Alexander Schmemann

4. Byzantium (22 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 3

But, although it renounced art for the sake of something else, this painting of the catacombs actually proved to be a cause of the rise of

that new, medieval art, religious and Christian throughout, which gradually consolidated itself both in the east and in the west of the Empire. In order that it might arise, corporeal and mental forms and images had to become spiritual, a naturalistic art had to become transcendental.
So as to come to life and be reborn, art was obliged to renounce itself and plunge, as though into a baptismal font, into the pure element of faith. It accepted “penitence for its life” and was washed “in the waters of everlasting life” that it might become “a new creature.”[20]

The icon is also a fruit of this renewal of art and its appearance is inextricably connected with the unveiling in the Church’s consciousness of the meaning of the Incarnation: the fullness of the Godhead that dwells corporeally in Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the Man Christ reveals Him in full. An image of the Man Jesus is therefore an image of God, for Christ is the God-Man. If the material universe and its matter can be sanctified by grace of the Holy Spirit, and in feeding our bodies also feed the “whole man” in God’s conception of him as an incarnate spirit; if the water of baptism grants us forgiveness of sins; if the bread and wine of the Eucharist make present to us the Body and Blood of Christ, then a portrayal of Christ, the product of human art, may also be filled with the grace of His presence and power — may become not only an image but also a spiritual reality. In the icon there is at once a further revelation of the profundity of the dogma of Chalcedon and the gift of a new dimension in human art, because Christ has given a new dimension to man himself.

 

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Schmemann, A History of the Orthodox Church: Table of Contents

Cf.  Books for getting closer to Orthodox Christianity ||| Orthodox Images of the Christ ||| Byzantium : The Alternative History of Europe ||| Greek Orthodoxy - From Apostolic Times to the Present Day ||| A History of the Byzantine Empire ||| Videos about Byzantium and Orthodoxy ||| Aspects of Byzantium in Modern Popular Music ||| 3 Posts on the Fall of Byzantium  ||| Greek Literature / The New Testament

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