Christ the King of Glory - Rex Gloriae

The Cross is the Glory of Christ

As we approach the Sunday of Christ the King, I thought I would feature the award-winning Crucifixion painted by the English Catholic artist Martin Earle. This choice may surprise some who are expecting an image of Christ Enthroned, such as the one at the foot of this article, by Mr Earle. I chose this Crucifixion because the artist decided to entitle it “Rex Gloriae – King of Glory”, a title that I think is wholly appropriate.

This wonderful painting hangs in the cathedral in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is painted in egg tempera on a gessoed wooden panel, two-sided, with the same image repeated on each side. This allows it to be hung over the altar so that both the congregation and those in the sanctuary will see the image as they worship. It encapsulates Salvation History in five parts, representing Christ’s life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven.

First, in the main picture, we see the inscription Rex Glo(riae), which draws our attention to the Kingship of Christ commemorated in the Church on the Solemnity of Christ the King, the last Sunday before Advent. Christ was crucified precisely because he claimed to be a king, and Pilate wrote the inscription “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (not shown on this cross, but often represented by the first letters of the Latin version, INRI). Pilate wrote this to give legal justification for his execution of an authority who might be perceived as a threat to Roman rule.

As Christians, we know that Christ was always king by his divine nature as the Son of God, and he became king by his victory over death and suffering through his crucifixion. Accordingly, in the creed, we profess that Christ is king because of his divine nature as “God from God and Light from Light” and because he was “crucified under Pontius Pilate.”

Accompanying Christ are Mary the Mother of God and St John the Evangelist on the left, and on the right, in accordance with the Gospel of John, we see Mary Magdalene and Mary, the wife of Clopas. The male figure on the right is the soldier who pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy:

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first-born. (Zechariah 12, 10)”

This centurion is the soldier who came to us in tradition as St Longinus, and recognised Our Lord as the Son of God in an act of faith, later becoming a bishop in the early Church. From the pierced side flow blood and water, symbolising the Eucharist and Baptism. 

Considering now the minor images: 

On the left is the Nativity, which reminds us of the life of Christ and the mystery of the incarnation, and of Mary, the Mother of God, who gave him his humanity. As a point of interest, the stable is portrayed as a cave in a mountain. This reflects the actual local topography and is a visual reference to a prophecy in the Book of Daniel in which the King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had a dream and Daniel, his counsellor, was called to interpret:

“You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. ... Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.” (Dan 2, 34; 45)

The mountain is traditionally interpreted as the Mother of God, and Christ Himself is the stone “cut without hands.” This language alludes to Mary’s perpetual virginity; for example, a hymn in the Byzantine liturgy which draws on the traditional teaching of the Church says:

We exalt you, O Theotokos, crying out, “You are the mountain out of which, in a wondrous way, a stone was hewn that crushed the gates of Hades.” (Orthros, Friday, Tone 4)

Below the central figure is the skull in a cave, a reference to Golgotha - “the place of the skull” - where Christ was crucified, and to His descent to Hell for three days after his entombment, by which He freed Adam and Eve, and the souls of the just from the limbo of the Fathers. The cave in this part of the cross echoes the cave which was the stable in the Nativity scene; one is the place of His birth, the other of His death. The white swaddling clothes in the Nativity scene also become an anticipatory sign of His death, when He will be wrapped in a shroud. The heavenly Christ in the Ascension then has a brilliant white outer garment, which is the transfigured garment, indicating that not just the person, but of all creation - animate and inanimate - participates in the redemption offered to us.

On the right, we see the myrrh-bearing women who came to the tomb and found it empty, and the angel that told them of the resurrection. 

Finally, we see the Ascension, when Christ, having appeared to the Apostles, ascended to heaven and took his place at the right hand of the Father.

Note: I drew information on the Kingship of Christ from a posted homily by Fr Hugh Barbour O. Praem: “The Trial of a King”, Catholic.com (25 November 2018) https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-trial-of-a-king [accessed 8 November 2024]

Martin Earle of the Chichester Liturgical Art Workshop Wins Major Award in US

I was delighted to learn recently that Martin Earle, of the Chichester Workshop of Liturgical Art in the UK (which I have been energetically promoting in this blog), has been awarded first prize in the annual competition of the Catholic Art Institute.

The award was given for this Franciscan-style cross commissioned by the Rev. Hugh Gilbert, Bishop of Aberdeen in Scotland. Martin was keen to emphasize the important part that his colleague at the workshop, Jim Blackstone, had to play in the creation of this monumental piece of work. There were also many highly skilled apprentices who contributed, all under Martin’s expert direction, and many of whom I was privileged to meet on a recent visit to the studio in Chichester.

Bishop Hugh, incidentally, has a great love for the San Damiano Crucifix at the church of St Clara in Assisi, which inspired both this commission and one another done about 20 years ago for Pluscarden Abbey, where he was formerly a Benedictine monk and served as abbot. The diocese is currently raising the money for the project, so I encourage readers contribute at the gofundme here.

It is especially gratifying to see work in the iconographic and Gothic style featuring so prominently in the awards and mentions made by the Catholic Art Institute. It is my conviction that Catholic traditions from the pre-Renaissance period are the most likely springboard for a new flourishing of contemporary styles of sacred arts in the Church, and the Catholic Art Institute is doing sterling work, in my opinion, in showcasing projects that are simultaneously traditional and of the 21st century.

Second prize went to an icon by Orthodox monk, Fr. Silouan Justiniano, whom I met at the Scala Foundation Conference in Princeton last spring.

Juror comments from the Institute were as follows: The San Damiano Crucifix is a new, beautiful and highly-skilled contribution to a centuries-long Franciscan tradition of depicting Christ’s Sacrifice, while expounding on its deeper meanings in the adjacent, appended panels. This work combines the fine and allied arts to achieve a radiant, magnificent, unified whole. 

St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Cathedral in Aberdeen is currently fundraising to be able to install this crucifix as part of a project to re-order the sanctuary. If you are able to help, please visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/37i9ff1mnc. 

This crucifix was painted at the Chichester Workshop of Liturgical Art. Alongside providing a space for artists to undertake commissions across a broad range of traditional media, the Chichester Workshop offers an education programme that includes both practical artistic training and theological engagement with the principles of Christian iconography. Find out more at http://www.chichesterworkshop.org

The Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Art - Call for Apprentices

An Authentic Formation as a Master Sacred Artists in the Manner of Medieval Guilds

Last month, I featured the Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Art in two posts (on October 10 and October 17.) This week I want to explain more about what is going on there, and why I think that this provides a unique model for the re-establishment of authentic traditions in sacred art and the evangelization of the culture, one which should be a prototype for others.

Martin Earle working on a mosaic of the Pantocrator.

As you can see from this page on their website, they are offering a series of training opportunities for gifted artists in 2024. If you are a skilled artist who is looking for an opportunity to work on real commissions under the direction of a Master, and wish to serve the Church, then please consider applying through this page. The workshop has been established under the leadership of the renowned iconographer Aidan Hart and two of his senior former students, who are now masters in their own right, taking commissions and teaching others to the highest level.

This is also a call for enlightened patrons to want to help establish an updated system of apprenticeship which mirrors the medieval guild system in its teaching practice. By doing so, they will not only be contributing to the creation of work that will inspire faith and right worship for centuries. They will also be helping to train those masters who not only continue the tradition through their own work, but also pass it on to others what has been established by training them.

The Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Art was established under the patronage and support of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester, the Right Rev. Dr Martin Warner, and is multidenominational. Aidan is Orthodox, and his colleagues, Jim Blackstone and Martin Earle are Anglican and Roman Catholic respectively. Each has a fully liturgically centered understanding of what the Church is, and understands deeply how to harmonise the form and content of sacred art with the right worship of God within their denominations. You can see their individual work on their websites here: Aidan Hart, Jim Blackstone, Martin Earle. They are able to take commissions in the US as well as the UK.

This is a workshop in which each Master takes on apprentices in a focused, traditional model, tailored to the individual strengths and weaknesses of the students, and brings them up to the Master level quickly. They take on people who already have a high degree of artistic ability and training, but need the final, high-level training - post-doctoral level, if I can call it that - that produces the person who is capable of taking on commissions in painting, sculpture, mosaic, stained glass or fresco, and can also teach others in these disciplines.

These Masters will only consider students who are committed to the mission of evangelization, and want to pass on to others in turn what they learn. Each student is carefully selected. They must be open to direction, have a strong mission-oriented faith, and have the artistic talent. In this sense, the project works more on the Medieval guild model of bespoke personal training and formation than that of the Academy model that developed in the High Renaissance, and which is used in the ateliers that teach classical naturalism today.

The Workshop’s mission is also a way of training multipliers - artistic missionaries, so to speak - who can re-establish and propagate an authentic paradigm of tradition, on which will hand on the positive experience and wisdom of past generations.

I spoke to a typical student, who is a Roman Catholic and member of an Anglican Ordinariate church Maryland. He approached Aidan after completing three years of training in classical naturalism in the academic method at an atelier in Baltimore. He recognised that his training, which imparted great skill in drawing and painting, did not give him the additional formation that would enable him to paint liturgical art which is truly in harmony with the sacred liturgy of the Church. He will travel regularly to the UK to work alongside Aidan in his workshop, spending focused periods with the other Masters in order to learn specific skills, such as mosaic.

This is where you, dear readers, come in. This is a call for patrons of the arts. The high level students are there, but funding is needed to pay for the time of these Master artists to teach them. Every hour spent with a student is one in which these professional artists are not earning a living as an artist for their families.

If you are interested, you can help in two ways. One is to fund a student by paying tutorial fees, plus room and board. Perhaps you know an artist in your own congregation whom you would want to support, and who could in turn create beauty in your own church. Funding such a person would be establishing a local model of art creation in which all the congregation will feel part of what is happening, and so will want to safeguard what it is created. They will feel personally involved and engage with it more readily in their worship.

The cost of such a training would be less than the fees at a conventional art school or classical naturalism atelier, perhaps of the order of $15,000 per annum all in. Some require just part of a year to complete the program, while some will require perhaps a full year or even two.

Alternatively, and perhaps even more excitingly, you or a group of you could commission a large scale work or a number of transformational works for your church. Then Aidan, Martin or Jim would be able to pay the apprentice to work on the commissions directly. This is the most efficient and effective way to see positive results.

Just to inspire you with what is possible, you could contribute to the transformation of a church in the way that the patrons who funded Martin Earle did at Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, England.

And to explain how it works: when I was a learning to paint, Aidan taught me fresco by letting me assist him in two projects. One was at the hermitage in Shropshire, the Monastery of St Anthony and Cuthbert. At first I assisted in a lot of the non-artistic work of the project, while observing what Aidan was doing all the time, and talking to him. Ultimately, I did paint minor details in the fresco itself as my teacher gained confidence in me, in this case, the drapery painted on the walls.

Art of the quality that Aidan, Martin and Jim create will inspire worshipers and future artists for generations. You or your parish could commission, for example, a rood screen or a reredos, and the frescoes on the walls, to create a fully interactive schema of art that engages all during the act of worship.

I would be available to advise on how to design such schemas if anyone needs help in this regard.

I encourage those with funds or with access to them to consider very carefully the value of such beauty and become enlightened patrons who play an absolutely vital part in the evangelization of the culture, which in turn will have an effect on the Church and the wider culture, potentially, for centuries.

A mosaic of St Dominic by Jim Blackstone

Those who are interested in commissioning work can contact myself through thewayofbeauty.org or the workshop direct: https://www.chichesterworkshop.org/, or the artist from whom you wish to commission something: Aidan Hart, Jim Blackstone, or Martin Earle.

An Artistic Feeding of the Five Thousand: The New Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Art

Last month my wife Margarita and I visited the newly established Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Art, in the county of West Sussex in southern England. This article was written by Margarita about her observations of this exciting new project. The occasion was a blessing of the workshop by the Anglican Bishop of Chichester and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.

Margarita writes: Standing in front of a 10-foot-tall icon he painted based on the San Damiano Crucifix, the English Catholic artist Martin Earle commented that the most satisfying part of making this sacred object was not the product itself, but the sense of community he developed with the various apprentices working alongside him. This desire for a community of liturgical artists led Earle, along with his own Master teacher Aidan Hart and one of his former apprentices, James Blackstone to found The Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Art. By working with side-by-side with apprentices on their commissions, these Masters pass on both the skills and the theology of liturgical art.

Martine Earle and Jim Blackstone at work on the San Damiano inspired crucifixion

On September 14, 2023, I traveled to Chichester, where the Anglican Bishop of Chichester (the patron of the project) and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Arundel and Brighton gathered to bless the workshop. “Sacred art is profoundly ecumenical,” Anglican Bishop Martin Warner said, “as all Christians believe in sacred space, sacred time, sacred people and sacred objects.”

At the workshop, I naturally took delight in the beauty around me. But how did hearing about Earle’s experience help me understand Bishop Warner’s remarks about how sacred objects form Christian communities?

In a recently published book entitled The Shape of the Artistic Mind: A Search for the Metaphysical Link Between Art and Morals in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Brad Elliott, OP, describes two distinct registers by which philosophers, from Plato to Kant, have thought about art. For some, the artists’ inspiration is what makes art good, quite apart from any judgment about the qualities of the object made. For others, the perfection of the art itself—such as beautiful classical music—makes art worthwhile.

Drawing on Saint Thomas Aquinas, Elliott argues that, by bringing new objects into being, humans co-create with God. Thus, both art and moral virtue are ways that humans imitate God. By imitating God, we therefore participate in His governance, as He draws all things back to Himself. Hence, art seen as a practical virtue, extends God’s governance over creation. Furthermore, Elliott states that art understood as a practical virtue makes visible the invisible inner world of the human person and the goodness of God.

If Elliott is right that making art is part of our shared participation in the governance of God, then isn’t Earle also right that the process of making art should also bring us into community with others who share that purpose? It would be a mistake to think of master-apprenticeship relationships fostered at the Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Art simply as means to the end of having more beautiful liturgical art. The relationships fostered among artists there must also be a highly valued end.

Their example shows why we must never separate the process of making sacred art from the object made. For instance, two of the young apprentices, one man and one woman, who worked alongside Earle during his work on the San Damiano Cross (commissioned for the Catholic Cathedral of Aberdeen in Scotland), beamed with joy as they shared how both their faith and their skills grew while working alongside Earle and Blackstone.

In a time when many churches have either plain white walls or walls decorated with art that bears no resemblance to the great Christian tradition of sacred art, the renaissance in liturgical art spearheaded by Hart, Earle, and Blackstone will surely garner attention for the beautiful objects they make. But the personalities of these sacred artists could not be further from the popular caricature of the Romantic attention-seeking, self-aggrandizing, performative artistic persona celebrated in popular culture. Instead, it seemed to me their personalities are more akin to the product of kenosis, a humbling of oneself so the glory of God can shine.

Apprentices gilding

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A Contemporary Mosaic of St Dominic in Chichester Cathedral

Here are some photos of recent mosaic of St Dominic, completed just a year ago. It was commissioned by the Anglican Bishop of Chichester, Right Reverend Dr Martin Warner, and done by artist James Blackstone over the course of a three-month residency at the cathedral, during which, he worked alongside fellow liturgical artist Martin Earle within a custom-built studio. The project was developed with another celebrated liturgical artist, Aidan Hart.

Aidan, Martin and Jim who are Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican respectively, have recently established a new studio and liturgical art school - The Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Arts - under the patronage of Bishop Warner. 

Saint Richard of Chichester, bishop of that see from 1244-53, was prepared for the priesthood by the Dominican Order in Orléans, and St Dominic’s apostolic spirituality informed his ministry across his diocese. Read more about the commission on the cathedral website here.

Liturgical Art as Prophecy and Priesthood: Sacred Art and the Restoration of Human Dignity (Part 1)

By Aidan Hart

This is the first part of the presentation given by Aidan, my old friend and former painting teacher, at the Scala Foundation conference in Princeton, New Jersey on Saturday, April 22nd. The second part will be posted later this week.

Through this talk he traces the development of culture through the right worship of God. In order to make this argument he establishes and anthropology of man as body, soul and spirit who, through grace, partakes of the divine nature. He talks of how important sacred art is in this dynamic and closes by makes concrete suggestions as to how such artists might be trained. I would like to give a shout-out for the liturgical art school that Aidan has established in Chichester, England. The teachers are Aidan, who is Orthodox, and two other Masters who were his apprentices, Martin Earle, who is Catholic and James Blackstone, who is Anglican. They are accepting apprentices from the USA and the UK and if anyone wishes to make a donation to help an apprentice then please contact me and I will put you in touch with Aidan or you can go to aidanharticons.com .

All icons shown are painted by Aidan Hart, unless indicated otherwise.

Aidan writes:

Our subject this morning is Liturgical Art as Prophecy and Priesthood: Sacred Art and the Restoration of Human Dignity. I have chosen this title because we act as we see, and, I believe, worship and its art can profoundly affect how we see ourselves and all creation.

Our relationship with others and with the world at large corresponds with our vision of who we think we are, and who we think others are. Do I view other people as my competitors? As my enemies? Do I see them merely as a means of my individual happiness? Do I consider them merely as members of a crowd of humanity, nameless numbers among millions? Or do I see all others as living icons of God, potential saints, amazing and unique beings, small gods, sons and daughters of the Most High?

Behind destructive actions are footprints, which if followed back will always lead us to their source, which is false vision and ignorance. False worldviews need to be replaced with true ones. The Holy Liturgy and all its sacred arts, when healthy, can transform the way we see the world. Discovering what holy images to live by has been called the art of iconopeia.

So if we want change, we must first change the way we see. More particularly, if we want a flourishing culture, then we must begin with our worship, with our ‘cult’. What we offer God within the walls of our worshipping community is what we will try to live out beyond the walls of our worship.

The prophet Ezekiel had a vision of the temple, and in this vision a river flowed from below the altar, and wherever this river flowed Ezekiel saw that it brought life. Whatever a culture worships will, like a river, spread throughout the land either life, or if polluted water, spread corruption.

Relationships and whole cultures fail because they do not realize the unimaginable dignity and high calling of the human person. A saint acts with great love and reverence towards all God’s creatures because he or she sees all others as sons and daughters of the King of Glory. Every person is created a prince and princess of the Most High, destined, if they wish it, to become ‘partakers of the divine nature’, as the Apostle Peter writes. If we regard the people sitting next to us as they truly are, as living icons of God, then we will treat them with profound respect.

The importance of getting this vision right is one reason why the art of worship is so important. If the liturgical art of our microcosm does not accord with God’s intention for all life, then life beyond the church walls will be disoriented. Without vision the people perish, as the prophet warns.

Worship on earth is an icon of, and participation in, the worship of heaven: As the Our Father prayer puts it: ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. Since our idea of heaven is the ideal towards which we strive in our daily lives, we had better get our worship right, or we are in trouble. Some scholars have, for example, traced our current ecological crisis back to a faulty theology of matter and to the iconoclastic world view inherent in some Protestant teaching and worship. (2). A worship that denies the capacity of the material world to express God’s love for mankind, and for mankind to express its love for God, will inevitably affect how those worshippers treat the material world beyond the walls of their church. Beauty, worship and truth are close cousins. In Greek, the word for dogma, worship and glory is the same— doxa (δόξα).

So this morning I would like us to explore in a little more detail what this great dignity and calling of the human person consists of, through considering both the written and the visual tradition of the Church. In particular, we shall consider two sources: the written witness of a great second-century saint, Irenaeus of Lyon, and the visual witness of the Orthodox Church’s liturgical art, which is the tradition within which I work—although over half of my commissions come from Catholic and Episcopalian churches and individuals.

We shall first consider who we are, then what this means, and finally, how we can express this calling through the ministries and prophet and priest.

WHO ARE WE?

1. The witness of St Irenaeus of Lyon

St Irenaeus wrote much about the nature and calling of the human person. In Irenaeus we have a reliable witness to Christ’s teaching. Being born around AD 130, we have a man in close lineage with the apostles themselves. He had heard sermons by no less than Polycarp, a disciple of the Apostle John. Irenaeus also united in himself the eastern and western arms of the Church. He was a Greek, born in Smyrna of present-day Turkey, and later became a priest and then bishop in Lyon in Southern France, where he remained until his death around 202.

Irenaeus affirmed that all people are icons of God, regardless of the right or wrong use of their free will. He also asserted that we were created with a task, which is to grow into the divine likeness through a synergy of the right use of our free will and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Adam and Eve were created pure, but not perfect and mature. They had a task before them. To be deified and transfigured is therefore humankind’s natural supernatural calling. Our task is nothing less than to become gods by grace. As Irenaeus write in his work ‘Against Heresies’:

Man has first to come into being, then to progress, and by progressing come to manhood, and having reached manhood to increase, and thus increasing to persevere, and by persevering be glorified, and thus see his Lord. For it is God’s intention that he should be seen: and the vision of God is the acquisition of immortality; and immortality brings man near to God.(3)

Elsewhere he wrote even more succinctly:

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the word of God, of his boundless love, became what we are that he might make us what he himself is. (4)

In what way then is the human person made in God’s image and likeness? A Gnostic teaching current in the time of St Irenaeus asserted that the material world and man’s body was the result of the fall. St Irenaeus countered this by asserting that the human person is in God’s image not because of his spirit alone, nor his soul alone, but as a union of body, soul and spirit. The whole person, including the body, is in the image of God, not just a part of him or her. While some Church Fathers do relate the divine image only to the spirit of man and not also to his body, Irenaeus is emphatic that it is a composite union that the human person is in the divine image. It is the whole person, and not just a part of the person, that is in the divine image. Irenaeus writes:

Soul and spirit can be constituents of man; but they certainly cannot be the whole man. The complete man is a mixture and union, consisting of a soul which takes to itself the Spirit of the Father, to which is united the flesh which was fashioned in the image of God...men are spiritual not by the abolition of the flesh...there would then be the spirit of man, or the Spirit of God, not a spiritual man. But when the spirit is mingled with soul and united with created matter, then through the outpouring of the Spirit the complete man is produced; this is man in the image and likeness of God. A man with soul only, lacking Spirit, is ‘psychic’; such a man is carnal, unfinished, incomplete; he has, in his created body, the image of God, but he has not acquired the likeness to God through the Spirit.(5)

Three things can be highlighted from this and the earlier two passages. Firstly, a key passage in the quote we have just read is: ‘Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit the complete man is produced.’ Man’s deified state, granted through mutual love and the gift of the Holy Spirit, is man’s calling and his fulfilment. To be a complete human is to become more than merely human; it is to become a bearer of the Holy Spirit, a Pentecostal, to be deified, to become gods by grace. So, contrary to the humanist Renaissance motto, God and not man is the measure of all things.

Man becomes his true self when he looks away from himself, ‘forgetful of himself’, to contemplate his divine prototype. Elsewhere Irenaeus writes:

Where the Spirit of the Father is, there is the living man…flesh possessed by the Spirit, forgetful of itself, assuming the quality of the Spirit, made conformable to the Word of God…(6)

Secondly, if Irenaeus were to highlight any particular aspect of the human person that makes them capable of such a high calling, it would be their freedom; freedom either to love and worship God or, tragically, to worship something other than God. Freedom is the prerequisite of love. He writes that to be glorified man must ‘persevere, and by persevering be glorified, and thus see his Lord’. Perseverance is an act of free will.

Thirdly, Irenaeus asserts that man’s materiality is an integral part of his destiny to grow into the divine likeness of God. He states that ‘the complete man is a mixture and union’ of body, soul and spirit. He even goes further when he writes of ‘the flesh which is fashioned in the image of God’. How can the flesh be in God’s image, when God is bodiless, beyond all limitation or measure?

There are two reasons. First, Irenaeus believed, like many subsequent Church fathers, that the Incarnation would have occurred even had not man fallen into sin. If this is the case, then the human body is in God’s image by being created according to the image of the incarnate Christ, even though man’s creation preceded God’s incarnation. Christ the incarnate Logos is the prototype of all humans. The one crucial difference is that Christ is God by nature and human by grace, while the deified man or woman is human by nature and divine by grace.

Second, we can say that the human body is made in God’s image because its physical faculties— such as sight and hearing and touch—all correspond to a higher and incorporeal reality in God: God sees us, God hears us, God touches us by his Holy Spirit. Divine seeing preceded human seeing.

All that we have said means that the saints—transfigured and deified humans—are God’s intended norm for human existence and not the exception. Every person is born a prince or princess, and if they progress in virtues, they will eventually reach their coronation and be anointed as gods by adoption. They will become kings and queens, co-heirs with Christ to rule under the Holy Spirit.

We need to pause and try to digest how great this estate is, how splendid and magnificent are the faculties given to us and to those around us.

Perhaps we sin not so much because we think too highly of ourselves, but because we don’t think highly enough of ourselves, because we are ignorant of just how exalted a being God has created us.

The very fact that some people misuse these faculties to wreck destruction on others is itself testament to the powers granted to mankind, whether to use or abuse according to each person’s free will. Beholding the human person with the eyes of the Holy Spirit, we can declare, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet;

What a piece of work is a man! how Noble in Reason? how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable in Action, how like an Angel in apprehension, how like a God? (7)

All the woes of this world ultimately come, I believe, from failing to grasp the true greatness and destiny of the human person, both for ourselves and for all others. Because every fibre of the human person is created for this estate, if we refuse it—or find it too good to believe—we will still crave fulfilment, and therefore look for it in lesser ways. Thence come wars, factions, crime, unkindness, consumerism, selfishness, ugliness, and brutalism— aesthetic, spiritual and psychological. In short, all the woes of the fallen world.

But if we believe in and embrace this high dignity and calling, given to us by the beneficent God, then we shall live with thanksgiving and gratitude to our Maker. We shall show profound respect for all other humans as living icons of Christ. We shall honour all creation as an expression of God’s love for us.

Thus are made cultures that are worshipping communities, cultures worthy of that word, for ‘cult’ means to worship.

Traditional icon (not painted by Aidan Hart)

2. The witness of liturgy

We come now to the witness of traditional worship to help answer the question of who we are. As a member of the Orthodox Church, I shall here concentrate on its particular form of liturgical worship. This is an enormously rich seam to mine, impossible to do justice in a few minutes. So I shall outline just three elements here.

a) Community and Trinity

To be made in God’s image means that we are made in the image of the Holy Trinity. God is a communion of the three divine persons, or hypostasis to use the Greek theological term. Human life as God intended it and worship as God intended it, is therefore communal. We are made in God’s image not primarily as individuals, but as members of a community. This is one reason why the walls and ceilings of a fully-fledged Orthodox church are covered in frescoes or mosaics. These icons of the saints and angels affirm that worshippers gather not only with those on earth but also with those in heaven. There is one single Church, one worshipping community, a unity in diversity. In this way the tyranny of time and death is overcome. St Irenaeus is no longer a person of the past, sundered from me by the scissors of death, but a living being gathered with me around the throne of God.

(b) Matter and mystery

Traditional worship uses matter crafted by human hands to express the mystery of God dwelling among his people. Here we have icons, furnishings, incense, bread and wine, metalwork—a whole orchestra of crafted works united in a symphony of man’s praise of God, and of God’s revelation to man.

Here, human mastery of the cosmos is used not to dominate it but to transfigure it, to make it more articulate in the worship of God. Thus, there is no longer a division between mankind and the cosmos (what the secular world has wrongly dubbed ‘nature’). In patristic teaching the cosmos is seen as an extension of the human body, one being necessary for the other.

Our ecological crisis began not with technology but in the heart of man, when he separated himself from the rest of creation—and calling the latter ‘nature’—and then excluding the Most High as irrelevant. Summarizing the wonderful book by Paulo Mar Gregorios, The Human Presence, John Kunnathu writes:

Mastery of nature for oneself is the Adamic sin of refusing our mediating position between God and nature. The mastery of nature must be held within the mystery of worship. Otherwise we lose both mastery and mystery. We may give nature as our extended body into the hands of the loving God in Eucharistic self-offering.

 

(c) Revelation and creativity

Although human creativity is inevitably involved in the fashioning and enactment of liturgy, authentic liturgy comes from revelation and not from human invention. We see this union of revelation and originality in Scripture. The Hebrew cycle of feast and fasts, and the design of its Tent of Meeting was revealed to Moses upon Mount Sinai. In the New Testament, the Apostle John is granted a vision of the worshipping heaven, and we see his description of heavenly worship reflected in the Church’s worship on earth. Artistic creativity is therefore a fruit, and not the origin of liturgy. Variety comes from people adapting expressions of timeless truths to particular places.

A society will flourish inasmuch as it has, and is then guided by, a rich liturgical life. I stayed for a while on the traditional Greek islands of Sifnos and Evia, and longer still on the peninsula of Mount Athos. In these places I observed how daily life was profoundly affected by the liturgical year. What one ate was informed by the Church’s cycle of fasting and feasting. Festal processions around the streets, bearing icons, made the village an extension of the church. Each home has its own icon corner, with candles, incense, prayer books, thus making the family home a little church. Cars and buses have icons. Roads in the open countryside have roadside icon shrines, often with their lamps lit. All these things were created uniquely by individual people, but all manifest the same reality.

Mt Athos

Notes:
(1) A talk given at the 2023 Scala conference at Princeton University, on 21st April, 2023.

(2) See for example Paulos Mar Gregorios, The Human Presence: Ecological Spirituality and the Age of the Spirit (WCC, 1977), Philip Sherrard’s The Rape of Man and Nature (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1987), and his Human Image: World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1992; reprinted Limni (Greece): Denise Harvey, 2004).

(3) St Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses IV, xxxviii, 3, Translation by H. Bettenson in The Early Christian Fathers (OUP: Oxford, 1969), p.68.

(4) Ibid. v. praef. (Bettenson, p. 77).

(5) Ibid. v.vi.1 (Bettenson, p. 71).

(6) Ibid. V.ix.2-3 (Bettenson p.85)

(7) Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

When Mystique Obscures Mystery - Some Truths About Holy Icons

Do we write or paint icons? Do you have to fast and pray before you create one? Is the saint present in the icon just as Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament?

In the course of writing and talking about icons, I am often asked about the following: Is it true that an artist doesn’t paint icons, but rather that he ‘writes’ them, because he is portraying an aspect of the Word? Is it true that only Orthodox or religious are holy enough to paint them? Do we have to fast and pray before painting them? And finally, is the person depicted present in an icon in the way that Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament?

St Isaias, 21st century, English

So what does the Church really believe about icons? In short, the answers are as follows:

First, call it painting or writing, (or carving if appropriate), whatever you like. My teacher who is as Orthodox as they come, and a respected authority in the Orthodox world, refers to this pedantic insistence on the word ‘write’ as ‘a bit precious.’ (I am told that this happens because the word for write and paint is the same in Greek.) As he used to pointed out, if you put a paint brush in paint and apply it to a surface. the English word that accurately describes that process is ‘painting’, regardless of what you are painting.

Second, it is not true that you have to be Orthodox or religious to paint holy icons. Visual art, and this includes sacred art, is as good as it looks. If it looks like an icon then it is an icon. This is true regardless of who painted it and of the medium used (although some media do lend themselves to the portrayal of the essential qualities of icons more than others). Regardless of the method that was used to paint it, there is no right way or wrong way, as long as one gets to the desired result. Having said that, praying regularly with icons, as Orthodox and religious do - in common with many lay people and Catholics - will help to develop in an artist a deeper innate sense of how art nourishes prayer, and will likely improve the quality of the art he paints.

A relief carved depiction of the Magi by Martin Earle, Roman Catholic: martinearle.com

Third, you don’t have to fast and pray before painting icons. Having said that, fasting and praying in accordance with Christian precepts are likely to enhance our capacity and inclination to respond to inspiration, should God choose to give it. This is true for all Catholics regardless of the activity they are engaged in, and so is recommended for all, not just for icon painters.

Fourth, in the Catholic belief, although the Saint is made present to us through the image in a profound way which engages our imaginations, and which is  analogous, in some ways, to the Real Presence, a Saint is not present in an icon in the same way that Christ is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.

Some more background

The theology that stipulates that holy images are spiritually necessary to the Faith was established in the 7th Ecumenical Council, with a later clarification by the Synod of Constantinople. Between them, the the edicts of the two councils finally ended in AD 843 a period of destruction of images, the movment called Iconoclasm. This is celebrated today in the Eastern Church as the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

The Church Father who expresses this is St Theodore the Studite, abbot of the Studion Monastery in Constantinople. What is ironic is that the error of the iconophiles (those who were in favor of the use of sacred images) of attributing to the icon a presence of the Saint is one of the things to which the iconoclasts objected so strongly that it provoked them to the opposite errors, seeking to eliminate the use of sacred images altogether. Theodore, like the iconoclasts, opposed this error, but he provided an alternative theology that justified the use of sacred images. (Note that we are talking about all sacred images here, regardless of style, and not to the style that we call iconographic today.)

Theodore, abbot of the Studios Monastery, Constantinople.

According to St Theodore:

1. The essence of the Saint is not present in the icon. It is just wood, gold, paint etc. The connection to the Saint is made in our minds, especially through the imagination, when we see the characteristic likeness portrayed. So if the icon is covered up, for example, by metal cladding, it has no sacramental value (unless the cladding has been beaten into a likeness, in which case it is the cladding that evokes the Saint for us). Theodore illustrates this with the point that once the icon becomes damaged so that the likeness is destroyed, it is just thrown away.

2. There are two qualities in particular that makes sacred art worthy of veneration, and therefore appropriate for use in prayer and worship. First, the art must look like what it depicts. In other words there is no place for an abstract portrayal of Passion of Christ. It must, to use Theodore’s phrase, capture the essential characteristics of the person or the scene being depicted. This does not necessarily require an accurate portrait, but it does mean that the things that distinguish a particular person must be present. So for example, the prophet Isaiah has a gray beard and long hair, and is shown with tongs and a hot coal which touched his lips at the beginning of his ministry (Isa. 6, 6-7). Second, the name of the person or the scene (e.g. the Nativity), must be present in a form that will be understood by those who see it; therefore, the vernacular is usually used. The name is present as another essential characteristic of the person.

St John the Baptist, English 21st century

3. Icons, when worthy of veneration, are like sacramentals. Their value is that they predispose us to grace, but they are not themselves channels of grace. This distinguishes them from sacraments. Their effect is profound and powerful nevertheless, and the use of images is not just permitted by the Church, it is required as part of the practice of Christian prayer and worship.

4. The Seventh Ecumenical Council and Theodore’s theology apply just as much to any form of art in which the characteristic likeness appears. Therefore, the view that what we now consider to be the iconographic style - typically that of Russian and Greek icons, in people’s minds - is a higher form than the other sacred art traditions of the Western church such as the Gothic and the Baroque, cannot be justified. English translations of Theodore’s writings do have him using the word “icon”, but in using this word, the translators are leaving untranslated a Greek word which means “image.” Theodore did not refer to specific styles or traditions. Accordingly, his theology applies as much to Gothic and Baroque art (the other two traditions cited by Pope Benedict XVI as authentically liturgical in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy) as it does to the iconographic style; it can also be applied to statues as much as to two-dimensional images.

St John the Baptist, by Guido Reni, Italian, 17th century. This would need a plaque on the frame with his name in order for this painting to be worthy of veneration.

Furthermore, it should be pointed out that there is no canonical or dogmatic statement or account by any Church Father that I know of, Eastern or Western, which says that the iconographic style, as we now refer to it, is inherently superior to any other. Like the discussion of Theodore, the debate in the early Church was about the validity of images in general.

Giotto, Italian, 14th century, gothic. Again we would need to see the name of the event - The Baptism in the Jordan - and ideally the names of the main figures in order for this to be worthy of veneration.

When we talk of icons today, we are usually referring to a style of art that, generally, speaking includes all Christian art, East and West, from about the 5th century AD up to about 1200AD. This includes, therefore, many Western variants in the styles of the Romanesque, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Ottonian and Carolingian periods. With some interruption and variance, the iconographic style has remained the dominant form in the Eastern Churches, with variant styles such as those of the Coptic, Greek, Russian, and Melkites traditions.

St Matthew, The Lindisfarne Gospel, English, 8th century. Consistent with the iconographic prototype, in a style called insular art which combines Mediterranean, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic elements.

It may be a surprise for some to discover that the characterization of the visual elements of the iconographic tradition (as distinct from other forms of sacred art), and an accompanying theology as it is generally articulated today is a modern development, and did not exist until the 20th century. This doesn’t make it wrong, but it does make it new. We should be aware, however, that it was developed by anti-Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox thinkers based in Paris such as Ouspensky and Lossky. While they did some great work in their assessment of their own tradition, they spoke in ignorance of other traditions. While their dismissal of other liturgical traditions may be fair from an Orthodox point of view (that is for the Orthodox to say), it has no basis in the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Eastern Rite Catholics legitimately and reasonably insist that the only form of sacred art that is appropriate for the Eastern Rite is the icon, and this might affect their choice of image for an icon corner in their homes. But it is just as legitimate for Roman Catholics look to their authentic liturgical traditions (which includes the iconographic as well as the Gothic and the Baroque), and consider them appropriate for the Roman Rite, and for use their own home.

To read an account of the theology of icons of Theodore the Studite, his works are still available. For an excellent summary of the whole debate regarding sacred art, which includes an account of the theology of images developed by both Theodore and St John of Damascus, I recommend God’s Human Face by Cardinal Cristophe Schoenborn, published by Ignatius Press.

The Frescoes at St Francis of Assisi, Baddesley Clinton, England, Part 3: the Chancel Arch

Here is the third posting about the fabulous frescoes at little St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, in Warwickshire, England, in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, the works of the artist Martin Earle. (To see previous parts click here: part 1, part 2.)

Before showing photographs of the third and final section, the chancel arch, I want to explain why I think this is so important. First, this is a schema that is intrinsically liturgical (as distinct from devotional) in its conception. Second, while it is painted in a contemporary English iconographic style, absolutely appropriate for its time and place, it incorporates discerningly other more naturalistic styles of liturgical art and statues inherited from past communities of this parish, and therefore, one presumes, particularly dear to them. In regard to this Martin told me:

The rather dark and intense colour scheme (though the orange is less saturated in real life) was dictated partly by the pre-existing oil painting. Trying to find a way that the new paintings (which the parish asked to be in a sort of neo-Romanesque style) wouldn’t clash too badly with the old was a headache. In the end, I opted to paint the new murals dark enough so that the oil painting didn’t pop forward, as it would have against a lighter background. We also reflected some of the colours - especially of Christ in Glory - in the new works.

Obviously, the oil painting is incorporated thematically as well. In the end, a curious and good effect is achieved by having the heavenly scene below the nativity. Earth gone up to heaven and heaven come down to earth.

My hope is that every person in this parish is catechized, perhaps through the homilies, so as to understand the images they see and how to engage with them as they pray the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. Then, when people visit the church to see the paintings, as they surely will, any parishioner can be a docent who takes them on a tour of the church, and in so doing becomes an evangelist for the Faith.

The Chancel Arch

On the chancel arch, the liturgical hymn Gloria in excelsis Deo (Glory to God in the highest) repeats the idea that what is sung in the earthly liturgy echoes the praise of the heavenly liturgy, and the themes of both the First and Second Comings of Christ are both repeated and lead into what is displayed in the sanctuary.

At the apex is the Lord’s Cross, seen as an object of glory and veneration, triumphant, bejewelled and containing the sacred monogram ‘IHS’. Below this, and over the altar, is suspended the crucifix, akin to the Rood in medieval churches, suspended between earth and heaven, the point of entry from one to the other, and contrasting with the triumphant cross above, but also positioned so that, from the nave of the church, Christ in glory on the east wall is seen below it, the bottom of the cross in line with the head of Christ.

Surrounding the cross are angels of the apocalypse, as St John relates in his Revelation, one with a trumpet, the other rolling up the moon and stars; the clouds behind them are red and blue, representing the sunrise at the end of time. The same clouds are repeated on the east wall, surrounding the Hand of God, showing that he is Lord of time and of history.

On the spandrels of the arch are stylised representations of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the two poles of salvation of Incarnation and Redemption, with sheep representing the apostles who continue the saving work of Christ. Jerusalem, of course, is not just an evocation of the earthly city, but also of the heavenly Jerusalem, described in the liturgy of All Saints and in the Dedication of a Church as ‘our mother, where the great array of brothers and sisters gives you eternal praise’ and representative of the Church, the Bride of Christ, ‘mother of countless children.’

Beneath these are four Old Testament prophets, holding scrolls that tell of both Comings of Christ, the Second Coming already foreshadowed in the First Coming, which is completed in the Second Coming:

Isaiah 7, 14 - ‘Behold the virgin will conceive and bear a son [and shall call his name] Immanuel’

Malachi 3, 1 - ‘The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’

Ezekiel 34, 12 - ‘I will rescue my sheep [from all the places where they have been scattered] on a day of clouds and thick darkness.

Zechariah 9, 9 - ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you, the Just One and Saviour’.

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The Frescoes at St Francis of Assisi, Baddesley Clinton, England, Part 2: the Schema

Last week I posted images of the spectacular frescoes at St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, in the West Midlands of England. Once again, the artist who painted these is Martin Earle.

This week I want to share the description of the schema written by the parish priest, Fr John Sharp. Typically, the art in Catholic churches today does not conform to a liturgical schema. Going back perhaps as much as 200 years (from what I have seen), even when the art is beautiful and of high quality, it is more likely to be a collection of the favorite devotions of past priests than what it ought to be, a single, harmonious presentation that reveals the mysteries being celebrated.

I present the document with the introduction and the three sections as written. I have a large number of photographs to show, and so this week I will cover the first two sections, and the third next week in a final post of this series. The introductory paragraphs, which come before the description of the paintings themselves, make an excellent basis for a statement of governing principles for devising a schema in any church.

St Francis of Assisi, Baddesley Clinton: The Iconographic Scheme

Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, paragraph 8, states, “In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem towards which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, Minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle. With all the warriors of the heavenly army we sing a hymn of glory to the Lord; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ, until he our life shall appear and we too will appear with him in glory.”

The scheme of decoration in the sanctuary gives visual expression to this. The whole schema encompasses salvation history – the preparation of Israel in the Old Testament (past), the First Coming of Christ in the Incarnation and in His continuing Sacramental Presence (present), and His Second Coming at the consummation of all things (future).

EAST WALL

On the east wall, above the tabernacle where He dwells sacramentally in His risen and glorified body, is a representation of Christ in glory, holding in His left hand the Book of the Gospels with the words from the end of Matthew’s Gospel (28, 20), “I am with you always, to the close of the age”, while His right hand is raised in blessing. He is flanked by St Peter and St Paul, founders of the Church of Rome. Their presence is an historical allusion to the paintings of these saints by Rebecca Dering which formerly were in these positions before being removed in the 1960s. They are flanked by our two local martyrs, Blessed John Sugar and Blessed Robert Grissold, who were captured in the lane near Baddesley Clinton Hall on 8th July 1603 and executed in Warwick on 16th July 1604. They, of course, were martyred for their adherence to the Roman Church.

The frieze above here contains the text of the liturgical hymn Te Deum Laudamus (We praise you, O God), which says “the glorious band of apostles … the white-robed army of martyrs all sing your praise.” The text of the hymn begins on the north wall and is preceded by the dates 1870 and 2020 in Roman numerals. 1870 is the date of the opening of the church, and 2020 is the date of the painting scheme and the renovation of the church.

Above this frieze, the surviving painting of the Adoration of the Magi by Rebecca Dering is incorporated into a fuller scheme of the Nativity of Our Lord, with a representation of the appearance of the Angels to the shepherds. These are shown offering lambs to the Lord, mirroring the offering of the gifts by the Magi. This evokes the theme of offering, which is continued in the top band of decoration on the north and south walls. Above this scene is the Hand of God, shown in blessing, which applies to the First and the Second Comings of Christ, both of which are displayed below. The stars of the firmament are carried over to the ceiling of the sanctuary.

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