www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Icons & Iconography Art History project on Icons

I finished the paper, chose my Icons and put my powerpoint together and included an Mp3 of the Exapostolarian Pascha Orthos to the first slide. I did this so that I can point out that the Tone they are hearing is as old as the Icons and both Prayers and Icons are still part of the Liturgy today. But I hit a snag: I found the mp3 on an Othrodox website, I can't find the date for when it was composed and how long the Church, both Catholic and Orthodox have been using it. My husband says at least the 6th century, since that is when most of our Liturgies date from, but the textbook is saying that the earliest known Liturgies date from the 10 century. Since St. Basil lived long before then, I know the book is wrong. Can anyone tell me the earliest date for our Liturgies?

Next question really is about the Icons themselves. I point out in both my paper and my powerpoint that Icons are not works of Art in the Western sense - they are not meant to be merely 'looked at' and that is why they seem so different from the religious and sacred art of the west. I took the common theme of Icons being a Window into Heaven as my title and I am using five Icons of the Theotokos to represent each of the five types...am I wrong in how I am presenting this, or is there anything I should add? I should mention this is due Friday, but I hit the snag in the textbook tonight and may have to re-work something before Friday.

The Easter Matins was written by St. John of Damascus. Is this what you are talking about? Please cite the exact words.

I am really confused about what you are trying to say here. Western Sacred art is realistic art according to the whim of the artists. Also Western Religious art can be used for decoration.
Orthodox iconographers obey the canons and rules, traditions of iconography not according to their own ideas.
I don't liek the expressions of icons as "windows". I remember a priest saying you look through windows. With icons you experience the divine reality. You are not outside looking through something.
Are you trying to concentrate on the transfigured world that icons illustrate and symbolism?
Have you read Ouspensky "The Meaning of Icons"?
Start with that book. I think parts of it are on the web already and you can cite in web article in your bibliography.

I am by no means an expert, but I thought the roots of the Divine Liturgy go back to 321 AD.

2. Seeing the Word of God -- The Beauty of Icons and Nature
Nowhere is the invisible rendered more visible than in the beauty of iconography and the wonder of creation. In the words of the champion of sacred images, St. John of Damascus: "As maker of heaven and earth, God the Word was Himself the first to paint and portray icons." Every stroke of an iconographer's paintbrush -- like every word of a theological definition, every musical note chanted in psalmody, and every carved stone of a tiny chapel or magnificent cathedral -- articulates the divine Word in creation, which praises God in every living being and every living thing. (cf. Ps. 150.6)

In affirming sacred images, the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea was not concerned with religious art; it was the continuation and confirmation of earlier definitions about the fullness of the humanity of God's Word. Icons are a visible reminder of our heavenly vocation; they are invitations to rise beyond our trivial concerns and menial reductions of the world. They encourage us to seek the extraordinary in the very ordinary, to be filled with the same wonder that characterized the divine marvel in Genesis: "God saw everything that He made; and, indeed, it was very good." (Gn. 1.30-31) The Greek (Septuagint) word for "goodness" is kallos, which implies -- etymologically and symbolically -- a sense of "calling." Icons underline the Church's fundamental mission to recognize that all people and all things are created and called to be "good" and "beautiful."

Indeed, icons remind us of another way of seeing things, another way of experiencing realities, another way of resolving conflicts. We are asked to assume what the hymnology of Easter Sunday calls "another way of living." For we have behaved arrogantly and dismissively toward the natural creation. We have refused to behold God's Word in the oceans of our planet, in the trees of our continents, and in the animals of our earth. We have denied our very own nature, which calls us to stoop low enough to hear God's Word in creation if we wish to "become participants of divine nature." (2 Pet 1.4) How could we ignore the wider implications of the divine Word assuming flesh? Why do we fail to perceive created nature as the extended Body of Christ?

Eastern Christian theologians always emphasized the cosmic proportions of divine incarnation. The incarnate Word is intrinsic to creation, which came to be through divine utterance. St. Maximus the Confessor insists on the presence of God's Word in all things (cf. Col. 3.11); the divine Logos stands at the center of the world, mysteriously revealing its original principle and ultimate purpose (cf. 1 Pet 1.20). This mystery is described by St. Athanasius of Alexandria:


As the Logos [he writes], he is not contained by anything and yet contains everything; He is in everything and yet outside of everything ... the first-born of the whole world in its every aspect.


The entire world is a prologue to the Gospel of John. And when the Church fails to recognize the broader, cosmic dimensions of God's Word, narrowing its concerns to purely spiritual matters, then it neglects its mission to implore God for the transformation -- always and everywhere, "in all places of His dominion" -- of the whole polluted cosmos. It is no wonder that on Easter Sunday, as the Paschal celebration reaches its climax, Orthodox Christians sing:

Now everything is filled with divine light: heaven and earth, and all things beneath the earth. So let all creation rejoice.

All genuine "deep ecology" is, therefore, inextricably linked with deep theology:

"Even a stone," writes Basil the Great, "bears the mark of God's Word. This is true of an ant, a bee and a mosquito, the smallest of creatures. For He spread the wide heavens and laid the immense seas; and He created the tiny hollow shaft of the bee's sting."

Recalling our minuteness in God's wide and wonderful creation only underlines our central role in God's plan for the salvation of the whole world.

http://www.archons.org/news/detail.asp?id=269