond Rome
still points to a striking continuity of themes and indeed symbols
such as the fish, anchor, the loaves and fishes and so on, ones that
were consistent with the popularity of maritime themes in Roman
society in general at that time14 and across the empire. It is perhaps
safer to presume that at this stage in the use and development of
imagery within the Christian setting it was a natural process as the
existing pagan culture met a new, emerging Christian community
that naturally wanted to give a new interpretation on the world
around them and their relationship to it. This fuses Christian spiritual
sources, such as Biblical stories, with a ubiquitous pagan pietistic
artistic language, and does so by a natural process of osmosis rather
than as a formal Church process led by the bishops and clergy. That
inevitably leaves exact interpretation vague, something alien to
anything resembling a formal canonical process, yet nevertheless
bearing witness to a common thread of important reference points in
the ongoing life of that community. To take one example, “the fish,
when it occurs alone or with other simple objects, could be anything
from a reference to the two miracle stories of the multiplication of

the loaves and fishes (Matthew 14:15–21; Mark 6:35–44; 8:1–8; and

14 See Jensen, ibid. (p. 49).

parallels) to a Christological symbol.” As Jensen concludes, “By
itself, the iconography is ambiguous.”15

Having established beyond reasonable doubt that the earliest

Christian communities embraced the use of images and engaged in a
process of appropriation of the pagan artistic language around them,
a process that was spontaneous yet focused within a certain range of
images and types that best enabled the Christians to express their
faith in the artistic language available to them, we come to the time
of Constantine (272-337AD) which was a watershed in Christian
history, marking the transition of the Church community from a
persecuted sect to the mainstream of civic life at the very heart of the
Empire.

From the moment of the Edict of Milan (313AD) the Church

emerged centre stage in the life of the empire. Already a significant
minority within less than a century its clergy had been transformed
into civil servants of the Empire, a central plank in its official
organisation. Meanwhile the Christian religion become definitive for
shaping Roman society while the Church was transformed into a
highly organised temporal institution defined by dogmas made in
Council under the authority of the emperor himself.

In some ways this was a very rapid process, in others it was

something that continued for centuries, a living, organic relationship
that was everything from the pragmatic to the mythological. And its
art touched into and was touched by, all of this. From this period
onwards we have more archaeological evidence as well as written
sources to help us. The new freedom enabled churches to be built
and to survive, and to be built on a grand scale. Constantine and his
mother Helena single handedly oversaw the erection of countless
churches over the key Christian holy sites, investing vast sums of
money in their decoration. No longer did the Christians need to be

15ibid. p.47
discreet and transitory, but could begin to create art of depth and
quality.

It also coincided with the establishment of Constantinople as the

New Rome. This movement of the capital city precipitated the
implosion of Roman social order in the West, leading to the sack of
Rome three times by barbarian hordes. Meanwhile the eastern empire
thrived despite the ebb and flow of threats from the eastern borders.
Over a period of several centuries this new city eclipsed the ancient
magnificence of Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria. A mark of
how slowly this process took can be seen in the eventual elevation of
Constantinople to the rank of Patriarch alongside that of Rome,
Alexandria and Antioch only in 451AD. Until this point, even though
it was the imperial capital, its chief bishop only held the rank of
archbishop.

This shift eastward was also solidified by the new significance

afforded to the Province of Palestine. When Rome was the capital of
the Empire Palestine was very much a fringe province, bordering on
nomadic wastelands and always vulnerable to raiding parties. With
Constantinople as the capital its port of Caesaria became a critical
trading post for the riches of the orient, bringing with it wealth and
prestige.

Palestine was also the site of countless holy places, the chief of them
being Jerusalem which the Byzantines called simply the ‘Holy City’.
The faith of the early Christians was deeply attached to the idea of
relics, with the graves of martyrs especially venerated and the site of
worship from the earliest times. The bones and possessions of saints
had immense significance for the early Christian community in a way
which is difficult for us to grasp today. The preeminence of Rome in
the Christian community was due largely to the relics of SS. Peter
and Paul, the undisputed primary patrons of the Church. For such a
mind-set the places where Jesus and his apostles lived, performed
miracles and above all died, were imbued with unbelievable
supernatural power. Nowhere on earth was so infused with this
power than the city where Jesus died and rose from the dead. “It was
only in later centuries that Constantinople rivalled these cities as a
pilgrimage centre, and it achieved this by amassing the most famous
relics connected with Christ, Mary, other saints, and biblical events
(from relics of the True Cross to the timbers from Noah’s Ark).”16

Christian art could thus move beyond a focus on funeral monuments,

such as coffins and catacombs, and into the church building proper.
Unlike pagan temples, Christian places of worship focused on the
interior, on the place of assembly and the celebration of the
sacraments, above all of the Divine Liturgy where the initiated we
permitted to consume the Living Christ in the sacrament of his Body
and Blood. During the Diocletian persecution reference is made to
church buildings, so churches were built prior to Constantine, but
there is no archaeological evidence to help us understand the nature
of how they were decorated. However, whatever there quality, it is
unlikely that they could compare with those new churches built and
embellished with the resources of the Imperial treasury at their
disposal. Now artists and craftsmen were free, indeed mandated, to
embellish these new churches lavishly.

At the same time the eastward gravitation of the empire new

influences begin to be felt from the eastern provinces and beyond,
from cultures such as Persia which seems to have influenced textile
design in particular. Alexandria in Egypt had been the empire’s
prolific artistic and creative hub since Greek times, and produced
noted artistic works in the Greek tradition that had long been
discussed across the empire. “Panel painting was the leading edge of
artistic creation among the Greeks”17 , a form of artistic work that

16 Robin Cormac, Byzantine Art (Oxford History of Art), 2nd edition, 2018 p.8.

17 Matthews & Muller, op.cit. p.9.

was valued at a premium in the Roman world at this time18. We
already have seen how panel paintings of St John and others featured
in the earliest Christian records, and with this renewed exposure to
the centre of Greek artistic culture these two become renewed as a
medium for Christian cultic expression.

Suddenly the Christian environment was flooded with new

influences, resources and opportunities. However, the digestion of all
of this and its creation of a richer, more nuanced Christian
community took time. We can see this with the long, slow process of
doctrinal consolidation and elucidation. The essential dogmas of
Christianity took five hundred years to stake out, at times creating
enormous social and political tension, and even bloodshed and
leading to endless fragmentation among the Christian community,
from the separation of the Oriental Churches of Alexandria and
Antioch in 451 to the Great Schism between Eastern and Western
Christianity in 1054. It is thus to be expected that the artistic
expression of the theology and spirituality of Christianity is both
impeded and impelled by these theological debates, and certainly
iconography was eventually defined to align itself to this canon of
Christian thought. The evolution of Christian liturgical art is
integrally linked to the wider development of the Christian identity
fashioned over these centuries.

At the time of Constantine Christian art consisted of pagan styles

reworked with Christian content, be it decorative, devotional or
instructive. By the time the process of transformation reaches its
defining moment of transition in or around the early 6th century what
has emerged is a Christian style of art expressing through

18In Diocletian’s price edict of 301AD panel artists were the highest paid craftsmen,
paid twice the salary of mural painters for example. See Matthews and Muller,
op.cit.p.9.
embodiment the central truths of the Faith, one which as Grabar says,
was an attempt to "create a language capable of expressing the
Unintelligible”. In essence the Byzantine world, and hence its art and
architecture, were intensely spiritual, a fruit of a Christian world-
view which saw reality through the lens of the incarnation of the
Divine Logos and his life-giving death and resurrection. Matter, for
Christians, matters.

The paradigm of the Transfiguration established a particular

appreciation of the visual, and in particular light, as a means of the
interaction between humanity and God. While the Byzantine empire
crumbled into non-existence more than 500 years ago, its viewpoint
endures to this day particularly, though not exclusively, within the
world of Orthodoxy, where not just the outward form of its liturgy
directly relates to the Byzantine world but its art also reflects a
fundamental way of looking at reality that is as comprehensible
today to an Orthodox Christian as it was to his or her Byzantine
forefathers. This view of reality is most conscious when it comes to
the icon: “The icon is one of the aspects of divine revelation and of
our communion with God. The Orthodox faithful assembled in
church for a liturgy establish contact with the Heavenly Church by
the intermediary of their icons and liturgical prayers”19

it is worth defining at this stage what a Byzantine icon is. Perhaps the
best description is as a ‘door’ from heaven to earth, a term used by St
Stephen the Younger, a martyr at the hands of the iconoclasts around
764AD. It is a liturgical art, designed specifically for and as a fruit of
the liturgical experience of the Christian Church. This demands
theological knowledge and a spiritual maturity. It's not just religious
themes, but the method of art  which has been shaped by theology,
and not just abstract academic theology but lived theology, the
spirituality of the very heart of the Christian life, and experience, of
the risen Christ.

19 Michel Quenot, The Icon – Window on the Kingdom, SVS Press 1991, p.12.
I can speak as an icon painter: an iconographer is someone who lives
what he paints. He is contemplating divine realities and transforming
them through the medium of paint into liturgical images. “The
images leave us with an impression of darkness and brightness,
incense and candles, deep voices chanting, and icons. The pictures
are not there just to be looked at as thought the worshippers were in
an art museum: They are designed to be doors between this world
and another world, between people and the Incarnate God, his
Mother, or his friends, the saints.”20 In icons “the human figure,
always the focal point of the painting, becomes the means of
attaining sublime aims of a purely spiritual order”21 “...the images
intended to lead us on to divine speculation, the being and things
represented are transfigured into the forms and shapes of a world
which resembles ours and yet is differ- ent from it, a kind of mystical
intercession between the intelligible world and the perceptible
world.”22

While these are contemporary expressions nevertheless it takes us to

the essence of what art of the liturgy has become for Christians in the
east, and there is nothing here that an icon painter from 1000years
ago would not have recognised. Uniquely, after 1,500 years icon
painting is still a living art form, and the practitioners of this art give
us a reliable glimpse into what makes it so distinctive, where its
energy lies.

Therefore, we are looking for those elements in the life of the

Christian Church between the 4th and 6th centuries which would
nurture and form art in this way. This will give us the clues we need
to identify where and when such elements propitiously came together

20 Lynette Martin, Sacred Doorways - A Beginner’s Guide to Icons, Paraclete Press p

xiv

21Chatzzidakis, op.cit, p.5

22Andreopoulos, A. (2005). Metamorphosis: The Transfiguration in Byzantine

Theology And Iconography. United States: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p.36
and give us a basis for establishing where and when iconography as
we know it emerged.

As iconography is a creative spirituality it demands, not least at its

inception, a rigorous spiritual life, what we might call an ascetical
aesthetic.  Iconography is a form of lived theology, one which seeks
to embrace the material world but to transfigure it with heavenly
realities, what we can call ascetical art. It is a fruit of a spiritual path,
consisting of theological formation and visual realisation of realities
known directly to the artist. This realisation is itself part of the
spirituality of the icon, for at the very heart of the Christian
understanding is that matter, the stuff of the universe, creation has
become intimately united with the Divine, a process known
dogmatically as the Incarnation. Icons are all about such material,
ground rock, broken eggs, beaten gold sheets, water and wood being
re-worked through the artists vision and skill into something that
brings glory to God through the use of particular lines and colours
conforming to certain prototypes.

As Aidan Hart comments, “since the icon is above all a liturgical

object, in practice theology and technique cannot be separated and so
you will find theological references through the book interspersed by
the technical details.”23 In the earliest centuries icon painting, defined
in this way, simply didn’t exist. It was Christian themes using secular
or pagan art forms. What happened between the fourth and sixth
centuries is that Christianity developed its own, Incarnationally
formed, art form specifically making these objects of art objects of
prayer, of communion between heaven and earth. They were not
objects about God, but objects from God, just as in the Incarnation
God took the Initiative and became flesh, and dwelt among us.

23 See Aidan Hart, Techniques of Icon and Wall Painting, Gracewing, 2011 p.xx. See
the book for a comprehensive practical presentation of the interconnection of
theology and the methodology of icon painting.
Not every religious painting is an icon, as we are using the term in
this essay. It is a genre of art with its own methodology and vision
concerning how the truth about the spiritual realities central to the
Christian faith are to be communicated visually within and as part of
the lived experience of prayer. The art itself is part of this
transfiguration, which is why the subject of the Transfiguration of
Jesus in the Bible is a favourite story among iconographers past and
present. “The transfiguration is one of the keys that can unlock the
mystery of our eschatological fate, break the hedonistic/pseudo-
moralistic stereotype, and give us a clear picture of our bodily self in
the post apocalyptic glory of God. Deification, the spiritual task and
hope of every Christian, is the participation in the energies of God;
through this participation occurs the transformation not only of our
own selfs but also of the entire world, to a worlds of light and
glory.”24

Its no longer art about religion, but art as itself a manifestation of

religious faith, an embodiment of religious experience experienced
as communion and sanctification, not just in its subject matter but in
the methodology it follows to transform matter to create that. It is a
spiritually conceived form of art and so, presumably, it is out of such
an intense spiritual context it will have emerged. Thus I would add to
the art historical process of comparison of examples the nature of the
change that occurred during those two centuries in order to more
accurately estimate when and where such a new way of painting
religious images could have emerged.

In understanding the nature of iconography we need to look not just

to the external forms but to the inner nature and logic of the icon, and
to put the use of this religious art into that context. Leonid
Ouspensky, perhaps one of the greatest theologians of the icon in
modern times, probes further: “What is the basis of the symbolism in
the churches? Christian life is based on two essential realities. One is
the redeeming sacrifice of Christ, the need to participate in this

24 Andreas Andreopoulos, Metamorphosis - the Transfiguration in Byzantine theology

and iconography, SVP, 2005, p.19.
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
forthcoming universal Kingdom of God.”25

We have pointed to some evidence, e.g. the Acts of John, that a

spiritual desire for proximity to living saints, and to the saints in
general, was projected onto images made of them from the earliest
post-Apostolic period. We find that this spiritual intensity associated
with the images of the saints is still as potent in the post-
Chalcedonian period. “Sacred images were called upon for
protection from a very early period, as a fifth-century historian
makes clear in his discussion of St Symeon the Elder (died 459): ‘It
is said that this man [St.Symeon] became so famous in the great
Rome that in the porches of all the workshops they set up little
images of him so as to obtain protection and security”.26 We can infer
that is the ownership of such an image was of great spiritual power,
how much more must the making of them have been considered not
simply a physical or artistic work but as something profoundly
spiritual and powerful that linked directly to the experience of
pilgrimage and the desire for proximity to the holy and as an offering
of thanks. In this we have a continuous link to the images made of
living saints in the earliest period of the churches history and to the
development of pilgrimage to these spiritual elders who were so
cherished in their own lifetime.

This potent desire for proximity to the holy, be it a person, relic or

place gripped the Christian imagination, and shaped two new
developments in the Christian community: monasticism and

25 Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon Vol.1, SVP, p.21

26Ousterhout & Brubaker, ‘The Image East and West’ University of Illinois Press,
1995, p.9
pilgrimage, two of the many seismic developments in the Roman
world in the 4th and 5th centuries.

Monasticism grew across the Roman world, as a diverse and

powerful movement. This was something spontaneous and for quite a
while it developed in tension with the clerical institutions of the
Church that were emerging as closely allied to the Emperor and the
administration of the Empire27 .

This tension between the forces desiring order, and those desiring
authenticity, marked in particular the post Chalcedonian Church
(Council of Chalcedon 451AD) as it become more aggressively
defined by the orthodox view of Christian belief, vociferously
condemned its opponents, and the full force of imperial authority
was employed to impose whatever faction had the emperor’s ear. The
movement towards a systematic, coherent and universal code of
belief and practice was painful, often deadly, and made more
complex by the wider realities of imperial politics. Schism was a by-
product of this attempt at a more centralised control by the Emperor
and his loyal bishops. The orthodox community in Antioch were
nicknamed ‘melkites’, a translation of the word for ‘king’ or
‘emperor’ because of their loyalty to the emperor’s theological
position. Bringing control to the all too independent and
idiosyncratic monastics was another aspect of trying to reign in these
potent sources of spiritual power.

Monasticism began in Egypt in the 3rd century as a rejection of the

worldliness of the Church that had become too aligned to daily life, a
process intensified once the Church became assimilated to the
Roman state. As Christianity grew in numbers and influence, in
divergency of opinion and faced the imperial demands for
conformity and unity, some of those seized with a religious fervour
sought to distance themselves from this worldliness and embrace a
rigorous and personal spiritual battle. Retreating into the wilderness

27 See Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire, University of California Press, 2014

or desert places these people of an acute spiritual awareness lived
lives of incredible rigour and spiritual discipline. The initially lived
mostly alone, but eventually began to form communities around
respected elders, a process eventually encouraged and then enforced
by imperial power. The accounts of the extremes of endurance to
which they willing gave themselves testify to the incredibly virile
spiritual energy that drove them, so we could describe them as
‘storming heaven’ as it were by their prayers and deprivations. It was
also why they proved so appealing to their contemporary, more
worldly, fellow believers.

In the fourth century the centre of monasticism spontaneously moved

from Egypt to Palestine, this new element of Christian life
converging with another vibrant one: pilgrimage. Millions of
pilgrims converged on the Holy Land from the time of the Empress
Helena onwards, and we have the journals of several pilgrims which
testify to the depth of the spiritual and physical experience they
encountered. Many of these stayed for protracted periods of time,
such as St Nicholas and St Jerome. Some lived as solitaries in caves,
others with a few followers or companions. Others settled
permanently and established settlements that dealt not only with
spiritual needs but the material means of support. "Monastic
economies were small in scale and had only limited impact on the
world around them in early centuries, except in such places as
Jerusalem, where a demanding and lucrative pilgrimage trade lay in
monastic hands. It was only later that the economic activities of
monks increase and diversify to such an extent that those outside
their ranks took notice."28 This is collaborated by the archaeological
evidence of the monastic estates found in Byzantine Palestine as the
monastics developed into more sophisticated stable communities,
moving on from serving the needs of pilgrims and diversifying into
agriculture and the business of supplying food to the rapidly
expanding local population. 

28Peter Hatlie, The Monks and Monasteries of Constantinople ca. 350-850,

Cambridge University Press, 2007, p.52
Those renowned for their holiness and spiritual power became
themselves the focus of pilgrimage, living relics as it were, and the
devout would seek them out as living saints, people already living in
the heavenly sphere while just remaining physically present in the
world, even if on top of a stone column or living in wild, forgotten
places. “Christian audiences were drawn by these stories in another
world, one shaped (and authenticated) by unceasing prayer,
prophecy, healing and exorcism.”29

Pilgrimage, like monasticism, became common across the Christian

world from the early 4th century, as the many great shrines to saints
littered across the Mediterranean world give witness. Nowhere, not
even Rome, rivalled the Holy Land and the city of Jerusalem in
particular, for its allure of spiritual power through proximity to the
myriad relics and holy places associated with Christ, His Mother and
the Apostles, the highest ranks of spiritual authority in the Christian
world view. Towering above them all was the Holy Sepulchre with
its twin sites of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, and the ultimate
of all relics, the True Cross. Venerating, touching, kissing, prostrating
were very physical ways in which those making pilgrimage
responded to their proximity to the sacred, to the forces of heaven,
which was experienced in an intense, overwhelming way through
miracles, healings and exorcisms.

Simply getting there was in itself little short of a miracle, and would
certainly have been experience as such by these spiritual seekers.
The journey was arduous, even if just across land, with the threat of
robbers, sickness and attacks by wild animals, let alone if it meant a
sea voyage. It would take months, even years from the farthest
reaches of the empire. People were thus not in a hurry to get back,
and from the records that come down to us, such as the journal of the

29 See Georgia Frank, ‘The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian
late Antiquity’, 2014 University of California Press, Chapter 1, loc 63, Kindle Edition.
Spanish nun Egeria c.AD380, a pilgrim’s visit would also last for
months, if not years and embrace a whole range of places with
specific religious associations. Nor was this passionate spiritual
desire restricted to the places associated with the past and with the
dead. As we have noted pilgrims were attracted to living ascetics,
and the Holy Land had a particular attraction for those as well.

We can imagine how the heightened spiritual sense of these pilgrims

would also be associated with images of these holy people that they
had seen and objects connected to the holy sites. We know that the
pilgrims of this period took many souvenirs with them back home,
for example the phials which contained holy oil blessed by being
placed beneath the relic of the True Cross, or with holy water from
the River Jordan. These were themselves touched by divine power, as
a 6th century pilgrim from Piacenza describes in his travel journal:
“... The Cross is brought out of this small room for veneration ... and
they offer oil to be blessed in little flasks. When the mouth of one of
the little flasks touches the Wood of the Cross, the oil instantly
bubbles over, and unless it is closed very quickly it all spills out.”30
As Viken comments, “The Early Byzantine pilgrim souvenir was the
eulogia or “blessing”; it was not a memento to evoke pleasant
memories, as is a modern tourist trinket, but rather a piece of
portable, palpable sanctity which possessed and could convey
spiritual power to its owner.”31

In the early Byzantine era they were almost often identified by means
of an image or an inscription of some kind, through which these
objects, designed to be held and looked at, communicated their
sacred power via an inscription, which might includes words but
most directly an evocative image. They conformed to two
characteristic themes: the patron as the giver of a ‘blessing’ either as
1) an intercessor, that is with the ‘orans’ pose, or 2) with the desired

30As quoted by Gary Vikan, Byzantine Pilgrimage Art, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine
Collection, 1982, p.23

31 ibid. p.14
effect, for example delivery from harm on a sea voyage. There is a
surviving ‘pilgrim’s box’ at the Museo Sacro of the Vatican that is
filled with rocks and soil, and the inside lid decorated with small
icons to identify the sacred places and the Biblical events that
happened there. These images give direct and accurate access to the
relics, and hence to the spiritual power associated with them,
contained in the box.

This was all a very sensory experience, of touch and sight, of

prostrations and the offering of incense. “And while, as Egeria points
out, many may have wished for a sliver of the True Cross, few could
actually expect to receive such a prize; indeed the vast majority of
our pilgrims was obliged to accept instead a eulogia or
"blessing" (Stuiber, 1966, cols. 900ff.). When material, this
"blessing" usually consisted of a small quantity of some common
substance like oil, water, or earth which had been sanctified by
contact with someone or something holy; occasionally, these eulogiai
bear images evoking the circumstances of their origin or the context
of their use.”32

The intensity of the spiritual encounter, combined with the intensity

of an ascetic life is directly connected to the veneration of the icons
in its liturgical setting in an account of a vision had by Saint
Pachomius (292-348). This Egyptian saint, a disciple of St Anthony
the founding father of monasticism, is credited with the development
of scattered communities of disciples around a spiritual father into a
more recognisable cenobitic community, regulated around the
celebration of the Divine Office and the Eucharist and thus rooted in
the normal life of the Church. One day the saint is at prayer in the
chapel when he experiences a terrifying vision of Old Testament
proportions: “Here is the revelation that our father Pachomius saw
while he was praying: He was looking at the east wall of the
sanctuary and the wall became all golden, and on this wall there was
a great icon in the manner of a great panel painting (of someone)
with a great crown on his head. This crown was of immeasurable

32ibid., p.11
glory and around this crown were images of different colors like
precious stones, which are indeed the fruits of the Holy Spirit…”33
The vision continues and involves the appearance of angels, whose
intense gaze of adoration is directed to the image and to which
Pachomius adds his own fervent prayer and receives a ray of light
from the image itself.

In this episode, the earthly context for this experience of the Divine
is a chapel, that is the place set aside exclusively for the celebration
of the Church’s Liturgy, for prayer, principally through the offering
of the Eucharist, or what is more commonly called the Divine
Liturgy in the Byzantine world. From those times until today it is
here that the Christian is drawn up into the realities of heaven and
receives them directly in Holy Communion, being graced by the
Body and Blood of Christ. At the heart of this celebration sits the
altar table, set apart in the sanctuary. “Based on the communion of
the entire earthly congregation with the triumphant Church, it
expresses the complete liturgy, the one that takes place on earth and
in heaven at the same time. In a typical Orthodox church building,
the icons of the iconostasis connect (rather than separate) the
sanctuary and the nave, as a window that connects earth and heaven,
the spiritual and the material.”34 Alongside church architecture,
sacred chant and the text of Scripture, icons clearly an essential
element of the Christian worship of God in all His Majesty and it is
in this way that the term ‘liturgical art’ for icons should be
understood.

At the time of St Pachomius’s vision we could not claim that such a

highly worked out understanding was apparent, but we see that
already, at this early stage, images were objects associated with the

33Mathews and Muller, op.cit. p.137. For a full analysis and description please see p.
137-138.

34Andreopoulos, A. (2005). Metamorphosis: The Transfiguration in Byzantine

Theology And Iconography. United States: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,U.S.p.36

Divine and the presence of the holy, and located within the area set
aside for communion with God, that is the chapel. We can also see
from this story how this sense of intimacy between God and his
Christian believer could be intimately associated with the images
within the sacred space and that this is clearly an integrated aspect of
monastic life. It is also clear that this was a prayerful use of a sacred
images (the word translated in the quotation is the Greek word
‘ikone’ which is not necessarily what we mean by the word icon as
used here in English) and one which was a natural and established
part of a monk’s life.

We can see then that the use of images in this period correlates to the
spirituality of pilgrimage and monasticism, both of which are
therefore to be considered important influences on its development.

Egypt was the home of the first monastics, of which St Pachomius

was a leader, and it is in Egypt that we find the earliest examples of
Christian panel icons. Half of the earliest examples of this fragile but
accomplished art were re-discovered in the 1950’s at the Monastery
of St Catherine at Mt Sinai, in contemporary Egypt. The earliest have
been dated to the 6th century.

Another, earlier, 20th century discovery in Egypt was of a cache of

funeral portraits at Fayyum. This, together with a small corpus of
panel paintings which had a cultic use in Egyptian pagan temples
during late antiquity has enabled scholars to compare them with
these earliest surviving Christian cultic panel paintings and to record
an important number of similarities - panel construction, the use of
tempera or encaustic paint, as well as stylistic similarities such as a
frontal composure, inclusion of the light source in the halo, and the
lack of any narrative - to suggest that we have a direct evolutionary
connection between the two. “Christian icon painting, in lour view,
stands squarely in the tradition of ancient art and constitutes one of
the most inventive phases of Greek panel painting.”35

35 Mathews and Muller, op.cit. p.13

Christian imagery was not limited to panel paintings, and in the great
basilicas erected by Constantine and Helena and others over the
following centuries, wall paintings, especially in mosaic, were as
important if not more so liturgically during this period of
development. Certainly I think we have two streams of the
development of Christian iconography, monumental decoration and
panel painting, which converge during the post Chalcedonian period
in a way that alarms some Christians as much as it inspires others, to
the point that the Christian world splits into a violent civil war in
order to resolve it and which the iconophiles emerge triumphant with
the enhanced use of images mandated as central tenet of orthodox
faith and worship at the Second Council of Ephesus in 787AD.

The evidence for monumental images from this period is largely

found in Rome supplemented by other places such as Ravenna and
Thessaloniki. These are all mosaics, a form of decorative art that
emerged in the early part of the 4th century. “Early Roman mosaics
belonged to the floor”, except in Nero's Domus Aurea, there is little
evidence of ambitious wall mosaics before the Christian period, even
at Pompeii and surrounding sites, where their chances of survival
were better than elsewhere.” The idea of glorious wall decoration in
mosaic seems to have been something distinct to the new era of
Constantine, directly related to the erection of the great basilicas and
the desire to embellish them richly and distinctively, setting them
apart from the temples of Old Rome and its pagan religion.
Constantine had immediately given land to the pope and had a
magnificent basilica, the Latern Basicilica which still stands today,
constructed with four bronze columns at its entrance to display in
more than a ton of silver statues of Christ and the apostles.

Certainly the opulence of mosaic, especially when using golden

tesserae, is spectacular compared to the dusky tones of painted walls,
and the overall impact of the radical shift in religious art cannot be
underestimated. “Little would have prepared a Christian born early in
the 4th century for the experience, in old age, of praying in the
church of Santa Pudenziana in Rome. Looking a the stunning mosaic
installed at the turn of the fifth century above the fine marble altar
arrayed with gold and silver church plate and books bound in ivory, a
member of the faith would have glimpsed Christ himself,
majestically seated like Jupiter, the sovereign god of the Romans
portrayed everywhere in Rome during her childhood. Separated from
his apostolic counsellors by and enormous gem-encrusted throne and
a hillock that frames his upper torso and supports and enormous gold
cross, the Saviour would have appeared simultaneously to be
president over the heavenly Jerusalem, pictures in the background,
and this very church in Rome; as the book he proffers declares, he is
the “Lord, the Preserver of Pudentia’s Church”. In this way, the
mosaic asserts the belief that Santa Pudenzia is but one manifestation
of the universal Church, formed by the coming-together in Christ of
the Jews and pages (personified by the two women) and left by Paul,
the apostle to the Gentiles, and Peter, the apostle to the Jews, the
guardians of the new Jerusalem of Rome, whose own tombs lie
nearby on either side of the Tiber.”36

As the church emerged from persecution great churches were built in

notable places of pilgrimage, such as Rome and Jerusalem, and in
political centres such as Constantinople. Indeed, during the early
Byzantine era the old Roman layouts of towns and cities was
replaced when churches became the central locus. These churches
were richly decorated and adorned. The scale of imperial
munificence cannot be underestimate, and Constantine seems to have
taken a very personal interest in ensuring that these new Christian
buildings were impressive, even glorious. “Constantine did not
recommend any specific building type; he only wished that the
churches be large and richly ornamented. The best craftsmen were to
be employed, and there was to be a generous use of precious
materials like cedar wood, coloured marbles, marble columns,
bronze, and fold, for these structures were meant to reflect the glory

36 Herbert L.Kessler in Picturing the Bible The Earliest Christian Art Ed.Jeffrey Spier,
Yale University Press, 2007 p.111.
of Christ.”37 Patronage was not limited to the emperor or the imperial
court, but inscriptions excavated in ruined churches show that local
persons of wealth, women as well as men, took immense pride in
raising up wondrous Christian churches to the glory of God. It was a
spiritual and civic duty, with benefits no doubt temporal as well as
eternal.

As we have seen, the first surviving examples of Christian art are in

the places of Christian burial or communal gathering, be it the
catacombs in Rome or the house church of Dura Europa. But all of
these examples are pretty humble compared to the new images of the
Church after Constantine. They also mark a shift away from simple
symbolic representations of Christ, for example as the Good
Shepherd transcending the god Apollo, to images of a likeness of
Jesus, complete with beard and long hair. These more direct portrait
types resemble the panel images of the pagan world which, as we
have already noted, had established a place in Christian prayer from
very early on. There seems, therefore, to a fusion of sources and
contexts as the decoration of Christian buildings gains experience
and confidence.

The work of Mathews and Muller38 has established a very clear

provenance for the early Christian panel images within pre-existing
pagan devotional art, with evidence drawn largely from Alexandria
in Late Antiquity. Comparing examples such as that of Soknebtunis
and Amun from the mid-2nd century show enthroned gods, frontally
posed, with large eyes and radiant halos, to the image of Jesus Christ
in the apse of Santa Pudenzia you can’t but notice a passing
resemblance even if the Christian image is more classical in its
appearance and more sophisticated in its composition and execution.

37 Johannes G. Deckers, in Picturing the Bible, op.cit. p. 93.

38See Mathews and Muller’s The Dawn of Christian Art, op.cit. for their full and
extensive thesis.
Gradually the pre-existing preference for certain biblical scenes, such
as Jonah and the Whale and the Fiery Furnace from the Book of
Daniel, gave way to a more direct and visual encounter with the holy
persons of heaven who gather in the Liturgy together with the living.
New iconographic schemes appear, such as Christ enthroned, Christ
surrounded by the apostles as the giver of the New Law, the worship
of the Christ Child by the magi.39 Jesus is increasingly majestic and
endowed with authority, even imperial, but also human, a particular
person, not a generic figure. We know from Ireneaus’ reference to the
****** that life like images of Jesus were in circulation from the
earliest times, for example the Holy Napkin associated with King
Agbar of Edessa which will eventually become the Icon of the
Mandylion. Presumably these were utilised as the artists developed
their work to meet the new opportunities and demands they faced.
Presumably many of these who were the artists employed in the
decoration of these new churches were not themselves Christians.
The sudden transformation of Christianity’s fortunes from out and
out persecution bent on their extermination to most favoured religion
let little time for a mass conversion of artists who presumably up
until that time were busy making art for other gods. While some
would have been Christians, we can’t even then presume a high level
of theological literacy.

Therefore in the conflux of influences that saw the emergence of this

new phase of Christian art we have: emperors, bishops, clergy,
monastics, pious laity especially women, pagan artists, pagan and
imperial visual languages, Biblical imagery, the allegorical writings
of the Church fathers, the tradition of devotional panel painting and
the tradition of funeral decoration. None of these factors was
universally dominant, indeed there is just too little evidence to gauge
which of these elements was of key importance at any particular
situation, but each of them surely had a distinctive contribution to
make. Having said that, the theological and Biblical references are so
strong that clergy supervision, if not design has to be presumed for

39 See Robin Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, Routlege, 2000, p.
96
most of these, especially the most important and prestigious, which
of course are those which have survived. There is no example I can
think of where the syncretic elements have dominated or even
remotely appeared to do so.

The basilica’s that survive from late antiquity have certain common
patterns. The key area for decoration is the apse above the altar, and
secondly the upper walls of the nave leading up to the altar. This
itself makes a statement about the focal point and spiritual
significance of the area the apse contains. Here was the altar, the
place of communion between heaven and earth, and visually you are
confronted with Christ in glory, enthroned, dressed in golden
vestments, presiding over the assembly surrounded by the apostles
just as below the bishop presides over the assembly from his throne
and is surrounded by the presbyters. It is visually a mutually
enhanced allegory, theologically articulate and direct. The apse was
already a religious area in pre-Constantinian times, in the secular
basilica the apse house a column with an image of the emperor with
an altar before it, and in other buildings the apse houses images of
the gods. The dome or apsidal roof was a symbol of the heavens,
having no start or end point it embodied eternity. It neatly translated
to Christian use as the setting for the manifestation of the Living
Christ in the Eucharist.

This would also explain, perhaps, the movement towards

representations of Christ in his glory rather than simply as recorded
in the Biblical record. The apse mosaics do not depict stories from
the Bible such as was the case in the funeral monuments but rather
show an apocalyptical vision. For example in the earliest apse
mosaics which are found in Santa Costanza, the imperial mausoleum,
in Rome, Jesus stands between the trees of Paradise, and on a rock
flowing with four streams such as flowed in the Garden of Eden and
from the temple in the visions of Ezekiel. “The place of sacrifice is
also the New Eden”.40 Christ is himself clothed in gold, and is giving
the New Law to the Apostles Peter and Paul, who look upon him

40 Jensen, op.cit. p100

with awe and joy. This is a theological statement about the Jesus here
and now rather than a visual version of a Biblical text.

We must not forget that it was at this time that the Christian liturgy
was itself developing and taking the definitive forms of St Basil and
St John Chrysostom that endure today. The Christian world was in a
state of flux, of massive growth and transformation, developing on
many different levels from its dogma to its organisation to its way of
praying. All of these influences converge, and art must of course
reflect this. What we can see from the scholarship, the pastoral zeal,
the architecture and the conflicts is how deep and seriously the
Christian community took on these challenges, and the creativity and
dedication of its spiritual leaders.

This depth of application to the challenges must also be taken into

account when assessing the developments in the decoration of the
liturgical space. As we saw above, while borrowing from the
available pagan and imperial imagery was unavoidable - what other
language could they appropriate? - what they rejected as unsuitable is
perhaps more illuminating that what seems to have an obvious
origin.

For example, in the developing iconography of the Virgin Mary.

Some see clear evidence of some elements of the iconography of Isis
being assigned to the Virgin Mary, such as her being enthroned.
However, in her iconography Mary is almost always without jewels,
which is something fairly remarkable given the elaborate jewellery
worn by the wealthy and royalty in Byzantine times (see the mosaic
of the Empress Theodora at Ravenna for example). For the pagans
of the empire female goddesses wore jewellery as would any woman
of status and power. Yet, “the early icons of Mary, best exemplified
in Rome, consistently assert a severe and noticeable poverty that sets
her apart from the bejewelled goddesses”.41 Again, in contrast to the
depiction of female deities, the Virgin Mary carries no staff or

41 Mathews & Muller, p.161.

sceptre, no sign of military or judicial authority. She is nothing like
Athena with her helmet, shield and body armour.

Rather Mary has a royal coloured garment of purple of various

shades, but one without any adornment. It is a plain garment that
hangs loosely and flat. She doesn’t show her breasts, hidden by loose
folds of her himation, or her hair, which is kept in a net beneath her
head veil. She is a figure of modesty, purity, solemnity. The
simplicity and depth of colour are in marked contrast to the bright or
gilded clothes of her Child who sits on her lap. If we compare the 6th
century encaustic panel icon of the Virgin Mary at St Catherine’s
Monastery with the 2nd century panel icon of Isis from Assiout in
Egypt, the feel of the two is completely different. Both figures are
regal in their look, and the but the goddess is animated and haughty,
her face very fleshy and rounded, she is adorned with fine material
and a splendid headdress. The Virgin Mary however sits calmly, her
flesh is radiant as though the light is coming from within her, she is
dressed modestly, yet sits on a gilded throne, high backed and
bejewelled as were the thrones of the old goddesses.

This icon of Mary comes from the moment when Christian

iconography finally emerged into what we now call icons, a mature
and distinctively Christian art form. It has passing similarities with
the Fayyum funeral portraits and the panel images of the pagan gods,
but it is something of another order. Indeed, look at all of the
encaustic icons of the monastery or in Rome, and you are struck by
their serenity, their sense of inner illumination, their radiance, the
steady, calm, noble but humble gaze. The sensuality of the pagan
images, and of the Fayyum portraits is in such marked contrast to the
figures of the saints and Christ, which are so minimal in their
naturalism. They gaze out of the icons in a way that the icon itself
seems to fall away, you are drawn in to an intimate encounter. Here
heaven breaks out into the world in which you find yourself.

Here we should note something important. One of the most radical

notions which set Christians apart from their pagan neighbours was
their relationship with the dead42. For Romans the dead were to be
feared and kept happy with oblations and offerings, entombed away
from the living. Christians, however, worshipped a dead god, and
collected the bones of dead Christians which they then housed in
their altars to be kissed and venerated. They talked to the dead in
their prayers, and treated them as present friends. It was all
disturbingly different. “In an account of the end of paganism in
Egypt, by Eunapius of Sardis, we catch the full charnel horror of the
rise of Christianity: For they collected the bones and skulls of
criminals who had been put to death for numerous crimes…made
them out to be gods, and sought that they becomes better by defiling
themselves at their graves. ‘Martyrs’ the dead men were called, and
ministers of a sort, and ambassadors with the gods to carry men’s
prayers.”43 The panel icons, showing Christ, a crucified man, and
dead people such as the Virgin Mary and the apostles, were thus as
much a radical, even horrific adaption of their pagan antecedents, as
an adoption of the pre-existing language of associated with a divine
pantheon. It was both an adoption and a radical development, with
the emphasis on the latter.

At its heart was above all in the Liturgy. It was over the tombs of
these martyrs that the Eucharist was often offered, and the bones of
dead saints, relics, were canonically encased in altars as an integral
part of the sacral nature of the church sanctuary. If we are to
understand the developing place of art within the Liturgy we need to
at least understand something of what the Liturgy is in the life of the
Christians of this period. First and foremost it was, quite literally, a
mystery. This was not some informal gathering to offer petitions to a

42This is fascinating and broad area of discussion, too vast to be discussed in depth
here but for a comprehensive insight into this critical but overlooked area of Christian
belief and practice see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its rise and function in
Latin Christianity, University of Chicago Press, 1981/2015, and Charles Freeman,
Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How relics shaped the History of Medieval Europe, Yale
University Press, 2011.

43 See Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its rise and function in Latin Christianity,
University of Chicago Press, 1981/2015, p.7
far off deity, but an entrance into the Presence of the Living God, and
the acclamation in worship of His glory -as the priest says in the
opening part of the ancient anaphora composed in the early 5th
century: “for you are God, ineffable, incomprehensible, invisible,
inconceivable, ever existing, eternally the same.”44 The Liturgy,
indeed all Christian prayer, was about communion, the union of the
believer with God in the Person of Christ, a communion which drew
each person into a living relationship with each other through being
part of the Body of Christ, a relationship which transcended death by
paradoxically entering through baptism, which was about being
united with the death of Christ so as to live forever.

This communion was in Christ with all the others ‘in Christ’ through
baptism. So solemn were the implications of this encounter that it
was sometimes put off to the moment of death, as in the case of the
emperor Constantine. This communion was renewed week by week
in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy and the receiving of Holy
Communion, the Bread and Wine transformed mystically into the
Body and Blood of Christ. This communion placed the believer on
an intimate level with God, and derivatively with the angels, saints,
cherubim, seraphim, martyrs, apostles, and so on who were gathered
eternally around Him in endless worship and praise.

The Christian life was thus about the journey to Paradise, to the New
Eden, a journey that would be completed in the eschaton when there
would be a new heaven and a new earth described in the Book of
Revelation and of which the Eucharist was a foretaste.

This is all clearly illustrated in the iconography of the mosaics we

have just discussed. It is a lavish depiction of Paradise, with lush
trees and transfigured landscapes, with the sky flecked with the red of
the new dawn when Christ would come in his glory to inaugurate the
Kingdom of God with the ending of all things and the creation of

44 Quoted in Andrew Louth, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology, loc. 242 Kindle
Edition, 2013
new heavens and a new earth for which the Church gathered with
longing in every assembly.

One of the most difficult issues for this newly official and public
Church was who could enter for this celebration of these Mysteries,
the Divine Liturgy. Until this time the non-baptised were kept strictly
out, and even the catechumens, those preparing for initiation through
baptism and receiving the Sacrament, were asked to leave before the
praying of the anaphora, still enacted symbolically in the Liturgy
today. It was simply all too holy, too sacred to be exposed to those
with little or no understanding, and who weren’t themselves already
within the communion of Christ. This was a solemn moment of
gathering with all those who had gone and passed through death
unscathed, an entry into a foretaste of the Christian destiny of heaven
itself.

The mosaics of the grand churches of the fourth and fifth centuries
can’t but impress with their elaborate, ornate and rich style. From St
Maria Maggiore to the cupola mosaic of the Baptism of Christ
among the apostles of the Orthodox baptistry in Ravenna (458AD),
from the apse of Santa Prudenziana in Rome to that of St Cosmas
and Damian in the same city, the iconography is grand, elaborate,
impressive, theological literate and visually stunning pas it presents
the world that is within reach but just out of sight, a world of angels
and cherubim, or living martyrs and interceding saints.

These early examples employ complex theological details and

arrangements, but they are not yet images that convey communion.
They are all still straining to break out of the shackles of the
naturalism of the Classical world in order to do full justice to the
Christian experience, to bring about a true transcendence in line and
colour that truly reflects the actual lived experience of transfiguration
that is at the heart of every Eucharist, where the Bread and Wine
become the Body and Blood of Christ, and through which a unique
dimension of heaven becomes intimate to the ordinary life of the
Christian regardless of earthly rank or status.
This sense of communion, of intimacy, warmth and friendship, even
familiarity with the dead who in fact were still living according to
Christian theology, finally comes across in the mature form which
Christian iconography took around the early to mid sixth century. By
this time the iconography on the church walls is successfully being to
pushed to another depth of revelation, to a sense of direct, mediated
encounter and communion, something that is also true of the earliest
panel icons that we see in Sinai and Rome.

It seems as though the directness of the panel icons fuses with the
grand schema of the basilica to create a new, liturgically shaped art
that transcends the space through a brilliantly executed artistic
humility, through an infusion of the idiom of light and a willingness
to allow the image to be more than can be displayed, to embody the
living here and now in the sacred place as heaven breaks through to
this specific consecrated space on earth, an approach that we can
perhaps best describe as an ascetic aesthetic.

Take for example the mosaic procession of saints toward Christ in

the nave of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, from the mid-6th
century. Here the tranquility of composition is striking, the figures
while appearing as a block also radiate a personal quality, you feel
that you are with them as you too move towards the holy of holies, to
the altar where Christ awaits. The walls of gold dissolve revealing
paradise populated but frontal standing saints and angels, while
Christ himself, dressed without ostentation in the royal purple is
enthroned but approachable. This is an intimate scene in which the
worshipper at the Mass finds him or herself. The icons are drawing
back a veil to reveal what is really taking place all around them. This
is Christian art revealing the liturgy through an increasing simplicity
of form and a grandeur of design. The impression is not of fear and
otherness, but of bathing in light and peace.

However, the image of the figures still lacks that radiance and
directness which we find in the icon proper. For this we need to look
far from Rome and Italy to the very spiritual heart of the Empire: to
Palestine and the mosaic of the Transfiguration in the basilica of the
monastery at Sinai.

Slobon Curic45 argues that the role of art changed under the
imperative of a new Christian understanding. As I have already noted
Alexandria was the greatest centre of art in the Roman world and it is
not surprising that a Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, should
discuss ideas of art and aesthetics. For Philo beauty in art equalled
natural beauty, but not that of the human body which he described as
the source of all ‘human misfortunes’, a ‘horrible prison’. Natural
beauty was stable in contrast. Quest of permanent beauty set a wise
man on the path of truth.

Clement of Alexandria (150-215) refines this concept of true beauty

as the testimony of divine wisdom. Creation is by the Archetype,
and generated by imprinted images. Explores the incarnation as a
progression of imaging, of the archetype invisibly imaged in the
Logos, the Logos invisible and then made visible as imaged in Jesus
Christ. Humanity imprinted with Christ’s own image, thus strives for
perfection. The final level of this are man-made images. This
reflection develops further under St. Athansasius, St. Gregory of
Nyssa and ultimately Pseudo-Dionysios in 5th century. In the latter
view the broadest philosophical-religious category was the symbol,
including everything from signs to, notably for our context of
liturgical art, the Eucharist. “Thus, according to Pseudo-Dionysios,
the preeminent role of any symbol is in its inherent power to reveal
and conceal simultaneously. “Absolute beauty,” in his words, is not
external but internalized, accessible only to those capable of

45“Aesthetic shifts in late antique art: Abstraction, dematerialization, and two-

dimensionality” Slobodan Curcic, In ‘Transition to Christianity - Art of Late Antiquity,
3rd–7th Century’, edited by Anastasia Lazaridou, Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit
Foundation, 2011
“spiritual seeing”.46 Critical for him is the symbol of light: Like all
other symbols it has visible and invisible aspects, existing on the
borders of the physical and spiritual spheres. “Spiritual, or ‘divine,’
light dwells within pictures and is thus made accessible to those
humans capable of spiritual seeing. Beauty…is an agent of light –
‘beauty shines’ – while light itself retains a broader and deeper
spiritual meaning linked as it is, according to him, with the good or
the life-giving property of the divine.”47

Thus the interior luminosity I alluded to earlier is not some

accidental, decorative element but evidence of Christians wrestling at
a deep level with the medium of art to express with beauty and truth
the reality of the space where heaven and earth met. Making art for
the liturgical context was a theological as well as an aesthetical work.

He identifies three aesthetic principles as the hallmarks of what

Byzantine artists achieved in transforming the art of the Classical
world to something that was rooted in the Christian understanding of
matter, truth and beauty.

Firstly, abstraction. ‘Predominantly a rejection of naturalistic

conventions but also a reliance on a range of symbols totally
unrelated to the representational framework of naturalism’48.
Symbols operated without the constraints of proportion, scale etc.
Naturalism declined as the foundation though never completely
absent. An interplay of naturalistic motifs, symbolic arrangement etc.
as seen for example in the pilgrim’s 6th century ampulla from the
Holy Land.

Secondly, dematerialization. Denying materiality, ‘one of the clearest

manifestations of the dramatically altered aesthetic principles of Late

46 ibid. P. 68

47 ibid. p.68

48 ibid.p.68
Antiquity… creating abstract patterns derived from naturalistic
forms’49. Reducing three dimensionality to a minimum through
drilling and undercutting as for example the Byzantine deep carving
of column capitals.

Thirdly, two-dimensionality. ‘The most ubiquitous and enduring

aesthetic shift in the art of Late Antiquity, and in the Byzantine art
that follows, was the virtual elimination of three-dimensional in
favor of two-dimensional representations.’ This was achieved
through frontal viewing, which was employed in saints, and other
aspects such as buildings and cities. By 6th century three dimensional
images in the round were abandoned, with selective use of illusions
of three dimensionality on flat planes. Thus painting emerges as the
main medium of representation rather than carving. This shift is
particularly noticeable in buildings which by the end of the 5th
century spatial concepts such as perspective and physical scale
disappear. This was not some primitivism or a lack of ability to see
perspective, but a reflective of sense that ‘divinity could be neither
represented or contained and therefore lacked the physical properties
characteristic of classical naturalism.’50

The Classical centre of painting was Alexandria, which as we have

seen was also the hub of Christian philosophy, with included its own
reflection on the nature of beauty and its relationship to faith and
salvation. Sinai lies not far from Alexandria, in modern day Egypt,
an oasis in the wilderness where it is believed Moses had the
theophany at the Burning Bush and then subsequently when the Law,
the Ten Commandments, as given. This was the subject of much
spiritual reflection and speculation, and returning to Pseudo-
Dionysios, whom we have just mentioned above, he comments that
Moses on Sinai “breaks away from what sees and is seen, and he
plunges into the truly mysterious darkness of our knowing. Here,

49 ibid.p.69

50 ibid. p.70.
renouncing all that the mind may conceive wrapped entirely in the
intangible and invisible, he belongs completely to him who is beyond
everything. Here, being neither oneself nor something else, one is
supremely united by a completely unknowing activity of all
knowledge, and those beyond the mind by knowing nothing.” 51

For Pseudo-Dionysius, who lived circa A.D. 500 and came from the
Monophysite Syria, the aim of the hierarchy, whether celestial
ecclesiastical, was "as far as possible, assimilation to God and union
with him” which places his thought at the very heart of how the
Byzantine world understood its liturgy. He saw the path to God
through a ladder of images. This understanding applies perfectly to
the apse mosaics found in the monastic church, “…at Sinai the
mosaics present a highly complex programme detailing the path to
mystic union with God through a hierarchy of visions.”52
It is clear that we have here a strong connection between Sinai,
Alexandria and the central themes of the transformation of the
Liturgy across the Byzantine world. And it is the unique spirituality
associated with Moses that finds its explicit locus at the spiritual life
of the community of monks that gathered daily for worship in the
church built at the site. The significance of the place is of direct and
profound relevance to this universal movement in the Byzantine
world. “Where the full vision of God had earlier been denied to
Moses, now in the person of the Incarnate Christ, it is offered not
only to the prophets and apostles, but also to the viewers of the
congregation in the main body of the church. The viewer is being
taken through a hierarchy of images which represents the ladder of
his own spiritual path as monk or pilgrim towards the vision of
Christ. The very structure of the Sinai programme works as an
allegorical simulacrum and paradigm of the viewers own spiritual
journey – from the call to a spiritual life, to the reception of the

51John Elsner The View and the Vision: The case of the Sinai Apse, in Art History,
Vol.17 No.1 March 1994, p.93

52 ibid.p.83.
Divine Law, to the full confrontation with God face to face.”53 It is
inconceivable that the monks at Sinai were not inspired by these
writings, or others like them such as the De Vita Moysis, by St
Gregory of Nyssa. For him the Burning Bush was an awe-inspiring
theophany, an illumination of his senses as well as his soul by the
grace of the rays of light from the bush. The bush “still flowering
just beyond the apse, was a sign of what was possible for ‘us’.”

For the monks who settled on this holy site their search for
communion with God was shaped by the events that took place there,
but also by the hermeneutic of the theophany to Moses and Elijah in
the Gospels, at the Transfiguration. (Elijah also had a theophany at
Sinai when he heard the ‘still, small voice’). The monk sought union
with Christ with an intense passion, and drawn to Christ in that
sacred place would naturally read his own journey in the light of
what had taken place there, what it was a foretaste of and how it was
eventually fulfilled. They were living in the very place about which
St Gregory of Nyssa had talked about in words, “It is upon us who
continue in this quiet and peaceful course of life that the truth will
shine, illuminating the eyes of the soul with its own rays. This truth,
which was then manifested by the ineffable and mysterious
illumination which came to Moses, is God.” Moysis, II.19

These monks were searching earnestly for union with God through
the transfiguration of their own flesh, seeking to ascend to God, like a
man climbing the mountain. Here symbols become something more
than signposts, just as a holy place for the pilgrim was more than a
tourist spot. Through symbols and relics the monks were entering
into a deep ravine of spiritual power, and from that power seeking to
refashion themselves as a ‘new Adam’.

As we can see in these quotations, this transformation was all about

light and sight, about image as symbol, about proximity to the holy.
This was the precisely what the life of a monk, being an ascetic, on
Sinai was all about and it was out of this experience that a monk

53 ibid. p.88
from the monastery under the direction of his Abbot designed the
apse image, the icon of the Transfiguration that dominated54 the
entire basilica. The names are inscribed in the mosaic itself.

The image that they produced is quite frankly a leap beyond anything
else that has been found before this point. However, while we have
little to compare it too generally, by happenstance there is another
example of an imperial commissioned apse, of precisely the same
date (within 20 years or so of each other) and of the same subject at
Sant’ Apollinare in Classe. We can safely compare these images to
understand what is unique and distinctive in each.

Both are superb workmanship, though perhaps the one in Ravenna is

finer and more technically accomplished. The Ravenna mosaic is
fantastical, with a playful scene of rich foliage transfigured into
perky, radiant figures that stretch heavenward towards the light of the
radiant Cross, at the centre of which is a tiny face of Jesus. It is
Paradise set against a golden sky, filled with light, and at its centre
the Glorious Cross set against an giant azure halo that glittering with
golden stars. The is all as a background to the figure of St Apollinare
himself, who straddles the lower register attended by 12 apostles, of
whom he is a successor, represented as sheep. This figure is an icon
as we would think of it today, frontally addressed, his gaze looking at
us and engaging, a tranquil figure in a simplified shape so that the
dress doesn’t distract us from the figure. It is labelled, and there is a
halo. As an icon painter I could easily take this part of the whole and
make a very good panel icon.

Other sheep attend the radiant Cross representing Peter, James and
John while Moses and Elijah loom large to the left and the right of
the Cross in the midst of sunrise, symbolising the Return of Christ in
Glory when the Sign will appear in the sky and be recognised by all.

54 I put this in the past tense because, though the mosaic still exists in its entirety it
has been obscured by the erection of the iconostasis and the enormous cross that
surmounts it, so that its difficult to get the sense of just how this image was originally
intended to work.
Its fundamentally a tableau of symbolism, which incorporates a
figure in an icon like pose but where Christ’s Face is much reduced
in size and is consumed within the Sign. In this register you don’t
find yourself engaging with Christ or Elijah or Moses, and its
impossible to do so with the three apostles as they are changed into
images of sheep.

Its a marvellous commentary on the celebration of the Mass taking

place directly beneath it, it is definitely an image composed for that
space in a reflective way. Apollinaire stands above his successor the
bishop as he preside, arms orans, at the liturgy, flanked by his priests
and deacons. The large disc containing the Cross echoes the host to
be elevated after the Consecration of the bread as the Body of Christ.
The setting of Paradise unites to the nave as though drawing all into
the New Eden, while the sunrise bids the faithful not to loose sight of
the imminent return of Christ. Its full of light, and is a bright and
animated composition, and the colours are sublime combination of
gold, green and white with highlights of blue and red/browns, all
without loosing a tangible peace and tranquility.

The Sinai mosaic is radically different. The first and last thing that
strikes you is…Christ. The figure dominates the compositor and
dominates the space below it; it emerges as though to hang in midair
above the altar. Like the Ravenna mosaic there is a blue halo of light,
but this has radiant beams rather than stars and at its centre, as
though standing on the threshold, is a vast figure of Christ,
monumental in stature, commanding, engaging. The face is facing
the congregation of monks gathered before him in prayer, and his
hand is blessing them. It is a majestic but not haughty pose,
commending but compassionate, even intimate, and image of God
who is human. His clothes are radiant whites edged in gold which
catches the vast gold pane behind him. It is a figure of light.

The figure is reduced down, however, to essentials forms - you aren’t

dazzled by an earthly likeness but released to look beyond the form
to the reality, to see the face and to look beyond the face to the One
who is truly standing here. This is an acetical re-working in art of the
human form to reveal its spiritual nature, just as had been done with
St Apollinaire, but this time it is Christ Himself who is being
revealed in this way.

Likewise the mountain top is reduced to a strip of green which

blends through yellow into the gold background which rather than
being and apocalyptic skyline of what will come is a sheer sheet of
light enveloping everyone, including those before it.

Moses and Elijah tower on the sides, as in the Ravenna piece, but
between them and Jesus are nestled the three apostles, clearly shown
and recognisable - especially Peter with his neatly curled white
beard, and John fresh faced. The three apostles are animated by
surprise, two pulling back in awe while Peter, prostrate before Christ
looks on pondering, his chin in his hand. “Physically closest to
viewers in the nave below, Peter is also the most earthbound. Like
the monks, all the abbot for that matter, he struggles with sleep and
thus could serve as a reminder of its dangers.”55 They are drawn in to
the company of saints and apostles who are portrayed, panel like, in
the bottom border and the border of the arch.

In other words, this is an ascetical art as communion. This is the art

of the mountain top, for those devout monks who lived there, and the
dedicated pilgrims who had arduously made the ascent.

This is all underlined by its physical context. Above the conch of the
apse is a three arched window (in photos you can only see two as a
later roof was added which has obscured the third window) through
which a dynamic stream of light would flow at dawn when the
monks were at prayer. To either side of this light Moses is shown
untying his shoes at the theophany of the burning bush, and on the
other stretching upwards to receive the tablets of the Law. The whole
composition is cleverly crafted to interact at every level with its
context: the altar below, the monks gathered in prayer and its

55 Holy image Hallowed Ground – icons from Sinai. Edited by Robert S. Nelson and
Kristen M. Collins. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2006, p.15
location facing east on the mountain of theophany. “this is the
aesthetic, mystical, or spiritual-depending on one's sensibility-the
changing natural light in the church is stunning and unforgettable.”56

While the style might be a bit clumsy and lacking in a certain refined
elegance, which is expected of icons in principal, nevertheless this is
an image which pierces through the material world to reveal what
lies hidden as heaven is wedded to earth, and in a manner so as to
catch we who look on it into those heavenly realities as communion.

Pavel Evdokimov speaks of an icon as not simply reproducing what

can be perceived by the senses, but rather it presupposes, as he says,
“a fasting of sight.” Interior perception must free itself from merely
sensible impressions and learn through prayer and ascetical practices
a new and more profound kind of seeing; it must manage to make the
transition from what is merely external to the depth of reality, so that
the artist sees what the senses as such do not see—even though it
does appear in the objects of the senses: the splendor of God’s glory,
the “glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). This is true icon
as we use the word today and it is something which we see
happening in the Sinai mosaic.

It is difficult to say that this is the moment of final transition, of that

breakthrough which the Christian art of late Antiquity was heavily
pregnant with during the proceeding century. However, it is possible
to say that if that moment was to be anywhere the most likely place
was in one of these monasteries in Byzantine Palestine.

Art is a fruit of culture, and the formation of a Christian culture

comes about when the mass of people in a community resonate with
the core Christian experiences: the Eucharist, Scripture, the saints,
the holiness of time and space, the Presence of Jesus etc. Its not
about a ‘majority’ as though some sort of democracy, but about a
precipitation of reference points that root a community around a
particular set of experiences.

56 ibid. p.21
In the transition from the Ancient pagan culture to the Christian one
of Byzantium it was not just about having a majority identifying as
Christian, but about communities where the Christian experience had
rooted itself, which meant a precipitous number of people but also,
more crucially perhaps, an intensity of experience intense enough to
re-orientate even the minority around the Christian world view.

The different locations of Ravenna and St Catherine’s placed their

artistic creation in different cultural context. Ravenna was the
imperial centre of Italy while St Catherine’s, despite its location
today in Egypt, was securely within Byzantine Palestine, one of the
key sites of the Holy Land.

At the time of the apse mosaic it was but one of a whole series of
monasteries that gathered around Jerusalem, were scattered around
the Negev and extended further east into Transjordan and south into
the Sinai desert. Its difficult to estimate the size of the monastic
communities but by the Islamic conquest a century later the numbers
around Jerusalem are estimated to stand at about 10,000. Among
these, over the years, were a number of scholars, such as St Jerome,
as well a bishops of note such as St Cyril of Jerusalem and Eusebius.
At the time of St.Catherine’s basilica it was the world centre of
monasticism, theology and pilgrimage which would last for less than
another century.

However, the flourishing of this once forgotten backwater was not

just restricted to monks and pilgrims. After Constantinople became
the capital the port of Caesarea was one of the main trading ports in
the empire, a conduit for the riches of the east to reach the New
Rome. And with trade came immense wealth, to which we can add
the vast sums of imperial resources poured into erecting magnificent
churches over the holy sites across the provinces. For three centuries
it flourished, a centre for trade, learning and spiritual exuberance.

“Byzantine Palestine experienced a tremendous growth of

population, reaching levels never seen. Avi-Yonah gave a figure of
2.5 million inhabitants, while Broshi (1980), offering convincing
arguments, estimates their number as 1 million at most. Both
maximalists and minimalists agree that at that time there was a peak
in the population of ancient Palestine; regions that had been sparsely
populated became densely populated. The towns and farms of the
Negev are the most outstanding example of this process. In the
northern regions, the villages of the Golan were resettled after a
period of desertion that had lasted more than 250 years - since their
destruction in the first Jewish revolt against Rome (66-70 CE).
Throughout Palestine wherever archaeological surveys were
conducted, they consistently yielded the largest number of
settlements and installations for the Byzantine period. This
expansion is attested in the urban centers as well.  Caesarea
Scythopolis and Petra, as well as Jerusalem, the provincial and
religious capitals of the there provinces “during the Byzantine period
reached their largest dimensions as Roman cities.”57

“During the Byzantine period the Christians became a majority in the

country. They grew in number mainly at the expense of the Gentiles,
but the process of christianization of the pagans was gradual,
enforced by law, the missionary zeal of the monks, and sometimes
even by use of the army. The number of Christians was also
augmented by immigration and settlement of pilgrims, monks and
Arab tribes in a province that underwent economical and cultural
prosperity. A cosmopolitan society was thus attained, mainly in
Jerusalem and in the monasteries, introducing cultural influences
from all over the Christian world.”58

Jerusalem, the site of the crucifixion and resurrection, was of primary

significance for the Christian empire and literally millions of
pilgrims began to make their way to this place of intense spiritual

57 Joseph Patrich, "Church, State and the Transformation of Palestine - the

Byzantine Period (324 - 640 CE)”, p.2 in Thomas E. Levy (ed) Archaeology of Society
in the Holy Land, Leicester University press, London 1995.

58 ibid.p.3
power. The city expanded and literally rebuilt itself around the Holy
Sepulchre as people sought to live and die in as close proximity as
possible to the holy places. The streets of the Holy City were the
scene for liturgies and processions marking the holy places and the
events that took place there. Its spiritual energy was to directly shape
the formation of aspects of the Liturgy, for example the keeping of
Lent, until the present day.

It was also the source of an abundant creativity of religious knic-

knacks. We have already mentioned the ampullae which were filled
with holy oil, water from the River Jordan and soil from the Holy
Places. These were often richly embossed with iconographic themes,
and the pilgrim’s box held in the Vatican is richly painted with icons
associated with the holy places commemorated in the box. The
myriad basilicas and churches were also richly decorated and we get
glimpses of their magnificence from the remains of mosaic floors
which its impossible not to stumble over at the many religious sites
pilgrims still visit today.

Having said that the prosperity and growth of Byzantine Palestine to

be an epicentre of the early Byzantine world was not solely due to
monasticism and pilgrims it would also be wise not to underestimate
the importance of the former during this period. In many ways it was
a society, and hence a culture, shaped by monks and their intense
spiritual vision. Peter Hatlie has surveyed the period and
summarises the general shape of monasticism during this time which
applies above all to monasticism in the Holy Land.

1.Wealthy patronage and participation, re-shaping the rag-taggle

religious enthusiasts into disciplined societies. In this context we
should remember the extent of imperial patronage and that of leading
merchants, pilgrims and dignitaries. 
2. Sophisticated societies, with strong ties to the local society and the
ecclesiastical hierarchy. He explicitly notes that nowhere was this
stronger than under St Sabbas in Palestine.
3. Developed economic models, nowhere more advanced than in
Palestine where monks were directly involved in the nurture and care
of pilgrims. There is evidence of monastic farms in the Negev not
only introducing advance irrigation but also of having enough wealth
to have the threshing floor covered with mosaic.
4. Imperial regulation - monks were unpredictable, and as they
became more settled in the great cities so they participated into the
doctrinal disputes that were such a feature of the early period of
There was thus an emphasis on stability and episcopal oversight. The
influence of charismatic holy men, going to extreme ascetic lengths
and gaining superstar status as mediators of grace and power was
threatening to the 'powers that be' and needed reigning in. This was a
real issue in Byzantine Palestine with considerable tension between
those wedded to spiritually charismatic monks and those who
preferred a Eucharistic spirituality of a religious community.59
5.Social impact -monks didn’t pay taxes and their numbers reduced
the potential resource for recruiting soldiers.

Therefore we can say with some certainty that the shaping of

Byzantine Palestine was influenced by an intensity of spirituality
which spilled over into public liturgical acts and set the tenor of the
wider society, not least through the large number of monastics. It is
also the case that nowhere outside of the immediate environs of
Constantinople could vie with Palestine for economic and social
vitality during this period, despite popular assumptions to the
contrary. As a main conduit of trade it was also wealthy and thriving
economically, with all the resources needed to support a flourishing
society, as can been seen at the archaeological excavations of
Madaba in Jordan, which is lavishly decorated with mosaics and
buildings made with marbles and columns. Its creative resources
were certainly enough to rival Constantinople during this period.

In contrast to the political centres of the empire, such as

Constantinople and Ravenna, the Holy Land had a unique spiritual

59 See Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire, University of California Press for a full treatment of
this issue.
potency to add to all these factors which new know from the writings
of people such as St Cyril of Jerusalem put her at the centre of the
development of the Christian liturgy.

It was also in very close proximity to Alexandria and the

philosophical/theological/artistic heritage that came from there. And
half way between Jerusalem and Alexandria was St Catherine’s
monastery. With its monks, dignitaries and pilgrims, Jerusalem was
the natural convergence of all the different trends drawn from across
the empire, and with its spiritual intensity the best place to find the
emergence of an ascetical aesthetic.

Nowhere else can compete for this convergence of all the various
factors essential for this to take place. Thus i would rage that it is
time to revise the assumption that the Sinai panel icons could only
have originated in Constantinople and to assert that all was available
in Palestine, if not in the monastery of St Catherine’s, for them to be
made with their technical brilliance and spiritual depth. Their
similarity to the Fayyum portraits would add a further impetus to
locate their origin closer to Egypt than distant Constantinople, and
Sinai is on Fayyum’s doorstep. There is thus everything necessary
for ascribing a local, Palestinian authorship and little reason to
project the genius of the Sinai apse mosaic and the assembly of panel
icons beyond their current locality.