Icons

Icons are religious images painted on wood in the Byzantine manner and used extensively in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, both in private homes and in the liturgical celebrations of the churches. The widespread use of icons is a distinctive mark of Eastern Orthodoxy all through the world, in both its Greek and its Slavic forms, and also in the Oriental churches such as the Coptic and Ethiopian communions, all of which are now represented in American religious life.

Early Christianity was ambivalent about religious paintings. The emperor cult and the practice of depicting savior gods in late antique art led to a deep suspicion among many Christian theorists that depictions of Christ should not be permitted at all. Regardless of this, however, Christian art began to flourish at an early date, as the funerary paintings in the catacombs can demonstrate, and by the fourth century the practice of depicting Christ both as a young man and as an imperial judge was gaining ground. Earliest forms of Christian art, particularly visible in Rome and Egypt, are characterized by the late antique style of Roman "realist" painting; but by the sixth century, when icons had developed a distinctive form and a much wider popularity among Christians, some distinctive "nonrealist" traits were emerging that were to be fixed by later church laws.

At this period, iconic art focused on figures of Christ, the Virgin Mary, some of the Apostles, and the martyr-saints whose shrines were becoming more popular. Icons were still largely a private matter, and the surviving panels are mostly of portable size. Very little survives from before the ninth century, as during this period a large reaction against the popularity of icons among Eastern Christians was taking place. This, the so-called iconoclastic crisis (from the Greek word for the smashing of icons), was one of the most severe internal disruptions to the life of the Christian East in the Byzantine period. Several emperors denounced Christian devotional painting as "idolatrous." The ensuing conflict led to a radical reassessment of the importance of art and culture in Christian worship practice.

Eastern theologians answered the charge by elaborating a theory of Christian art. The icon or image was painted to be a focus of Christian worship. The Christian was not worshiping the icon itself, but the figure depicted. Thus, if the image was venerated (typically with a deeply reverential bow, or with an offering of incense before it), then the worship such devotion represented would pass directly to the person depicted within the image: whether it was Christ, the Virgin, or one of the saints. The icon became, therefore, a primary medium of Christian worship. These theologians (named iconodules, or venerators of icons) created a technical vocabulary of worship, distinguishing among important concepts such as adoration, worship, veneration, and reverence. They accused their iconoclastic accusers of not having sufficient intellectual subtlety, or tolerant humility, to recognize a genuinely Christian theology of culture. And they argued that to advocate the smashing of icons was nothing short of blasphemous. The theological argument of the iconoclasts that the spiritual God cannot be depicted in material form was answered by iconodules arguing that since the Incarnation God has indeed been embodied in Christ, so he now can be depicted in graphic form. The practice of iconography was, therefore, allied with the expression of a strong doctrine of divine Incarnation, and this remains true in Orthodoxy today.

The iconodule theologians, and Eastern Christians as a whole, defended the practice of venerating icons, and to this day it is a very marked feature of Orthodox religious practice. The Western Church never elaborated a doctrine of religious art in the same intense manner. The West preferred to approach art in a pedagogical, intellectualist fashion. Thus religious art existed in churches to serve a teaching function. In the East, by contrast, the icon existed to fulfill a doxological function. Art was not to be looked at for didactic reasons but to be experienced as a medium of prayer.

Accordingly, Orthodox icons are functionally used: They are kissed in church celebrations, carried in processions, laid over people for purposes of blessing, incensed, and so forth. It is unusual for an Orthodox home to be without several icons, and the churches will have many, not least the large icons that separate the altar area, or sanctuary, from the main body of the church. This screen (iconostasis) usually holds life-size figures of Christ, the Virgin, John the Baptist, and the patron saint of the church.

In the course of the twentieth century, with a large Orthodox presence accumulating in North America, icons again became much more familiar to Western Christians, and they are once more becoming popular across a wide range of churches other than the Orthodox.

See alsoCoptic Orthodox Church; Eastern Orthodoxy.

Bibliography

Limouris, G. Icons: Windows on Eternity. 1990.

McGuckin, J. A. "The Theology of Images and the Legitimation of Power in Eighth-Century Byzantium." St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 37, no. 1 (1993): 39–58.

Rice, D. T. Icons and Their History. 1974.

Weitzmann, K. The Icon. 1978.

John Anthony McGuckin