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Icons in Christianity |
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One of the few ceramic icons in existence, |
Christianity originated as a movement within Judaism during a time when there was great concern about idolatry.
There is no evidence of the making and use of painted icons or of similar religious images by Christians within the New Testament writings. However, Eastern Orthodox theologian Rev. Dr. Steven Bigham writes (Early Christian Attitudes Toward Images, Orthodox Research Institute, 2004), "The first thing to note is that there is a total silence about Christian and non-idolatrous images. It is important to note that the silence is in the New Testament texts, and this silence should not be interpreted as describing all the activities of the Apostles or 1st century Christians. St. John himself said that 'Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book...' (Jn 20.30). We could easily add that the Apostles also did and said many things not recorded in the New Testament. |
It is obvious, therefore, that we do not have a complete account of the activities and sayings of the Apostles. So, if we want to find out if the first Christians made or ordered any kind of figurative art, the New Testament is of no use whatsoever. The silence is a fact, but the reason given for the silence varies from exegete to exeget depending on his assumptions." In other words, relying only upon the New Testament as evidence of no painted icons amounts to an argument from silence. Though the word eikon is found in the New Testament (see below), it is never in the context of painted icons. There were, of course, Christian paintings and art in the early catacomb churches. Many can still be viewed today, such as those in the catacomb churches of Domitilla and San Callisto in Rome. The earliest written records available of Christian images treated like icons are in a pagan or Gnostic context. Alexander Severus (A.D. 222235) kept a domestic chapel for the veneration of images of deified emperors, of portraits of his ancestors, and of Christ, Apollonius, Orpheus and Abraham (Lampridius, Life of Alexander Severus xxix.). Irenaeus, in his Against Heresies 1:25;6, says of the Gnostic Carpocratians, They also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles [pagans]. A criticism of image veneration is found in the apocryphal Acts of John (generally considered a gnostic work), in which the Apostle John discovers that one of his followers has had a portrait made of him, and is venerating it: (27) ...he [John] went into the bedchamber, and saw the portrait of an old man crowned with garlands, and lamps and altars set before it. And he called him and said: Lycomedes, what do you mean by this matter of the portrait? Can it be one of thy gods that is painted here? For I see that you are still living in heathen fashion. Later in the passage John says, "But this that you have now done is childish and imperfect: you have drawn a dead likeness of the dead." |
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Image of the Saviour Not Made by Hand: a traditional Orthodox iconography in the interpretation of Simon Ushakov (1658). | In addition to the legend that Pilate had made an image of Christ, the 4th Century bishop Eusebius, in his Church History, provides another reference to a first icon of Jesus. He relates that King Abgar of Edessa sent a letter to Jesus at Jerusalem, asking Jesus to come and heal him of an illness. In this version there is no image. Then, in the later account found in the Syriac Doctrine of Addai, a painted image of Jesus is mentioned in the story; and even later, in the account given by Evagrius, the painted image is transformed into an image that miraculously appeared on a towel when Christ pressed the cloth to his wet face (Veronica and her Cloth, Kuryluk, Ewa, Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, 1991). Further legends relate that the cloth remained in Edessa until the 10th century, when it was taken to Constantinople. In 1204 it was lost when Constantinople was sacked by Crusaders. |
Elsewhere in his Church History, Eusebius reports seeing what he took to be portraits of Jesus, Peter and Paul, and also mentions a bronze statue at Banias / Paneas, of which he wrote, "They say that this statue is an image of Jesus" (H.E. 7:18); further, he relates that locals thought the image to be a memorial of the healing of the woman with an issue of blood by Jesus (Luke 8:43-48), because it depicted a standing man wearing a double cloak and with arm outstretched, and a woman kneeling before him with arms reaching out as if in supplication. Some scholars today think it possible to have been a misidentified pagan statue whose true identity had been forgotten; some have thought it to be Aesculapius, the God of healing, but the description of the standing figure and the woman kneeling in supplication is precisely that found on coins depicting the bearded emperor Hadrian reaching out to a female figure symbolizing a province kneeling before him (see John Francis Wilson's Caesarea Philippi: Banias, the Lost City of Pan; I.B. Tauris, London, 2004). When Christianity was legalized by the emperor Constantine within the Roman Empire in the early 4th Century, huge numbers of pagans became converts. This created the opportunity for the transfer of allegiance and practice from the old gods and heroes to the new religion, and for the gradual adaptation of the old system of image making and veneration to a Christian context. "By the early fifth century, we know of the ownership of private icons of saints; by c. 480-500, we can be sure that the inside of a saint's shrine would be adorned with images and votive portraits, a practice which had probably begun earlier" (Pagans and Christians, Robin Lane Fox, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989).
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