“’Traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented” - Eric Hobsbawm[1]

In Part 1 of this series on the Patristic Theology of the icon we looked briefly at our modern Western understanding of the image and its origins in Scholasticism. This is necessary to understand the roots of the modern theology of the icon and how it differs from the Patristic theology. So before we get into what the Fathers teach about the icon, we need to first take a brief look at the state of the modern theology of the icon, where it originated and the problems that arise from it.

After a period of “Western Captivity” of the icon which, in Russia, began in the 18th century with the reforms of Peter the Great[2] and in Greece in the 19th century during the Barvarocracy, the beginning of the 20th century saw renewed interest in Russian and Byzantine iconography. For centuries it had been considered crude and primitive by the West where the naturalistic style of the Renaissance dominated and this style of painting had infiltrated the iconography of the Orthodox Church. Along with the renewal of the traditional Byzantine/Russian style of painting appeared a new genre of traditionalist icon theology, represented primarily by Pavel Florensky, Leonid Ouspensky and Fotis Kontoglou.

Although Ouspensky and Kontoglou are often credited with the modern revival of traditional iconography and the Byzantine/Russian painting style, the “rediscovery” of the icon did not actually have its beginnings in the Church, but in the rise of nationalism and Romanticism in late 19th century Russia[3]and the revolution taking place in Western art with the birth of Modern art.

“What rehabilitated Byzantine art in the late nineteenth century from this servile status, was its supposed primitiveness, a concomitant belief in the purity of its forms and the sense that it resembled modern art. The Byzantine thus became the ancestor of another type of Western art, now post-Impressionism, and the favored medieval art for the modernist avant-garde from Gustave Klimt and Roger Fry to Henri Matisse.”[4]

*Mrs Adele or The Lady in God - Gustave Klimt, 1907*

This gave rise to a new modern aesthetic and philosophical approach to icons that came to dominate Orthodox writings on the subject. This new “theology of the icon” is firmly rooted in the modern Western understanding of the image as a medium for expressing hidden meanings and ideas (discussed in Part 1) and ignores the existing Patristic theology which was also formulated by the 7th Ecumenical Council, and the Byzantine understanding of the icon’s liturgical and ecclesiological function.

“The main conceptual events of the ‘theology in colours’ were formed outside the theological thought of the Eastern Christian Church and based on subjective emotional experience without taking into account previous ecclesiastical icon tradition”[5]
“Of course the 7th Ecumenical Council doesn’t speak directly and extensively about art and its function. And that… isn’t by chance. However, it clearly defines what is depicted, what the purpose of the icon is, and of course, what is not depicted. In an indirect manner, in other words, although it does not define it, it lays down the framework in which the art of icon-making evolves. With this in mind, the general tendency of Russian theologians to endeavor to redefine the icon and the art of the icon, appears inexplicable.”[6]

In order to convince the faithful of the truth of these crude, primitive icons, the pioneers of this modern theology emphasized and gave dogmatic and theological content to the Byzantine/ Russian styleof painting which became a visual language for expressing theological truth and spiritual meaning - something completely foreign to Patristic and in general Orthodox thought:

So the icon, viewed through the prism of European art and in contradistinction with the religious art of the Roman Catholic Church, was included in the same form of art as modern art. The research, in other words, understood the making of icons, the art of the icon, as the creation of a certain and special visual language able to make perceptible the sublime truths of Orthodoxy and to suitably present the spiritual state of the holy persons depicted.[7]

For the father of the modern theology of the icon, Pavel Florensky[8], and those who followed him, bound by their Western assumptions that the image is a medium for expressing transcendent content or meaning, the external form of the person (which is the Patristic definition of the icon[9]) is not enough to constitute the icon. For them the icon has to show the existential state of Christ and the Saints, revealing Christ’s divinity or the saints’ transfiguration by divine grace. In other words the icon has to reveal a transcendent content beyond the external form.

Florensky, who was involved with, and heavily influenced in his iconology by the Russian Symbolists (who were inspired by the Neo-Platonism and sophiology of Vladimir Solovyov[10]), defines icons as windows into a spiritual realm representing truths perceived by those who have ascended into the heavenly realm.[11] In order to achieve this the icon must be made according to a narrow set of criteria that includes the materials, technique and most importantly the style, and specifically the style of 14th-16th century Russian icons.[12]

The consequence of this is the redefinition of the icon and rejection of the Patristic and Conciliar definition. In explaining their view, George Kordis states:

“In other words, insomuch as the style is that which expresses, that perceptualizes the transcendent content, it constitutes the essence of the icon. Without the specific visual language the icon is no longer an icon, in that it does not express the content and does not perceptualize the sanctity or the divinity of the person depicted.” [13]

This redefinition of the icon creates a number of problems and serious contradictions. Firstly, in terms of theology, it is iconoclastic as it comes to the same conclusion as the iconoclasts that the Patristic definition of the icon, i.e. that the icon is the external form of the hypostasis/person) is wrong. This definition is stated clearly in the Acts of the 7th Ecumenical Council:

“Therefore it is in this form, seen by men, that the holy Church of God depicts Christ, according to the tradition of the Holy Apostles and Fathers. She does not divide Christ, as they frivolously accuse her of doing. For as we have said many times, what the icon shares with the prototype is only the name, not what defines the prototype.”[14]

One of the main characteristics of the iconoclast theory of the icon is that it is the transcendent content that constitutes the object of depiction.[15] At the Iconoclastic Council of 754 one of their arguments against depicting the saints was based on the belief that depiction means expressing and describing a transcendent content, in this case the glory of the saints, i.e. their deification and transfigured nature. For the iconoclasts “vulgar art of the pagans [ἐν τῇ χυδαίᾳ τοῦ Ἕλληνος τέχνη]”cannot depict the glory of the Saints.

“How do they also dare to depict through the vulgar art of the pagans the all –praised Mother of God, upon whom the fullness of the Godhead cast his shadow and through whom the inaccessible light did shine on us…? Or, again, those who will reign with Christ and sit along with Him to judge the world, and who will be as glorious as He… Are they not ashamed to depict them through pagan art? For it is not lawful for Christians who, who have their hope in the resurrection, to use the customs of the nations that worship demons, and to treat so spitefully, by means of worthless dead matter, the saints who will be resplendent in such glory.[16]

Nowhere do the Church Fathers argue that this is possible, because, quite simply, they do not believe that painting can depict the glory of the saints and their transfigured nature or the divinity of Christ. On the contrary:

“The icon lacks a soul – something impossible to describe, for it is invisible. Thus if it is impossible for one to depict a soul – even though soul is created – how much more is it impossible for one to consider depicting, in a perceptible way, the incomprehensible and unfathomable divinity of the only-begotten Son? – unless one is totally out of his mind.”[17]

Just as it is impossible to describe in painting a soul and divinity, so it is impossible to depict holiness, the spiritual state of a person and transfiguration of human nature. The patristic understanding of the icon is realistic which is why they respond to the iconoclasts, saying that artists know how to “express their feats and braveries though iconographic paintings.”[18] And as St John of Damascus explains:

“To put it simply: we can make images of everything with a visible shape, we understand these things just as they are seen.”[19]
And “…It is clear that when you see the bodiless become human for your sake, then you may accomplish the figure of a human form; when the invisible becomes visible in the flesh, then you may depict the likeness of something seen; when one who…is in the form of God, taking the form of a slave, by this reduction to quantity and magnitude puts on the characteristics of a body, then depict him on a board…Depict His ineffable descent, his birth from the Virgin, his being baptized in the Jordan…”[20]

And again the Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council declare:

“For just as when one paints a man, one does not render him without his soul and the icon is called his because of his resemblance, so it is when we make an icon of the Lord. We confess the Lord’s flesh to be deified, and we know the icon to be nothing else but an icon, signifying the imitation of the prototype.”[21]

The icon, for the Fathers, shows historical reality. It shows the persons and events (“feats and braveries”) that took place, it doesn’t describe their spiritual state. Yet Ouspensky tells us that:

“The historical reality alone, even when it is very precise, does not constitute an icon. Since the person depicted is a bearer of divine grace, the icon must portray his holiness to us. Otherwise, the icon would have no meaning.”[22]

So the modernist theology of the icon uses the same argument for the icon that the iconoclasts used against it and both of them agree that the Fathers and Ecumenical Councils are wrong. As George Kordis points out,

“Certain contemporary iconologists understand the icon dialectically as a dynamic relationship between the form and some, variably defined, content. The deification of Christ’s flesh and of the saints, the divinity of Christ are usually considered the content of the icon that must be expressed by the form. The style, the manner of painting is the element that expresses the content and realizes the authentic icon of Christ and the saints
It is remarkable and worth underlining that many contemporary iconologists arrive at the same conclusion as the iconoclasts, with completely different presuppositions: in other words, they do not accept that the bodily form itself constitutes the person’s icon. Since the bodily form does not express the transcendent content which ultimately constitutes the essence of the icon, the form isn’t an icon; it is a heretical image because it does not signify the two natures of Christ. The difference between the contemporary iconological trends and the iconoclastic position is the fact that that contemporary thinkers endorse a kind of symbolism which helps make the expression of the transcendent content possible.”[23]

The abovementioned view of Ouspensky therefore raises serious Christological problems and leads to the following conclusions: 1) Christ’s form doesn’t constitute His icon, 2) An authentic icon can only be created with a special visual language; by a specific style of painting, 3) Christ’s icon isn’t a historical fact realized from the moment of His birth and a consequence of the incarnation, but is the product of art 4) Since Christ’s historical form isn’t his icon, He was born unformed (contrary to the teaching of St Theodore the Studite that “Christ came from the womb of his Mother the Theotokos fully formed [ἐξεικονισμένος /ex- eikon –ismenos – literally “with an image”] otherwise he would be a miscarried fetus and unformed…”[24]) and a suitable visual language had to be developed, capable of depicting holiness (so, if Florensky and Ouspensky are to be believed, He didn’t have an image until the 14th century when they believe Russian iconography was perfected) and 5) the depiction and icon of Christ are entirely dependent on the painting visual language the that expresses the spiritual transcendent content.[25] It is ultimately a denial of the incarnation and a form of Docetism. It brings into doubt Christ’s humanity, the physical characteristics of which, according to St Theodore the Studite, constitute that which is portrayed:

“In what way then, it is possible to believe that He took flesh from the most holy Virgin, if He could not be represented in it? It is indeed necessary that the one who is given birth should be identical with the one who gives birth…and nothing that is present in the nature of the mother should be missing from what is carried by the one who is generated. And one of the first characteristics that are present is the portrayability (ἐξεικόνησις – exeikonesis) of the bodily character. If, indeed, the body could not be portrayed, the body would not come [from the Virgin] but from some other source, and then of what should it be made?”[26]

One of the problems raised by equating style with dogma is that dogma cannot change. This fails to explain the huge variety in styles and manners of painting used by the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine painters. It denies that fact that the icon in terms of style has history that can clearly be seen by perusing icons from different eras. It is not like the Symbol of Faith, which once it was formulated and accepted by the Church, cannot change. While some may argue that the overall style – the byzantine system of painting - didn’t change from one school to another, which is true, there are a lot of things that change essentially, such as the colour of the background which can be gold, blue or even black. How do those who claim that the background symbolizes the kingdom of heaven explain the black backgrounds? There are also differences in colour perception which can clearly be seen when comparing the Palaiologian and Cretan schools. Body proportions also differ dramatically. In many cases the painting technique differs in the way that the forms, facial characteristics, clothing and space are rendered. If style is dogma and therefore Truth, then even they minutest change would be incomprehensible and tantamount to heresy.[27]

*Lamentation - Nerezi - 1164 (Comnenian Period)*

*Ressurection - Panselinos - Protaton, Mount Athos (Palaiologian Era)*

The equation of style and dogma also cannot explain the fact that the Byzantine style of painting was never used exclusively for painting religious icons, but was also used in secular painting as seen in these scenes from daily life in Byzantium.

*Laborers being paid and working in the fields*

And scenes from mythology:

*Zeus dressed as a Byzantine Emperor giving birth to Dionysios from his leg. Mount Athos*

*Zeus in his cradle accompanied by musicians, Mount Athos.*

There are churches with Byzantine style icons of Greek philosophers in the narthex:

Moreover, if the style of painting is supposed to depict the holiness and transfiguration of the saints, why are the “baddies”, Judas, the heretics and executioners, for example, depicted in exactly the same manner? Shouldn’t they be painted in a naturalistic manner since that are not holy? Unlike Western painting, where the artist often shows how “bad” a person is by depicting him as ugly, the icon doesn’t try to influence emotionally and depicts all people in the same manner.

*Beheading of St John the Baptist, Theophan of Crete*

While during Byzantine times the iconographer was simply a painter (ζωγράφος – zographos) who humbly served painting icons, this new theology of the icon creates the need for the “holy iconographer” who has mystically ascended and perceived spiritual truths of the heavenly realm,[28] on whom the authenticity and truth of the icon depends. Kontoglou introduced the term hagiographer – αγιογράφος. He is the true creator of the icon who depicts in forms and colours of this world the transcendent and spiritual reality. The authenticity of the icon depends on the holiness of the iconographer.[29]

“Just as in Western European art, the artist is the absolute creator, the person who creates the work of art ex nihilo, choosing certain forms in order to embody a certain content, and so the iconographer is the charismatic person who creates the icon with special illumination of the Holy Spirit.[30]

This notion of the “holy iconographer” is unheard of in Patristic and Byzantine sources. There is only one known “holy iconographer” from Byzantine times, St Lazarus the Painter, but he is a saint not because he supposedly received the prototypes of the icons in mystical ecstasy, but because he was an iconophile who refused to stop painting icons during the iconoclast era and was tortured.

This concept of the “holy iconographer” also raises a number of problems. It ignores the reality of the historical development of the icon. The forms used do not come from the “holy iconographer” who had ecstatic visions, but from the visual codes of the surrounding culture that people were familiar with and would be able to understand. The icon of the Nativity, for example, has its origins in images such as the birth of Alexander the Great and the angels in the ancient Victories. Even the angels’ hairstyles were simply the Roman styles of the time. The art of the Church didn’t develop in a vacuum, but was a continuation of the art of the surrounding culture. From the Expressionism of Late Antiquity it took the lack of depth and it’s plasticity from Hellenistic art. The Church took what it needed to visually express the ecclesiastical and liturgical experience and we will later how it does this.

*Victory of Samothrace, Pythokritos of Lindos, 190 BC*

Another serious consequence of the absolutization of the painting technique and equating it with dogma is the stagnation of the iconographic tradition and the slavish copying of old icons. Today this is considered dogma and the tradition of the Church, but rather it is the death of tradition. Never was there a tradition of making copies of old icons. The iconographers worked creatively within tradition producing the wealth of different styles that enrich it. Now the Church has ceased to produce culture and simply imitates the past.

The modernist theology is also characterized by a rejection of all naturalism and by an anti-materialism in favour of a more spiritualized and symbolic style. Kontoglou, for example, rejects Western Art saying,

“The works of the Western Church, such as those of the Italian Renaissance, are simply representational, naturalistic…only the theme is religious, not the manner in which they are painted…In the Byzantine icon, on the other hand, everything has been raised to the religious order – human forms, mountains, buildings, rocks, herbs, flowers animals, rivers and so on…”[31] Florensky, describing the church organ and oil paints states that “both the colors and the sounds are wholly earth and flesh”[32]Ouspensky also criticizes a “dependence on matter” seen in icons influenced by Western art.[33]

For the modernists a naturalistic painting is by definition not an icon and is heretical as it merely depicts the external form of the person. How then do they explain the countless miraculous icons painted in a naturalistic manner such as theJerusalem icon of the Mother of Godthat is not-made-by-hands? According to the theology of the Fathers and Ecumenical Councils, this is an icon because it shows the“form, seen by men”[34]. And in the words of St Paisios the Athonite,“The Panagia looks a lot like the icon of the Panagia of Jerusalem. She is exactly the same. I have seen her many times and I don’t know of any other icon resembling her so much.”

To reject naturalism on the grounds that is “dependent on matter” and not spiritual enough is to tread on dangerous ground as it suggests a kind of dualism that has been rejected by the Church. In his defense of the icons St John of Damascus even warns, “Do not abuse matter; for it is not dishonourable; this is the view of the Manichees”[35]

Often those who oppose the naturalistic Western style of painting paint a picture of the Byzantines being unanimously opposed to this “heretical” painting, but this is not the case. They usually quote Gregory Melissinos (later Patriarch of Constantinople) who accompanied Patriarch Joseph to the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-39):

“When I enter a church of the Latins, I do not venerate any of the saints that are there, because I do not recognize any of them. I only recognize Christ, but I do not venerate Him either, since I do not know how he is inscribed. But I make my own the cross and revere it. I venerate the cross that I make myself, and not anything else that I see there.”

But this quote actually makes no mention of style. The reasons that he cannot venerate the saints are that a) he doesn’t recognize their forms (Renaissance painters often used living models and contemporary clothing) and b) He doesn’t recognize their inscriptions. These are the two patristic criteria for an icon; it must bear the external form of the person and his name.[36] It is interesting that St Mark of Ephesus and his brother John, who are well known for being anti-Western and opposed union with Rome, were greatly impressed by the naturalistic paintings the saw in Italy. In his Ekphrasis, St Mark lauds a Western Dormition of St Ephraim the Syrian. As D. Pallas remarks on this:

“It appears that Mark’s theoretical position was that art has no relation to religious dogma; that the phenomena are not identified with the essence.”[37]

However despite many Byzantines praising Western naturalistic art they never changed the Byzantine painting system. There are reasons that we paint in the Byzantine style and not the naturalistic style, as we will see later, but it has nothing to do with the naturalistic style being “wrong” or “heretical”, rather it is incapable of expressing the liturgical and ecclesiastical function of the icon. However, as long as the icon bears the form of the person and his name and is recognizable as that person, it is an icon.

The equation of abstraction with spirituality is found nowhere in Byzantine and patristic sources but is rather a modern phenomenon:

“Ironically, despite their traditionalism and anti-western rhetoric, the style-theologies of Florensky, Ouspensky and Kontoglou are at their core both western and modern. Though they aim to present traditional Church teaching on icons, they are nevertheless rooted in the same modern aestheticism of the artists, critics and intellectuals who praised the colours and expressive forms of early Russian icons with their similarities to modern art…The history of iconography was subjected to this new standard of modern aesthetic taste, and any icons that did not adhere to the modern preference for abstraction were deemed carnal and unspiritual, despite the fact that such icons had been accepted and used for centuries as liturgical and devotional images in churches and homes[38]

It was Wilhelm Worringer’s book Abstaktion and Einfuhlung (“Abstraction and Empathy”) published in 1908 that introduced the concept that abstraction is equated to spirituality and influenced many artists and art historians in the 20th century and is very foundation of the icon theology of Florensky and his followers:

“Worringer’s modernist Platonism assumes that sensuous reality is a veil of illusion, and that abstract forms come closest to the absolute. This is Worringer’s great achievement, freeing most of the world’s art from invidious comparisons with Greco-Roman naturalism, It is also the great flaw in his vision. Abstraction and a universal language makes no allowance for cultures with different ideas of reality and different conventions for depicting it.”[39]

There are reasons for the abstraction used in Byzantine iconography, but as we will see, it has nothing to do with symbolizing Christ’s divinity and the deification of the saints. Rather it is what helps the icon achieve its function of making the persons depicted present in the same time and space as the viewer.

There are some who think that the so-called pioneer’s use of modern philosophy to theologize about the icon is the same as the Church Fathers’ use of the terms like “Holy Trinity” and “homoousios,” to speak to the people of their era, but there is a huge difference. The Fathers used the terminology and thought structures and preached using images of their era, but when it came to expressing the truth they made it clear that those terms are given new content. Never did they change the teaching of the Church when using the philosophical terms of the surrounding culture[40]. As St John of Damascus states,

“Wherefore, brethren, let us plant ourselves upon the rock of faith and the Tradition of the Church, removing not the landmarks set by our holy fathers, nor giving room to those who are anxious to introduce novelties and to undermine the structure of God’s holy ecumenical and apostolic Church. For if everyone were allowed a free hand, little by little the entire Body of the Church would be destroyed.”

The pioneers of the modern theology of the icon, on the contrary, not only adopted modern philosophies, foreign to the teaching of the Church Fathers, they rejected the very teaching of the Fathers and Ecumenical Councils.

During the iconoclast era the Church confronted the iconoclast danger and expressed, with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the truth about the icon. The theology of the Fathers of the 8th and 9th centuries, to the extent that it agrees with the theology of the 7th Ecumenical Council, is not a circumstantial response of certain theologians to secondary problems of their era. It is the theological response of the Orthodox Catholic Church to the iconoclast heresy and constitutes the body of her theological tradition. Consequently, the reference to this theology is just as obligatory as the reference to the theology of the Ecumenical Councils. Any attempt to speak of the icon and what it is, outside the theology that the Church accepted during the Iconoclastic period, resembles an attempt at selective assumption, and consequently amputation of tradition. Ultimately it means heresy.[41]

To be continued...

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[1] Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)

[2] See Mikhail Krasilin, “Russian Icons of the 18th to early 20th Centuries” in A History of Icon Painting, Ed. Archimandrite Zacchaeus (Wood), Moscow 20072, pg 209-230, and Alexander Musin, “Theology of the Image and the Evolution of Style. The dogmatic and canonical evaluation of Russian Ecclesiastical Art of the Synodal Period,” Iconofile 7 (2005), pg. 5-25

[3] Evan Freeman, “Rethinking the Role of Style in Orthodox Iconography: The Invention of Tradition in the Writings of Florensky, Ouspensky and Kontoglou” in Church Music and Icons: Windows to Heaven. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Orthodox Church Music (Helsinki – The International Society for Orthodox Church Music, 2015), pg 351

[4] Robert S. Nelson, “Byzantine Art vs Western Medieval Art,” in Paule Pagès et al., ed., Byzance et le monde extérieur: contacts, relations, échanges : actes de trois séances du XXe Congrès international des études byzantines, Paris, 19–25 août 2001 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005), 255-256.

[5] Alexander Musin, “Theology of the Image and the Evolution of Style. The dogmatic and canonical evaluation of Russian Ecclesiastical Art of the Synodal Period,” Iconofile 7 (2005), 10.

[6] George Kordis, Ἱεροτύπως… Ἡ εἰκονολογία τοῦ ἱ. Φωτίου καὶ ἡ τέχνη τῆς μετοικονομαχικῆς περιόδου. Armos, Athens 2002, pg 18

[7] George Kordis, Ἱεροτύπως…, pg 12

[8] Pavel Florensky is a problematic personality whose influences include German Romanticism (many of his ideas about the icon are taken almost verbatim from Schelling), theosophy and Russian Symbolism. He was a vocal supporter of the Russian “Name Worshipper” heresy and according to his friends he probably practiced yoga, at a time when it certainly wasn’t considered “exercise”. None of these are compatible with Orthodox theology and yet have influenced his “theology” of the icon which is considered the “canonical” teaching of the Church.

[9] “Fourth chapter: what is to be depicted and what is not to be depicted and how is anything depicted? Bodies can reasonably be depicted as having shape and bodily outline and color…To put it simply: we can make images of everything with a visible shape, we understand these things just as they are seen.” St John of Damascus, Treatise III 24, (Three Treatises on the Divine Images, Translation and Introduction by Andrew Louth, SVS Press, 2003. Pg 100) and “If anyone calls the circumscription of the bodily form of the Word neither the image of Christ not Christ by homonymy…he is a heretic” St Theodore the Studite, 1st Refutation of the Iconoclasts , XX, (Writings on Iconoclasm, Translated and Introduced by Thomas Cottoi, Ancient Christian Writers, The Newman Press,) pg 60

[10] Evan Freeman, “Rethinking the Role of Style in Orthodox Iconography…” pg 354, Nicoletta Misler, “Pavel Florensky: A Biographical Sketch,” in Beyond Vision, 19-21

[11] Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan & Olga Andrejev, SVS Press, 1996, pg 64-66

[12] Ibid. pg 43

[13] George Kordis, ibid. pg 13

[14] Mansi 13, 340E

[15] George Kordis, “Μορφή και Εικόνα. Η Προβληματική για την σχέση μορφής και εικόνας κατά τους Εικονομάχους και Εικονοφίλους, Doctoral thesis, University of Athens, 1991, pg 173

[16] Mansi 13, 277 CD. Also “For the saints who have pleased God and have been honoured by him with the dignity of sainthood live with God forever, even though they have departed from here. Thus, he who thinks to reinstate them on poles, by means of a dead and accursed art which has never been alive but rather has been invented in vanity by the adversary pagans, proves himself blasphemous, Mansi 13, 276D (Translation: “Icon and Logos sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm D. J Sahas, Toronto 19882) See also George Kordis, ibid pg 140-1

[17] Mansi 13, 340E-342A

[18] Mansi 13, 280A

[19] Treatise III 24

[20] Treatise I, 8

[21] Mansi 13, 344AB

[22] Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, Vol 1, SVS Press, 1992

[23] George Kordis, “Μορφή και Εικόνα…” pg 264

[24] Epistle 8, Book of Epistles II, PG 99, 1132D

[25] George Kordis, “Μορφή και Εικόνα…” pg 29

[26] “Refutation and Subversion of the Impious Poems, A response to John’s Poem”, pg 148

[27] George Kordis, “ Ιεροτύπως…», pg 16

[28] Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, pg 44-45

[29] Pavel Florensky, “In the most precise sense of the word, only the saints can be iconographers”, Iconostasis, pg88 and Ouspensky, “The icon cannot be invented. Only those who know from personal experience the state it portrays can create images corresponding to it which are truly ‘a revelation and evidence of things hidden’… No artistic fantasy, no perfection of technique or artistic gift can replace actual knowledge, drawing from ‘seeing and contemplating’”, The Meaning of Icons, pg 32

[30] George Kordis, “Μορφή και Εικόνα…” pg 28

[31] Fotis Kontoglou, Byzantine Sacred Art, pg 89-90

[32] Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, SVS Press, pg 102

[33] Ouspensky, The Meaning of Icons, pg 44-5

[34] Mansi 13, 340E

[35] Treatise I,16, pg 30

[36] Theodore the Studite “And it shares the name [of the prototype] as well as the honor and the veneration” (2nd Refutation XVII, pg 69. Also, “In the same way, when we signify an icon with a name, we transfer the honour to the prototype; and by embracing it and offering to it the veneration of honour, we share in the sanctification,” (Mansi 13 269E) See George Kordis, «Ἱεροτύπως...», pg 205

[37] D. Pallas refers to this and other Byzantines who marveled at Western naturalistic painting in his article «Αἱ Αἰσθητικαὶ ἰδέαι τῶν Βυζαντινῶν πρὸ τῆς Ἁλώσεως» ΕΕΒΣ (1965) 313-331. See George Kordis, «Αυγοτέμπερα με Υποζωγράφιση…», Pg 82&96

[38] Evan Freeman, “Rethinking the Role of Style in Orthodox Iconography…, pg 368

[39] James Trilling, “Medieval Art without Style? Plato’s loophole and a Modern Detour,” Gesta 34, 1 (1995), pg 60

[40] Stylianos Papadopoulos, «Πατρολογία, Τόμος Α’ Εἰσαγωγή, Β’καὶ Γ’ Αἰῶνας, Athens 20004 , pg 53

[41]George Kordis, “Μορφή και Εικόνα…” pg 28-9

Revisiting the Patristic Theology of the Icon. Part 2: The Modern Theology of the Icon: Is it Orthodox?

Painting St Sophrony and the Difficulties of Painting Contemporary Saints

Revisiting the Patristic Theology of the Icon. Part 1: Setting Aside our Western Assumptions