Icons From Sinai: Holy Image, Hollowed Ground

A Review

by

R. Alan Woods

-When we look on an icon of a saint- and this is true for every icon of a sai nt- we venerate not the panel or the paint but the pious and visible figure.-

The Getty Center in Los Angeles loomed high upon a hill reminding me of the photographs Ive seen of the fortresses built by Herod The Great during the first century BC I was privileged to have gone there with Mr. Duncan Simcoe, my Art a nd The Bible instructor, to view a collection of icons on exhibit from the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine. The monastery- the worlds oldest continuously operat ing Christian monastery- is located at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt and was commissioned to be built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian (ruled AD 527-565) a nd under his rule the Byzantine territories encompassed most of the Mediterranea n basin, including the Sinai Peninsula. Monks have resided here, at the foot of the mountain where Moses is said to have encountered God, since the third centur y. Its geographic location and political isolation from the Byzantine Empire prev ented the destruction of its religious images during the period of Iconoclasm in the eight and ninth centuries. The veneration of icons continued uninterrupted at Sinai, and over the last fifteen centuries the monastery both commissioned and r eceived as gifts hundreds of icons, manuscripts, and liturgical objects. Today, Saint Catherines monastery is the worlds largest repository of Byzantine icons.

-By using bodily sight we reach spiritual contemplation.-

Icons hold a central role in the religious practice of Eastern Orthodox Chri stians. Representing holy figures and events, they provide access to the divine by making visible that which is invisible and enhancing the viewers understanding of God and the heavenly hierarchy. Unlike Renaissance paintings, icons do not d epict figures within an illusionistic space, as if seen through a window. Icons bring the saint into the space of the pious viewer. During the period of Iconocl asm, AD 726- 843, several emperors actively sanctioned the destruction of religi ous images starting with the Byzantine Emperor Leo III. In AD 843 iconoclasm was finally rejected as imperial policy and the restoration of the veneration of ic ons was hailed as The Triumph of Orthodoxy- with a little help from St. John of Da mascus and his Three Treatises on the Divine Images written between ca. AD 726 and 743- in a ceremony that became annual, and still continues to be celebrated in the Orthodox (the middle way) Church on the First Sunday of Lent.

-Suppose I have a few books, or a little leisure he spiritual hospital- that is to say, a church- with rickles of thorney thoughts, and thus afflicted I see f the icon. I am refreshed as if in a verdant meadow, glorify God.-

for reading, but walk into t my soul choking from the p before me the brilliance o and thus my soul is led to

Icons are vehicles for intense personal dialogue between a viewer and a sain t and can also be organized into comprehensive decorative programs in a church. In this manner they make the cosmic hierarchy visible and animate the church wit h the eternal presence of the holy. Icons bring holy figures or events into the viewers presence thus the sacred time and space of the heavenly realm are merged in the church with the earthly time and space of the viewer. Located far from- in time and space- the Byzantine capitol of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), Saint Catherines monastery has maintained a collection o f icons that allows us to tell the uninterrupted story of icon painting and vene ration from the sixth century to the present. I was honored and privileged to ga ze upon with veneration and awe such Holy Images from such Hollowed Ground the d ay I went to The Getty Center Museum to witness the Icons from Sinai.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in partnership with the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherin e at Mount Sinai and the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt. Saint Germanos, Patriarch of Constantinople, AD 715-730 Note: Before the relics of the martyr-saint Catherine of Alexandria were brought to the monastery in the eleventh or twelfth century, it was formally known as th e Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai.