WHAT IS AN ICON? CELEBRATING THE HISTORY OF ICONS IN THE CHURCH

Some of you have asked why St. Gregory’s uses icons as part of our visual language of worship and prayer. I’m so glad you asked! The traditional Christian icon is a stylized religious image that is usually created on a wood panel in egg tempera paint. In Christian history, icons have depicted Christ, the Trinity, St. Mary, other saints, and even events in the gospels and the lives of the saints. Icons have been used both in Eastern Orthodox churches and in the churches of the West. Early icons were painted directly on the walls of churches or placed on the walls, interior columns, or screens. They have also been displayed in private homes and at wayside shrines for pilgrims and travelers.

The oldest extant icons likely date from the fifth century CE. The Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787 determined that the use of icons is supported theologically by the doctrine of the Incarnation, in which the Word of God was united to create human nature and thus to create matter in general. This gives us a good idea of what an icon is supposed to be: a holy image that unites the power of the divine to the simple earthly materials of wood, pigment, and gold so that as we gaze at it prayerfully, God may be made manifest in us and we may be transformed. That same Council also taught that the honor and veneration given to an icon passes beyond the image to that which it represents. Icons are therefore a door to a spiritual world, to a world beyond this one, and the theology of icons asserts that as we contemplate and honor the icon, we can be drawn in and transported into the life of the divine.

The Eastern churches developed the icon tradition extensively. In the Christian West, the medieval tradition of icons was eventually eclipsed by the heightened creative experimentation of the Renaissance and other ensuing artistic movements. The icon tradition in the West continued to manifest in secondary ways through the growing use of images in stained-glass windows and in the illustrations in illuminated manuscripts and liturgical books. Today there is a revival of the use of icons in the Western churches, including in both the Episcopal Church USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

In both the icons of Eastern Orthodoxy and of the early Medieval West, very little room was made for personal artistic license. The image is not intended to be photorealistic and is often based on earlier Byzantine and Greek standards for visual representation. Almost everything within the image contains a symbolic aspect. Christ, the saints, and the angels all have either a halo or a nimbus (a gold disk) positioned behind their heads to indicate their holiness and closeness to God. Angels (and often John the Baptist) are portrayed with wings to represent their status as messengers. Figures have consistent and stylized facial appearances, hold attributes personal to them (such as a book or a scroll in the case of Gospel writers), and use only a few conventional poses. Archangels bear a thin staff or spear in one hand and sometimes a mirror or an orb in the other. During the time of the European Reformations, some English reformers urged churches to remove images from the worship space altogether lest they distract worshippers from the tasks of listening intently to Scripture and praying earnestly for salvation. Lutherans, on the other hand, generally favored sacred art, including the use of icons. The Reformation churches that came to be known as the Reformed tradition (such as the Calvinists) were generally iconoclastic. The earliest colonial churches in the United States, such as the early Church of England congregations in Virginia and Massachusetts that later became founding members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, often had no art in the worship space at all and very little in the way of ornamentation other than a small, modest silver standing cross on the altar.

Under the dual influence of both the Liturgical Movement and the Ecumenical Movement of the late 20th century, today’s Episcopal churches have gradually incorporated icons back into their worship spaces. You can see icons at St. Gregory’s in the chapel, which features the Twelve Apostles on either side of the fixed altar (written by Isabelle Paul), and in Harris Hall, in the Youth Room, in some of the children’s Sunday School classrooms, and in the church offices. Icons are featured most prominently above the high altar in the main church atop the reredos (the stone screen against which the clergy are seated), and we now have two new beautiful icons by Brookes Turner of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene there.

The creation of an icon is a contemplative and devotional act, and we therefore say that “icons are not painted, but rather ‘written’”, indicating that icons are a form of divinely inspired devotional text. Icons are believed to be authored by God, and the artist (or iconographer) simply “writes down” what God speaks into being (much like biblical authors writing down the words of Scripture). The image can therefore be “read” not only with the physical eyes, but with the eyes of the heart. A holy icon is often described as “a door to Heaven” and a window into the life of the divine.

Everything about an icon — its physical form, perspective, components, and symbolism — is designed to draw us out of ourselves and direct both our minds and our hearts toward God. Holy icons in this way serve as vehicles for prayer and worship, either in private contemplation or public liturgy. The word “icon” simply means “image” in Greek, but Christian icons are more than mere images. I invite you to allow yourself to be drawn into the icons at St. Gregory’s today, to walk through these doors to Heaven in order to meet the living God and to allow the bright image of God to be made fully manifest in you. The icons of St. Gregory’s can make a difference in our devotional and contemplative life together. May we all become living icons, glorifying God by shining forth the beauty of God’s image in us, now and always.

Faithfully, The Rev. Dr. Robyn M. Neville, Ph.D.

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