The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon From Sinai (Chap. 1 From the the Art of Seeing)

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37 CHAPTER ONE he Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai Introduction: Journey to Sinai Situated among the mountains of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, St. Catherine’s Monastery is the oldest, continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. Hermits and ascetics established settlements here as early as the third century, and the site soon became an impor- tant center of pilgrimage, for it was here that God had spoken to Moses from the burning bush (Ex 3:2). 1 he monastery was also t he home of St. John Klimakos, who served as abbot in the early seventh century. His famous work, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, is a classic of Christian spiritual writing, and is read aloud in Orthodox monasteries every year during Lent. Also popular in the West, the Ladder was the irst book published in the New World, thanks to the eforts of Juan de la Madalena, who typeset the work in Spanish on a printing press, sent to Mexico by Charles V in 1535. 2 Between 548 and 565, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I ordered the building on the site of a large basilica church, along with a series of massive fortiications, which stand to this day. he walls enclosing the monastery reach up to sixty feet high, and in some places are more than 1 he site was visited in December 383, by Egeria, a wealthy nun from the western Medi- terranean, who notes that it was situated ubi plurima monasteria et ecclesia (SC 296:142). Ar- cheologists have conirmed that the monastery was indeed the focal point of a large network of monastic communities and settlements, with the total number of surrounding sites reaching into the hundreds; cf. I. Finkelstein, “Byzantine Monastic Remains in Southern Sinai,” DOP 39 (1985): 39–75; and U. Dahari, Monastic Settlements in South Sinai in the Byzantine Period. he Archeological Remains ( Jerusalem, 2000). 2 According to G. Couilleau, “Jean Climaque,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. 8A (Paris, 1972), 369–389; and W. Lowries, A Short Life of Kierkegaard (Princeton, 1942), 167.

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The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai

Transcript of The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon From Sinai (Chap. 1 From the the Art of Seeing)

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    CHAPTER ONE

    he Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai

    Introduction: Journey to Sinai

    Situated among the mountains of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, St. Catherines Monastery is the oldest, continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. Hermits and ascetics established settlements here as early as the third century, and the site soon became an impor-tant center of pilgrimage, for it was here that God had spoken to Moses from the burning bush (Ex 3:2).1

    he monastery was also the home of St. John Klimakos, who served as abbot in the early seventh century. His famous work, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, is a classic of Christian spiritual writing, and is read aloud in Orthodox monasteries every year during Lent. Also popular in the West, the Ladder was the irst book published in the New World, thanks to the eforts of Juan de la Madalena, who typeset the work in Spanish on a printing press, sent to Mexico by Charles V in 1535.2

    Between 548 and 565, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I ordered the building on the site of a large basilica church, along with a series of massive fortiications, which stand to this day. he walls enclosing the monastery reach up to sixty feet high, and in some places are more than

    1 he site was visited in December 383, by Egeria, a wealthy nun from the western Medi-terranean, who notes that it was situated ubi plurima monasteria et ecclesia (SC 296:142). Ar-cheologists have conirmed that the monastery was indeed the focal point of a large network of monastic communities and settlements, with the total number of surrounding sites reaching into the hundreds; cf. I. Finkelstein, Byzantine Monastic Remains in Southern Sinai, DOP 39 (1985): 3975; and U. Dahari, Monastic Settlements in South Sinai in the Byzantine Period. he Archeological Remains ( Jerusalem, 2000).

    2 According to G. Couilleau, Jean Climaque, Dictionnaire de spiritualit, vol. 8A (Paris, 1972), 369389; and W. Lowries, A Short Life of Kierkegaard (Princeton, 1942), 167.

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    ten feet thick.3 he basilica, which has an unusual series of ten side-chapels, is one of the most important to have survived from the sixth century. Justinians church was originally dedicated to the Burning Bush, understood as a type of the Virgin, whose womb was not con-sumed by the ire of divinity. At some point during the tenth century, the monastery was re-dedicated to St. Catherine, ater acquiring the relics of the great Alexandrian martyr.4

    Among its many justiiable claims to fame, the monastery houses the worlds second largest collection of Byzantine manuscripts, with three thousand codices, surpassed only by the manuscript collections of the Vatican Library.5 What is perhaps the most famous manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus, also igures in the monasterys most famous thet, perpetrated in 1859 by the German biblical scholar Constantine Tisch-endorf. he Codex, which dates to the fourth century, is one of the ear-liest and best textual witnesses for many of the books of the Old and New Testaments. Tischendorf gave the codex to Tsar Alexander II, and it later passed into the hands of the Soviets, who sold it in 1933 to the British Government. It is currently in the British Library.

    In addition, the monastery also houses the worlds largest and most important collection of icons, more than two thousand in number, dat-ing from every period of Christian history. Four of the most ancient icons were removed from the monastery by archimandrite (later arch-bishop) Porphyry Ouspensky (18041878) and taken to Kiev. hese icons pre-date the outbreak of the Iconoclast controversy in 726, as does the icon of Christ that is the focus of this chapter. he total num-ber of surviving, pre-Iconoclasm icons is extremely limited (around twenty-ive), and nearly all of them have been preserved at Sinai, be-yond the reach of the Byzantine emperor and his icon-smashing agents.

    Modern study of these icons began only in the 1950s, when the Hel-lenic Archeological Society conducted a number of surveys under the

    3 See the studies by Forsyth, who conducted the irst modern architectural survey and analysis: G.H. Forsyth, he Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mt. Sinai: he Church and For-tress of Justinian, DOP 22 (1968): 319; and G.H. Forsyth and K. Weitzmann, he Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mt. Sinai: he Church and Fortress of Justinian (Ann Arbor, 1973). See also I. Demakopoulos, , 9.4 (19771979): 261301, who updates some of Forsyths work in the course of commenting on the efects of the 1971 ire that damaged the northeastern wall and attached structures.

    4 he date is disputed, and estimates range from the 9th to the 11th centuries.5 In 19491950, a large number of the Sinai manuscripts were microilmed with the help

    of the United States Library of Congress.

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    direction of George Soteriou (1881-1965), professor of Early Christian and Byzantine Art at the University of Athens, and founding director of the Byzantine Museum. Soteriou had initially been invited to St. Cath-erines in the 1930s, and subsequently published studies on individual icons in 1939, 1947, 1950, and 1953, culminating in a major two-volume work published jointly with his wife, Maria (d. 1979), in 19561958.6

    Shortly aterwards, Princeton scholar Kurt Weitzmann (19041993) began what would be a long and fruitful association with the monastery, including a series of four campaigns (1958, 1960, 1963, and 1965) conducted jointly by the Universities of Alexandria, Michigan, and Princeton. During the second campaign, Weitzmann studied and photographed thousands of illuminated manuscripts and icons, and supervised the restoration of the monasterys celebrated, sixth-century apse mosaic of the Transiguration of Christ. Before the pioneering work of Soteriou and Weitzmann, the Sinai icons were largely un-known, and their discovery and publication greatly advanced our understanding of Byzantine art and the civilization that produced it.

    However, such a vast and unprecedented project, involving inter-nationally recognized scholars, high-ranking members of the clergy, along with their respective academic, ecclesiastical, and government bureaucracies, was bound for trouble. In October of 1960, not long af-ter the start of the second expedition, Professor George Forsyths ar-cheological work on the basilica was called to a halt, in fear that the winter rains would lood the now exposed foundations. At the same time, diferences of opinion regarding the cleaning and restoration of the pre-Iconoclasm icons escalated into a minor international afair.

    Acting on questionable reports from a faction of scholars, the monasterys liaison to the project, Father Gregorios (who would later become abbot), quarreled with Weitzmann and ordered a stop to the restoration work. he Egyptian authorities were called in, and it was eventually agreed to bring the matter before a plenary session of the forthcoming Twelth International Congress of Byzantine Studies, scheduled to meet in Ohrid, Yugoslavia, in September of 1961. At the conclusion of the plenary, a committee was formed to assess the situa-tion and drat a series of recommendations. On the following day, the

    6 For full references, see the bibliographies published in XAE 4 (19641965): , and in G. Konidaris, ed., 1400 (Athens, 1971), 548549. Ma-ria Soteriou published similar studies in 1960, 1961, and 1969; cf. XAE 9 (19771979): -.

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    committee members (i.e., Andr Grabar, David Talbot Rice, Otto De-mus, Manolis Chatzidakis, and Ernst Hawkins) presented their report. hey unanimously agreed that the work of cleaning the icons should continue, without however repainting any missing parts, and insist-ed that such work be undertaken only by qualiied experts under the supervision of responsible scholars. he latter clause was suiciently ambiguous as to allow all parties to feel vindicated, and Weitzmann was allowed to resume his work.7

    Ater the conclusion of the Alexandria-Michigan-Princeton proj-ect, work on the icons continued intermittently. his was partly due to the monasterys remote location, the ongoing reluctance of the monks to expose the icons to possible damage and thet, and various political events such as the Arab-Israeli conlicts of 19671974, during which time the Sinai Peninsula was a theater of war.

    Important advances in the study of the Sinai icons were made in the late 1990s, when the monastery loaned nine icons to a major exhibition of Byzantine art that took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (he Glory of Byzantium, 11 March6 July 1997).8 Four years later, the same number of icons was loaned to the Church of Greece for an exhibition mounted at the Byzantine and Christian Mu-seum in Athens (28 May31 July 2001). In celebration of the millenni-um, the exhibitions centerpiece was the sixth-century icon of Christ that is the focus of this chapter, and this is the only time in its long his-tory that the icon has ever let the monastery.9 At the same time, a group of ten Sinai icons igured in the exhibition, Sinai, Byzantium, Russia, mounted initially at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg ( JuneSeptember, 2000), and then at Londons Courtauld Gallery (October 2000February 2001).10 Collaboration between St. Catherines and the Metropolitan Museum continued with the loan of more than forty icons to the exhibition Byzantium: Faith and Power (23 March4 July

    7 See the account, including a dossier of letters and other documents, published by Gre-gorios, Archbishop of Sinai, ,, in Konidaris, ed., , 457-496.

    8 H.C. Evans and W.D. Wixom, eds., he Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era A.D. 8431261 (New York, 1997). Partially remounted as he Glory of Byzantium at Sinai [ ] (Athens, 1997).

    9 . Kypraiou, ed., . 2000. ( , 28 31 2001) (Athens, 2002), 188189.

    10 Y. Piatnitsky, ed., Sinai, Byzantium, and Russia (Sinai and Saint Petersburg, 2000).

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    2004).11 More recently, a group of Sinai icons was the focus of an exhi-bition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California (Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, 14 November4 March 2007).12 Finally, as this book was nearing completion, icons from Sinai were traveling to London for a major exhibition of Byzantine art at the Royal Academy (25 October 200822 March 2009).13

    In the half-century since the pioneering work of Soteriou and Weitzmann, scholarship on the Sinai icons has made signiicant prog-ress, especially in the last ten years, during which these icons have been featured in major exhibitions at some of the worlds leading museums. Such exhibitions, oten held in conjunction with academic conferenc-es and symposia, serve the needs of the scholarly community and at the same time bring the Sinai icons to the attention of a large public audi-ence. Even though some of these exhibitions have been largely com-mercial enterprises, we should be encouraged by the increasing sensitiv-ityespecially evident at the Getty exhibitionto the icons function and signiicance in the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church and in the devotional life of the faithful.

    Part One: Description and Analysis

    As mentioned above, the Sinai Christ, which most scholars date to the irst half of the sixth century, belongs to a very small group of panel icons that has survived or otherwise predates Iconoclasm (726843). It will therefore be instructive to consider the fate of another sixth-century image, a marble relief icon of Christ from the church of St. Polyeuktos in Constantinople [ig. 1]. he carving was defaced by the Iconoclasts, and subsequently placed in a substructure beneath the church. During the Fourth Crusade (1204), the church was pillaged and fell into ruin. Buried somewhere beneath modern-day Istanbul, the church was considered lost for ever, until it was discovered by chance

    11 H.C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (12611577), (New York, 2004). Partially remounted as Pilgrimage to Sinai: Treasures rom the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine [ : ] (Athens, 2004). he Sinai icons exhibited in New York in 1997 and 2004 subsequently traveled to Athens, where they were placed on display at the Benaki Museum.

    12 R.S. Nelson and K.M. Collins, eds., Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons rom Sinai (Los Angeles, 2006).

    13 R. Cormack and M. Vassilaki, eds., Byzantium 3301453 (London, 2008).

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    in 1960, at which time the icon of Christ, and nine other panels like it, all similarly defaced, were unearthed.14 he Sinai Christ was spared a similar fate, in part because of its remote location, but also because the world had changed: from about 640, St. Catherines had been residing in what had become Islamic territory.

    he Sinai Christ is thus a remnant from a shattered artistic tradi-tion, a survivor from a government campaign to purge the state of sa-cred images. Like most survivors, it has an important and fascinating story to tell. As a work of art, the Sinai Christ is surely one of the last great achievements of Byzantine panel painting before the outbreak of Iconoclasm, quintessentially what an icon was at the time the crisis erupted. Let us begin, then, by attending closely to its archeological and artistic features.15

    Description

    he icon [ig. 2] is 84.5 cm in height, and 44.3 cm at the top and 43.8 cm at the bottom in width. It is painted on a thin wooden board of 1-2 cm in thickness ( 1 cm at the top and bottom, 2 cm toward the sides). he icon is impressive for its sheer size, but was originally slightly taller and wider, before it was later trimmed at the top and along both sides. It is, therefore, not unlikely that the icon was intend-ed for display in the basilica, the walls of which, apart from the icono-graphic program of the apse, are bare.

    Unlike later Byzantine icons, which are painted in tempera, the Sinai Christ was painted in encaustic, a medium in which colored pig-ments are suspended in heated beeswax. he visual and aesthetic efects of encaustic, which are diicult to capture in a photograph, produce a

    14 See C. Mango and I. evenko, Remains of the Church of Saint Polyeuktos at Con-stantinople, DOP 15 (1961): 243247; and R. M. Harrison, Excavations at Saraane in Istanbul, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1986).

    15 he following technical information, and parts of the subsequent description and anal-ysis, are indebted to the work of G. Soteriou, (Athens, 1958), 125126; M. Chatzidakis, An Encaustic Icon of Christ at Sinai, Art Bulletin 49 (1967): 197208; re-printed in id., Studies in Byzantine Art and Archaeology (London, 1972), XVII; K. Weitzmann, he Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: he Icons, 1: From the Sixth to the Tenth Cen-tury (Princeton, 1976), 1315; G. Galavaris, , in : , ed. C. Manais (Athens, 1990), 91-101; and J.C. Anderson, he Byz-antine Panel Portrait before and ater Iconoclasm, in he Sacred Image East and West, eds. R. Ousterhout and L. Brubaker (Urbana, 1995), 2544.

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    warm, luminous transparency, along with a sot, smooth texture not unlike the appearance of human lesh.16

    Christ is depicted in bust form, frontally disposed, and blessing the beholder with his right hand. In his let hand, he holds a large Gospel book, its binding ornamented with pearls and precious stones forming a cross and right-angles.17 He wears a purple-violet mantle (himation) that envelops his arms up to the wrists, revealing underneath a small part of a tunic (chiton) of the same color, but ornamented with a verti-cal stripe (clavus) of lighter color and heightened with inely engraved gold lines of which only a few traces remain.18

    A sense of space is created by the curved, architectural backdrop (recognizable as a hemicycle), whose ornamental windows terminate in a cornice, each surmounted by a golden volute.19 Flanked by the pro-jected piers of this structure, Christ stands before an open space that recedes behind him in perspective. However, the precise relationship between the igure and the architectural frame is somewhat ambigu-ous. From one point of view, Christ stands prominently in the fore-ground, face to face with the viewer. At the same time, he occupies a three-dimensional position in space, the depth of which is opened up in a distinctly illusionist fashion by the distant architecture depicted in half tones. Obviously the efect of foregrounding is meant to dominate, but it is efectively challenged by the spatial setting, which creates a subtle though inescapable sense of ambiguity.

    he elusive setting is intensiied by the indeinite sense of time, primarily through the treatment of the graded background, painted with a blue grey-green in two tones, with the darker tone at the horizon line, in a schematic rendering of atmospheric perspective. In the upper

    16 In the 19th or perhaps the 18th century, the icon was heavily over-painted, which sub-sequently led to the mistaken notion that it was originally a work of the 13th century. In 1962, the icon was cleaned and the later layers of paint were removed.

    17 he symbolism of these forms, known as gammadia, is debated; they bear comparison with the gammadia on the altar cloths depicted in Ravenna, also of the 6th century, and are found on Roman burial clothing.

    18 he clavus was originally an indication of senatorial rank. Usually purple or gold, clavi were woven into the tunic in pairs in such a way as to be visible even when the tunic was cov-ered by an outer mantle.

    19 A hemicycle is a rounded recess, oten a group of columns arranged in a semi-circular formation. Anderson notes that hemicycles continued to be built during the late-antique pe-riod, so that Christ appears here in a contemporary setting, as if in the middle of a forum. he volute is a spiral ornament found on capitals, oten twisted, scrolled, or whorled; cf. Anderson, Byzantine Panel Portrait, 29.

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    corners appear two eight-pointed stars, shining paradoxically in the day, and thus reminiscent of the star of Bethlehem (Mt 2:9). In the numero-logical symbolism of the early Church, the eighth day was the day of the Resurrection, which transcended the seven days of the cosmic week, and pointed like a lodestar to the end of time. hus the hour depicted in our icon may be the dawn, which is one of the names of the Messiah (cf. Num 24:17; Lk 1:78; 2 Pet 1:19; Rev 2:28), who in the book of Rev-elation calls himself the bright morning star (Rev 22:16).20

    he face of Christ, framed by thick, dark hair, is intensiied by con-trast with the large, cruciform nimbus, the bars of which are delineated in a gold color slightly darker than the golden ground of the nimbus (although this is rarely visible in photographs). he nimbus is deco-rated with a border of small, stamped rosettes, a device which has par-allels in several other encaustic icons at Sinai, as does the thick, dark, grey-blue line that runs around its circumference.21

    Christ Pantokrator

    To the modern viewer, the Sinai Christ, with his long hair and beard, may appear to be a rather conventional depiction of the Savior, but this was not quite the case in the sixth century. To complicate the picture still further, the origins and historical development of this par-ticular type of Christ are not very well understood, due to the lack of surviving evidence. here are, however, parallel images on contempo-rary coins, and these have igured prominently in eforts to locate the Sinai Christ in a larger iconographic context.

    As has been pointed out by several scholars, the iconographic type of the Sinai Christ occurs on a gold solidus of Justinian II (685695) [ig. 3], and, earlier, on a silver cross of Justin II (567578)both ob-jects being produced before the outbreak of Iconoclasm. he same type appears on the coins of Michael III (842867), following the conclu-sion of the Iconoclast controversy in 843 [ig. 4]. It therefore seems likely that the iconographic type in question had been adopted as a

    20 See below, n. 111.21 Compare Weitzmann, he Monastery of Saint Catherine, nos. 45. On either side of

    the nimbus, there are faint traces of an inscription (in cinnabar lettering) that reads: () (), i.e., Jesus Christ the Philanthropos (Lover of Mankind). his is probably of later date, as are the cinnabar lines and small cruciform motifs of the cross inscribed within the nimbus.

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    kind of emblem by the imperial court in Constantinople, perhaps mod-eled on a well-known image in the capital, such as that of Christ Chal-kites, which adorned the principal entrance to the imperial palace (the so-called Chalke Gate).22

    In what has been called a revolution in Byzantine coinage, Justin-ian II was the irst Roman emperor to place the image of Christ on his coins. his dramatic change of policy, although not easy to interpret, suggests that a profound spiritual change, a shit in imperial self-deini-tion, took possession of some of the rulers of the late sixth and seventh centuries.23 Historians have tried to explain this new situation in light of the social and political upheavals that toppled the Justinianic order: foreign invasions, attacks on the capital, the rise of Islam, permanent territorial losses, a decline in literacy and cultural life, and the prolif-eration of divisive theological controversies.24

    As a result of these events, the Byzantine emperor was no longer the de facto master of the oikoumene, and so the symbolic focus of po-litical power was shited away from the earthly ruler and placed on a level where it was not subject to the vagaries of politics and history. And this seems clear even from the coins inscriptions: Justinian II is now identiied as the servus Christi, whereas Christ is the Rex regnan-tium, a title which, among other things, sounds a note of eschatological expectation: hey will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will con-quer them, for He is the Lord of lords and King of kings (Rev 17:14; cf. 1 Tim 6:15).

    he evidence provided by late-antique coins has played a promi-nent role in the study of the Sinai icon, and has led at least one scholar

    22 See Weitzmann, he Monastery of Saint Catherine, 13; J.D. Breckenridge, Christ on the Lyre-Backed hrone, DOP 34-35 (1980-1981): 254255; id., he Numismatic Iconography of Justinian II (685695, 705711 A.D.) (New York, 1959), 4662; and P. Grierson, Byzantine Coins (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), 9798, 175176.

    23 On the revolution in coinage, see E. Kitzinger, he Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm, DOP 8 (1954): 127; and Grierson, Byzantine Coins, 27. he notion of a profound spiritual change is set forth by A. Grabar, LEmpereur dans lart byzantine (Paris, 1936), 163164; cf. id. LIconoclasme byzantin (Paris, 1998), 4650.

    24 During this period, the Persians overran Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and repeatedly in-vaded Asia Minor; the Arabs conquered the irst three of these provinces and North Africa as well; the Slavs occupied most of the Balkan Peninsula. he Visigoths reconquered the small Byzantine foothold in Spain, and the Lombards much of Byzantine Italy. hese disasters in-volved the loss of two-thirds of what in 565 (the date of Justinians death) had still been impe-rial territory, with far-reaching efects on every level of society, cf. J. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century: he Transformation of a Culture (Cambridge, 1990).

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    to date the panel to around 700, thereby making it contemporary with the coins of Justinian II.25 Such a dating also aligns the icon with the eighty-second canon of the Penthekte Synod, convoked by the same emperor and convened in his palace (691692). his canon prescribed that Christ be depicted in human form and not symbolically as a lamb. While we cannot be certain regarding the speciic type of hu-man form the canon had in view,26 it is ultimately of little importance: the type that in fact prevailed shared a common archetype with both the coin type of Justinian II and the Sinai Christ. Not only had this type become an emblem of the empire, but it was also the type of Christ with the widest geographical distribution. In addition, it had the ad-vantage of corresponding to the celebrated image of Christ not made by hands, which had been miraculously derived directly from Christs face during his sojourn on earth.27

    It seems, then, that in an age of political catastrophe, social decline, and religious anxiety, the sacriicial lamb was no longer deemed an ap-propriate symbol of imperial self-expression. What was needed was a powerful, adult Christ, whom later ages would call the Pantokrator, that is, All-Sovereign. No longer subject to time, still less a victim of the times, this Christ promised to appear at the end of time to judge the world (cf. Rev 19:15).28

    Of course, the evidence provided by coins is subject to multiple

    25 E. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making (Cambridge, 1977), 120, with the qualiica-tion that the iconography is a reversion to a Justinianic ideal of lifelike monumentality.

    26 Grabar, LIconoclasme byzantin, 48-49, argues that the human form envisioned by the canon was that of the youthful Christ, with a triangular face with short curly hair and beard, which appears on a second series of coins issued by Justinian II. Grierson, Byzantine Coins, 98, however, relates the canon to the mature type of Christ (with a long face and dark, lowing hair), and suggests that the issue of the new coin type is scarcely likely to have been a consequence of the promulgation of the canon, as some scholars have supposed; more probably it was the striking of the coin that caused discussion of the matter and led to the formulation of the canon.

    27 On which, see the remarks of G. Dagron, Holy Image and Likeness, DOP 45 (1991): 2333, 2830.

    28 Art historians continue to debate the genealogy of the Pantokrator type, some seeing it as inspired by the iconography of ancient philosophers, from which it deviates by the incor-poration of long hair; cf. P. Zanker, he Mask of Socrates: he Image of the Intellectual in Antiq-uity (Berkeley, 1995), 297307. Others argue for a mythological source (e.g., Zeus, Asklepios), but apart from the beard, there is not much to associate the iconography of Christ with that of the gods. Even so, the artistic line between Christ and Zeus was not always clear, and re-mained a sensitive issue: cf. John of Damascus, Defense of Sacred Images 3.130 (Kotter, 3:196); John of Jerusalem, On the Holy Icons (PG 95:313C); and Ignatius the Deacon, Life of Patriarch Tarasios, 5455 (ed. S. Ethymiadis [Ashgate, 1998], 144146).

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    and at times conlicting interpretations. One thing, however, seems sure: the close connection of the Sinai Christ to the iconography of the imperial coins, along with its exceptional artistic quality, leaves little doubt that our icon was produced in Constantinople. But when? As-signing the icon a date coincident with the reign of Justinian II is cer-tainly attractive, not least for its theoretical elegance. However, the iconographic type in question was so widespread by the end of the sixth century that it seems mistaken to group the Sinai Christ with coins and canonical prescriptions issued a century later.

    It seems best, then, to hold to the earlier date and concur with the opinion that the icon was brought to Sinai at the time of its construc-tion under Justinian I. Alternatively, it could have been painted in situ by one of the Constantinopolitan artists who decorated the basilica in the mid-sixth century, a supposition that inds some support in the par-allels between the apse mosaic and the icon, which we shall consider below. In either case, there are no real grounds for doubting the Con-stantinopolitan provenance of our icon, which is both a masterful de-piction of the central igure of the Christian faith, and a powerful sym-bol of Justinians empire.29

    The Aesthetics of Ambiguity

    Let us now resume our examination of the Sinai Pantokrator, this time paying particular attention to the depiction of the face and eyes, since it was on these that ancient portrait painters lavished all their talent.30

    Christs face is luminous, mostly ivory in tone, and in general cor-

    29 he 6th-century Moses cross, designed especially for the monastery, but most likely made in Syria or Palestine, indicates that lavish gits were being brought to Sinai from other parts of the empire as well. he cross, which is without parallel, is inscribed with two Moses scenes (both of which also igure in the monasterys apse mosaic), along with an inscription from Ex 19:1618. With an upright bar of 1.04 m, it may have originally been a ixture in the main church (in the vicinity of our icon?), perhaps on the top of the chancel screen. But even though the igures are of high quality, they do not compare with the artistic level of the Sinai Christ, as do none of the early icons said to be of Syro-Palestinian origin, see K. Weitzmann and I. evenko, he Moses Cross at Sinai, DOP 17 (1963): 385398.

    30 hus Plutarch, Life of Alexander the Great 1.1: Just as painters get the likenesses in their portraits from the face and the expression of the eyes, wherein the character shows itself, but make very little account of the other parts of the body, so I must be permitted to devote myself rather to the signs of the soul in men, and by means of these to portray the life of each (LCL 7:224).

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    rectly and coherently lighted, creating the impression of a single light source somewhere above and to the right (perhaps in the late ater-noon) [ig. 5]. he play of light creates an illusion of volume, as in the deep shadow thrown on the side of the neck, or in the shadow the nose casts on the cheek, and in the deep crease at the top fold of the eyelid.

    On Christs right cheek (which is on our let), the shadows are greenish-grey (the same as the under-painting on the chin, which is perhaps easier to see). he let cheek, however, has a trace of purple-violet added to the grey to mark the transition from light to shade. he same purple-violet (which photographs closer to a sienna) is used to indicate the shadows of the upper eyelids, the let side of the nose, and the nostril, while on the right side, the greenish grey tones are used both around the eye and on the let side of the nose.

    he features of the face are not outlined, but built up by the juxta-position of dark and light brush strokes. he modeling of the forehead is executed with white highlights, along with small white lines around the eyes, hatched in with a ine brush. he lips are modeled with nu-ances of a pale, cherry-purple color. he mustache and beard, in shades of chestnut, are rendered in a painterly manner, and the treatment of the hair, when compared to the rendering of the face, is somewhat cur-sory and schematic. he hands, which are slightly darker than the face, are also treated in summary fashion. To be sure, hands, garments, book, and architecture are executed with considerable mastery, but not with the same care or attention as the face.31 he result is a magnetic portrait in which dynamic expressionand the viewers attentionis concen-trated intensely in the face and eyes.

    Upon closer inspection, however, things are not quite what they seem. Although the head of Christ is centered within the frame of the panel, the features of his face are disposed in a distinctly asymmetrical manner. he long nose, for example, is not in the middle of the face, but

    31 he hands, in particular, are markedly diferent from the rest of the igure, for which they appear too small, and of a much more ruddy hue than the face. In an unpublished paper delivered in Athens in 1998, Tasos Margaritov suggested that these hands belong in fact to an earlier image of Christ, whose face was later painted over (with the face we currently see). his is an intriguing suggestion, although Margaritov undermined his case when he suggested that the over-painting was done, not in the 6th-century by a Byzantine painter, but in the 16th cen-tury by El Greco. To date, the icon has not been tested with x-rays to determine if there are earlier levels of painting under the present surface. I am thankful to Fr. Justin of St. Catherines Monastery for this information.

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    The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai

    in the middle of the part of the face that is illuminated. he shaded part of Christs let cheek is more or less incorporated into the width of the let side of his face. One might think that by such a displacement of the central axis the artist intended to indicate a slight turn of the igure to the right. However, the inner corner of the let eye is precisely as far from the root of the nose as the inner corner of the right eye, as if the face were rigidly frontal.

    If the face gives the impression of being represented frontallywithout being so in factthe body reinforces the sensation that Christ is turned to his right, both by the level of his sloping shoulders, and by the movement and folds of his garments. he right shoulder is partial-ly uncovered, while the let is not, so that the torso is on an angle not only to the picture plane, but also to the orientation of the head.

    Within the face of this ambiguous igure, the two large eyes difer in terms of shape, size, and activity. he right pupil, turned up toward the top of the eye, is higher than the let pupil, which is ixed directly in the center of the iris. Each pupil, moreover, is in a slightly diferent state of dilation/constriction. Under normal physiological conditions, when light is shone into one eye alone, the pupils of both eyes constrict. In the case of the Sinai Christ, however, the eyes appear to be respond-ing independently of each other, as if one were in the light and the other in relative darkness.

    he eyes themselves are not placed on the same level, and, through strong diferences in the movement of the eyebrows, each eye acquires a rather diferent expression. he right eyebrow is relatively relaxed, lattened on its lower side, and thickens into a gentle, rounded curve over the center of the eye. he let eyebrow, on the other hand, is fur-rowed and twisted, like a troubled braid, knotted together in opposing angles, and dramatically raised in a pointed arch. he raised arch, more-over, creates a space beneath it for a series of vigorous white highlights that are not found on the right. he right eye, which is smaller, radiates tranquility, but the energy introduced by the contorted let eye, like a gathering storm, threatens the balance, and efectively disrupts the per-fect symmetry, giving to the otherwise handsome, regular face a dis-turbing sense of tension and disquiet.

    One seeks in vain for elements of formal unity between one side of the face and the other. As already mentioned, the let cheek employs a diferent color scheme in the modeling of the large, dark shadow,

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    which gives it an angularity that deviates from its counterpart. he mouth and lips are also asymmetrical. he well-deined cupids bow of the upper lip inclines slightly to the let, and whereas the right naso-labial fold of the philtrum is visible, the let fold is obscured by the mus-tache. he lips and mouth are turned down on the let hand side, being abruptly halted by the elongated (let) mustache, whose row of sharply angled hatchings (down to the edge of the lip) contrasts with the smooth, elongated lines of the right.

    In sum, the two sides of Christs face are marked by signiicant dif-ferences of color, contrasts of light and shade, variations in size and shape, and the handling of the brush and application of the heated wax. It is to the expressive and symbolic values of these diferences that we may now turn.

    Changing Sides

    If we cover irst one side of the face, and then the other, thereby viewing each half in isolation, the diferences between the two sides become immediately apparent and indeed are quite striking. When we reverse the image [ig. 6], so that the let-hand side now appears on our right, the contrast is brought plainly into view. he distortion of the (original) let-hand side now seems overwhelming, and mars the entire depiction.

    his dramatic change in our perception of the image is due to a neuro-physiological phenomenon known as cerebral lateralization, a feature of the brains split structure. As is well known, the human brain is physically and functionally divided into two lateral hemispheres, so that the let hemisphere controls the right half of the body and vice versa. Hemispheric lateralization, moreover, accounts for certain abili-ties being controlled more by the let hemisphere and others by the right hemisphere. In most people, for example, control of speech is in the let hemisphere, whereas the right controls spatial perception. hus when we look at another person, our vision is drawn to the right side of that persons face (which is on our let), because the right hemisphere of the brain (which receives visual input from the let visual ield) is responsible for deciphering and interpreting facial expressions and

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    The Face of Christ in a Sixth-Century Icon from Sinai

    moods.32 When the icon is viewed in its normal state, our vision is drawn to the right side of Christs face (which is on our let), while the disigured, let-hand side recedes from view, being kept in check by the brains right hemisphere, which insures an aesthetically pleasant view-ing experience.

    Having uncovered this striking diference, we may pursue our in-quiry still further. If we take each half of the face and duplicate it, so that each half forms a mirror image of itself, we can generate two im-ages that are astonishing in their diferences [igs. 7-8].33 Before us now is a Janus-like igure at once meek and majestic, diminutive and daunt-ing, oscillating between the extremes of vulnerability and power. On the one hand, we are presented with a timid, slightly sad-looking young man, who hesitantly turns to us in a gesture of prayer or petition. He seems poised to bless and perhaps even to touch us. With his hands gently raised before his heart, he appears poignantly, almost patheti-cally, human in his unspoken yearning for contact and love. And yet, absorbed in his prayer, his eyes are turned inward, so that he looks, not at us, but at God. His dark counterpart, on the other hand, is a ponder-ous Titan, aloof to all relation. Solemn and impassive, he is self-con-tained in the closed circle formed by the armor of his authoritative volumes, themselves suggestive of ominous secrets and threatening revelations.

    he contrast between these two igures could hardly be more pro-nounced. Were we not aware of their common source, it would be dif-icult to believe that they are but fragments of a larger whole, painted by the same artist, indeed the elements of a single face. Were sixth-cen-tury icon painters capable of such conscious stylistic equivocation? hat is what we shall consider in the remainder of this section.

    32 For discussion, see J. Hellige, Hemispheric Activity: Whats Right and Whats Let (Cam-bridge, 1993); and J. Jaynes, he Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston, 1976), 117121.

    33 Byzantine iconographers may have used mirrors to design and achieve certain efects of lattening and distortion, as suggested by B. Uspensky, he Semiotics of the Russian Icon, trans. P.A. Reed (Lisse, 1976); cf. David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Tech-niques of the Old Masters (New York, 2006), 228229, 238. his practice, moreover, may have been encouraged by the use of mirrors (and other relective surfaces) in mystical and visionary experience, cf. L. Jacobs, Jewish Mystical Testimonies (New York, 1976).

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    Form and Content

    In a groundbreaking study, Kurt Weitzmann demonstrated that Byzantine artists employed diferent styles or modes in order to ex-press diferent realities or states of being.34 Classical elements, for ex-ample, oten occur alongside non-classical or even anti-classical ele-ments, so that the two modes seem to be purposely chosen for contrast. An example of this technique, involving two separate pictorial units, occurs in an illustrated herbal of Dioskorides, commissioned by Anicia Juliana, a distant cousin of the Emperor Justinian. In this manuscript, which is exactly contemporary with the Sinai Christ, a naturalistic, classicizing style is used to depict the ancient botanist, whereas an ab-stract, ornamental style is used for the igure of the aristocratic donor. Both images were made by the same painter, whose artistic aim was to contrast the past with the present, the classical with the imperial.35

    he use of contrasting modes also occurs within the same pictorial unit, and it is signiicant that Weitzmann inds a prime example of this technique precisely in the apse mosaic from Sinai. Here, contrasting styles are used to express, not diferences of past and present, but rath-er diferent degrees of corporeality in the igures of Moses and Christ. For example, Moses feet are planted irmly on the ground, and his body, which is slightly turned, stands in classical contrapposto, giving it a high degree of physical reality. he loose leg in particular creates an efect of three-dimensionality and motion in space [ig. 9].36 hese marks of corporeality are efectively contrasted with the relative imma-teriality of the body of Christ, achieved through strict frontality and the suspension of the igure in space independently of any ground line

    34 K. Weitzmann, he Classical in Byzantine Art as a Mode of Individual Expression, in Byzantine Art: An European Art (Athens, 1966), 151-177.

    35 Ibid., 154155; cf. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making, 19, who notes that on the 3rd-century Attic sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, two diferent styles ap-pear side by side on one and the same monument, one for contemporary mortal men, the other for igures from mythology. his is the phenomenon of the so-called modes - the con-ventional use of diferent stylistic manners to denote diferent kinds of subject matter or dif-ferent levels of existence. Similarly, in a 7th-century Sinai icon of the Virgin, Kitzinger sees an outstanding example of an artist modulating his style within one and the same context to suit diferent subjects, to set of from one another diferent orders of being and to express dif-ferent functions (p. 118)

    36 Weitzmann, he Classical in Byzantine Art, 165, notes that these are traditional sculp-tural values, readily paralleled in ancient statues of philosophers, poets, and orators.

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    [ig. 10]. he folds of Christs garments, moreover, are a system of straight lines, and any illusion of corporeality they may have created is diminished both by the absence of shading and the extensive use of white and gold, which tend to latten the body. Weitzmann observes that, in the Sinai apse mosaic, classical corporeality and Christian ab-stractionism are no doubt used purposely in order to distinguish be-tween the human and the divine.37

    Byzantine artists also used contrasting modes to visualize emotion-al expressions, a psychological element that is most readily observed in the depiction of the human face. Once again, a striking example of this technique occurs in the Sinai apse mosaic. Here the impassive, rigidly frontal face of Christ contrasts with the highly expressive face of the Prophet Elijah, which is turned in three-quarter pose with a deep, purple shadow falling on the hair, itself an instance of ancient illusionism. In-fused with deep emotion, the prophets face is expressive of awe, or per-haps worry, achieved by steep contracted brows and obliquely set eyes [ig. 11]. hese elements constitute the classical formula for the depiction of pathos, and Weitzmann suggests that the face of Elijah is ultimately descended from a tragic mask of antiquity. he face of Christ, on the other hand, is devoid of emotion, a quality consistent with the demate-rialization of the body. His wide-open eyes, arched eyebrows, bell-shaped hair, and slightly parted beard are arranged in strict symmetry approaching an almost geometrical clarity [ig. 12]. he overall efect of this pronounced emphasis on abstraction is to remove the igure of Christ from the realm of human qualities, so that he is neither the se-vere judge nor the benevolent savior of later Byzantine art.38

    Sixth-century artists, then, were indeed capable of employing con-trasting styles both in separate pictorial units and side by side in a single composition. In the case of the latter, as exempliied in the Sinai apse mosaic, the artists aim, according to Weitzmann, was to contrast human and divine characteristics. Weitzmann took the matter no fur-ther, but on the basis of his indings one may reasonably argue that Byzantine artists could also make use of diferent styles, not simply in the same composition, but in the same igure, indeed in the same face. hus I believe that the artist of the Sinai icon employed two diferent

    37 Ibid., 164165.38 Ibid., 170173.

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    styles in order to express two contrasting qualities within the one per-son of Christ.39

    Obviously, in the depiction of a single face, stylistic diferences can-not be overly pronounced, or else the image will fail as an artistic unity: it will not be a successful portrait. here is no question, however, that the right and let sides of Christs face are set apart by strong modal con-trasts. When each side is isolated and used to form two separate faces [igs. 7-8], the contrasting modes emerge into plain view, and we are confronted with two divergent portrait types: a naturalistic image of a frail young man, and a colossal, almost non-human igure rendered in a style that is comparatively abstract, hieratic, and symbolic.

    here is no doubt that the Sinai Christ gives expression to a strong duality, and that this was quite deliberate on the part of the artist, who successfully integrated two contrasting styles into a single, uniied por-trait. But what exactly are the two terms at issue? What qualities or aspects of the depicted igure do the contrasting styles aim to express? Do they, as Weitzmanns work suggests, denote the realities of human-ity and divinity? his is what we shall seek to answer in the remainder of this chapter.

    Part Two: heological Interpretation

    As every artist knows, the best way to impress an image on the mind is to subject it to the play of strangeness, marring its aspect through discoloration, distortions, asymmetries, and other incongru-ous visual marks. By distorting the basic elements of form, the hege-mony of natural representation is broken, opening up the image to the play of symbolic associations. In its ability to arrest the eye and impress itself upon the mind, the image becomes a locus of contemplation, a

    39 According to Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making, 24, all early Byzantine art is marked precisely by the coexistence of diverse and contrasting styles, along with extraordinary attempts at synthesis, at reconciling aesthetic views. E. Auerbach, Mimesis: he Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W.R. Trask (Princeton, 1953), 72, had earlier advanced the same claims regarding early Christian literature, which had likewise overthrown the distinc-tion of styles: the age of separate realms of style is over hat the King of Kings was treated as a low criminal, that he was mocked, spat upon, whipped, and nailed to the cross - that story no sooner comes to dominate the consciousness of the people then it completely destroys the aesthetics of the separation of the styles.

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    privileged place for layered networks of meaning, a sonorous seed that opens toward the branching tree of signiications.40

    Our analysis of the visual data indicates that the Sinai Christ has been built up by a series of such distortions, so that the viewers percep-tion is encroached upon by an almost subliminal but nevertheless per-vasive feeling of ambiguity. As described above, the igure of Christ stands in ambiguous relation to the surrounding space, and at an equal-ly ambiguous moment of time: is it dawn, a starry night, or some mo-ment in between? Although Christ appears to be standing quite still, he is nonetheless in the midst of a majestic turn, like a planetary revolu-tion, both vast and imperceptible. Moreover, the odd angles of his body and sloping shoulders make it diicult for us to take his precise physical measure. hese artistic devices give the icon tremendous animation and vitality, enabling the igure of Christ to break free from the conines of the picture plane and advance toward the viewer. hey also create a compelling framework for the contrasting halves of his face.

    hrough his large eyes, the Sinai Christ exerts a mesmerizing pow-er over the viewer. Caught within his gaze, our vision is naturally (and thus inexorably) drawn to the right side of his face. here, however, our bliss of repose is disturbed by something stirring in the shadows, a con-trary force skirting the edges of our vision, concealed within a realm beyond perception.

    Looking at the Sinai Christ, we are face to face with the visual equivalent of the textual stumbling block that so fascinated ancient ex-egetes, for whom obscure and contradictory surfaces concealed lumi-nous depths of meaning.41 Such surfaces demand a new way of looking, a new mode of attention and awareness, and thus mark a point of ana-gogic departure. But to what end? What, to restate our original ques-tion, is the higher or deeper meaning hidden behind the troubled sur-face of the Sinai Christ?

    The Doctrine of Christs Two Natures

    Perhaps the most obvious response, and the one given by many modern interpreters, is to see in our icon a visual expression of Christs

    40 In the words of the Romanian philosopher Mihai Sora, On Poetic Meaning: A Song for Two Violins, cited in D. Staniloae, Revelation through Acts, Words, and Images, in id., heology and the Church, trans. R. Barringer (Crestwood, 1980), 149.

    41 See the introduction to this volume.

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    two natures: divinity and humanity. his was one of the most impor-tant dualities articulated by the early Church, culminating in the Fourth Ecumenical Council (also known as the Council of Chalcedon) in 451, which proclaimed that Christ was both fully God and fully man.

    To assess the matter properly, however, we need to consider some of the iner points of patristic Christology, and thus our focus will now shit away from the icon to the theological context in which it was pro-duced. In particular, we shall look at the development of Christological thought from the period preceding the hird Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, 431), down through the Fith Ecumenical Council, convened in Constantinople by Justinian in 553. he latter provides us with a critical terminus, since it coincides precisely with the place where, and the time when, the Sinai Christ was painted.

    Perhaps the best point of entry into the sacred grove of patristic Christology (which in places runs to a thicket) is a key passage from the writings of St. Gregory the heologian. his important text will serve to familiarize us with a number of critical themes that will be of use to us throughout our discussion. Foremost among them is a particular habit of mind, a method of approaching, relecting on, and expressing in language, the duality in Christ.

    St. Gregory the Theologian

    We begin our Christological study, then, with the heological Ora-tions of St. Gregory the heologian. Delivered before a small audience in a private chapel in Constantinople in the late summer of 380, these ive discourses exerted far-reaching inluence on theological thinking in both the East and the West.42 Recognized as milestones in the his-tory of Trinitarian theology, the Orations also contain a highly devel-oped Christology that anticipated the doctrine of Chalcedon.

    In the hird heological Oration, Gregory responds to a question that remained under discussion through the sixth century and beyond: How are we to understand the diferent and oten contradictory char-

    42 In the Byzantine world, the Orations are extant in as many as 1,500 manuscripts; cf. J. Mossay, Vers une dition critique de Grgoire de Nazianze, Revue dhistoire ecclsiastique 74 (1979): 629. A Latin translation became available to Saint Augustine around 418419, on the basis of which he revised portions of his On the Trinity; cf. P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, trans. H.E. Wedeck (Cambridge, 1969), 202204.

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    acteristics that Scripture ascribes to the person of Christ? To ascribe, for instance, both divinity and mortality to the same subject seems logically impossible and theologically blasphemous: can the immortal God be said to sufer and die? Gregory refers to this contradiction as a stumbling block contained within the literal text of Scripture.43 He believes, however, that it may be readily cleared away by means of a simple principle:

    You must predicate the more sublime expressions of the Godhead, of the nature that transcends bodily experiences, and the lowlier ones of the compound, of Him who because of you was emptied [cf. Phil 2:7], became incarnate, and became man.44

    According to Gregory, the surface contradiction is in fact a con-trast between two diferent forms of speech, two diferent sets of attri-butes that give voice to the mystery of the Incarnation. One form is appropriate to the Godhead, and the other to the reality of the God-head compounded with human nature in the incarnate Christ. Where others see opposition and contradiction, Gregory sees diverse modes of representation, expressing diferences in the revelation and appre-hension of the incarnate Word of God.

    Moreover, when taken together, these contrasting attributes contain a self-correcting dialectic: If the irst set of expressions starts you going astray, the second set takes your error away.45 he productive tension between the two sets of attributes indicates that the mystery of the living Christ cannot be grasped solely within a one-dimensional perspective, for it does not rest on a single plane. he vision of faith must therefore encompass apparent contradictions; it must confess the paradoxical. Gregory admits that such talk appears illogical to his opponents, but for him it is the basic mode through which truth can be discovered, because it preserves the mystery without resolving it rationalistically.46

    Gregorys teaching concerning the twofold character of both Christ and Scripture was not simply a reaction to the theological needs of the

    43 Gregory the heologian, Oration 29.18 (SC 250:216); cf. id., Or. 41.7 (SC 358:330).44 Id., Oration 29.18 (SC 250:216). Gregorys principle, which is cited by John of Damas-

    cus, On the Orthodox Faith 3.4 (Kotter, 2:117), is derived from Athanasios of Alexandria; cf. Letter to Serapion 2.8 (PG 26:620D); id., Against the Arians 2.12; 3.41 (PG 26:172; 409D); and id., On Dionysios 9 (PG 25:492BC).

    45 Gregory the heologian, Oration 29.20 (SC 250:222).46 Ibid., 29.21 (SC 250:224).

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    moment, neither was it a facile pasting-over of literary seams in sacred letters. It was both an authentic expression of the experience of Christ, and an accurate representation of the witness of the New Testament, which itself presents Christ as both authoritative God and sufering man.47 We are therefore not surprised at Gregorys widespread and lasting inluence over the subsequent theological tradition: ater the Bible, he is the most frequently cited author in all patristic and Byzan-tine literature.48

    In the Christology of Gregory the heologian, with its emphasis on duality and paradox, we seem to have found a itting theological framework for the Sinai Christ. Gregorys ability to discern deeper meaning beneath the crosscurrents of a seemingly conlicted surface resonates closely with the visual complexities of our icon. Gregorys two modes of predication, moreover, provide us with a striking analogue to the two artistic styles that were employed in the icons design. Given Gregorys unquestioned authority in the Byzantine world, it would be highly unlikely for iconographers and their patrons to have escaped his inluence. Indeed by the mid-sixth century, when the Sinai Christ was painted, Gregorys inluence was so pervasive that excerpts from his Orations had been redacted by hymnologists and were being chanted in churches throughout the empire.49

    The Council of Chalcedon

    In the period between the delivery of the heological Orations and the painting of the Sinai icon, the question of Christs two natures con-tinued to be intensely debated, and provoked a series of major church

    47 For a study of this phenomenon in the Gospel of Mark, see D. Trakatellis, Authority and Passion (Brookline, 1987). he author argues (p. 139), moreover, that it was the experience of Christs dual nature that ultimately determined Marks selection and organization of his mate-rial. C.K. Barrett, he Dialectical heology of St. John, in id., New Testament Essays (London, 1972), 54, airms the same for the Gospel of John, the antinomies of which (i.e., life and death, truth and error, light and darkness, lesh and spirit, sight and blindness, love and hate) are grounded in the early Churchs theological understanding of the experience of Christ.

    48 J. Noret, Grgoire de Nazianze, lauteur le plus cit, aprs le Bible, dans la littrature ecclsiastique byzantine, in II Symposium Nazianzenum Louvain-la-Neuve, 2528 aot, ed. J Mossay (Paderborn, 1983), 259266.

    49 References in N. Constas, Gregory Nazianzus and a Byzantine Epigram on the Resur-rection by Manuel Philes, in Rightly Teaching the Word of Your Truth. Studies in Honor of Archbishop Iakovos (Brookline, 1995), 253271.

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    councils.50 Ater protracted controversy, the discussion came to a head and received classic deinition at the Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon, 451), which articulated a duality of natures in the unity of the one hypostasis (or person) of Christ. he Councils Deinition of Faith proclaimed that Jesus Christ was one and the same Son, who was both perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, and thus had a double consubstantiality, being both one-in-essence with God (in terms of his divinity), and one-in-essence with us (in terms of his hu-manity). In a key formulation, the Council airmed that the two na-tures were truly united but nonetheless remained distinct, so that Christ is known in two natures without confusion, change, division, or sepa-rationand note the word known here, to which we shall return shortly. Consequently, the characteristics of each nature were not com-promised but preserved in full: the union in no way abolished the distinction in the natures, but rather preserved the characteristic prop-erty of each.51

    he Councils airmation of two natures, however, did not meet with universal approval, and gave rise to a Monophysite party, which held that Christ consisted of only one nature, in which the human element had been more or less absorbed by the divinity. he Mono-physites had capable spokesmen, grew quickly in strength, and became irmly established in Egypt and Syria. A long struggle ensued, and be-came particularly intense during the reign of Justinian, who ardently defended the Chalcedonian dogma, ultimately at an Ecumenical Coun-cil that he convened in 553.

    It was precisely in the midst of this crowded moment that an out-standing artist, in all probability associated with the Justinianic court, painted the icon of Christ now at St. Catherines monastery. Given the urgency of the emperors theological agenda and the theological nature of icons in general, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that the Sinai Christ was intended as a visual statement of the doctrine of two natures.

    his at least is the view of many scholars, who hold that the icono-graphic type in question (i.e., Christ Pantokrator) was developed in the context of the Trinitarian and Christological controversies, and

    50 On which, see J. Meyendorf, Christ in Eastern Christian Tradition (Crestwood, 1975), chaps. 15; and id., Byzantine heology (Crestwood, 1974), chaps. 12.

    51 ACO 2, I, 2, 129130; cf. R. Price and M. Gaddis, trans., he Acts of the Council of Chal-cedon, vol. 2 (Liverpool, 2007), 202-205.

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    intended to serve as an illustration of Orthodox theology. In response to questions about the person of Christ, this particular image is said to place special emphasis on Christs divine nature, that is, on his status as God. his, it is claimed, is partly evidenced by the use of the epithet Pantokrator, which is predicated of God the Father in the irst line of the Nicene Creed. From this point of view, the Pantokrator type elides the features of Christ the incarnate Son with those of God the Father, who some historians believe is looking down on us from the domes of Byzantine churches. Others claim to see in our icon the direct inluence of the Christology of the Council of Chalcedon.52

    The Art of Chalcedon

    Such a thesis at irst glance seems perfectly logical, and inds sup-port in a number of contemporary sources. We know, for example, that

    52 See, for example, Galavaris, , 93: By means of the unfocused gaze, the artist gives expression to Christs divine nature, whereas the naturalistic features, such as the raised eyebrows, refer to the human nature of his theandric person. he Christ Pantokrator of Sinai is depicted as the God-man, in accord with the dogma of Chalcedon; and id., he Il-lustrations of the Prefaces in Byzantine Gospels (Vienna, 1979), 91: Byzantine art, essentially dogmatic in character, is concerned here (i.e., in the iconography of Christ Pantokrator) with the dogma of the two natures of Christ as formulated in the Council of Chalcedon. his doc-trine, so predominant in the East, had already been most forcefully expressed in the celebrated Sinai mosaic. Similar views are advanced by E.M. Jones, he Pantokrator: A Study of the Iconography, Eastern Churches Quarterly 9 (1951/1952): 266272; H. Hommel, Schpfer und Erhalter (Berlin, 1956); O. Montevecchi, Pantokrator, in Studi in onore di A. Calderini-R. Paribeni (Milan, 1957), 2.401-432; Breckenridge, Numismatic Iconography, 5962; C. Capizzi, Pantokrator: Saggio desagesi lettarario-iconograico (Rome, 1964); Weitzmann, he Classical in Byzantine Art; K. Wessel, Das Bild des Pantocrator, in Polychronion: Festschrit fr Franz Dlger zum 75. Geburtstag, ed., P. Wirth (Heidelberg, 1966), 521535; Grabar, LEmpereur dans lart byzantine, 120; F. Buri, Der Pantokrator: Ontologie und Eschatologie als Grundlage der Lehre von Gott (Hamburg, 1969); C.P. Charalampidis, A propos de la signiication trinitaire de la main gauche du Pantokrator, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 38 (1972): 260265; D.L. Holland, Pantocrator in New Testament and Creed, Studia Evangelica 6 (1973): 256261; J. Timken Mathews, he Pantocrator: Title and Image (Ph.D. dissertation, New York Univer-sity, 1976); ead., he Byzantine Use of the Title Pantocrator, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 44 (1978): 442462; A. De Halleux, Dieu le Pre toutpuissant, Revue thologique de Louvain 8 (1977): 401422; F. Bergamelli, Sula storia del termine pantokrator: dagli inizi ino a Teo-ilo di Antiochia, Salesianum 46 (1984): 439452; I. Stouphe-Poulemenou, - . - , 57.4 (1986): 793854; N. Gkioles, - (Athens, 1990), 55, 65, 7073; Galavaris, , , , , in Ky-praiou, 3942; and most recently, D. Kalomoirakis, Icon with Christ Pantokrator, in Egeria: Mediterranean Medieval Places of Pilgrimage (Athens, 2008), 236: On the let part of His face somehow the human face of Christ is depicted while on the right the divine one.

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    the defenders of Chalcedon made use of icons in their debates with the Monophysites, a tactic advocated by Anastasios of Sinai, a monk and possibly abbot of St. Catherines, who later became patriarch of An-tioch (599609). Anastasios believed that visual images were stronger than words or passages in books, because, unlike the latter, they could not be falsiied or otherwise altered by heretics. It was therefore much more efective to advert to actual types and images of Christ (in this case, an icon of the Cruciixion), in order to demonstrate visually that it was the physical body of Christ that had sufered and died on the cross, and not his divine nature, which was not subject to passion. For Anastasios, the icon of the Cruciixion was an irrefutable demonstra-tion of the Chalcedonian doctrine of Christs two natures.53

    In the following century, the defenders of Chalcedon ventured even further, for they undertook, not simply to argue on the basis of existing icons, but to create new images that forcefully illustrated the doctrine of the two natures. he most striking example of such an at-tempt is extant in the church of Panagia Drosiani on the island of Naxos [ig. 13].54 In the central dome, the igure of Christ appears twice: once as a mature man with a full beard, and again as a relative youth.55 It has been argued that this painting was designed and executed under the direction of the pro-Chalcedonian Pope Martin I (a staunch colleague of St. Maximos the Confessor), who was exiled to Naxos in 653, where he spent more than a year, most likely in the immediate vicinity of Dro-siani, the islands administrative center.56 Such daring double depic-tions, however, were not to prevail. Whatever its merits, an icon con-taining two diferent images of Christ fails to account for Chalcedons emphasis on the unity of person, and could readily be seen, not merely as distinguishing between the two natures, but as dividing Christ into

    53 Anastasios of Sinai, Hodegos 12.1 (CCSG 8:201202).54 Cf. . Drandakis, (Athens,

    1988),5156; and Gkioles, , 6985.55 On the two types, see above, nn. 2628.56 See . Gkioles,

    , 4.20 (1999): 6570, for the evidence concerning the popes exile. Alternately, and on the basis of epigraphic evidence, Professor Haralambos Pennas suggests that the church may have been built and decorated during the reign of Justinian II (685695; 705711). He argues that the double Pantokrator corresponds to the emperors use of both im-ages of Christ on the coins published during his two reigns, with the Pantokrator type appear-ing during his irst reign, and that of the youthful Christ during the second (personal corre-spondence, 20 December, 2012).

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    two separate persons or hypostases. Such an image may also have been confusing in the context of public devotion, which was one of the prin-cipal arenas in which the controversy was fought.

    Double images of Christ were consequently rejected in favor of more subtle compositions, such as the seventh-century panel icon of Christ Pantokrator preserved at Sinai, but probably produced in Pal-estine [ig. 14]. Here, rather than separate the contrasting characteris-tics of divinity and humanity, the two are conlated and combined. In this instance, the contrast is primarily between eternal existence and birth within time. hus, an aged, white-haired Christ (i.e., the Ancient of Days from Dan 7:9), is inscribed as Emmanuel (cf. Mt 1:23), a type which calls for a youthful Christ. By a combination of images and epi-thets, this unusual, seventh-century icon, in a certain sense, gives ex-pression to the meaning hidden behind the face of its sixth-century counterpart.57

    Altogether we seem to be confronted with signiicant evidence for the production of theological art by proponents of the two natures theology, which lends support to the Chalcedonian interpretation of the Sinai Christ. Not least among this evidence is the prominent dual-ity of the icon itself, which seems an ingenious depiction of two con-trasting natures united in a single prosopon. However, such an interpre-tation will not stand up to sustained scrutiny. Like Pope Martins dou-ble Christ, it fails in the irst place to account suiciently for Chalce-dons emphasis on unity. Second, it directly conlicts with theological tendencies prevalent in mid-sixth-century Constantinople, i.e., the time and place where the Sinai Christ was actually painted. In order to un-derstand these tendencies better, we need to take a closer look at the theology of Justinian and his defense of the Council of Chalcedon.

    Justinian and the Defense of Chalcedon

    he Chalcedonian Deinition of Faith was a calculated efort to rule out two Christological extremes: (1) a radical division of Christ into two persons, and (2) a reductive truncation of Christ into one nature. With respect to the former, the Councils repeated emphasis on the existence of one and the same Son (a phrase it reiterates eight

    57 Cf. Weitzmann, he Monastery of St Catherine at Mount Sinai, 16; Gkioles, , 7677; and Galavaris, , 93.

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    times in one short paragraph) was a response to the Nestorians, who believed that the Savior was in fact a conjunction of two diferent sons: the Son of God and the son of Mary, as if the former had merely inhab-ited the soul of a certain man named Jesus. To divide Christ like this, however, was to separate humanity from the source of divine life and grace, and the Council rejected the notion that Christ consisted of two separate persons, understood as two independently functioning centers of consciousness and activity.

    At the same time, the Council held irmly to the belief that in Christ there were two distinct natures (divinity and humanity), and that these remained whole, complete, and unimpaired despite their union with each other. Here the Councils aim was to rule out the notion that Christ consisted of only one nature, in which the human principle had been suppressed by, absorbed into, or otherwise confused with the divinity (a view promoted by the archimandrite Eutyches and his followers, later called Monophysites). hus, of the four adverbs used by the Council to characterize the union of the two natures, the irst two (without confu-sion or change) were directed against the Monophysites, and the latter (without division or separation) against the Nestorians. he goal was to avoid both division and fusion with equal care.

    Defeated and condemned, the Nestorians established a separate church outside the eastern borders of the empire (in Persia, India, Cen-tral Asia, and China), where they were of relatively less trouble to the church of Constantinople, and more or less forgotten by the govern-ment. However, within major centers of the empire (Alexandria and Antioch), strong Monophysite communities emerged which rejected the doctrine of two natures, claiming that any talk of duality in Christ was tainted with Nestorianism. hey consequently condemned the Council of Chalcedon as heretical and stubbornly adhered to the one nature formula, which they had taken out of context from the writings of St. Cyril of Alexandria.

    During the reign of Justinian, the presence of Monophysite com-munities in Egypt and Syria seriously threatened the empires physical and spiritual integrity and received the emperors full attention.58 Trans-

    58 On which see E.R. Hardy, he Egyptian Policy of Justinian, DOP 22 (1968): 2341; J. Meyendorf, Justinian, the Empire, and the Church, DOP 22 (1968): 4560; and S.P. Brock, he Conversations with the Syrian Orthodox under Justinian, 532, Orientalia Chris-tiana Periodica 47 (1985): 107109.

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    forming his palace into a center of theological activity, Justinian pro-nounced on matters of doctrine, authored (or signed) a number of theological works, sponsored theological dialogues, and convoked the Fith Ecumenical Council.

    Although Justinians policy towards the Monophysites evolved over time, there were certain aspects of it that remained invariable. His aim was to reairm the condemnation of Nestorianism and reassure the moderate Monophysites that they had nothing to fear from Chalce-don. In so doing, he hoped to isolate the more radical Monophysite factions, and thus secure general ecclesiastical unity. Justinians eforts to restore unity took many forms, although the central challenge re-mained the same: to maintain the doctrine of two natures without di-viding the one Christ into two.

    Known in Two Natures

    A solution was found within the very terminology of the Chalce-donian formula, which asserted that Christ is known in two natures. his was a popular way to express the duality in Christ as outlined by St. Cyril of Alexandria, who had played a central role in the condemna-tion of Nestorios at the hird Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, 431), but who remained a point of extreme contention between Chalcedonians and Monophysites.

    What does it mean that Christ is known in two natures? At issue here is a special form of knowledge that is not a species of ordinary sense perception. According to Cyril, the mind cannot know the two natures of Christ in separation, any more than the naked eye can dis-tinguish between the colors blue and yellow once they have been unit-ed in the color green.59 he two natures of Christ are not two objects or things available to human visualization. Both in his person and at the level of human perception, Christ is one, and the duality of his na-tures can only be known through a process of spiritual relection, which Cyril generally calls contemplation (theoria).60

    59 his is not an example that Cyril uses, since it depends on a mixture or fusion of the two elements that he consistently avoided, although he does speak of a mixing of the properties of the two natures in his treatise On the Incarnation (SC 97:282); cf. id., Commentary on John 11 (PG 74:488D, 512B). He elsewhere argues that because colors do not exist in abstraction from the physical bodies or substances that they color, they can only be distinguished from them in contemplation, Dialogue on the Trinity 2 (SC 231:324326).

    60 Cf. Plotinus, Ennead 3.8.57 (LCL 3:372385).

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    Cyril argued that a similar act of contemplation takes place when we consider the human person, a single entity that the mind, and not the sense of sight, understands to be a union of two elements: body and soul. Once again, the eye cannot actually see the constituent elements in separation from each other, since the soul is by nature invisible, and to see a body without a soul is to view a corpse. In the same way, the two natures of the one Christ can be known only through the experience of spiritual contemplation and not by physical seeing. his is a view that Cyril advocated from the beginning of the Christological controversy, and maintained throughout all his subsequent work.61

    Justinian remained faithful to this principle, and it appears fre-quently in his writings. He airms that such contemplative distinc-tions are grounded in Trinitarian theology, where the three divine hy-postases are known (i.e., distinguished) while remaining absolutely inseparable.62 It was generally agreed, moreover, that propositions in Christology had to agree with those in Trinitarian theology. Justinian therefore applies the same logic to the distinction of natures in Christ, and makes extensive use of the Chalcedonian notion that Christ is known in two natures,63 along with the directly Cyrillian language of contemplation and conceptualization (epinoia).64 Like Cyril, Jus-tinian insists that the only kind of seeing that is possible in this context is with the eyes of the soul.65

    61 Cf. Cyril, hird Letter to Nestorius (L. Wickham, ed., Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters [Oxford, 1983], 22); id., First Letter to Succensus (ibid., 76); id., Letter to Eulogios (ibid., 6264); id., Second Letter to Succensus (ibid., 92; cf. 86); id., On the Creed 17 (ibid., 114). For further examples of Cyrils use of theoria in this context, cf. id., Letter to Acacius (ibid., 50; cf. 52); id., Dialogues on the Trinity 45 (SC 237:174; 232; 268; 300); id., On the Incarnation (SC 97:240250). See also id., Glaphyra 3 (PG 69:129BC); id., On Isaiah (PG 70:312D); id., Commentary On John 1 (PG 73:161B); 75:408D; id., Against heodoret (PG 76:408D); id., Letter 46 (PG 77:240C); and id., Letter 50 (PG 77:260A, 276B).

    62 Justinian, On the Orthodox Faith (PG 86:995AB, 999D); id., Against the Monophysites (PG 86:1105CD, 1140AB).

    63 Justinian, Against Origen (PG 86:957B); id., On the Orthodox Faith (PG 86:999CD, 1003BD, 1009D, 1011AD, 1013A); id., Against the Monophysites (PG 86:1108D, 1109ACD, 1112AC, 1116D, 1121C, 1133BD, 1137BC, 1140D, 1141D, 1144D).

    64 Cf. theoria (PG 86:1005CD, 1007B, 1007CD, 1011D, 1015D, 1113CD); noein (PG 86:997B, 1005C, 1141AB); epinoia (PG 86:1007D, 1009AB); ennoia (PG 86:1113BC).

    65 Justinian, Against the Monophysites (PG 86:1113AB).

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    Contemplation: Word and Image

    hat the two natures of Christ could be known through contem-plation was an idea taken from the art of biblical exegesis. his is not surprising given that Cyrils argument with Nestorios was directly con-cerned with the interpretation of certain passages in the New Testa-ment. Like Gregory the heologian ity years before him, Cyril like-wise had to deal with the problem of the seemingly contradictory at-tributes that Scripture ascribes to the person of Christ. But whereas Gregorys opponents had used the human attributes to deny Christs divinity, Nestorios was now parceling out the two modes of speech to two separate individuals or subjects.

    Cyrils response to this radical disjunction was a massive emphasis on unity, and he insisted that the exclusive subject of all attributes and experiences was the Word of God made lesh. According to Cyril, the human activities of Christ are not the expressions of an individual human life distinct from God. Instead, they are modes of divine revela-tion enabling the immaterial and incomprehensible Logos to act in and through the lesh, making it the physical medium of spiritual knowl-edge.66 his is particularly evident in the miracles of Christ, where di-vine things are wrought through the agency of human acts and ges-tures, including spitting on the ground ( John 9:6) and crying out in a loud voice ( John 11:43).67 he Words presence in the lesh is an economy of divine manifestation, a gracious accommodation to the situation of human embodiment, enabling human beings to receive divine life and grace.68

    In its original, exegetical context, theoria designates the activity of understanding the hidden sense of Scripture, of perceiving the spirit within the letter (cf. 2 Cor 3:6). But inasmuch as the hidden meaning of all Scripture was the mystery of God made lesh, theoria was a single act encompassing both hermeneutics and Christology, a movement from the visible to the invisible. A word inscribed on paper is visible to the eye, but its inner meaning is not itself an object of physical vision.

    66 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 1 (PG 73:132AB).67 Id., hesaurus 23 (PG 75:388C).68 Id., Commentary on John 1 (PG 73:132AB); cf. id., hesaurus 24 (PG 75:393D). Justin-

    ian closely follows Cyril on these points; cf. Against heodore of Mopsuestia (PG 86:1055CD, 1065D, 1071AB).

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    During his sojourn on earth, Christ was likewise the object of physical vision, and may now be depicted in an icon, but it is the mind that con-templates the truth of his person and distinguishes the duality of na-tures within him.

    And it is precisely here where the line that separates word and im-age is erased, where the diference between them collapses. hough the verbal and the graphic may be fundamentally diferent modes of repre-sentation, neither mode prevails over the other in terms of exhaustive signiication, for the spirit may magnify (or contradict) what the eye and ear perceive. In the face of what exceeds signiication, words and images fall mute. Words and images are a point of departure, not a destination. hey stand in direct relation to truth, without being absolutely one with that truth. And this is supremely true of all that aspires to represent the divine nature, which always remains unavailable to human thought, still less to the naked eye, and can never be captured in a work of art. Indeed Cyril says that such a thing is not even possible on the level of created being: he forms and colors of a painting of a king are not continuous with the king himself, and thus do not show us his nature.69

    In light of the above, it hardly seems possible that the Sinai Christ, a highly conscious masterpiece of the Justinianic court and theological environment, was an attempt to portray in colored wax what Cyril of Alexandria, and now the emperor himself, airmed could not be seen by human sight. In the irst place, the moderate Monophysites could not have been expected to unite under an imperial system whose major sym-bol was an icon of Christ so obviously susceptible of a Nestorian inter-pretation. At the same time, a depiction of Christ in which the two na-tures were visually separated and indeed sharply polarized would have undermined the emperors commitment to the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, being a lagrant repudiation of the latters injunction not to divide the one Christ into two, picturing a two-faced Emmanuel.70

    69 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 9 (PG 74:196B); cf. Basil, Against Eunomios 1.12: Do you know the essence (ousia) of God? Tell me, then, what is the essence of the earth? With what faculty will you grasp it? With one of the senses, such as sight? But sight apprehends only colors (SC 299:214); and Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs 12: he bride says: I sought him, but found him not (Song 5:6). How can the bridegroom be found when he does not reveal anything of himself ? He has no color, form, quantity, place, appearance, evidence, comparison, nor resemblance; rather, everything we can discover always transcends our comprehension (GNO 6:357); cf. id., Against Eunomios 1 (GNO 1:80; cf. 105106).

    70 Cyril of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (SC 97:240). It subsequently became clear that icons depict, not natures, but persons, and so the Seventh Ecumenical Council airmed that: He

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    We can, then, deinitively rule out the Chalcedonian interpreta-tion of the Sinai Christ, along with the idea that it represents the con-substantiality of the Father and the Son. But, having done so, we are still let with the visual fact of the icons compelling duality, which we need to approach from another perspective. As we saw in the irst part of this chapter, the face of Christ is strongly marked by a deliberate con-trast between the right and let hand sides, and it is to these cardinal points that we shall refocus our attention. As is well known, the Chris-tological locus classicus for the polarity of right and let is the Judgment Parable in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 25:31-46). Seated on a glorious throne, Christ welcomes the righteous into a place of heavenly bliss on his right hand side, while sinners are relegated to a place on his let, where they hear the harrowing sentence of their eternal damnation.71 As we shall see in what follows, the duality that our icon portrays is not that of Christs two natures, but rather a duality within God himself: the paradoxical co-existence of mercy and judgment.

    Divine Polarity

    As we saw in the preceding discussion, polarity does not always imply division, but can be a link between two seemingly opposite qual-ities that belong to or describe the same reality. Most religious tradi-tions recognize diferent degrees of complexity within God, including various dualities, even if these are said to exist only on the level of hu-man perception. Some religions locate duality within a single divine igure; others recognize a multiplicity of gods to whom contradictory activities and functions are variously parceled out. In some traditions, diferent aspects of the deity may be disclosed over time, so that God may irst appear angry or wrathful, followed at some later historical stage by a display of mercy and love.

    Strict monotheism, of course, rules out the existence of a second god, to whom might be assigned activities such as wrath, judgment, the inliction of punishment, and cosmic destruction. In both Judaism and

    who venerates the icon venerates the hypostasis of the one depicted, cited in H. Hennephof, Textus Byzantinos ad Iconomachiam Pertinentes (Leiden, 1969), no. 296 = Mansi, 13:377E.

    71 he salvation of the thief cruciied on Christs right, and the damnation of the one on his let (Mt 27:38), is a related locus, and is seen by some Church Fathers as a type of the Last Judgment, e.g., John Chrysostom (PG 59:625A); cf. Plato, Republic 10 (614C).

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    Christianity, such functions may be executed by an avenging angel or demon, as in the preliminary judgment immediately following death. he temporal or historical approach to divine polarity igures promi-nently within Christianity, where it gives shape to Christs two com-ings: the irst in humility, and the second in terrible glory, when he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

    But Christianity also knows of polarities within God that are much deeper than this, and which present themselves as more abiding fea-tures of the divine portrait. hus God is one and many, same and dif-ferent, simple and complex, uniied and diferentiated. God is at once transcendent and immanent, hidden and revealed, known and un-known; he is great and small, giver and git, origin and destination. He is the source of all fecundity, but is himself innascible; he is both the boundary to all things and the unbounded ininity about them. He is all things in all, and nothing in any.72

    We see, then, a kind of bipolar structure informing Gods self-man-ifestation, with an emphasis on the coming together of opposites in such a way that they continue to coexist. Opposites are not absorbed into an all-encompassing unity; the philosophical pull toward simplic-ity is rejected.73 And if theologians have tended to focus on the episte-mological and metaphysical aspects of this question, these do not ex-haust the depth of the mystery. No less important are what we might metaphorically call the extremes of Gods emotional and psychological life, strongly contrasting afective states that igure prominently in de-votional literature and in certain forms of religious art and iconogra-phy, where they endow the divine with something like a human face.

    Gods wrath and his love, his mercy and his justice, are in fact deep-ly woven into the fabric of the Bible. Although the God of the Old Testament is frequently chided for his arbitrary its of anger, irrational rage, and lust for war, the New Testament itself begins with the threat

    72 hese examples are taken from Dionysios the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, a work most likely written in the early 6th century, and thus contemporary with the Sinai Christ.

    73 See, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, On the Beatitudes 6, who endeavors both to negate and airm the dizzying contradiction between divine visibility and invisibility represented respectively by Matthew 5:8 (Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God) and John 1:18 (No man has seen God at any time) (GNO 7/2:136138); cf. id., Catechetical Oration 20, where he argues that none of the divine attributes may be disjoined from the rest, and thus in God absolute power is conjoined with self-efacing love (GNO 3/4:53; 61); cf. id., To Eu-stathios (= Basil, Letter 87) (LCL 3:4869).

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