An abridged version of this paper is published
in Studia Patristica 2004
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The surviving archaeological
evidence of Iconoclastic church decoration programmes is almost entirely
limited to mosaic Crosses like the one in the apse of Hagia Irene in
Constantinople[1] (Fig.1).
In addition we can reconstruct the decoration programmes from equally
scattered remarks in written sources, the most important of which is the Life of Stephen the Younger, which
describes the martyrdom of a champion of icons, monk Stephen in the acme of
iconoclasm under Constantine V. The Life informs us not only about the fact
that the Iconoclasts destroyed the old pre-Iconoclastic church decoration
consisting of the images of Christ, Theotokos and saints, in several
churches. According to the description,
the walls of the Iconoclastic churches represented trees, birds, animals, as
well as human entertainment activities such as, for example, hunting or horse
races at the Hippodrome.[2]
For their designs the Iconoclastic Emperors did not have to invent iconography anew – the pre-Iconoclastic art carried on the long and well-developed tradition of secular representations – the iconography of triumphant Emperor. Besides the different kinds of portraits of the reigning Emperor, it included the specific iconography of the Emperor at the Hippodrome.[3] This cycle of images could also be included into a general triumph cycle since all the victories at the Hippodrome were ascribed to the Emperor himself; and those victories were the prefigurations of the Emperor's victories at the battlefield. In his famous monograph on Iconoclasm, André Grabar pointed to the existing examples of church decoration involving hunting scenes.[4] Wherever the Iconoclasts found such scenes, sometimes scattered among religious ones, they must have cherished and renovated them, possibly also installing new ones of similar kind while removing the cultic figural compositions.
We cannot assess how consistently the Iconoclastic program of redecoration was carried out in the short time before the Iconodulic interlude since the destruction of very durable mosaics and their replacement by new designs, as for example, those described in the Vita Stephani, and those carried out in the church of Dormition in Nicaea, must have been a rather costly and lengthy enterprise. In most cases, perhaps, the Iconoclasts limited themselves to the installation of plain Crosses in the apses and whitewashing the naos decoration.[5]
In fact, we have a standing monument preserving a decoration programme, which might have been similar to the Iconoclastic decorations described in the Vita Stephani. This program is a cycle of "secular" frescoes from the staircases of the western towers of the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev, painted between the second half of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth century by a team of Constantinopolitan artists.[6] This cycle contains different episodes from the Hippodrome games in the presence of the Emperor and Empress: the Hippodrome in the beginning of the horse races, the performances of musicians, dancers, jugglers and comedians as well as scenes of gladiators' fights, some of whom wear masks, and the hunting scenes (Figs. 2–4).
We must remember, that the Church, both Byzantine and Russian, was always opposed to amusements of this kind, and the Hippodrome cycle could not simply be executed as a set of genre-pieces in a church but must have had a self-representational meaning, granting the proper "Imperial" status to the Prince of a new Christian state of Rus' and with such political connotation softening the outrageously secular contents of the frescoes. However, the ambiguity must have been obvious since the cycle was placed in a premise where only the Prince's family with their retinue and guests could see it while going up to their place up in the choirs during the Liturgy. Such a cycle would be impossible in the main church of Byzantium of that time in light of the post-Iconoclastic iconographic reaction, which mostly included into the decoration programs the frontal single figures of saints and the selected festal compositions, and cycles similar to those from St. Sophia of Kiev, would have reminded the audience of the art of the abominable Iconoclasts.[7]
The striking correspondence between the Iconodulic description of the Iconoclastic churches and the decoration programme of St. Sophia of Kiev was noticed already by André Grabar, and he was also concerned with the question of secular scenery in the Iconoclastic churches.[8] He interpreted such decoration as a testimony of the triumph of the Emperors over idolatry – the visual expression of the statement of the Council of Hiereia on the equal honour and purpose of the Iconoclastic emperors with the apostles of Christ, who were sent to destroy the pagan idols.[9]
However, here we need to pose a question: Byzantine
decoration programmes which adorned an interior or exterior space of a
building, were designed for a certain architectural space and a certain
ceremonial taking place within that space.
This ceremonial could be liturgical in the case of a church service,
with its division of ceremonies outside the church, in the narthex, nave and
apse with their corresponding decoration programmes, but also secular, for
example, in the case of the Imperial or popular ceremonials, each having its
proper space in the City and accompanying monuments. The tradition of many centuries conditioned the firmness of these
rituals, in some way similar to the rigidity of the ecclesiastical rituals: the
Imperial "liturgy" included the processions of the Emperor with his
retinue, the ceremonies of triumph and advent, in the same way connected with
their proper decorations (reliefs on the triumphal arches, or statues) and
monuments, such as the Imperial palace, its vestibule or the Chalke, or the
Milion.[10]
Yet even with the "caesaropapist" attitude of the Iconoclastic Emperors, why then would they use images of their Imperial propaganda in such an inappropriate context for it as the walls of churches – while as far as we know, the Church liturgy and its rituals remained unchanged by the Iconoclasts? And, finally, we know about some special decoration activities on the public monuments of the City: the reworking of the Chalke decoration program, the redecoration of the Milion with scenes of horse races instead of the previous depictions of the Six Councils,[11] or possible erection by Constantine V of his monumental statues in the City, which by itself carried a full-fledged programme of secular Imperial propaganda. In view of the importance of the Cross as the palladium of victorious Emperors Constantine the Great and Heraclius, the Iconoclastic Emperors indeed must have promoted the Imperial connotation of the Cross, but again, the inclusions of the Cross in the apses by the Iconoclasts do not seem to bear such "political" Imperial context – for this context the apse is simply the wrong place. Perhaps, they may imply another theological meaning in addition to their political one.
I
propose to interpret the data on the Iconoclastic church decoration programmes
from the functional point of view starting with the question of how the
Iconoclast viewed the Eucharist, since it is exactly for the Eucharist
celebration that the churches were built and adorned. The Definition of the
Iconoclastic council of Hiereia (754) testifies that the Iconoclasts considered
the Eucharist as a consubstantial image of Christ's natural body. But if image is substantially equal to its
model then why should they introduce the notion of image? Or maybe the Eucharist is substantially
equal with the Body of Christ, but is different from it in some aspect? It seems that this difference according to
the Iconoclasts consisted in the characteristics of circumscribability and
tangibility of the Eucharistic gifts as opposed to the uncircumscribable and
intangible subtle body of Resurrected Christ.
I will present several sources in support of this hypothesis.
In a passage from the Antirrhecticus of Theodore the Studite,
the Iconoclast states that the visibility of Christ's body to the Apostles
after the Resurrection can be explained not by the tangibility of Christ's
resurrected body (as was the position of the Iconodules) but rather by a
miracle. Christ's appearance to the
Apostles is explained as God's condescension to human weakness which needs to
see God in a corporeal form, in a way, as a miracle against the nature of
Christ's resurrected state similar to Prophets' visions of the divinity in
corporeal form in the Old Testament.[12] To the objection of the Orthodox
that what is visible is necessarily circumscribable, the Iconoclast replies:
"the Apostles saw the Lord with purified eyes, with our eyes it is not
accessible to look [at him]."[13]
As an
illustration to the Iconoclastic doctrine on the subtle body of Resurrected
Christ, we may find a very interesting episode in the description of Patriarch
Tarasius' parents from the Vita Tarasii
written by Ignatius, a repentant Iconoclast.[14] Ignatius includes a story
illustrating the just character of Tarasius' father, a judge. The story tells that certain poor women were
falsely accused of murdering their new-born babies, transforming themselves by
means of magic into spirits and thus penetrating into the room where the babies
were kept; and Tarasius' father as a just judge, released them from such
accusations. Certainly, Ignatius could
have chosen any other story from the legal practise of his time with just the
same effect, why such a bizarre one?
Precisely because Ignatius can use the story on ghosts[15] to argue against the Iconoclastic doctrine on the subtle body of
Christ, the belief which Ignatius must have also shared while being an
Iconoclast. Having described the story
and justice of Tarasius' father, Ignatius proceeds to his main point:
What insensibility, what blindness of the eyes of the heart, have those who
believe that a body compact in length, depth and width can be dissolved and
contained in a spirit and permitted to do all this! When Christ said that 'true spirit has no flesh and bones,' (cf. Lk 24: 39) was He regarded as a ghost by those who could certify this? But also
Christ himself, who assumed true flesh and verily confirmed to his disciples
that the spirit has no flesh and bones, in no way can be described as a phantom
with no substance.[16]
We can complete our
dossier of texts presenting one more passage which belongs to yet another genre
– homiletics. In his Parva Catechesis,
the sermons to the monks of his monastery, Theodore the Studite not once
alludes to the Controversy and refutes the "wrong" doctrines, which
the monks were aware of and which might have been be seductive for some. In a following passage Theodore insists that
after the Resurrection Christ preserved his bodily qualities, writing against
the Iconoclasts, who must have taught that the resurrected Christ became
spiritual:
...after the Resurrection he touched food [though] indeed his holy flesh
had no any need. But in the same way,
in order to assure His Resurrection, He ate and drank and [allowed] His side to
be touched. And He said this to those who taught that He was a spirit: 'Behold
my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: touch me and see that a spirit has
no flesh and bones as you see me have' (Lk. 24:39–40). What would you say to this,
the enemy of Christ: if He has flesh and bones, why can He not be depicted?[17]
In
order to understand better what change happens with the Body of Christ after his Resurrection, it is necessary
to consider how the Iconoclasts view Christ's Body before the Resurrection.
The Christological formula from the Definition
of Hiereia states that Christ's soul mediates between the divinity of the Word
and the coarseness of Christ's flesh.[18] Thus, before the Resurrection
the body of Christ is "coarse," material, and mortal but after the
Resurrection it is endowed with new characteristics – it is much more subtle
and less material, as we can deduce from another fragment from the same Definition of the Iconoclastic council.[19]
This text is very important
because it uses for the description of Christ's Body the same term
"coarse" (pacu/j)
as was used in a Christological formula a little earlier in the run of the Definition. According to the text of the anathema,
Christ has a body, but this body is not of a fleshly nature, it is
"God-like" and "out of coarseness," although the
Christological formula clearly speaks about the soul as a mediator between the
Godhead and "the coarseness of flesh." A possible reason for the discrepancy is that the Iconoclasts
describe the same body of Christ in its different states – one before the
Resurrection, in the Christological formula, and the other – after the
Resurrection in the anathema.
Looking for the
sources of inspiration of this Eucharist doctrine of Byzantine Iconoclasts, we
may find a striking resemblance to the Eucharistic doctrine of the great
theologian of the Antiochene school Theodore of Mopsuestia: for Theodore as
well the Eucharist has dual character – the Gifts are simultaneously the real
Body and Blood of Christ and sign and image.[20] Theodore of Mopsuestia's
doctrine of the Sacraments as symbol, typos,
which has its ontological counterpart in reality, seems to be also ultimately
connected with the Antiochene doctrine of two katastases or two states of reality: the state of mortality,
corruption, and corporeality in the present age, and the state of immortality,
impassability, and spirituality in the future age. It is only the "future" for us, since Christ after his
Resurrection already exists in the age of spirituality. However, we, on earth, still remain in a corporeal condition until the general resurrection
and establishment of spiritual katastasis,
the first fruits of which are given to every Christian at baptism.[21]
Moreover, two different descriptions of Christ's body expressed by the
same Council in one Definition also point to a possible parallel with the
Antiochene doctrine of two katastases:
the first description was in the temporal reality of the Incarnation, and the
second one is related to the future Judgement, when Christ will come in a body
already transformed after his Resurrection.
If we take the Antiochene doctrine of the two katastases as a starting point, the Iconoclastic church decoration
program can receive an additional and more theological explanation, which,
however, does not contradict the Emperor-cult iconography of Iconoclastic
secular imagery but supplies it with a new supra-mundane dimension.
In the old
tradition which comes from a typology of the school of Antioch, a church
building, besides its usual associations with the Old Testament tabernacle or
the Temple of Solomon, was also interpreted as the model of the physical world,
and the model of all reality, visible and invisible expressed in its
architectural structure. This typology
is reflected in several writings coming from completely different environments:
from the East Syriac tradition we can cite a text with a similar doctrine,
associating architectural parts of a church with different spiritual
realities. In this typological system
the altar represents Heaven, the nave represents the Earth, and the katastroma (an elevated part connecting
the altar and the nave) represents Paradise (it is elevated as the
altar/Heaven, yet its place is in the nave/Earth). The ambo, the architectural structure in the middle of East
Syrian churches, represents the Holy City of Jerusalem, also situated in the
middle of the nave – the Earth.[22] We can also cite a Chalcedonian
author, St. Maximus the Confessor, who gives a very similar interpretation of
the structure of a church connected with the two-fold image of the whole reality,
noetic and aesthetic in his Mystagogy.[23]
We may assume that Constantine V and his
theologians also knew the tradition, associating the altar with the heavenly
world, and the nave with the earthly world and, it is thus possible to give a
different interpretation concerning the removal of anthropomorphic images in
churches during the reign of Constantine V and renewing and installing new
designs of secular character. Such attempt of a conscious selection of
particular church decoration programmes, besides its political connotation, may
be interpreted as an attempt on the part of the Iconoclasts to create a church
decoration programme coherently embedding both the image of the Tabernacle (or
the succeeding Temple of Solomon), and the model of the reality consisting of
two katastases – material and
spiritual. Thus, in the Iconoclastic
church-tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, the altar, might represent the noetic
reality with the image of the plain Cross, simultaneously the symbolic
representation of Resurrected Christ in his present spiritual body, and the
future Parousiac Theophanic vision.[24] The representation of the
Cross in the apse as well as elsewhere must have served for the Iconoclasts as
the image of Resurrected Christ in his Resurrected state with an
unrepresentable subtle body, signified by the Cross. The tradition of representing the Cross in the Resurrection
scenes is, in fact, well attested to in the early Christian art. The
representation of the Cross was the sign usually used for the Resurrected
Christ as opposed to Christ's anthropomorphic images in other scenes, so, for
example, in the Resurrection scenes at Christ's Sepulchre, the Sepulchre often
exposes the curtains open on two sides with the Cross inside (Figs 6-7).[25] Thus, if the apse with the
Cross could signify the noetic reality, the nave of a church (signifying
simultaneously the Holy of the Tabernacle), must have stood for the sensible
(aesthetic) reality with its images of trees, birds, animals, and secular human
activities. If the altar represented
the intransitive everlasting reality of the unchangeable and eternal katastasis, the nave represented the
transitive katastasis of this
world. That is why, perhaps, the two
divisions of the church possessed a different epistemological value and from
the semiotic point of view the whitewashing of the nave could serve as a
substitute for the decoration of the nave with secular scenes and ornamental
motifs for the economic reasons.
Summing up the results of our investigation: in only one segment of the Iconoclastic system of theological argumentation against images can one see strong indications of specific Antiochene leanings of Byzantine Iconoclasts concerning the state of Resurrected Christ. Christ's Resurrected body seems to be perceived as a lighter substance than the previously coarse and material body of Christ's earthly life. This doctrine fits very well both with the fundamental Antiochene doctrine of two katastases or two conditions of reality and with the peculiar doctrine of the Eucharist as simultaneously image of the Body and Blood and the Body and Blood themselves, which can be found both in Theodore of Mopsuestia and Byzantine Iconoclasts. The hypothesis on the Antiochene impact in shaping Iconoclastic theology (the channels of penetration still remain a task to determine) and, in particular, the Antiochene doctrine of two sharply different conditions of reality may provide a theological explanation to the Iconoclastic church programmes whose fundamental feature seems to be a similar sharp delineation between the decoration of the altar, typologically connected with the eternal katastasis with its image of the sole Cross as symbolic representation of Resurrected Christ, and the nave with its secular scenery, typologically connected with the temporal katastasis of our earthly life.
[1] Since I cannot offer a detailed
analysis of the iconographic programmes of the Iconoclasts from an
archaeological and art historical point of view due to the limit of the paper,
I am obliged at least to provide a bibliography of the main studies on the
remains of Iconoclastic church decoration activities. On the church of Saint
Irene, see: W. S. George, The Church of
Saint Eirene at Constantinople (Oxford, 1913); U. Peschlow, Die Irenekirche in Istanbul. Untersuchungen
zur Architektur (Tübingen, 1977). On photographs of the now destroyed
church of the Dormition in Nicaea, it can bee seen that during Iconoclasm an
image of the Cross was inserted into the original mosaic of the apse (whatever
it might have been, see: F. De'Maffei, "L'Unigenito consustanziale al
Padre nel programma trinitario dei perduti mosaici del bema della Dormizione di
Nicea e il Cristo trasfigurato del Sinai. I, II," Storia dell'arte 45-46 (1982): 91-116, 185-200; and Ch. Barber,
"The Koimesis Church, Nicaea: The Limits of Representation on the Eve of
Iconoclasm," Jahrbuch der
Österreichischen Byzantinistik 41 (1991): 43-60); this Cross was
removed and a representation of the Theotokos was put in the apse after the
Restoration of the Icons in 843 (P. Underwood, "The Evidence of
Restorations in the Sanctuary Mosaics of the Church of Dormition at
Nicaea," Dumbarton Oaks Papers
13 (1959): 235-43). On the church, see O. K. Wulff, Die Koimesiskirche in Nicäa und ihre Mosaiken (Strassburg,
1903); T. Schmit, Die Koimesis-Kirche von
Nicaia, das Bauwerk und die Mosaiken (Berlin, Leipzig, 1927); and recent:
G. Peers, Subtle Bodies: Representing
Angels in Byzantium (Berkeley University of California Press, 2001), 61-88;
and Ch. Barber, Figure and Likeness: On
the Limits of Representation in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2002), 63-9. We are not treating the churches with aniconic decoration
such as those located in Cappadocia and Naxos with relation to Iconoclasm
because of the methodological problems of their interpretation (see L.
Brubaker, "On the Margins of Byzantine Iconoclasm," in XXe Congrès International des
Études Byzantines. Collège du France – Sorbonne, 19-25 août
2001. Pré-acts (Paris, 2001), 209f; for the list of the churches
with aniconic decoration, see: Ibid.,
213-15).
[2][2] "And one could see in all
towns and villages the pious people’s lamentation upon lamentation and 'ouai
upon ouai' (Hez. 7:26), whereas the impious trampled down the sacred things and
remodelled the holy vessels, dismantled the churches and painted them over with
lime as having holy images, and they gave the images of Christ and of the
Theotokos and of the saints to fire, to dismantling, and destruction. But
wherever there were plants or birds or irrational animals, or, especially,
satanic horse races or hunting, scenes from the theatre or hippodrome, those
they kept and cleaned them up with honour" (ed. M.-F. Auzépy, La vie d'Etienne le Jeune par Etienne le
diacre (Aldershot; Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1997), 26, p. 121, 13-21 for
the Greek text); and "When the tyrant dismantled the honourable church of
the Most Pure Theotokos in Blachernai, whose walls were formerly decorated,
instead of God's condescension for our sake depicted in iconic manner by way of
various miracles up to his Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Spirit, thus
breaking all mysteries of Christ’s life, they turned the church into a
vegetable storehouse (Ps. 78:2) and augury with various plants and birds,
beasts, other things enlaced with ivy, storks, and crows, and peacocks, so to
say, making it truly ugly" (Ibid.,
29, p. 126, 23-127,6).
[3] A. Grabar, L'empereur dans l'art byzantin: Rechershes sur l'art officiel de
l'Empire d'Orient (Paris: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de
l'Université
de Strasbourg, 1936), passim.
[4] As, for example, in the chapel
decoration in Bawit, whose date precedes the Islamic invasion of the
mid-seventh century) (A. Grabar, L'iconoclasme
byzantin. Le dossier archéologique (n.p.: Flammarion, 1984, repr.
1998), 223 and figs. 108-09).
[5] At least such procedure is
prescribed in the (probably forged) fragment of St. Nilus to eparch
Olympiodorus from the Iconoclastic florilegium
of the Council in Saint Sophia: "In the sanctuary, according to the
ordinances of the ecclesiastical traditions, it is sufficient to install the
Cross through which all the mankind has been saved; and to whitewash the rest
of the nave ( )En ga\r tw=| i(eratei/w| kata\ to\ pro/stagma th=j
e)kklhsiastikh=j parado/sewj stauro\n e)gcara/xaj a)rke/sqhti, di' ou(=
staurou= e)sw/qh pa=n to\ a)nqrw/pinon ge/noj, kai\ to\ loipo\n tou= oi)/kou
leu/kanon). There
exists two versions of the fragment, the Iconodulic and the Iconoclastic (cited
above). In the Iconodulic version, however, Nilus prescribes decorate the nave
with the scenes "from the New and Old Testament." On the problems of
the text see: A. Cameron, "The Authenticity of the Letters of St. Nilus of
Ancyra," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine
Studies 17 (1976): 181-96; see also H. Thümmel, "Neilos von
Ankyra über die Bilder," Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 71 (1978): 10-21.
[6] Drevnosti
Rossijskogo gosudarstva. Kievskij Sofijskij sobor [The Antiquities of the
Russian state. St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev] (St. Petersburg, 1871), pl. 52-54;
A. Grabar, "Les fresques des escaliers à Sainte Sophie de Kiew et
l'iconographie impériale byzantine," Seminarium Kondakovianum 7 (1935): 103-17; N.P. Kondakov, "O
freskakh lestnitsy Kievo-Sofijskogo sobora," [On the frescoes of the
stairway of the Kiev Sophia Cathedral] Zapiski
Imperatorskogo Russkogo arkheologicheskogo obschestva 3 (1887-88) 2f; A.
Grabar, Imperator v vizantijskom
iskusstve [The emperor in Byzantine art] (Moscow: Ladomir, 2000), 89f.
[7] O. Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration: Aspects of Monumental Art in Byzantium
(New Rochelle, New York: Caratzas Brothers, Publishers, 1976), 52f.
[8] A. Grabar, L'iconoclasme byzantin. Le dossier archéologique (n. p.:
Flammarion, 1984, repr. 1998), 223f.
[9] Whom the Definition names "equal to the apostles," raised
"for the destruction of the demonic strongholds raised up against the
knowledge of God and for the refutation of the diabolical craft and
deceit" (Mansi 13, 225D).
[10] On the Constantinopolitan Imperial ceremonial,
see G. Dagron, Empéreur et
prêtre: étude sur le cesaropapisme byzantin (Paris: Gallimard,
1996), 106-38; and M. McCormick, Eternal
Victory. Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early
Medieval West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 35-79.
[11] PG 100, 1172A.
[12] Cf.: "Using the means of
condescension, the Lord showed himself to the Apostles after his Resurrection,
having the properties of his body but neither in coarseness nor in
circumscription: thus he was seen in the midst of them while the doors were
closed, and again he became invisible for them (Sugkataba/sewj
me/troij crw/menoj o( ku/rioj de/deicen e(auto\n meta\ th\n a)na/stasin toi=j
a)posto/loij e)/cwn ta\ me\n i)diw/mata tou= sw/matoj, a)ll' ou)k e)n pacu/thti
ou)de\ e)n perigrafh=|: kata\ tou=to ga\r kekleisme/nwn tw=n qurw=n ei)j to\
me/son au)tw=n w)/fqh: kai\ pa/lin a)/fantoj e)ge/neto a)p' au)tw=n)" (PG 99, 384D).
[13] " )/Ommasi
kekaqarme/noij teqe/antai oi( a)po/stoloi to\n Ku/rion, oi(=j h(ma=j prosble/pein
ou)k e)fikto/n"
(PG 99, 384D; cf. Mansi 13, 336E). On
the Origenist traits of the Iconoclastic epistemology, see my "Origen and
the Iconoclastic Controversy," forthcoming in the Origeniana Octava, ed. L. Perrone.
[14] On Ignatius, see the preface in:
ed. C. Mango, Correspondence of Ignatios
the Deacon, Dumbarton Oaks Texts 11 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks
Research Library and Collection, 1997), and Thomas Pratsch, "Ignatios the
Deacon – Churchman, Scholar and Teacher: A Life Reconsidered," Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 24
(2000): 82–101.
[15] In fact, this story, as a popular
superstition of the time, must have had some foundations: it is also recorded
in a short treatise On the Dragons and
Ghosts transmitted under the name of John of Damascus (CPG 8087, 1-2; PG
96, 1604A). See. also P. Speck, "Die Ursprünge der byzantinishen
Renaissance," in The Seventeenth
International Byzantine Congress. Major Papers. Dumbarton Oaks/Georgetown
University, Washington DC. August 2-8, 1986 (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D.
Caratzas Publisher, 1986), 557-58.
[16] Ed. S. Efthymiadis, The Life of the Patriarch Tarasios by
Ignatios the Deacon, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs 4
(Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1998), 73,17-74,24; trans. from p. 172, slightly
modified.
[17] Ed. E. Auvray, Theodori Studitis Praepositi Parva Catechesis (Paris: Apud Victorem
Lecoffre, 1891), 6, pp. 20,36–21,43).
[18] "…while the divinity of the
Son has assumed in his own hypostasis the nature of the flesh, the soul
mediated between the divinity and the coarseness of the flesh… (proslabou/shj ga\r th=j tou= ui(ou= qeo/thtoj e)n th|= i)di/a|
u(posta/sei th\n th=j sarko\j fu/sin h( yuch\ e)mesi/teuse qeo/thti kai\
sarko\j pacu/thti...)"
(Mansi 13, 257AB). The passage has a hidden quotation from Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 38, 13 (ed. C. Morischini, Grégoire de Nazianze. Discours 38-41,
Sources Chrétiennes 358 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1990), 134,27-30;
the identical passage is in Oratio
45, 38; PG 36, 633D-636A).
[19] "If anyone does not confess
that our Lord Jesus Christ with what he assumed, that is his flesh, animated by
reasonable and intellectual soul, sits together with God and Father, and will
come again to judge the living and the dead with his paternal glory, though
[being] neither flesh, but not without body, with the God-like body by the
reasons which he knows himself, so that he may be seen by those who stabbed
him, remaining God without coarseness (ou)ke/ti
me\n sa/rka, ou)k a)sw/maton de/, oi(=j au)to\j oi)=de lo/goij qeoeideste/rou
sw/matoj, i(/na kai\ o)fqh=| u(po\ tw=n e)kkenthsa/ntwn kai\ mei/nh| qeo\j
e)/xw pacu/thtoj),
anathema!" (Mansi 13, 336CD;
here the Iconoclasts use another hidden quotation from Gregory Nazianzen's Oratio 40; PG 36, 424C; see S. Gero, Byzantine Iconoclasm during the Reign of
Constantine V with Particular Attention to the Oriental Sources, CSCO, sub.
52 (Louvain, 1977), n. 126, p. 89).
[20] The space of this article does not
allow us to provide any substantial argumentation of this point, but one may
find the indications of dual character of the Sacraments in the following
passages of Theodore; see R. Devreesse, R. Tonneau, Les Homélies Catéchétiques de Théodore de
Mopsueste, Studi e Testi 145 (Vatican City, 1949), 467, 473, but cf. 475).
On the Sacramental theology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, see F. Reine, The Eucharistic Doctrine and Liturgy of the
Mystagogical Catecheses of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Washington: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1942). The view concerning the purely symbolical
value of the Sacraments in Theodore can be found in Wilhelm de Vries, "Der
Nestorianismus' Theodors von Mopsuestia in seiner Sakramentenlehre," Orientalia Christiana Periodica 7
(1941): 91-148, and Idem., "Das
eschatologische Heil bei Theodor von Mopsuestia," Orientalia Christiana Periodica 24 (1958): 309-38, and in his
remarks on Theodore in Idem., Sacramententheologie bei den Nestorianern (Rome:
Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1947). The arguments of de Vries and his
opponents, Ignatio Oñatibia (I. Oñatibia,
"La vida cristiana, tipo de las realidades celestes. Un concepto basico de
la teologia de Teodoro de Mopsuestia," Scriptorium Victoriense 1
(1954): 100-33), and Luise Abramowski (L. Abramowski, "Zur Theologie Theodors von Mopsuestia." Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte 72 (1961): 263-93), together with his own
remarks are presented in Frederick G. McLeod, "The Christological
Ramifications of Theodore of Mopsuestia's Understanding of Baptism and the
Eucharist," Journal of Early
Christian Studies 10.1 (2002), 41ff.
[21] Visual illustrations to this
doctrine can be found in the Vatican Ms. of Cosmas Indicopleustes' Topographia christiana (Bib. Apos., Cod.
gr. 699, fols 89r and 108r). The miniatures are reproduced in H. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing: Picturing God’s
Invisibility in Medieval Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2000), pl. III, and p. 57 (see fig. 8).
[22] "Sanctum sanctorum vice caeli
posuit, qestroma (kata/strwma) vice Paradisi, qui usque ad aethera altus est. Sed Paradisus, licet
altitudine cum caelo stat aequalis, tamen intra terrae fines est. Ita est
qestroma: quamquam altitudinem absidis attingit, cum templo tamen connectitur;
et porta clausa stat inter ipsum et absidem, quae est caelum. Participat cum
caelo per altitudinem suam, sed in essentia (ou)si/a) sua terrae inhaeret… Templum est
terra universa. Bema, quad est in medio templo, est vice Ierusalem, quae in
media terra est" (Anonymi auctoris
expositio officiorum ecclesiae Georgio Arbelensi vulgo adscripta, vol. 1,
CSCO 64, Scr. Syri 25 (Louvain, 1911) (text), (CSCO 71, Scr. Syri 28), 1913
(translation), the text here is CSCO 71, 91 quoted in Syriac and Latin in E.
Renhart, Das syrische Bema.
Liturgisch-archäologische Untersuchungen, Grazer theologische Studien
20 (Graz: Andreas Schnider Verlags-Atelier, 1995), 132-33. I reproduce only the
Latin translation).
[23] PG 91, 668D-669AB; for the English
translation, see G. Berthold, Maximus
Confessor. Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 188. Notably
in this passage Maximus the Confessor modifies the Antiochene notion of the
spiritual katastasis with only Christ
dwelling there by including the heavenly powers into the spiritual katastasis. The Temple of Solomon is
described as both the Tabernacle, and the model of the universe, in the
Pseudo-Chrysostomian Homily on the Conception of St. John the Baptist (CPG
4518, PG 50, 787D-789A). See also W. Wolska, La Topographie chrétienne de Cosmas Indicopleustès.
Théologie et science au VIe siècle (Bibliothèque
Byzantine. Études 3 (Paris: Presses Universitaires du France, 1962), n.
8, p. 116, n. 6, p. 117. This tradition survived till as late as the fifteenth
century, cf. late Byzantine exegesis on the structure of church by Simeon of
Thessaloniki (d. 1429): "The chancel screen signifies the distinction
between the sensible and the intelligible; it is, as it were, a firm barrier
between the material and intelligible things" (De Sacro Templo, 136, PG 155, 345C).
[24] Cf. the Cross in the apse mosaic of
S. Apollinare in Classe where the Cross is simultaneously the image for
Transfigured Christ, and the Parouciac Theophanic vision (R.-L. Fox, "Art
and the Beholder: The Apse Mosaic of S. Apollinare in Classe," Byzantinische Forschungen 21 (1995):
249), Ch. Milner,"The Role of the Prophet Elijah in the Transfiguration
Mosaics at Sinai and Classe," Byzantinische
Forschungen 24 (1997): 216. For iconographic programmes of the churches on
the oriental margins of the Byzantine Empire in the tenth-thirteenth centuries
which preserved many archaic elements in church decoration, the apse is
reserved for the theophanic vision, see T. Velmans, "La koine greque et
les régions périphériques orientales," Jahrbuch der Österreichische
Byzantinistik 31. 2 (1981): 680-84, 720-21, the Cross in the coupola and
vault: Ibid., 705-707.
[25] For example, see the sign of the
Cross inside the Sepulchre on the stone relief from the Dumbarton Oaks
Collection, which signifies the resurrected Christ (A. Kartsonis, Anastasis: The Making of an Image
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 25-26). See also the glass
chalice from the Dumbarton Oaks collection, 5th C ("Kreuz" in Lexicon der christlichen Ikonographie,
ed. von Engelbert Kirschbaum, vol. 2 (Rome, Friburg: Herder, 1970), pl. 3, p.
567-68). Both images are reproduced in this article.