The Orthodox Church never allowed the writing of icons according to the imagination of the artist or from a living model, as this would mean a conscious and complete separation from the prototype. The name written in the icon would no longer correspond to the person portrayed, and this would be a clear lie that the Church cannot allow (although deviations from this rule or, rather, abuses, unfortunately, have been quite numerous over the past centuries). To avoid any fiction and a gap between the image and its prototype, the icon painters use in the sight of samples either ancient icons or originals. The ancient icon painters knew the faces of the saints as well as the faces of their relatives. They wrote them either from memory, or using sketches or portraits. When a person was known for the sanctity of his life, his portraits were made immediately after his death, long before his official canonization or opening of his relics, and were distributed among the people. N. P. Kondakov, speaking of the portrait basis of the icon, gives a typical example of the use of the portrait as a guide for the icon. When the relics of St. Nikita Novgorodsky, which turned out to be incorrupt, were opened,, in 1558, a posthumous portrait from his face was made and sent it to the Church authorities with the following letter: "We, Sir, for the sake of the saint's mercy sent thee on paper the image of St. Nikita, the bishop. [...] And from that sample, Sir, order to write an icon to be the image of a saint." In addition to the image, refinements are given regarding the characteristic features of the appearance of St. Nikita and his vestments.
   All sorts of information were preserved about the image of the saint, and especially the sketches and testimonies of contemporaries. When the living legend began to be forgotten, or rather, when they began to depart from it around the end of the 16th century, the documentation used by the icon painters was systematized, and face and explanatory originals appeared. The first convey a schematic iconography of saints and feasts and indicate the main colours. The second ones contain brief descriptions of the characteristic features of the saints and the same indications of colours. These scripts are a necessary technical tool for icon painters, but no more, and they should never be given the same meaning as the icon-painting canon or sacred Tradition, as some Western scholars do.
   However, as we know, the transmission of one historical reality, no matter how reliable it may be, is not yet an icon. Since this person is a bearer of Divine grace, the icon should indicate to us his holiness. Otherwise, it would not make sense. The vision of the Church differs from the eye of the world in that it sees the invisible in the visible, the eternal in the temporary, which is revealed to us in Divine service, of which the icon is a part. Like the Divine service itself, it is the Revelation of eternity in time. Therefore, in churchly art, a portrait of a person can only be a historical document, serve as a guide, but cannot replace the liturgical image — the icon.
   But on what do we base our assertion that the icon is an expression of a specific spiritual experience of holiness, that here too is the truthfulness as in the transmission of historical reality? According to the words of the Apostle Paul we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12, 1), telling us their experience of this sanctification. "What is contained in these words," says Venerable Simeon the New Theologian, "should not be called thoughts (noemata), but the contemplation of the true being: for we are talking about it by contemplation [...]. Why and what is being said should be called more a narrative of the contemplated, and not of the thought off." Indeed, only truly experienced, personal experience can make one possible to find those words, those forms, colours and lines that truly correspond to what they express. "Similarly," the Monk Simeon continues, "as when someone wants, for example, to tell about a house or a spectacle, he must see in advance and have a good look at all this and then speak about it with knowledge. Who can say anything from himself about any subject that he has not seen before? [...] If, such a way, no one can say something true about what he has seen visible and earthly without seeing it with his own eyes, then how can one say and notify something about God, about the Divine things and the saints of God, that is, to what kind of fellowship with God are saints approved, and what is this knowledge of God that happens inside them and which produces inexplicable effects in their hearts — how can this be said about this to someone who is not enlightened in advance with the light of knowledge?"
   The transfiguration of Christ happened just before three witnesses, the three Apostles “able to contain” this Revelation, and they saw this “dawn of the Divine light” only in the measure they could (that is, to the extent of their inner communion with this revelation). We know similar things and from the lives of the saints. When Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, showing Motovilov the purpose of the Christian life, was transfigured before him, he explained to him that he could see this transfiguration only because he himself was partly involved in it: he could not see the blissful light if he himself was not enlightened by it. This also explains why Tradition claims that the holy evangelist Luke painted the icon of the Mother of God after the Pentecost. Without this "light of knowledge", which Venerable Simeon speaks of, without direct participation in the sanctification and concrete evidence of it, no science, no perfection of techique, no artistic talent can be sufficient. Even the Apostles themselves, who directly communicated with Christ and believed in Him, before the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them, did not have a direct experience of sanctification by the Holy Spirit and therefore could not convey Him either in word or in image. Therefore, both the Holy Scriptures and the sacred image could appear only after Pentecost. In creating the icon, nothing can replace the personal experience of acquiring grace. Without this personal experience, icons can be written only by conveying the experience of those who had it. That is why the Church, in the voice of its councils and its bishops, commands to paint icons as the ancient icon painters painted: "Depict with paints according to Tradition," says St. Simeon of Thessalonica. "This is true painting, like the Scriptures in books, and the grace of God rests on it because the image is holy." "Depict according to Tradition", because through Tradition we share in the knowledge of the holy icon painters, the living experience of the Church.
   Just like the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, St. Simeon of Thessalonica points to the complicity of the image in the holiness and glory of the prototype: “the grace of God rests” on the image because “the saints were filled with the Holy Spirit even during their life; also after their death the grace of the Holy Spirit abides in souls and in bodies, lying in tombs, and in their features, and in their holy images," says St. John of Damascus. The grace of the Holy Spirit, which remains in the image, is the power that "sanctifies the eyes of believers," according to the Synodic of the Triumph of Orthodoxy (paragraph 4), "heals spiritual and bodily diseases." We honour Thy holy image, with which Thou savedst us from the work of the enemy, or: By Thine image Thou healest our disease, as it is sung in irmos of the 7th song of the holiday's canon.
   By what means is the spiritual reality that the Reverend Fathers verbally describe to us practically transmitted in the icon? It is obvious that Divine grace is not transmitted by any human means. In life, if we meet a saint, we do not see his holiness. “The world does not see saints, just as the blind do not see the light,” says Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow. Naturally, without seeing holiness, we cannot depict it either by word, or by image, or by any other human means. In the icon, it can only be indicated symbolically, with the help of appropriate forms, colours and lines, the artistic language established by the Church, combined with strict historical realism. Iconography is therefore not limited to the plot, to what is portrayed, for the same plot of a religious nature can be depicted in various ways. The iconic nature consists mainly in how this plot is depicted, that is, in those means that indicate the holiness of the depicted.
   When the Holy Scripture or liturgical text, leading us to spiritual understanding, resort to comparisons with the visible world, we should always remember that these are only images, not exact descriptions. On the other hand, the icon should correspond to sacred texts that are perfectly clear. The point here is not a poetic image or allegory, but a perfectly defined reality. It is necessary to convey this reality. But how may it be conveyed in the image this irradiation with light, shining more than the sun's one, that is, surpassing all kinds of visual means? With paints? But the paints are not able to reproduce even natural sunlight. How can they reproduce light superior to the light of the sun?
   Both in the patristic writings and in the lives of the saints, we often find testimonies of the light shining on the faces of saints at the time of their highest glorification, just as the face of Moses shone when he came down from the Sinai mountain, so that he had to cover it, because the people could not stand this radiance (see Ex. 34, 30; 2 Cor. 3, 7–8). The icon conveys this phenomenon of light with a nimbus or halo, which is a completely accurate visual indication of a certain phenomenon of the spiritual world. The light with which the faces of the saints shine and which surrounds their head, as the main part of their body, naturally has a spherical shape. "Imagine," Motovilov says of the transformation in his eyes of the Monk Seraphim, "in the middle of the sun, in the most brilliant brightness of its midday rays, the face of the person who is talking to you." Since this light, obviously, cannot be directly portrayed, the only way to pictorially convey it is to image a circle, as if in a cut of this spherical light. The point is not to raise a crown over the head of the saint, as sometimes in the Roman Catholic images, where this light is a kind of light crown, that is, applied from the outside, but to indicate the radiance of his face. Nimbus is not an allegory, but a symbolic expression of a certain reality. It is a necessary attribute of the icon, necessary, but insufficient, because it was used to express not only Christian holiness. The pagans also portrayed with a halo their gods and emperors, obviously to emphasize, in their belief, the divine origin of the latter. What order was this light transmitted by them, of course, we cannot say. On the one hand, the Church recognizes partial revelations even outside of it, and therefore it can be assumed that the secret of uncreated light could to some extent be revealed to the Gentiles; in any case, they had an idea that the Divine should be connected with the light. On the other hand, from the writings of the holy ascetics, we know that the appearance of light can also be seduction, that is, have a demonic origin: satan himself takes on the image of an angel of light. So, at the icon nimbus is not the only thing that differs it from other images; it is only an iconographic attribute, an outward expression of holiness, a testimony of light. When we see a quadrangular halo in some ancient images, this means a completely different thing: it is a sign that a person was depicted during his lifetime. And even if the nimbus is erased and becomes completely invisible on the icon, it still remains an icon and differs from any other image: with all its forms, lines and colours, it indicates to us, of course, we repeat, allegorically, symbolically, that internal state of the person, whose face shines more than the sun with a graceful light. This state of higher spiritual uplift and glorification is so indescribable that the Holy Fathers in their writings only point to it as a complete speechlessness. However, the effect of this graceful sanctification on human nature and, in particular, on the body, to some extent, still lends itself to a figurative description and depiction. Venerable Simeon the New Theologian, for example, resorts to comparison with a red-hot iron. Other ascetics left us with more specific descriptions. "When prayer is overshadowed by Divine grace," says Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov (19th century), "[...] the whole soul will be carried away to God by an unknown force, dragging the body along with it [...]. A person born to a new life has not only a soul, not only a heart, but also a flesh filled with spiritual comfort and bliss — joy about the living God." Or, as it is stated in the Useful Tale of Abba Philemon in the Philokalia: "By unceasing prayer and preaching in the Divine scriptures, the clever eyes of the heart are opened and see the King of forces, and there is great joy and the divine desire is irrepressible in the soul, and the flesh is co-rapt to the same place with action of the Spirit, and the whole man is made spiritual."
   In other words, when a person achieves this, then the routinely scattered state, “thoughts and experiences arising from the fallen nature,” are changed with an unceasing prayer state, and he is blessed with graceful illumination by the Holy Spirit; the whole being of man merges together in a general striving towards God. The spiritual ascent of the whole human essence takes place, and then, as St. Dionysius the Areopagite says: "everything that was in him a mess is ordered, which was shapeless takes shape, and his life is [...] enlightened in full light." In man there is established the peace of God, which passeth all understanding (Phil. 4, 7), that peace which is marked by the presence of the Lord Himself. "Under Moses and Elijah, when God appeared to them, both the trumpets and the forces served in great numbers before the greatness of the Lord, but the coming of the Lord was distinguished and revealed [...] by peace, silence and quietude. For it is said: a still small voice (1 Kings 19, 12). But it is shown that the quietude of the Lord consists in peace and beautification." Remaining a creature, a man becomes a god by grace. As well as the soul, his body becomes a partaker of the Divine life. This involvement does not physically change him: "The visible does not change," says St. Gregory of Nyssa, "the old man does not become a youth, and wrinkles are not smoothed out. But the inner is renewed, stained by sin and aged in evil skills, returning to the innocence of an infant." In other words, the body retains its biological structure, its properties and characteristic features of the appearance of each person. Nothing is abolished, but everything is sanctified, and the body is completely imbued with grace, enlightened by its union with God. “The Holy Spirit, combining with the mind [...],” says St. Anthony the Great, “teaches it to keep the entire body from head to toe in order: eyes to look with cleanness; ears to listen in peace and not enjoy slander, gossip and reproach; tongue, so that only good things can be said [...]; hands, so that they can only be set in motion before only in exaltation in prayers and in deeds of mercy and generosity; belly so that it is kept within proper limits in the use of food and drink [...]; legs, so that they walk right and go according to the will Of God [...]. In this way, the whole body makes good of it and changes, obeying the authority of the Holy Spirit, so that, finally, it becomes somewhat involved in the properties of the spiritual body that it has to receive on the resurrection of the righteous."
   These quotes are essentially a verbally expressed icon, down to the details, the understanding of which is taught by the teaching of St. Anthony the Great. Therefore, they are of capital importance for our topic. That action of the grace of the Holy Spirit on the human body, and in particular on the sense organs, which the Monk Anthony conveys in words, is shown to us on the icon. The analogy between the verbal description and image is so obvious here that it leads to a certain conclusion: the ontological unity of the ascetic experience of Orthodoxy and the Orthodox icon is revealed here. Namely this experience and its result are shown to us in the icon and transmitted through it. With the help of colours, shapes and lines, with the help of symbolic realism, a unique artistic language, the spiritual world of a person who has become the temple of God is revealed to us. The inner peace and beautification, which the ascetics testify to, is transmitted in the icon by the peace and beautification of the outside: the whole body of the saint, all the details, even wrinkles and hair, clothes and everything that surrounds him, everything is united, brought to a higher order. This is a visible expression of victory over the internal chaotic separation of man, and through it victory over the chaotic separation of mankind and the world.
   These details of an unusual appearance, in particular, the sensory organs that we see in the icon, these eyes without sparkle, these ears sometimes of a strange shape, everything is depicted in a not quite naturalistic manner, and this is not because the icon painter was not able to draw them the way we see them in nature, but because such as they are in nature, they do not correspond to anything here: the meaning of their icon image is not to show us what we see in nature, but to visually depict a body that perceives something that defies our ordinary perception: in addition to physical reproduction of the world, the perception of the spiritual world. A typical illustration of this can be the insistent questions of St. Seraphim of Sarov about how Motovilov felt at the time of the transfiguration of the reverend before him: "What do you see?.. what do you feel?.." And the light that Motovilov saw, the fragrance that he smelled, the warmth that he sensed were not of a physical order. His feelings at that moment perceived the action of grace in the surrounding physical world. The icon conveys with its conditional, non-naturalistic language that impassivity, that deafness and immunity to worldly excitations, detachment from these excitations, and, conversely, receptivity to the spiritual world, which is achieved by the feat of holiness. The Orthodox icon is a figurative expression of the Cherubic Song of Great Saturday: "Let all human flesh be silent [...] and think of nothing earthly in itself." Everything here is subject to general harmony, which expresses, we repeat, peace and order, inner harmony. For in the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit there is no disorder. God "is the God of peace and order," says Rev. Simeon the New Theologian, paraphrasing the Apostle Paul.
   So, the icon shows us the glorified state of the saint, his transformed, eternal countenance. But it is done for us, it is obvious that it turns to us with its conditional language, just as the descriptions of holy ascetics quoted above relate not only to the ascetic practice of monks, but also to all believers, since acquiring the grace of the Holy Spirit is a task for every member of the Church. As a figurative expression of the ascetic experience of Orthodoxy, the icon has a capital significance, which is the main and basic goal of churchly art. Its creative role lies not only in teaching the truths of the Christian faith, but in shaping the whole person.
   The contents of the icon are therefore disclosed as genuine spiritual guidance on the path of Christian life, and, in particular, in prayer: it tells us how we should keep ourselves in prayer, on the one hand — in relation to God, and on the other hand — in relation to the surrounding world. Prayer is a conversation with God; therefore, impassivity, deafness and immunity to worldly excitations are necessary for it. "So, brethren," says St. Gregory the Theologian, "let us not perform the holy in an unclean manner, the high in a low one, the honourable in a dishonourable way, and, saying briefly, the spiritual in earthly [...]. Everything is spiritual with us: action, movement, desire, words, even gait and attire, even beckoning, because the mind (nous) extends to everything and in everything constitutes a person according to God; so and [our] merriment is spiritual and solemn." This is what the icon shows us. We need a reasonable control of our feelings, through which enticements enter the soul of a person: "The purity of his (man's) heart is indignant because of the restless movement of images that enter and exit through the senses — sight, hearing, touch, taste and olfaction, and through the word," says St. Anthony the Great. The Fathers regard the five senses as a kind of door of the soul: "All the doors of your soul, that is, the feelings, carefully shut and keep," says Abba Isaiah, "so that through them the soul would not go wandering or the vile deeds and words would not fit into the soul." Praying before the icon or just looking at it, we have before our eyes a constant reminder that "whoever believes that his body will be resurrected on the day of judgement must keep it immaculate and clean from all filth and vice." And this is to ensure that, at least in prayer, we shut the doors of our souls and strive to ensure that our body, with the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit, learn to keep ourselves in order, like the body of the saint depicted on the icon, so that the eyes “look with cleanness” , the ears "hear in peace," etc., and "the heart think not evil." Thus, through the image, the Church seeks to help us recreate our sin-distorted nature.
   In the field of feat, the field of prayer, the Fathers characterize spiritual experience as the strait gate, and the narrow way, which leadeth unto life (compare Matt. 7, 14). A man, as it were, stands at the beginning of a path that does not concentrate somewhere in the depths of the image, but opens before him in all the immensity of its fullness. Before him opens as if the door of the Divine life. Thus, speaking of spiritual life, the Rev. Macarius the Great and many other authors resorted to the image of the doors: "The doors are opened before him, and he enters into inner space of many abodes; and as he enters, the doors are opened again before him [...], and he is enriched; and to what extent he is enriched, new miracles are shown to him." Endless perspectives and possibilities open up before a person entering the strait gate, and his path not only does not narrow, but expands more and more. But this path comes from only one point, from the depths of our hearts, from the point from which our whole perspective should become reverse. This is, in the true and literal sense, a conversion (metanoia) of mind.
   So, an icon is both a path and a means; it is prayer itself. It clearly and directly reveals to us that impassivity (freedom from passions) the Fathers speak of, teaches us to fast with our eyes, in the words of Abba Dorotheus. Indeed, it is impossible to fast with one's eyes before any other image, be it objectless (abstract) or ordinary, objective. Only an icon can indicate what this fast is concluded in and how it may be achieved.
   From the foregoing, it is clear that the purpose of the icon is not to arouse or strengthen one or another natural human feeling in us. The icon is not touching, not sensitive. Its purpose is to direct all our feelings, as well as the mind and all our human nature to its true goal — on the path of transfiguration, cleansing us of all exaltation, which can only be unhealthy. Just like the deification of a person that it conveys, the icon does not abolish anything truly human: neither a psychological element, nor various features of a person. Every icon of the saint shows what his earthly activity consisted of, which he turned into a spiritual feat, be it churchly activity, such as of a bishop, monk, or worldly activity like of a prince, warrior, physician. But, as in the Gospel, all human thoughts, knowledge, feelings and deeds are shown here in their contact with the Divine world, and everything is cleansed of this contact; that which cannot be purified burns out. Every manifestation of human nature, every phenomenon of our life is enlightened and conceptualized.
   Just as we portray the God-man Jesus Christ in everything similar to us, except for sin, we also portray the saint as a person freed from sin. According to Venerable Maximus the Confessor, “like the flesh of Christ, and ours is freed from sinful corruption. For as Christ according to His substance was sinless by both soul and flesh as a Man, so and we who believe in Him and clothed in Him by spirit, we can be in Him by dispensation without sin." The Orthodox icon also shows us precisely the body of a holy man, freed from sinful corruption, a body that "has become somewhat involved in those properties of the spiritual body that it has to receive on the resurrection of the righteous," the body of our humility, which has become fashioned like unto His glorious body (Phil. 3, 21).
   Orthodox churchly art is, therefore, an expression of the dogma of the transfiguration, and this transfiguration is understood and transmitted as a certain objective reality in accordance with the Orthodox doctrine: neither an abstracted concept about it is shown, nor its more or less distorted individual understanding, but the churchly truth.
   The paints in the icon convey the colour of the human body, but not the natural tone of the flesh, which, as we saw, simply does not correspond to the meaning of the icon. The question is also much deeper than the question of transmitting the beauty of the human body. Beauty here is inner, spiritual beauty, in accordance with the words of the Apostle Peter: the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price (1 Pet. 3, 4). This is the beauty of bringing the lower to the higher. This beauty — holiness, the likeness of God acquired by man — is shown by the icon. In its own language, it reproduces the action of grace, which, in the expression of St. Gregory Palamas, "begins to picture in us using things that are in the image, to show things that are in the likeness, so that [...] we form an image of ourselves into the likeness."
   Therefore, the very meaning of the icon is not to be a beautiful object, but to portray beauty — the likeness to God.
   It is clear that the light of the icon that illuminates us is not the natural lightness of the faces achieved with the help of paints, but Divine grace. This light of spiritualized, sinless flesh must, of course, be understood not only as a spiritual phenomenon or only as a physical phenomenon, but as a perfect combination of one and the other, as a revelation of future spiritual physicality. Therefore, in the Orthodox Church the question of depicting nudity did not arise, as it rose (and still stands) in the Roman Church. The Council of Trent (at its 25th session) issued a decree: "The Holy Council wants [painters] to avoid all impurities and not give images of tempting appeal." It turned out that "impurity" is the human body. Therefore, it began with the fact that it was forbidden to depict nudity in religious art. The real hunt for such images had begun. By order of Pope Paul IV in the image of the Last Judgement of Michelangelo, all the characters were covered with clothes. Pope Clement VIII, abandoning half measures, decided to destroy the entire fresco of the Sistine Chapel and did not do this only thanks to a petition filed by the Academy of St. Luke. Carl Borromeo, personifying the spirit of the Council of Trent, destroyed images of nudity wherever they met: paintings and statues that were considered not bashful enough were destroyed. The painters themselves burnt their own works. In the Orthodox Church, by the nature of its art, such a situation would be completely impossible.
   Clothing in the icon retains its properties and at all logically flows around the forms of the human body; however, it is portrayed in such a way that it does not hide from spectator's eyes the glorified state of the saint, but on the contrary, emphasizes it; revealing the work of man, it becomes, as it were, the image of his garment of glory, the image of the robe of incorruption. And here, ascetic experience finds its external expression in the rigour of even often geometric shapes, light and lines of creases. They cease to be random and erratic, change their character, become strictly rhythmic, subject to the general harmony of the image. The sanctification of the human body is communicated its clothing either. We know that touching the clothes of the Saviour, the Mother of God, the Apostles and saints brought healing to believers. It is enough to recall the Gospel woman diseased with an issue of blood (see Matt. 9, 20–22), or the healing by the clothes of the Apostle Paul (see Acts 19, 12).
   Naturally, the internal structure of the person depicted in the icon is also reflected in his movements: the saints do not gesticulate — they appear before God, hold the priesthood, and each of their movements and the very position of their body is sacramental and hieratic. Usually they are turned directly to the viewer or three quarters. This feature is characteristic of Christian art from its inception. The saint is present not somewhere in space, but here — before us. Praying to him, we must see him directly before us. Praying to him, we should see him before us, as if to meet him face to face. Obviously, this is the reason why saints are almost never portrayed in profile, only very rarely in complex compositions, where they face the compositional and semantic centre. A profile to some extent interrupts direct communication; it is already a beginning of absence. Therefore, beside the images from the lives of the saints in the seals on margins of the icon, usually only people who have not attained holiness, such as magi or shepherds in the icon of the Nativity of Christ, are depicted in profile.
   The property of holiness is that it sanctifies everything that comes into contact with it. This is the beginning of the coming transfiguration of the world. In man and through man, the co-inheritance of the creature in eternal Divine life is revealed and realized. Just as the creature fell through the fault of man, so by his deification it will be saved, for the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8, 20–21 and see further till 23). An indication of this beginning of the restoration of the unity of all creature violated by sin is given to us by the Saviour's sojourn in the wilderness: [He] was with the wild beasts; and the Angels ministered unto Him (Mk. 1, 13). Around Him gather the heavenly and the earthly, destined to become a new creature in the God-man. This idea of ​​the unity of the whole creature passes through the entire Orthodox iconography. It is emphasized with particular force in some icons that reveal the cosmic aspect of the Church. This unification of all beings in God, starting with the Angels and ending with the lower creature, is the future cosmos renewed in Christ, which is opposed to general discord and hostility among the creature. Gathering of the whole creature, as the coming peace of the universe, as the all-encompassing temple of God, is the main idea of ​​the Orthodox churchly art, which dominates both architecture and painting. That is why everything that surrounds the saint changes on the icon. The world surrounding the proclaimer of good news and the bearer of Divine Revelation, man, becomes the image of a new future, transfigured world. Everything loses its usual messy appearance, everything becomes according to the order: people, landscape, animals, architecture. Everything that surrounds the saint, submits the rhythmic structure together with him, everything reflects the presence of God, approaching God and bringing us closer to Him. The earth, the vegetable world, the animal world are not depicted here in order to bring us closer to what we see around us, that is, to the world in its fallen and perishable state, but to show the participation of this world in the sanctification of man. The effect of holiness on the entire created world, and in particular on wild animals, is a characteristic feature of many saints' lives, for example, of St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Mary of Egypt, the Monks Sergius of Radonezh, Seraphim of Sarov, Paul of Obnora and many others. Epiphanius, a disciple and co-writer of the life of St. Sergius of Radonezh, speaking about the attitude of wild animals to the saint, remarks: “And let no one be surprised at this, knowing certainly that when God lives in a man and the Holy Spirit rests in him, then everything is submissive to him, like first to the pristine Adam, before his break of the commandment of God, when he also lived alone in the wilderness, everything was submissive to him." Also in the life of St. Isaac the Syrian it is said that the animals that came to him nosed the fragrance that emanated from Adam before the fall. Therefore, animals are depicted not quite usual on the icon, although each species retains its own characteristic features. This might seem as strangeness or inability, if we did not understand the language of icon painters, pointing in this way to the now inaccessible to us secret of "naming" the animals in paradise.
   A special role in a certain sense is played by the image of architecture in the icon. Entering the general system, it points to the place where the depicted event occurs: a temple, a house, a city. But the building (as well as the cave in the icons of the Nativity of Christ or the Resurrection) never encompasses the events that take place, but serves as a background, so the scene is not depicted inside the building, but in front of it. In the very meaning of the icon, the action is not closed or limited to the place where it historically happened, just as, being manifested in time, it is not limited to the moment when it took place. (Only from the 17th century did Russian icon painters, who fell under Western influence, begin to portray the action happening inside the building.) Architecture is connected with the human figure by a common meaning and composition, but very often it has no logical connection with it. If we compare how the human figure is transferred in the icon and how the building is transferred, we will see a big difference between them: the human figure, with rare exceptions, is always correctly constructed; everything is in place in it. The same is in clothes: its cutting, creasing, etc., does not go beyond the framework of logic. Architecture, however, both in its forms and in their distribution, often runs counter to human logic, and in some cases it is emphasized illogical: proportions are not respected at all; doors and windows are punched out of place and completely inapplicable in size, and so on. It is generally believed that architecture in the icon represents a conglomeration of Byzantine and antique forms, preserved due to the conservatism of icon painters, their blind commitment to these now incomprehensible forms. However, the true meaning of this phenomenon is that the image on the icon really goes beyond the limits of rational categories, beyond the laws of earthly existence. Architecture (whether antique, Byzantine or Russian) is that element in the icon by which this can be shown especially clearly. It is interpreted with the known pictorial "foolishness" in complete contradiction with rational categories. This architectural fantasy constantly confuses the mind, puts it in its place and emphasizes the super-logicality of faith. Such “illogicality” of architecture existed in the icon until the beginning of its decline, in particular in Russia until the end of the 16th — beginning of the 17th century, when the understanding of the icon-painting language began to be lost. From this time, architecture becomes to be logical and proportional. And, oddly enough, it is precisely here that we encounter truly fantastic piles of architectural forms.
   The strangeness and unusualness of the icon is the same as the strangeness and unusualness of the Gospel, for the Gospel is a genuine challenge to all worldly wisdom. I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent (1 Cor. 1, 19), says the Lord through the mouth of His prophets, whom St. Apostle Paul quotes. The Gospel calls us to life in Christ, the icon shows us this life. Therefore, it resorts to forms abnormal and shocking, just as holiness sometimes takes extreme forms of madness in the eyes of the world, forms of challenge to this world, forms of foolishness. "They say I'm crazy," says one holy fool. "But without madness, one cannot enter the Kingdom of God [...]. To live the Gospel, one has to be crazy. Until people are prudent and reasonable, the Kingdom of God will not come to earth." The foolishness of holiness and sometimes provoking forms of the icon express the same Gospel reality. The Gospel perspective is reversed in relation to the secular. And the world that the icon shows us is not the world in which rational categories and human morality reign, but Divine grace. Hence the hieratism of the icon is, its simplicity, its greatness and tranquility; hence the rhythm of its lines, the joy of its colours. It reflects both the feat and the joy of victory. It is sorrow turned into joy about the living God; this is a new system in a new creature.
   As we see, the world in the icon is not like its daily appearance. Everything here is imbued with divine light, and therefore the objects are not illuminated from one side or another by any source of light; they do not cast shadows, for there are no shadows in the Kingdom of God, where everything is permeated with light. In the technical language of icon painters, the very background of the icon is called light.
   Having expounded this, we tried to prove that, just as the symbolism of the early Christian art was the common language of the whole Church, the icon is also the common language, because it expresses the pan-Orthodox teaching, pan-Orthodox ascetic experience and pan-Orthodox divine worship. The churchly image has always expressed the Revelation of the Church, bringing it in visible forms to the Church's people as an answer to their questions, as a guide and instruction, as the life task, the transfiguration and the beginning of the Kingdom of God. Divine Revelation and its acceptance by man constitute a single action in two directions: the apocalypse and gnosis — the path of revelation and the path of knowledge — correspond to each other. God descends and reveals Himself to man, man answers, ascending to God, conforming his life with the received Revelation. In the image he receives Revelation and by the image also he answers it to the extent of his communion. In other words, an icon is a visible evidence of both the convergence of God to man and the aspiration of man to God. If the churchly word and singing sanctify our soul through hearing, then the image sanctifies it through sight which is the first of the senses, according to the interpretation of the Holy Fathers. The light of the body is the eye, says the Lord Himself: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light (Matt. 6, 22). Divine worship through the word and image sanctifies our senses. Being an expression of the purified image and the restored likeness of God in man, the icon is a creative and dynamic element of divine worship. It is not simply conservative, and its role is not passive, as some people think. Therefore, by the definition of its Seventh Ecumenical Council, the Church also prescribes, "like the image of the Honest and Life-giving Cross, to put honest and holy icons in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and robes, on walls and boards, in houses and ways." It sees in the icon one of the means that can and should help in the implementation of the task set before us - to liken ourselves our Divine Prototype, the realization in life of what was revealed and transmitted to us by the God-man. There are few holy people, but holiness is a task for all people; and icons are set everywhere as an image of this holiness, as a revelation of the coming holiness of the world, as a plan and a project for its transfiguration. In addition, since the grace gained during the life of the saints, as says St. John of Damascus, inexhaustibly abides in their images, they are set everywhere as the sanctification of the world by their inherent grace. Icons are like milestones on the way to a new creature, and we all, according to the words of the Apostle Paul, beholding... the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image (2 Cor. 3, 18).
   People who experienced the knowledge of sanctification created corresponding images that are truly "revelation and knowledge of the hidden," according to the expression of St. John of Damascus, just as the tabernacle, made at the direction of Moses, revealed what was shown to him on the mountain. These images not only bring to man the revelation of the coming transfigured world, but also introduce him to it. We can say that the icon is written from nature, but with the help of symbols, because the nature that it depicts cannot be directly transmitted. This is the world that in its fullness will be revealed only at the second and glorious coming of the Saviour.
   It is significant that the struggle for the icon took place at the turn of two periods in the history of the Church, of which each formulated different aspects of the dogma of the Incarnation of God. Between these two periods, the dogma of icon veneration is, as it were, a kind of boundary stone facing both sides and combining the doctrine formulated in these two periods.
   The entire era of Ecumenical Councils (recognized by the Orthodox Church as such ones) is mainly a Christological period, that is, dedicated to the identification of the Orthodox doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, God and Man. In the continuation of this period, being an integral part of the Christological doctrine as a whole, the icon first of all testifies to the very fact of the Incarnation of God. The Church affirms the very doctrine of it both in word and image.
   The next period in the history of the Church, from the 9th to the 16th century approximately, was a pneumatological one. The central theological question, around which heresies and churchly creeds are concentrated, is the question of the Holy Spirit and His action in man, that is, the fruit and result of the Incarnation of God. During this period, the Church testifies that if "God became Man," then this is for "so that man becomes God," and the icon, in full accordance with theology and divine services, at this time testifies mainly to the fruits of God's worship, about holiness, about the deification of man: with increasing clarity, it shows the world the image of a man who has become a god by grace. At this time, mainly, the classical form of churchly art crystallizes and the possibilities that were laid down in the early Christian art are fully realized. This is the highest flowering of the icon associated with the flowering of holiness, especially holiness like the venerable monks. The painting of temples in this period takes its final form and already in the 9th century becomes an accurate and definite system.
   The victory over the iconoclastic heresy, proclaimed at the Council of 843 as the Triumph of Orthodoxy, does not mean that iconoclasm has been eliminated; it still continued to play an active role. "The convinced iconoclasts, who continued to persevere with their views after the death of the last emperor-iconoclast (Theophilus), were still numerous, apparently, for the half century that followed the official restoration of religious images," claims A. Grabar.
   Saint Photius opens a new era in the struggle for the true doctrine of the Church after the Triumph of Orthodoxy, that is, the end of the era of Ecumenical Councils, by which the dogmas relating to the embodiment of the Word were approved. To combat the argumentation of the iconoclasts, he reorganized the Academy. While some obscurantism reigned in the patriarchate of his predecessor (St. Ignatius) and it was believed that the sciences that the iconoclasts indulged in so much zeal were not so much needed as piety, then Patriarch Photius considered the latter far from sufficient and saw in possessing sciences as one of the main means of struggle against heresy. At the head of the Academy was put the closest friend of St. Photius, the future educator of the Slavs, Constantine (Cyril). Already in his first patriarchate, Saint Photius gathered scholars and artists and began work on the restoration of church murals. With his name, as F. Dvornik testifies, the revival of art in the 9th century is associated, which was especially clearly manifested in his second patriarchate.
   With regard to iconoclasm, the position of St. Photius was extremely uncompromising. Like the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, he sees in this heresy an overthrow of the central dogma of Christianity. In a letter to the Bulgarian Tsar Michael, he calls the iconoclasts "fighters against Christ worse than the Jews." "You (iconoclasts)," he says elsewhere, "give birth in your mind to an implacable war against Christ and you discover it not directly, but under the guise of an icon." Noting the advantage traditionally expressed in patristic writing of vision over hearing, he sharply emphasizes the importance of learning through the icon. If a person rejects it, then he had already rejected teaching through the Holy Scripture. To honour the icon means to understand the Scriptures correctly and vice versa.
   Council of 869/870, condemning St. Patriarch Photius, and therefore not recognized by the Orthodox Church as ecumenical, as the papists do, was still theoretically Orthodox, and its third rule regarding churchly art is of certain interest to us. It is significant that in the general context of that time it expresses the direction of theological thought and attitude to the image in the period immediately following iconoclasm. The text of this rule is as follows: "We command to honour the honest icon of our Lord Jesus Christ equally with the book of the Gospels. Because, just as through the syllables imputed into it, everyone receives salvation, so through the paints of icon-painting, everyone, both the wise and the ignorant, benefits from what they have. Because as well as the word proclaims it in syllables, the colours in the painted represent the same. If someone does not honour the icon of Christ the Saviour, let him not see His sight at the Second Coming. Also the icon of His Most Holy Mother, and the icons of the Holy Angels (written) in the same way as the Holy Scriptures describe them, and, in addition, of all the saints, we honour and pay tribute to them. Those who do not adhere to this, be anathema." As you can see, this rule, essentially, only abbreviatedly repeats the main provisions of the Oros of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. However, two points should be noted here. This is, first of all, a collegially expressed statement that all members of the Church, regardless of their cultural level, benefit from the image. It can be assumed that this statement of the council, which was of such great importance for the West, was directed against understanding the image only as the “Bible for the illiterate,” which has been firmly established there since the time of St. Pope Gregory the Great. And yet, despite the fact that this council was recognized by the Roman Church as the Eighth Ecumenical, such an understanding of the image in the West has not been eradicated, and partly continues to exist to this day. Of course, it cannot be said that in our time the painting of a Roman Catholic church by Matisse, Chagall or with abstract painting is a "bible for the illiterate." But here the image itself, where it exists at all, is no longer intended for spiritual learning, but for aesthetic perception. To the Orthodox East, such a view of the image has always been alien. "Like every person, even the most perfect one," Ven. Theodore Studite wrote, "needs the book of the Gospel, the situation is similar and with the image that corresponds to it."
   The phrase ending the rule of the council is of particular interest to us, since it essentially conveys the main truth of icon veneration, expressed in other words in the Oros of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, where the eschatological aspect of the image, though with a less bulge, is emphasized by the prophecy of Zephaniah (3, 14–15). The vision of Christ on His Second Coming involves the confession of His First Coming and honouring the evidence of this Coming — the image of His Person. And vice versa: veneration of the image is a guarantee and condition for seeing Him in the glory of the Second Coming. In other words, “veneration of the icon is, in a sense, the beginning of the vision of God,” as V. Lossky observes, the beginning of the vision face to face. Through the icon, we not only learn about God, but also know God Himself. And we contemplate in the icon of Christ His Divine Personality in that glory in which He will come again, that is, His transfigured, glorified face.
   On the icons we depict, concludes the third rule of the council, also the Mother of God, Angels and saints. As well as the image of Christ, the icon of the saint, and above all of the Mother of God, is, in the eyes of the council, a visible transfiguration of the future: the eschatological Kingdom of Christ, the manifestation of His glory in human being. The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them (Jn. 17, 22). This vision of the glorified face of God, addressed to every person, that is, the contemplation of the glory of Christ, subsequently receives its theological formulation in the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas and in the definitions of Сouncils of the 14th century on the nature of grace. It also, as we shall see, will be the theological formulation of the icon's content. In the 19th century, Moscow Metropolitan Philaret, applying to the icon of Christ the words of the Apostle Paul: we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3, 18), interprets them as follows: "He does not speak of himself alone, but of all; therefore, he speaks not of a single advantage of the God-inspired man, but of action and condition, which is accessible to many, and to a certain extent to all. We all, he says, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, that is, we look not just at the face of Christ, but at His glory [...], we look not as inactive spectators, but we present our soul to the luminous face of Christ as a mirror for receiving His light [...] and we ourselves are changed into the same image [...], continuously trying to grow in likeness to the image of Christ." As we see, St. Metropolitan Philaret in his "Word for the Consecration of the Temple of the Image not Made by Hand, November 17, 1855" explains the significance for the believer and the effect on him of the image of Christ in the same context as St. John of Damascus.
   At the council of 869/870, not only Patriarch Photius was deposed, but his undertaking in the restoration and dissemination of churchly art was seriously hindered, as the people gathered by him for this cause were banned. For them, the opportunity to continue it was suppressed, since the meaning of the icon is such that people deprived of the right to teach in the Church, that is, under anathema, cannot write it. The Seventh Rule of the Council states: "The arrangement of holy and honest icons and the teaching of others to the teachings of Divine and human wisdom is very useful. It is not good for this to be done by the unworthy. Therefore, in no case we do not allow the anathematized to write icons in holy churches, just as, for this reason, the same are not allowed to teach until they turn away from their deception. If, however, after this decree, anyone accepts the activity of writing holy icons in the church, if he is a clergyman, he will be cast out of his rank, and if a lay person, he will be excluded and lose the Divine ordinances."
   The final moment of the struggle of St. Photius against iconoclasm was the recognition of the Second Council of Nicaea as the Seventh Ecumenical Council (at the council of 879/880). Although this recognition has already taken place at Councils 867 and 869/870, the Roman Church continued to recognize only six Ecumenical Councils. However, at the Council of 879/880, at the insistence of St. Photius, papal legates unconditionally joined this confession and threatened with anathema to everyone who does not recognize this Council as the Seventh Ecumenical. “I,” says the first legate of the pope, Paul, Bishop of Ancona, “I recognize the revered Photius as the legitimate and canonically elected Patriarch, and according to the papal letters and the commonitorium, I declare that I am in communion with him. At the same time, I condemn the anathematical council, which was against him in Constantinople (8th Ecumenical), as well as everything that was done against him under Adrian. Who is separated from him is separated from the Church. In addition, I recognize the Second Council of Nicaea as the Seventh Ecumenical Council." Followed by signature. Both other legates spoke in the same sense, as Hafele testifies. Note that recognition was limited, in fact, only to the highest churchly authority in Rome. As for the Western Church as a whole, here the situation was not so certain. So. for example, when, for various reasons, Western bishops of that time speak of Ecumenical Councils, some consider them to be six, others only four, and some even two. The Seventh Council is either denied, or simply falls out of sight. As we see, the ignorance of conciliar definitions, affecting iconoclasm, is also manifested in relation to other heresies condemned by previous Councils. As Abbot F. Dvornik says, it was St. Photius who brought the Roman Church to unity with the Orthodox Church in this Council.
   It should be noted that the main theme of the preaching of St. Patriarch Photius was his struggle against the distortion resulting from the insertion in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed of the "Filioque", which, as you know, was introduced at that time in many places in the West. Latin missionaries insisted on it and in the newly converted Bulgaria. One of the dogmatic questions posed at the Council of 879/880 was precisely this insert (the Cathedral, convened by Saint Photius in 867, was already dedicated to it). The Council proclaimed the immutability of the Nicene Creed without the "Filioque". "If someone, having come to such an extreme of madness, dares to set forth another creed or makes an increase or decrease in the Creed given to us by the Fathers of the Holy Nicene Ecumenical Council, let him be anathema." The papal legates made no objection to this decision of the Council and signed it together with everyone.
   In terms of the struggle against iconoclasm, the recognition of the Second Council of Nicaea as the Seventh Ecumenical Council was not only a formal act of great importance. Iconoclasm was dealt a decisive blow. By this recognition, it was finally and irrevocably condemned by the Ecumenical Church as a Christian heresy. Thus, the dogma of icon veneration is recognized as one of the basic truths of Christianity, and the image itself is affirmed as evidence of the Incarnation and as a means of knowledge of God and communion with God.
   Having talked about the reaction of the West to the Byzantine iconoclasm, we consider it necessary to make some additions here in the light of modern attitudes towards this issue. As in the period of iconoclasm, the Western Church continued to support the Orthodox position of the Eastern Church with its authority. In Byzantium, as one of the famous Roman Catholic theologians of our time writes, "these were dogmatic debates that led to the deepening and definition of dogma, these stages of dogmatic development. The West, which did not know such disputes, did not attach much importance to them and saw in them not genuine dogmatic development, but only a disciplinary measure, the approval of veneration of icons, not taking into account the essence of their dogmatic significance." It is right. The West really did not see in the icon what Byzantium saw in it; it did not understand its content. Although it was involved in the debate, "however," as G. Florovsky testifies, " it never followed the East in theological argument and did not feel all the consequences of Byzantine theology about icons and all that was connected with them." But a very lot of things were connected. Nowadays, with the change in attitude to the icon in the West, the importance of the disputes that came up in Byzantium and their consequences is gradually being recognized. A beautiful illustration of this are the words of the Roman Catholic writer Daniel Rops: "The icon," he says, "gives Western people an idea of ​​what was really fought for in this dispute about the icons that had been tearing apart the Byzantine East for so many years and which represents them, as they see it, so empty, so insignificant. Is it possible for people to kill each other in order to know if they have the right to portray God and saints? But in reality, the issue was not in this, but in the argument, the subject of which was the highest data of faith. If an icon, an unchanging, imperishable icon, is a type of unspeakable reality, then does not it mean to abandon it thereby a cutting oneself off from this reality?" Coming to the correct conclusion, D. Rops, being a Roman Catholic brought up on the wrong idea of ​​the image, makes a gross mistake, not attaching importance to the "right to depict God and saints", which is one of the "highest data of faith"; the "unspeakable reality" of which he speaks can only manifest itself through historical reality.
   The struggle against the iconoclastic heresy and the victory over it were of capital importance for churchly art. According to O. Demus, "it was this conflict that contributed to the liberation of painting from all sideline and secondary elements and reduced it to expressing only what was of fundamental value." However, in our opinion, this reduction to the core value is not so much a direct result of the conflict itself, but rather of an awareness of the significance of the image to which this conflict led. Therefore, it is more accurate to say that the conflict prompted Christianity to affirm and develop the christological basis of the image, and prompted the theological justification of the icon. Awareness of this theological justification led to the purification and refinement of the language of churchly art. Since the сhristological basis of the image was finally established, a definite and clearly conscious tendency toward revealing its content, its spiritual essence on the basis of previous and present spiritual experience is manifested. The center of gravity, therefore, is transferred from the predominantly christological aspect of the icon (of the previous period) to its pneumatological, eschatological content, which found its theological expression in the service of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, in particular, in the holiday kontakion. There happens what in art history is called the spiritualization of art, and this process reaches its highest expression in the second half of the 11th century, passing through all types of churchly art, capturing also secular art. In other words, the line that has been defined in the art of the pre-iconoclast period and whose foundation was outlined by the 82nd rule of the Fifth-Sixth Council continues and becomes dominant.
   Just as the reaction to iconoclasm had general significance for the Church, so the programs and norms that were then being developed were the guiding principle in the development of the whole of Orthodox art as such. In other words, in the period immediately following iconoclasm, the canon of churchly art is drawn up. It must be said that at the same time, the overall context of the divine service is also taking shape. Namely with the Triumph of Orthodoxy, in Constantinople the so-called Byzantine divine service order was finally approved. A harmonious whole of architecture, poetry, painting, and singing is being developed, aimed together towards a common goal: the expression of the essence of Orthodoxy.
   Immediately after the Triumph of Orthodoxy, in the patriarchate of St. Methodius or St. Ignatius, as it is supposed, was restored the mosaic in the apse of Constantinople Hagia Sophia, representing the Virgin on the throne (843–845). It is believed that this mosaic was restored by St. Lazarus, icon painter and confessor of Orthodoxy during the period of iconoclasm (Comm. November 17). In the same time, the icon of Christ above the entrance to the imperial palace was also restored. However, even in Hagia Sophia there were apparently no icons, judging by the word spoken by Saint Photius at the solemn consecration of the icon in it in 867.
   In general, the art of that century is distinguished by a wide variety of styles and techniques. In the plot area, in this diversity, two main trends are outlined. The first reveals Orthodox doctrine in a dogmatic way. Namely in this direction, there is seen a desire to exalt the icon-painting style, to hieratism and spiritualization. The second current iconographically reflects the struggle with the defeated heresy. Such, for example, are the images of four Orthodox Patriarchs, fighters for icons, together with the twelve Apostles in the hall at the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople. This trend was reflected mainly in the illustrations of the Psalms, sometimes reaching a caricature.
   However, if the polemic against the iconoclasts took place in the illustrations, then it does not find reflection in cult art. Rather to say, the struggle against heresies is not manifested here in a polemical way. Liturgical art, in the true sense, was never polemic and could not be because its task is different. In its cult, the Church considers it sufficient to contrast distortions with its faith in a positive sense. Therefore, the reaction of Orthodoxy could only be here a statement of the right faith, a positive reaction. It could be expressed in the refinement of details. In addition to the Nicene mosaic, restored in the Assumption Cathedral of this city in the bishopric of St. Theophan the Inscribed (Comm. 11 October), where the cross in the apse was replaced by the image of the Mother of God with the Infant, above which three beams and a hand emanate from the symbolic heaven, above which is placed a symbolic image of the Holy Trinity, a throne with the Gospel and a dove, with an inscription from the Psalm on border, which, as in the service of the Nativity of Christ, compares the two births of the Saviour, the timeless from the Father, the incomprehensible and therefore inconceivable, which can only be indicated by text, and the human from the Virgin Mary, possible to be depicted, and later, for example, in the iconography of Transfiguration in 13–14th centuries, apparently in response to a symbolic interpretation of the Transfiguration and, in particular, mountain, is introduced the theme of Christ's ascent with the Apostles to the mountain and their descent from it. But this could no way be reflected by the introduction of polemic iconography to the liturgical art. That is why we do not find in this art a reaction even to such an event of capital importance as the deciduation of Rome.
   To the patriarchate of St. Photius also refers a change in the system of painting of the temples. It was he who inspired the iconography and its distribution, which was being developed at that time in Constantinople. The historical selection of subjects in the murals of temples, that dominated until then, yields the place to a dogmatic beginning. This principle of painting was established simultaneously with the wide distribution of cross-domed temples, that is, a church having in the basis of its architecture a cube crowned with a dome. Such a temple is an ideal form of expression in the architecture of the foundations of Orthodox dogmatic thinking. In contrast to classical architecture, which, proceeding from the external, went to the internal and gave content to the form, Orthodox architecture proceeded from the content, giving it the form, thus going from the internal to the external. The cross-domed type temple together with the painting makes it possible to most obviously and clearly identify its symbolic meaning and, to the extent possible, most fully express the Orthodox teaching about the Church. This system of building the temple was adopted as the basis in the whole Orthodox world. In different countries, it was modified, processed in accordance with local artistic tastes and received a new artistic expression. New compositions of the temple, new construction and decorative techniques were developed, which later also reflected on the architecture of Byzantium itself.
   The combination of the cross-domed architecture of the temples with the newly adopted mural system represents the most complete expression of the Christian understanding of the temple and its liturgical comprehension and meaning, "the most brilliant creation of the spirit of the doctrine of icons," says H. I. Schulz, a Western expert. It is in this form of the temple that its architectural and semantic centres coincide, and the mural theme is distributed around this single centre. Everything is subordinated here to the general conciliar plan, included in the conciliar unity. Around Christ the Almighty in the dome and the Mother of God in the apse, everything is going to, both heavenly and earthly, destined in the God-man Christ to become a new creature. The angelic assembly, the human race, animals, birds, plants, luminaries of heaven — the whole universe is united into a single temple of God: the whole cosmos fits under the vaults of the temple, which is the image of restored unity broken by the fall. This is the cosmic aspect of the Church, since to it, as to the Body of Christ, the whole universe belongs, which after the resurrection of Christ becomes involved in His glorification and subordinated to His authority. All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth (Matt. 28, 18). The cursed ground (Gen. 3, 17) becomes the blessed one, the firstfruit of a new earth under a new heaven. This cosmic aspect of the Church is expressed not only in temple architecture and murals, but also in the theme of some icons ("Rejoices about Thee...", "Every breath praise the Lord"). This union of all beings in God, this future cosmos renewed in Christ, is opposed to general discord and enmity among the creature. The image of the world of plant and animal, geometric and plant ornaments introduce into the painting of the temple (as well as in icons) not only as an artistic addition, but also as an expression of the belonging of the created world, through man, to the Kingdom of God. Thus, the painting also corresponds to the very fact of bringing by man the firstfruits of this created world to the temple, starting from its construction and ending with the Liturgy (The Thine are brought from Thy ones to Thee from all and for all). It is in the Liturgy that the meaning of the Christian temple is quite realized. Its architecture and painting are comprehended by the union of the Church of Heaven and Earth in the person of its members, gathered together by the spirit of love in a living communion of the Body and Blood. Universal unity is realized in them and through them, and the temple acquires the fullness of the expression of its meaning, as the Fathers-Liturgists interpreted it before the time of the iconclasm: he is the image of the Church, with its aspiration directed towards eschatological fulfilment. And in fact, and figuratively, it is a particle of the coming Kingdom of God.
   Returning to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, it must be said that, in essence, it did not reveal anything new; it only sealed the original meaning of the Christian image. It is important to note those of its main provisions that are directly related to various aspects of contemporary problems. Both in the Oros and in its judgments, the Council connects the icon, first of all, with the Gospel, that is, with theology in its most primary sense, revealed according to the expression of St. Gregory Palamas, "by the Self-Truth Christ, Who, being the Eternal God, became for us the theologian." Here we are first of all confronted with the Christian concept of the image and with its meaning in theology, and therefore with its significance in the life of man created in the image of God.
   All attention here (in the temple) is focused on the person, more precisely on how to put him who prays in the conditions that most elevate him to knowledge of and communion with God. In an Orthodox church, all efforts are not aimed at creating a place where a man or a woman can "concentrate on themselves, lonely meditate, meet in private with their internal secrets," as R. Cogniat writes, but to include a person in the unity of the Church, that it, earthly and heavenly, with one mouth and one heart could confess and praise God. If in Roman Catholicism architecture of the temple and its design are different and, depending on the spiritual direction, the nature of architecture changes, often and radically, then in the Orthodox world it is guided by a consistent search for the most accurate architectural and artistic expression of the meaning of the temple in accordance with its understanding as the image of the Church and symbolic image of the universe. In contrast to Roman Catholicism, with a rich variety of architectural solutions, once found, the most correct expression in its basic features has been finally established. In accordance with the meaning of the temple, the mural program also basically remained the same in churches of any type and purpose: cathedral, monastery, parish ones and even burial chapels, summarizes A. Grabar. If this general mural system does not reflect the functions of the church in connection with its practical purpose, then its immutability is connected with the immutability of the main function of any Christian church — to serve as a repository for the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Of course, the painting of the temple may deviate from ideal balance, it may be more or less complete: but no matter which direction it deviates, christological, mariological, hagiographic or otherwise, its foundation is always the same. This does not mean that the plots of this foundation remain unchanged: they naturally continue to develop, or rather, unfold. But the classical painting system established in the post-iconoclastic period remains in the Orthodox Church as a general rule until the 17th century, inclusive.
   During St. Patriarch Photius, and on his initiative, the mission flourishes "among the Bulgarians, Khazars, Russian and Moravian Slavs, and even among Armenians, although Christians, but schismatics (in order to return them to Orthodoxy). At that time, also theologians of his circle made an attempt to spread Christianity among the Arabs," states A. Grabar. In 833, St. brothers Constantine and Methodius are sent to Moravia. After their death, their disciples, persecuted by the German clergy, flee to Bohemia and, through Serbia, to Bulgaria. In 867, in the Epistle to the Eastern Patriarchs, St. Photius speaks of the conversion of the people of Ros and the sending of a bishop to them. Gregoire believes that the bishop, about whom St. Photius writes, was not sent to the Crimea or the Caucasus, but specifically to Kiev. In the art of this time, in murals and especially in illustrations, relevant themes appear expressing the continuity of the apostolic sermon and the implementation of the housebuilding of the Holy Spirit: the sending of the Apostles by Christ to preach, the preaching of the Apostles to different nations, the worship of various nations to Christ; the iconography of Pentecost introduces the groups of tribes to whom the Apostles preach is addressed (see Acts. 2, 9–11).
   In essence, the center of gravity of the mission was precisely in the preaching of Orthodoxy. This was the general mission of the Church, and Patriarch Photius was not led by the task of preaching the Caesarean kingdom, but by his characteristic consciousness of the universality of Orthodoxy. The unity of the so-called "Byzantine art" is not a consequence of the cultural, artistic or other influence of the empire: this unity of the artistic language of Orthodoxy is a consequence and an indication of the unity of creed and spiritual life. Monuments of this art have been preserved in many countries that have nothing in common with each other, either politically or ethnically. Nevertheless (with the exception of some details), their differences do not affect the nature of the very art of the Church.
   In the preaching of Orthodoxy, art played the role of a vehicle, we repeat, not of culture, but of faith, being one of its basic, organic elements. The peoples accepting Christianity also accept its figurative language, developed at the center of the Christian world, and accept it as an experienced expression of the truth they receive, captured in artistic forms. Every nation entering the Church accepts it integrally, with its past, present and future. The heresies of Arius, Nestorius, or the iconoclasts were not something alien to them, but a distortion of their own faith and truth. Therefore, the Church's response to them was perceived as an antidote to their always possible revival in one form or another. And at the same time, it is precisely for this reason that each nation, entering the Church, brings its own national characteristics into it, reveals itself in it in accordance with its character, both in holiness and in its external manifestation that is art. The figurative language of the Church is perceived not passively, but creatively, it is combined with local artistic traditions, and each nation, on a common basis, develops its own artistic language. This is how diversity is realized in unity. The manifestation of originality in the art of Orthodox countries is facilitated by the fact that the unity of faith in the Orthodox Church not only does not exclude diversity in forms of worship, in art and other expressions of churchly life, conditioned by national and cultural characteristics, but, on the contrary, causes it, since it requires constantly new experiences of Tradition, always original and creative. Unlike Rome, Orthodoxy developed precisely the national aspect in every nation, says G. Moravchik. Orthodox missionaries not only did not impose their own language, but, on the contrary, compiled the alphabet and grammar for the translation of Holy Scripture and worship into local languages. The very basis of the figurative language of the Church remained unchanged, and on this basis the artistic language of each people was developed by the direct experience of the truth they had accepted. Holiness and the image, so to speak, are created anew on the basis received. Both holiness and the image acquire national colouring and form because they are the result of living experience. A specific type of Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian holiness is born, in accordance with this and a specific type of icon comes.
   The result of Saint Photius' activity in the field of mission and art was the enlightenment of the Slavs and the flourishing of art in the 10th century. This flourishing was widely and violently perceived by the Slavic peoples.
   "Since the second half of the 11th century, Constantinople had possessed a completely exceptional role [..]. Its influences diverged radically in all directions: we encounter them in Cappadocia, Patmos, the Caucasus, Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Athos, Italy. They solder together the creative aspirations of almost all the peoples of the Christian East, giving them some kind of special stamp", stated by V. N. Lazarev in his History of Byzantine Painting.
   The 11th and 12th centuries in Byzantium represent a period of intense life, both in terms of the state and in the plan of the Church. In the state plan, the 11th century was a decisive moment in the history of the empire, already carrying in itself "the embryo of a fatal disease, which inevitably led to the catastrophe of 1204," as H. Evert-Kappesova put it in her Addendum to I. Swanoros's report at the 13th Byzantine Congress in Oxford. But at the same time, in the field of culture and theology, these two centuries were a period of prosperity.
   Already in the 10th century, the revival of spiritual life begins, the culmination of which was Simeon the New Theologian (949–1022). Literature about clever doing is being spread. The works of Venerable Isaac the Syrian are translated into Greek, the works of Philotheus the Sinaite about the Jesus Prayer and the writings of Elijah Ecdicus (whose life date, however, has not been precisely established), appear. In the ecclesiastical and literary circles of Constantinople, the works of Venrable Simeon the New Theologian are widely disseminated by his disciples and followers, both during his lifetime and especially after his death. In the spiritual life of Orthodoxy, along with Constantinople, Athos, closely associated with all Orthodox countries, acquires special significance at this time. In the Balkans and in Russia, intensified translation activity flourished, and monasteries associated with Athos and Constantinople appeared. Spiritual life in these countries begins to acquire a national character, which is clearly expressed in holiness. This spiritual flowering is the main basis on which church art also flourishes.
   On the other hand, the 11th century was marked in the history of the Church by a terrible catastrophe, which has not yet been overcome: the fall away of the western part of Christianity. The polemics of the Orthodox Churches with the West and with the heresies of the Bogomils and Cathars, as well as the struggle against distortions within the Church itself, were the factors that contributed to the flourishing of theological thought.
   We have seen that until then East and West were also not always in agreement, and their individual actions were sometimes associated with serious misunderstandings. But nevertheless, these actions were really joint actions of members of the same Church, and the victory over iconoclasm was a common triumph of both the East and the West. The Roman Patriarchate was a part of the Ecumenical Church, and therefore misunderstandings, no matter how deep and numerous, still did not violate its unity with the rest of the Church, its participation in the common sacramental life. This was a member of the Body of Christ which received Communion of one cup and one bread with other local Churches. Therefore, everything that was lacking in the Roman Church always had the opportunity to be replenished with the common property, and vice versa: the spiritual riches of the West entered the common treasury of the Church. But in the 11th century Rome is separated from the rest of the Church, communion in the sacraments ceases, and the Roman Church ceases to take part in the common life of the Church during the pneumatological period of its history. Therefore, even the extraordinary rise of Romanesque art, when the West creatively used forms obtained from the East, was only a brief flash. Later, already from the end of the Romanesque period, western churchly art followed the path of more and more secularization, betraying its meaning and purpose.
   In 1053–54. at the center of disputes with Rome was the issue of unleavened bread; at the same time, a dispute flared up around the main dogmatic issue: the insertion of the Filioque into the Creed. "Towards the end of the 11th century, the Filioque controversy intensifies. This issue is discussed in every Byzantine treatise. In the 12th century, this question dominates, if not in terms of the number of pages devoted to it, then, in any case, in its importance. The disputes between Greek and Latin theologians at the Councils of 1098 in Bari and 1112 in Constantinople relate mainly to the outgoing of the Holy Spirit ", writes A. Poppé. At the Council of 1062, John Italos and the Hellenistic philosophical trend, of which he was the representative, were condemned. It should be noted that among the reasons for the condemnation of Italos was the accusation of opposing the veneration of icons. In the 12th century, a dispute arises against the Latin-orientated Westernizers about the words of the Liturgy immediately before the Cherubic hymn "Thou art Bringing and Brought", and about who the Eucharistic sacrifice is brought to: God the Father or the entire Holy Trinity. Councils of 1156 and 1157 condemn the supporters of the non-Orthodox interpretation of the Eucharist as "inventors of new, foreign teachings."
   In the 11th and 12th centuries, dogmatic and theological struggle was the main theme of the life of the Orthodox Church. The upsurge of spiritual life and theological polemics against heresies find vivid expression in the spiritualization of churchly art. According to V. N. Lazarev, it may have never, neither before nor after, reached such a height of ideological saturation. The brilliant heyday of the 12th century in this sense only continues the 11th century, whose art became "the norm, one might even say, the canon style for subsequent centuries", asserts K. Weizmann in his report "Byzantine miniature and icon painting of the eleventh century" at the 13th Byzantine Congress in Oxford (1966). This art takes on the form that most fully conveys the spiritual experience of Orthodoxy. During this period, the image reaches the heights of accuracy and clarity of an adequate form: art is inseparably merged with the very reality of spiritual experience. This is an art in which the form is thought and realized as the most convincing and clear transmission of the content, directing and fixing the attention of the praying person to the prototype, facilitating his path of likening to the prototype. Here, the correspondence of art to that type of spiritual experience is manifested with particular force, the vivid exponent of which was Venerable Simeon the New Theologian: "Christ suffering and humiliated for him always and above all at the same time, is Christ risen and transformed in glory." Art finds means to express, as far as possible, the beauty that was characteristic of the spiritual vision of Simeon the New Theologian and his followers. The artistic language of the Orthodox Church is being developed, which is simultaneously changeable (since its forms are forms of living experience and, naturally, are diverse and change in time) and constant, just as the spiritual experience itself is constant in the whole being of its.
   By the end of the 12th century, due to external and internal reasons, the state machine of the Byzantine Empire was in complete disarray. The empire is losing territories in Europe and the Orient, the irrepressible process of feudalism gives rise to social strife within the country, Latin influence is widespread, which is not popular with the Greeks, and antagonism towards the Latins is further intensified after the breakaway of Rome from Ecumenical Orthodoxy. Under these conditions, the constant attempts of the emperors of the Comnenian dynasty for political reasons to resolve the issue of "uniting the Church" only added fuel to the fire. All this weakened the empire and led to collapse at the beginning of the 13th century. On Easter Monday in 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade broke into Constantinople. The capital of world art was devastated. "Monuments of classical art and shrines of the apostolic times perished or scattered in all corners of Europe," states F. I. Uspensky. "Constantinople never recovered from the Latin devastation: the impoverished kingdom was not able to restore the thousand-year incomparable riches accumulated from the 4th–5th centuries." Its fall was the greatest catastrophe that the Byzantine Empire experienced spiritually and materially. The desecration of its shrines left a deep mark on the soul of the Greek people and echoed throughout the Orthodox world. With the crushing defeat of Constantinople, the brilliant flourishing of 12th century art ceases. Byzantine artists flee in droves to the Balkans, East and West.
   However, neither culturally nor spiritually Byzantium was defeated. If in terms of the national-political role it was already over, then in terms of cultural and especially in terms of confession it still had to say its word. This word was spoken in the era of the Palaeologi, in the 14–15th centuries.
   Before the return of the Greeks to Constantinople in 1261, against the backdrop of state devastation, poverty, epidemics, civil wars (three wars for one generation) and a new game with the uniatism (Lyons uinion in 1274), continued by Michael Palaeologus, a new flourishing of churchly art begins, the last one for Byzantium, conventionally called Palaeologus's. Not so long ago, the Palaeologan Renaissance was a mystery. The question was posed: under what influence could this revival develop, which was in contrast to the economic and political situation? There was a try to explain it by the influence of the Italian Trecento. This hypothesis is not very plausible, since, with the exception of some isolated cases at this time, it was Greek art that influenced Italian one.
   It is customary to explain this flourishing in our time by the revival of the national consciousness of the Greeks during the period of the Nicene Empire. After the fall of Constantinople, Nicea became the political and ecclesiastical center of independent Greeks. The best national and spiritual forces of Byzantium are concentrated here. Of the three independent centres that formed on the territory of the disintegrated Byzantium, the Trebizond Empire in Asia Minor, the Epirus despotate in Northern Greece and the Nicene Empire, it was the latter that played the leading role. Nicaea is the seat of the Patriarch, who continues to bear the title of "Ecumenical", "Archbishop of Constantinople" and is revered as the only legitimate leader of the Greek Church. His jurisdiction, as before, extends to all territories subordinate to him. So, for example, the Kiev Metropolitanate, single at that time in Rus, continues to receive Greek metropolitans and has relations with Nicaea, being subordinate to the Patriarch. The clergy who escaped from Constantinople emigrated to Nicaea, and the theological and philosophical academy was created here by the learnt monks, which became the guardian of Orthodox enlightenment in the 13th century. Here the idea of a new upsurge of Hellenism was born and strengthened. In the current situation, "turning to old traditions, deliberately opposed to the hated Latin culture, was not only natural, but to some extent inevitable," says V. N. Lazarev.
   The revival of national self-consciousness undoubtedly played a large role, and this is all the more so since it took place in the political, cultural and religious terms. The empire realized itself as Orthodox. Therefore, as it is already noted, there was no sharp distinction between cultural and political life and religious one. The bearer of this religious life "was the most stable element in Byzantium — the Orthodox Church", points out G. Ostrovsky. It was the one that managed to preserve its monolithic unity at a tragic moment for the empire. And, of course, the fight against Latinism was not only a national, but also a cultural, and primarily religious task. The attempts of the union especially could not but cause, in terms of the Church, the reaction of Orthodox Byzantium to the Roman Catholic West, that is, an even more intense experience of the treasures of Orthodoxy. It is characteristic that at the time of constant negotiations on the union, the historian Niketas Akominatos, who worked in Nicaea, wrote in 1204-1210 a dogmatic and polemical treatise in 27 books, entitled "The Treasure of Orthodoxy". Without taking into account the role of the Church, which "endured the struggle on its shoulders", that is, the main factor that played a leading role in the life of the Greek people, without taking into account its internal life, one really involuntarily wonders, as V. N. Lazarev says, how the Byzantium of the Paleologian era could show such activity in the field of thought and art in such difficult conditions. After all, the fact remains irrefutable: "In the field of fine art, the Paleologian flourishing was expressed almost exclusively in religious painting," A. Grabar testifies. It was the inner life of the Church, which later became the subject of controversy, that played the main role in the art of this time. In the collision of hesychasm with the so-called humanism, the future fate of the Orthodox Church and its art was determined, when the Church of Constantinople once again had the task of formulating the Orthodox doctrine in the face of emerging distortions.
   The disputes that agitated the Byzantine Church in the 14th century concerned the very essence of Christian anthropology — the deification of man, as it was understood, on the one hand, in traditional Orthodoxy, represented by Hesychasts with St. Gregory Palamas at their head, and on the other hand, in religious philosophy, fed by the Hellenistic heritage, represented by humanists led by the Calabrian monk Barlaam and Akindynos. The so-called Hesychast Councils in Constantinople in 1341, 1347 and 1351 were mainly devoted to these disputes. The epoch preceding these disputes was for Byzantium, as we have already said, an era of external crisis, internal struggle and mental rebirth. At the end of the 13th century, the disputes about the proceeding of the Holy Spirit escalated again, which prepared the final formulation of the doctrine of the deification of man.
   Usually the term hesychasm is applied to theological disputes that arose in Byzantium at this time. However, these disputes only prompted the Church to reveal the Orthodox doctrine of the deification of man and, by a conciliar definition, to give a theological justification for the enlightenment of man by the Holy Spirit, that is, what from the very beginning of Christianity was the living impulse of its art, the basis that nourished it and determined its forms. Hesychasm, in the proper sense of the word, does not represent a new teaching or phenomenon; it is one of the directions of the spiritual experience of Orthodoxy, which goes back to the origins of Christianity. Hesychia is silence, which is achieved by sobriety of mind in connection with the mutual control of mind and heart: "This is actually a Christian expression of dispassion (apatheia), when activity and contemplation are considered not as two different ways of life, but on the contrary, merge together in the implementation of intelligent doing (praxis noera)," as Lossky notes. The term "hesychasts" as applied to Christian ascetics can be traced back to the 4th century. Perhaps that is why it is wrong to limit hesychasm to one Palaeologian Byzantium. Both in its true sense, as an ancient Christian ascetic practice, and in a narrower sense, as the theological disputes of the 14th century, this phenomenon is pan-Orthodox. For example, in Russ, the practice of smart doing has probably existed since the advent of Christianity. In any case, as a recent study on this issue shows (Tachiaos A. The influence of Hesychasm on churchly life in Russia in 1328–1406 . Thessaloniki 1962 [in Greek]), from the 12th and 13th centuries there are already certain indications for this. Based on the texts (the "Teaching" of Vladimir Monomakh [1115–1125] and the response of Theodosius, Archimandrite of the Kiev Caves Lavra [1220]), A. Tachiaos comes to a definite conclusion about the existence of the practice of smart doing in Russ in the pre-Mongol period. Since the 14th century, the influence of hesychasm has been increasing and, as we will see, all Russian art of the 14th and 15th centuries is under its direct influence. In the Balkans, the 14th century was "the time of a real hesychast international" (Elian A. Byzantium and the Romanians). Already in the 13th century, the first head of the Autocephalous Serbian Church, hesychast St. Sava (†1237) was inspired by the works of St. Simeon the New Theologian, and through him hesychasm guides the life of the Serbian Church, its monasteries and its art. The flourishing of ecclesiastical art in Serbia exactly coincides with the autocephaly of its Church and is associated with the name of St. Sava. Through him, the whole churchly life receives here the stamp of hesychasm. A number of successors of St. Sava (Arsenius I, Sava II, Joannicius I, Eustathius I) were "vigilant guardians of hesychasm and its ardent supporters (Vasich M. Hesychasm in the Church and Art of the Serbs in the Middle Ages). The influence of St. Sava on the spiritual and cultural life of Serbia continued until the end of the 18th century. Venerable Gregory of Sinai (1266–1340), who settled in Thrace, on the border of Byzantium and Bulgaria, played an important role in the spread of hesychasm in the Balkans. During St. Theodosius of Tarnovo, hesychasm is especially widespread in Bulgaria and occupies a leading position in its Church, headed by Patriarch Euthymius (1375–1393). Along with Athos and Constantinople, the Bulgarian monasteries served as the centers of communication between the Slavs and the Greeks (see D. Likhachev, Culture of Russ). "Bulgaria in the 14th century was that huge center through which Byzantine influence passed into Serbia and Russia" (ibid.). Intensive ties between Wallachia and Athos led to the spread of hesychasm in Romania, where it "established the Church hierarchy," as A. Elian states. According to the council of 1347, "the piety of Palamas and the monks" is "the true and truly common piety of Christians."
   Received its theological formulation in the writings of St. Gregory Palamas and the Councils of the 14th century, based on patristic Tradition, the spiritual renewal of hesychasm and the controversies associated with it had a tremendous impact on the entire Orthodox world, both in terms of spiritual life, and, consequently, in terms of churchly art. This influence went far beyond theology. The flourishing of culture (secular sciences, literature, etc.) was closely connected with the flourishing of theological thought, since it was in its line, or, conversely, opposed it.