We Christians in the West shake our heads when we hear of fanaticism such as Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy law, whereby anyone uttering a simple slight against the prophet Muhammad may find himself on the way to the chopping block.
“How medieval can you get?”
But Christ’s own Church has seen its own share of fanaticism.
In 726, the Byzantine Emperor Leo III published an edict declaring images — even religious ones — to be idols. Leo decreed that icons be destroyed. He tried to force Pope Gregory II (713-31) to destroy images in Rome and summon a general council to forbid their use. Pope Gregory answered by a long defense of icons, explaining the difference between them and idols.
At its height, the iconoclast heresy saw churches redecorated with pictures of flowers and birds — and monks who defended holy images were cruelly tortured and killed.
But the fanaticism couldn’t reach a place like St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Dessert — ironic, perhaps, because one of the reasons Leo gave to support his heresy was Exodus 20:4-5, the command in the Decalogue — given on Mount Sinai — prohibiting the making of “graven images.”
Sister Wendy Becket, famed British television nun and art critic, takes us inside St. Catherine’s in her book Real Presence: In Search of the First Icons. She recognizes that there was a significant and tragic gap in the production of icons during the 8th and 9th centuries — the time when the iconoclasts held sway. St. Catherine’s, thus, is a treasure trove of icons that were hidden during that “reign of terror.”
There, the most famous icon is Christ Pantacrator (Christ All Powerful), which dates from the 6th century and most likely was written by an iconographer from Constantinople. It is so beautiful and mesmerizing that it easily draws one into prayer. It is almost as if Christ himself, shown with one eye that is piercing in judgment and one that is soft with mercy, were standing before you.
It is the image used on the cover of this slim but very informative volume.
That is, after all, what icons are meant to do — present the Divine so that you may enter into prayerful conversation with the Lord. Icons, Sister Wendy points out, are another way of making Christ and the saints present to us.
Sister Wendy does not restrict herself to St. Catherine’s. On a quest to find the earliest existing icons in the world, including those of the Theotokos, she takes us to Kiev, Rome, London and various parts of Egypt.
She takes up the question of whether icons indeed depict the historical Jesus. We certainly can find many different iconic styles of Christ, but there are plenty that are very much the same. Was there an original icon that is true to an eyewitness description, from which faithful iconographers have passed down the true image? It’s an open question, but, ultimately, it is the deeper meaning in the icon that is important.
“Just as the Gospels are baffling to the modern mind, with their total indifference to Jesus’ appearance or temperament, so perhaps we must accept that the images have some deeper purpose,” she writes. “The Gospels are trying to make us aware of what Jesus was, what he meant. Perhaps the icons and the mosaics are the same?”
The contemplative nun finds another Pantacrator at Mount Sinai, for example, but this one is far from the strong Jesus depicted in the one with contrasting eyes. It is “Semitic,” she says, as opposed to the more famous “classical” one from Constantinople. Christ is seen as a weak, more human, personage, one who fits well into the prophetic vision of Isaiah’s suffering servant.
“It is clear that neither (Pantacrator) could have the sole prerogative of showing ‘what Jesus looked like,’” she writes. “Both are showing what Jesus is, and both accept that no human power can give visual expression to the Divine immensity of that meaning.”
One possible drawback about this book has to do with layout. Reproductions of icons are offered amid the pages on which Sister Wendy discusses them, but, without captions, it is difficult to tell sometimes to which icons she is referring. We find ourselves guessing which is which.
Then again, it may be a good way to get us to study them more closely, examining them to see if we can find the elements she describes and comparing them to icons on nearby pages that may describe something similar.
In that, she encourages us to meditate on the images more closely, inviting us into prayer.
Just like icons do.
Register news editor John Burger writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
REAL PRESENCE
In Search of the Earliest Icons
by Sister Wendy Beckett
Orbis, 2010
128 pages, $25
To order: OrbisBooks.com
(800) 258-5838
Joseph Pronechen: Our Mother of Perpetual Help Original Icon Goes Live
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I hate to see us becoming as sensationalist and anti-christian as the secular media.
“We Christians in the West shake our heads when we hear of fanaticism such as Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy law, whereby anyone uttering a simple slight against the prophet Muhammad may find himself on the way to the chopping block.” What does this have to do with Sister Wendy’s book?
“But Christ’s own Church has seen its own share of fanaticism.” Byzantine Emperor Leo III was not the church, he was a secular ruler. How can you seriously equate what happened in 726 with what is happening in Islamic countries 1,300 years later in 2011?
I can hardly wait to get this book! Comment on the opening of this excellent article, the Iconoclast Heresy is not the same as the blasphemy laws in the Muslim world. Holy Mother Church never promulgated iconoclasm. It was secular leadership and secular law. There is a huge difference. Holy Mother Church struggled to free herself from secular authority very early on. For various reasons, she was not always successful. She still struggles to divest herself of the slavery of Mammon. She will succeed. Jesus Himself has promised it.
The Church has always loved and promoted beauty as a reflection of the perfection of God. Isn’t there a branch of philosophy called “aesthetics?”
To get on the simplistic side and not into “deep” religious happenings; in today’s world, I have had Protestants tell me that we Catholic’s worship idols. My answer to them is that a statue/picture of Christ, or Blessed Mary or the Saints is no different than a bust of Lincoln or pictures of my loved ones [deceased or living] in my home. We look at our children’s pictures when they were young and meditate [think abt.them as babies]—I look at my dead husband’s picture and talk to him. Recently a minister in a Protestant church stated to the congregation that Catholics worship Mary, my son, who attends that church let her know that she gave false information to the congregation and that Catholics HONOR MARY.
Christianity was responsible for the valuing of art in Western Europe from the Catacombs onwards and if tradition is to be believed from St Luke himself who is said to have produced an encaustic image of Virgin and Child ( encaustic – the production of an image by adding pigments to hot beeswax)
Saint Paulinus (353- 431) was Governor and later Bishop in Campania wrote referring to a church dedicated to St Felix. “I now want you to contemplate the paintings that unfold in a long series on the walls of the painted porticos…. It seemed to us useful to portray sacred themes in painting throughout the house of Felix, in the hope that when the peasants see the painted figure, these images will awaken interest in their astonished minds”. He was inspired by St Felix (d 264). Paulinus himslef was held captive by barbarians in North Africa volunteering as a hostage in place of a widow’s son. Upon his return, the town citizens greeted him with lilies (gigli) and this festival has continued since a few years after his death to this present day.
The issue of icons and statues came to a head in the C8th. The Byzantine Emperor Leo III ( (c. 685- 741) was pressed by Khalifa Omar II (717-20) to convert to Islam, without success except as far as persuading him that pictures are idols. The emperor commanded the Pope Gregory II (reigned 715-731) to accept the edict, destroy images at Rome, and summon a general council to forbid their use. The Pope did not waver. Gregory answered, in 727, by a long defence of the pictures. He explains the difference between them and idols, with some surprise that Leo does not already understand it. He describes the lawful use of, and reverence paid to, pictures by Christians.
Iconoclasm was resisted by successive Popes and it was Adrian I (reigned 772 - 795) that made the ruling at the Second Council of Nicea 787 that religious art was to be preserved.
I love Sister Wendy. I will be getting this.
I am not a religion historian, but from what I learned in Catholic Grade School, pictures have always been a means of learning [& to some extent reading] since the peasants or population as a whole were not educated. The Egyptians, the American Indians used it. Don’t we still use images when teaching children how to read, also in teaching religion. I still believe that icons are no different than the pictures of our families. By the way, my parents came from the Campania Region of Italy. I found their passage here back in the late 1800’s, on Ellis Island.com [really exciting investigation]
I just wish that today they would make Jesus and Blessed Mother look more Jewish than Irish. That is the region they came from, why make then look Spanish or American even. ;o) P.S. I AM enjoying the history lesson.
I get bewildered why no one realizes - or wants to accept - that Jesus Christ left us His Genuine Countenance, probably because He knew mankind would one day, even try to deny He existed. We have the Shroud of Turin which, when superimposed on the Original Image of the Divine Mercy painted under the direction of Saint Faustina, is not only identical, but an exact copy of the Face of Jesus on the Shroud. But we must always remember that we genuine and faithful Christians, especially Catholics “Walk By Faith not by Sight”.
I love my jesus by my full of heart..
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