www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Statues and Icons

I am wondering, why is it that the Byzantines have icons in their Churches and not statues and why is it that the Romans have statues in their Churches and not icons? Some Roman Catholic Churches also do have icons. But, for the most part, don't. Can anyone explain this?

God bless!!!

Ave Maria

Simplistically [ very simplistically]

Eastern Christians do not have 3 dimensional representations -- you could say that they do not worship idols.

To them [ oh and me too ] an Icon is a window to heaven.

Anhelyna

Roman Catholics don't use the statues as idols to worship. Many protestants are even led into this false belief. Roman Catholis honor the People that these statues represent. All Catholics, and Christians alike, worship God alone!!! Roman Catholics honor Our Lady, the Angels and the Saints and look upon the statues as if they were really the Images of the People they really represent.

The icons, which are pictures (unless there is something else that I don't know about them---and please tell me if there is), help us also to think of the Heavenly images---the real Personages from Heaven. If we don't have pictures and statues of these Heavenly images, then comes the saying: "Out of sight, out of mind."

Yes, these icons---these Heavenly pictures---are very beautiful!!!

God bless!!!

Ave Maria

Roman Catholicism, specially after the rennaissance has been very naturalistic, and tends to enphasize the physical reality of what they want to represent. Although there are many tridimensional images that are very venerated in Roman Catholicism, the main purpose of statues and images in Roman Catholicism is decoration.

On the other side the icons in the East are not tridimensional because there is no naturalism in the Eastern spirituality in the way it is found in the Western Church (devotions to the sacred heart, the immaculate heart, for example; realistic physical representations of the pasion, etc). Icons are flat because they are seen as a mystical door to the person they represent. (the Church Fathers also said that Jesus Christ was the icon of the Father).

Unlike the statues in Roman Catholicism, Icons are an integral part of byzantine spirituality. A Liturgical celebration without icons would be quite "incomplete", and a church without icons would not be an Orthodox church.

In Roman Catholicism, statues and religious images in general, are not seen as an integral part of Catholic spirituality, specially nowadays. The proof is that now many newly built Roman parishes are now plain building without any religious image.

I am going to defer to someone much wiser than I on this forum but I seem to remember reading somewhere (unfortunately I can't remember the source) that very early on in the Christian East statues were also used. Iconography was a later development.

I also don't see statuary as mere "decoration" in Roman Catholic parishes. Initially, of course, statues and stained glass were used to educate an illiterate populace about their faith. Statues, like icons, also serve to remind worshippers that the saints and angels are present and worshipping with them during the Mass.

My husband's family is of Polish origin and mine is German. Two of the most beautiful Roman Catholic parishes in our area are that of St. Stanislaus and St. Stephen, one Polish and one German. The skill and beauty of the woodworking in the statuary in both churches is absolutely awesome. For Catholics interested in seeing religious woodcarving at one of its greatest zeniths I would recommend books about Tilman Riemenschneider.

I love the beauty and spirituality of icons. But I have seen churches in Europe where the beauty of the statuary moved me to tears.

I think that there is going to be a swing back in the Roman Church. Many folks are tired of the plain airplane hangers built in the 60's and 70's and are demanding a return to tradition.

Khrystyna

Dear Friends,

I think we need to be fair in assessing the use of religious images in East and West.

Eastern Christians sometimes evince a definite negative attitude toward the West to try and show how their traditions are "above" those in the West - and that is certainly wrong, uncharitable and totally unnecessary.

As Khrystyna says, one of the earliest images of Christ in the East was a statue that was miraculous and highly venerated - one can find details about this in the "Rudder" re: Seventh Ecumenical Council and icons.

The West tended to emphasize icons later, as did the East, but statuary was also encouraged in the West, as it is to this day.

The fact that there are religious processions and miraculous statues and their shrines indicates that such are more than "decoration" in Western Churches.

People do venerate them and honour them religiously, as icons are.

Statues are actually forbidden in the East by canon.

The reason for this is that an icon means "image" or something that reflects the actual reality of what it is intended to "Re-Present."

To "Re-Present" Christ, it is necessary to not only depict His Human Nature, but also to depict His Divine Nature symbolically.

An icon is the only medium that can truly achieve that.

An icon depicts the Divinized Human Nature of Christ, the Mother of God and the Saints. When we look at them, we know that we are looking at an Image of the God-Man, of the Saints who by virtue of their participation in the Life of the God-Man, have been Divinized themselves by way of Theosis.

And a statue, as a medium, simply cannot achieve this, cannot achieve what an icon can achieve.

Therefore, statuary is canonically forbidden for liturgical use in our Churches as being an insufficient medium to reflect our faith about Christ and the Saints.

Again, this is our ages-old theological tradition which we keep.

Private veneration of miraculous statue-shrines etc. is not forbidden - something confirmed to me by John Meyendorff himself.

Alex

Dear Alex,

Thank you for your astute and valued insights. It seems to me also that because Eastern Icons do indeed represent a divinized reality that they also safeguard against one's devotion from becoming too sentimental. Statuary that is crafted with care and dignity is one thing, but some Roman Catholic art is just too, too precious and defies description. I have always agreed with the Eastern view that the greatest of all titles of Mary is Theotokos -- nothing came compare to it. Unfortunately, sometimes in the West the multiplication of titles of Mary has led to an excessive devotion that perhaps unintentionally but nevertheless in reality separated her from her Son. The piety that resulted from that was neither doctrinally nor devotionally healthy.

Khyrystna, who will probably have greatly decreased vision by the time she finishes working her beautiful Mother of Perpetual Help needlework.

Dear Khrystyna,

Take care of your eyes!

And thank you for your important insight about the Divinized reality of icons versus the sentimentality of some examples of Western art.

That is not to say that we didn't have the sentimentality during the Kyivan Baroque Period.

But I think an emphasis on the Divinized reality, as you put it, is important for this day and age.

Alex

Alex, how very, very true. I am absolutely dumbfounded that the church in the West (and here I mean both Catholic and Protestant) is AGAIN fighting the theological battles of a "low" or "high" Christology in some places. Too, the way that the Christian East has firmly clung to expressing theology through icons and liturgy has been a tremendous safeguard against the tension of horizontal versus vertical worship cropping up again in the West.

Khrystyna

Dear Khrystyna,

Very, very well put. (Are you sure you aren't a theologian?)

The Byzantine and Oriental Orthodox Churches have a High Christology - which is exactly how we like it.

And from this proceeds the Theosis of the Mother of God and all the Saints and the emphasis we give it.

The West seems to think that an emphasis on High Christology i.e. on the Divinity of Christ and Theosis is somehow contrary to human values.

Au contraire, we say!

It shows the great intrinsic worth of every person in Christ's plan of salvation and of our own worth.

St Augustine often said, "Know your own worth, O Christian!"

Alex

If I'm not mistaken, it seems to me that I have heard somewhere that statues used to be used (by all Catholics) and that the reason why icons came into existence is because the statues, themselves, became immages of worship which is the worship of false idols. It seems to me that there was a certain period in history where people were really worshipping false idols and then the religious statues became false idols of worship. Then that is when the making of the icons came into existence---to take people away from worshipping the religious statues as false idols and, instead, putting back into the minds and hearts the honor and devotion due to Jesus, Our Lady, the Angels and the Saints. Am I right or wrong about this?

God bless!!!

Ave Maria

Dear Ave Maria,

Actually, other than the great bronze statue of Christ at Constantinople, statues were not used in the East.

It could very well have been because of the fact that the pagans had statues of their gods, but it is really because of the fact that statues, as a religious art medium, simply cannot symbolize the divinized Humanity of our Lord or of that of Our Lady and the Saints.

Statues can only present our Lord, our Lady and the Saints as they were while they were on earth - in their humanity only.

That is why the East rejects them - for their insufficiency in communicating the truth about Christ and the saints.

It is actually forbidden by our canon law to have statues in churches for this reason.

In fact, the bronze statue of Christ I mentioned was outside, above tall city gates and was never inside any Church.

Alex

Dear Alex

A thought has just ocurred to me about this [ yeah I know thoughts can be dangerous ] Could this ban on 3 dimensional images really date from the Commandments -

1) I am the Lord your God - You shall not have any strange gods before me.You shall not make to yourself any graven thing; nor the likeness of qanything that is in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath......

Just a thought ..

Anhelyna

Dear Anhelyna,

Actually, that Commandment was interpreted by the Iconoclasts as an outright ban against all images, statues and icons.

St John Damascus in his "On the Divine Images," does show how despite that Commandment, God also directed Moses to develop images of Angels on the Ark of the Covenant and other symbolic images that were to be honoured.

The ban against statues really only came with the seventh Ecumenical Council that condemned iconoclasm and set down rules for icon veneration.

For example, it decreed that all Crosses used for religious purposes were to bear Christ's insignia "IC XC" to identify it as Christ's Cross!

The notion of the problem of idolatry here actually came into the very act of icon veneration itself.

One of the abuses by those who honoured icons was that priests were actually scratching off some of the paint off icons to mix into the Consecrated Chalice prior to Holy Communion, as if they were somehow "adding more holiness" to it!!

Others were bringing images of their dead relatives, that were quite legitimate to keep at home in their private chapels, and placing them on iconostases!

The Seventh Ecumenical Council had to meet the challenge of iconoclasm while, at the same time, clean up its own house in this respect . . .

Alex

Dear Ave Maria,

I think when we get to discussing "images" and "statues" and "idolatry" it may help to keep in mind that if we literally observed the Biblical ban against images I would have to remove dear old faithful Aunt Nellie's photo from the fireplace.

It was natural for the Roman Church to continue the three-dimensional artform used by pagan Rome in its temples and shrines after "re-creating" them in a Christian context although the use of icons has been long present in parts of Italy and Sicily that had a strong Byzantine influence early on. The tendency toward idolatry has been present in the human species for millenia but true idolatry really has nothing to do with images per se but the placing of someone or something above God first and foremost.

I see a whole heap of idolatry in much of our present culture ... an unbalanced love of success, wealth, fame, status, et al.