www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Icons & Iconography Unusual Deesis icon in a Syro-Malabar Church

This rather unusual deesis icon is found in St Joseph's Church, Kizhathadiyoor, Palai. I chanced upon the pic while browsing a Syro-Malabar website.

http://thenazrani.org/images/gallery/small/kizhathadiyoor1.jpg

I'm not surprised at all. The Syro-Malabar Church is Catholic, and the Catholic Church teaches that next to the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is St. Joseph who is the greatest of the saints.

St. Joseph occupies in modern Catholic piety the place that St. John the Baptist occupied in traditional Byzantine piety.

At least, the art is quite Byzantine, and is far away from the saccharine 19th century Western religious art that remains all too popular among both Oriental Orthodox and Oriental Catholics.

They are also very heavily Latinised. India might be an independent Republic but the this Keralan based Church is still in colonial mode and bitterly divided on this subject as well.

What would be expected?

I don't think those statements hold water. St. Joseph might have that place in popular piety in some circles, probably due to the fact that Blessed John XXIII inserted his name after the Virgin in the Canon and Litany of Saints. Occupied? St. John the Baptist still occupies the place of greatest saint after the Theotokos in the Byzantine tradition. He still has second place after the Theotokos in our Litrugy. He is on evey proper iconostasis, is commemorated every Tue, we celebrate his Conception, Birth, Beheading, Synaxis, and the Finding of his head(twice) Two of those are Vigil Rank. I would say in Byzantine popular piety St. Nicholas outshines all others.

Fr. Deacon Lance

No doubt, our Lord was too modest to highlight his own adoptive father. Nevertheless, as Christians we are not called to fight among ourselves about places of honour.

I would agree that St. Joseph's place in Western piety is relatively recent, although not as recent as you suggest. However, many Western saints (especially St. Teresa of Avila) and spiritual writers from the 16th century onwards do speak of St. Joseph as being next in dignity to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is precisely the reason why Pope Pius IX instituted the Solemnity of St. Joseph with Octave (Wednesday after Good Shepherd Sunday), which in 1956 was replaced with the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1. Pope Pius IX also declared him Patron of the Universal Church.

It was, however, Pope Leo XIII who explicitly declared that St. Joseph is the greatest among the saints next to the Blessed Virgin Mary:


This teaching was repeated in our own day in John Paul II's " Redemptoris Custos [vatican.va] "

Keeping in mind what Popes Pius XII and John Paul II have said about the authority of Encyclicals, the teaching of Quamquam Pluries may be considered as "non-infallible but authoritative" for all Catholics.

Since the 19th century, devotion to St. Joseph has grown greatly in Latin circles, and many popular Catechisms do have variations of the statement: "Q: After the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the greatest saint? A: The greatest saint after the Blessed Virgin Mary is St. Joseph her most chaste spouse" It was certainly on the catechism I used as a child.

As St. Joseph has shone brighter, so St. John the Baptist and SS. Peter and Paul have sunk into the background in Western Catholic piety. And, honestly I find this to be troubling. It would have been good had devotion to St. Joseph simply been developed and intensified, but the way that he has been made to replace the Holy Forerunner and the Blessed Apostles in the Western Church since the 19th century, not just in the liturgy and in devotions but even in theology, certainly strikes me as an innovation that seems to question the integrity of non-Latin tradition. It is interesting to note that St. Joseph is invisible in the Ordo Missae of the "Tridentine Mass" from 1570-1962, but St. John the Baptist is repeatedly mentioned there, after the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Michael the Archangel.

This is but one of the many things in which I find the Byzantine and Latin traditions to be very hard to reconcile, especially since Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII and John Paul II put the weight of their authority behind the recent Latin position on the matter.




I didn't mean to deny any of that.

It is important not to impose a Byzantinization upon the non-Byz Eastern Churches. While it is true that St. John the Baptist holds a pre-eminent place in my Tradition (Syro-Malankara - he is mentioned in the beginning and in the middle of Morning Prayer, as well as the first words spoken by the priest beginning the Holy Qurbono) next to the Blessed Virgin; this is not so in the Chaldean Rites - Syro-Malabar included. If we look up the Hallowing of the Apostles (Holy Qurbana of Mar Addai and Mari), you will not see St. John the Baptist mentioned often. But keep in mind also that this particular parish is named after St. Joseph, it is not improper that a central image of St. Joseph would be placed there.

In addition, check out this zoomed out image of that same parish.. I bet most of us would feel blessed to to be this de-latinized, at least visually:
http://thenazrani.org/images/gallery/small/kizhathadiyoor.jpg

I've been reading the main website (http://thenazrani.org). Interesting. It advocates complete delatinization, severely attacks Latin practices and theology, and even advocates an eventual "return to Orthodoxy".

For example

http://thenazrani.org/issue.htm


I do not know if this refers to reunion with the Malankar Orthodox churches, or simply a complete return to the theological and liturgical practice prior to the coming of the Portuguese. However, some issues of the "Nazrani" are critical of the theology and liturgy of the Western Church, and compare it unfavorably to that of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox.

Michael is absolutely correct!


That (and several other of the temples shown in the gallery on the site) are exquisite and the lack of latinization evident in those gives significant hope, to my mind, for the overall delatinization of the churches of our Malabarese brethren.

Many years,

Neil

The Malankara Orthodox churches celebrate the West Syriac Liturgy (as do the Syro-Malankara Catholics), while Syro-Malabar celebrates the Eastern Syriac, aka Chaldean. A return to Orthodoxy for the Syro-Malabar Church would be a restoration of it's pre-Diamper practice, since there is no Orthodox counterpart to the Syro-Malabar Church, partly this means building academic and faith relationships with the Chaldean-Syrian Church of Trissur (Church of the East, based in India).

Many of the churches pictured are from the Archdiocese of Changanacherry, the largest Syro-Malabar diocese, which is at the heart of the de-Latinization and "Chaldeanization" trend in the Syro-Malabar Church. Over and against the influence of Changanacherry is the "Indianizing" and neo-Latinizing influence of the smaller but more influential Ernakulam Archdiocese (whose head is the Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church).

I sometimes wonder if it might not be better to split the Malabar Catholics into two jurisdictions: the "Chaldeanizers" to be put under the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch, and the rest evolving a hybrid Latin-Syrian identity.

Not to be snarky, but am I alone in finding it ironic that the shift from "saccharine 19th century Western religious art" that remains "all too popular" to a Byzantinized hybrid (equally foreign, and darned near just as far "West" of India!) in and of itself betrays a sort of "Latin thinking" about categories?

Not to be snarky, but I think it somewhat curious when I read:


It seems rather like praising today's modern Tanzanian (East African nation) for eschewing his western-style suits and ties for kente (fabric style/pattern of Ghana - WEST Africa) print dashikis manufactured in Pakistan. What would make such a move praiseworthy as more "authentic"? Because "At least it isn't Western"?

Is this neo-Byzantine sylization more "authentic" still to these groups? Could it in fact instead be (irony of ironies!) a bit of a neo-Latinization?!?!

What do I mean by that? Well I have noted with some irony at other times that iconography and Byzantine-inspired forms have enjoyed a terrific amount of interest in (Western) Catholic circles... A noted NY (RC) church that is rather traditionalist opted to commision extensive Byzantine iconography... So too has a rather dissident group that has commissioned Byzantine style iconography to depict images according to its imagining of certain realities.

"Byzantinization as neo-Latinization?"

That is a paper waiting to be written - any takers?

But ultimately the ironies that I can hardly articulate is the irony that a Melkite Catholic (whose own church experienced a great deal of Byzantinization!), a Ruthenian Catholic (who grew up in not one but two isolated parishes naively thinking all Ruthenian parishes were as vostochnik as his own!) and a Roman Catholic (who, in the Phillipines is further "East" on the map than any of these places) are discussing the merits or demerits of the aesthetics of a community that is not their own!

Ultimately I am hoping that the aesthetic transformations made by these folks will be part of something greater that will lead to holiness and salvation. These days, I am less and less interested (than I used to be) in "pristine forms" and merely hope that whatever saints they beg prayers of, before whatever style of images, in whatever language and whichever posture, they do so first and foremost in humble supplication for salvation in a world growing ever more hostile... And somewhere along the way, however much on the periphery, offer some prayers for this simple sinner.

Not completely sure where this is coming from, but ... for openers, I have never noted that it was somehow wrong for those of Eastern or Oriental Churches to be interested in and/or comment on or discuss their Sister Churches. In fact, I consider it a healthy interest that benefits both.

As to the Byzantinazation of my own Church, that occurred so far in the distant past that it is no longer likely to be changed and merits, chiefly, footnote mention.

Finally, when I look at the full gallery [thenazrani.org] on the site, do I see some byzantinazation - absolutely. But, what I find encouraging and the point at which my comments were directed was all that I saw which was truer to the Church's heritage. I see curtains, peacocks, bemas, crosses of their own tradition, a number of iconographic representations that are clearly Syriac, and, in general, architecture and accoutrements that are consistent with their ritual heritage. So, to my brethren of the Syro-Malabar who are working toward this end, I say 'bravo'.

Many years,

Neil

Now what I'm wondering about is... what does traditional Indian Syriac Christian iconography look like?