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The religion of Christ is the
revelation, by Him, of the truth. And this truth is the knowledge of the
true God and of the spiritual world. But the spiritual world is not what
men used to—and still do—call “spiritual.”
Christ calls His religion “new wine” and “bread that cometh down
from Heaven.” The Apostle Paul says, “Therefore, if any man be in
Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away: behold,
all things have become new.”
In a religion like this, one that makes the believer into a “new
man,” everything is “new.” So, too, the art that gradually took form out
of the spirit of this religion, and which it invented to express its
Mystery, is a “new” art, one not like any other, just as the religion of
Christ is not like any other, in spite of what some may say who have
eyes only for certain meaningless externals.
The architecture of this religion, its music, its painting, its
sacred poetry, insofar as they make use of material media, nourish the
souls of the faithful with spirit. The works produced in these media are
like steps that lead them from earth up to heaven, from this earthly and
temporary state to that which is heavenly and eternal: This takes place
so far as is possible with human nature.
For this reason, the arts of the Church are anagogical,
that is, they elevate natural phenomena and submit them to “the
beautiful transformation.” They are also called “liturgical” arts,
because through them man tastes the essence of the liturgy by which God
is worshipped and through which man becomes like unto the Heavenly Hosts
and perceives immortal life.
Ecclesiastical liturgical painting, the painting of worship, took
its form above all from Byzantium, where it remained the mystical Ark of
Christ’s religion and was called hagiographia or sacred painting.
As with the other arts of the Church, the purpose of hagiographia
is not to give pleasure to our carnal sense of sight, but to transform
it into a spiritual sense, so that in the visible things of this world
we may see what surpasses this world.
Hence this art is not theatrically illusionistic. Illusionistic
art came into being in Italy during the so-called Renaissance, because
this art was the expression of a Christianity which, deformed by
philosophy, had become a materialistic, worldly form of knowledge, and
of the Western Church, which had become a worldly system. And just as
theology followed along behind the philosophy of the ancients—so, too,
the painting which expressed this theology followed along behind the art
of the ancient idolators. The period is well named Renaissance, since,
to tell the truth, it was no more than a rebirth of the ancient carnal
mode of thought that had been the pagan world’s.
But just as those theologians were wading around in the slimy
swamp waters of philosophy, and were in no position to taste and
understand the clear fresh water of the Gospel, “drawn up to life
eternal,” so, too, the painters who brought about the Renaissance were
in no position to understand the mystical profundity of Eastern
liturgical iconography, the sacred art of Byzantium. And just as the
theologians thought that they could perfect Christ’s religion with
philosophy, since for them it seemed too simple, they being in no
position to penetrate into the depths of that divine simplicity: just
so, the painters thought that they were perfecting liturgical art, more
simply called Byzantine, by making it “more natural.”
So they set to work, copying what was natural—faces, clothes,
buildings, landscapes, all as they appear naturally—making an
iconography with the same rationalism that the theologians wanted to
make theology with. But the kind of theology you can get out of
rationalism is exactly the kind of religious iconography you can get out
of copying nature.
This is why their works have no Mystery, nor any real spiritual
character. You understand that you have before you some men masquerading
as saints—not real saints. Look at the various pictures of the Mother of
God. “Madonnas” who pose hypocritically, and those in tears, weeping,
which are even falser yet! Corpses and idols for shallow men! Our
people, who for centuries have received a great and profound nurture
from Christ’s religion, even though outwardly they seem uneducated, call
a woman who pretends to be respectable but who is really not, a
Frankopanayhia, a “Frankish Virgin,” thus making a clear distinction
between the “Frankish Virgin” and the true Virgin, the
Mother of Christ our God, the austere Odogitria, Her “more
precious than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the
Seraphim.’’ In other words, in the simplest way possible they make a
neat, sharp distinction between the art of the world and the art
belonging to worship.
Western religious painters who wanted to depict the supernatural
visions of religion took as models certain natural phenomena—clouds,
sunsets, the moon, the sun with its beams. With these they tried to
portray the heavenly glory and the world of immortality, calling certain
things ‘‘spiritual” which are merely sentimental, emotional, not
spiritual at all.
In vain, however. Because the blessedness of the other life is
not a continuation of the emotional happiness of this world, neither
does it have any relation to the satisfaction the senses enjoy in this
life. The Apostle Paul, talking about the good things of the blessedness
to come, says that they are such that “eye hath not seen, and ear hath
not heard, neither have entered into the heart of man.”
How, then, can that world, which lies beyond everything a man can
grasp with his senses—how can that world be portrayed by an art that is
“natural” and that appeals to the senses? How can you paint “what
surpasses nature and surpasses sense”?
Certainly, man will take elements from the perceptible world,
“for the senses’ sake,” but to be able to express “what surpasses sense”
he must dematerialize these elements, he must lift them to a higher
plane, he must transmute them from what is carnal into what is
spiritual, just as faith transmutes man’s feelings, making them, from
carnal, into spiritual. “I saw,” says St. John of the Ladder, “some men
given over with passion to carnal love, and when they received the Light
and took the way of Christ, this fierce carnal passion was changed
inside them, with divine grace. into a great love for the Lord.”
Thus, even the material elements which Byzantine iconography took
from the world of sense were supernaturally transmuted into
spiritualities, and since they had passed through the pure soul of a man
who lived according to Christ, like gold through a refiner’s fire, they
express, as far as is possible for a man who wears a material body, that
which the Apostle Paul spoke of, “which eye hath not seen, neither hath
entered into the heart of man.”
The beauty of liturgical art is not a carnal beauty, but a
spiritual beauty. That is why whoever judges this art by worldly
standards says that the figures in Byzantine sacred painting are ugly
and repellent, while for one of the faithful they possess the beauty of
the spirit, which is called “the beautiful transformation.”
The Apostle Paul says. “We (who preach the Gospel and live
according to Christ ) are ... a sweet savour of Christ unto them that
are saved and unto them that perish. Unto them that have within them the
small of death (of flesh), we smell of death; and unto them that have
within them the smell of life, we smell of life.”
And the blessed and hallowed St. John of the Ladder says, “There
was an ascetic who, whenever he happened to see a beautiful person,
whether man or woman, would glorify the Creator of that person with all
his heart, and from a mere glance his love for God would spring afresh
and he would pour out on his account a fountain of tears. And one
marveled, seeing this happen, that for this man what would cause the
soul of another to stink had become a reason for crowns and an ascent
above nature. Whoever perceives beauty in this fashion is already
incorruptible, even before the dead shall rise in the common
Resurrection,”
“Be ye not conformed to this world, but
be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind . . .“ (Rom. xii. 2)by
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