Veneration, the Iconostasis, and the Icon Corner

The icon lives in the act of prayer. This file describes how icons are venerated — the bodily acts of honor that pass to the prototype — the iconostasis that structures the Orthodox temple and images the union of heaven and earth, and the icon corner that makes the Orthodox home a “little church.”

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

How Icons Are Venerated

To venerate an icon is to render it timetike proskynesis — honorable reverence — through bodily acts that carry the honor to the person depicted (see Image and Prototype). The faithful cross themselves and bow before an icon, kiss it (on the hands or feet of the figure, or the Gospel or scroll, rather than the face, by custom), light candles and lamps before it, and cense it with incense; on entering a church the Orthodox Christian typically venerates the icons on the analogion and the iconostasis before taking a place (Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982; Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993). These are not acts of worship (latreia) directed at wood and paint — the Church condemns that as idolatry — but relative honor that passes through the image to Christ, the Theotokos, or the saint, exactly as one might kiss the photograph of a beloved person not to honor the paper but the one it shows (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; see The Icon as a Window to Heaven). The candle and lamp signify prayer, the light of Christ, and the offering of the one who prays; the incense, the prayer rising to God and the honor of the holy ones (Psalm 140[141]:2).

Icons are commonly blessed by a priest before being set to use, with prayer and (in the received Slavic and Greek rites) the sprinkling of holy water, formally setting the image apart as sacred — though the tradition also holds that the naming and liturgical use of an icon are integral to what makes it an icon (see The Iconographer and the Canon). Certain icons are set out for special veneration: the icon of the feast or the saint of the day is placed on the analogion (lectern) in the center of the church, and worn or darkened icons are treated with reverence even in disrepair, never simply discarded (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982).

The Iconostasis

The most conspicuous structure of the Orthodox temple is the iconostasis (or templon in its earlier Byzantine form) — the icon-screen that stands between the nave, where the faithful gather, and the sanctuary (altar area), where the Eucharist is offered (see The Divine Liturgy). The iconostasis developed from the low chancel barrier of the early Church — a colonnade or templon supporting a beam — which gradually acquired icons and grew, especially in the Russian tradition from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, into the tall, multi-tiered wall of icons familiar today (Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, SVS Press, 1992, vol. 2, on the development of the iconostasis; Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993).

Its arrangement is theological, not merely decorative. The screen is pierced by the central Royal Doors (Holy Doors), through which the consecrated Gifts are brought and which bear the icon of the Annunciation and the four Evangelists, and by two side (deacons’) doors, often bearing archangels or deacon-saints. On the main tier, immediately flanking the Royal Doors, stand the two principal icons: Christ (usually as Pantocrator) to the right of the doors as the viewer faces them, and the Theotokos to the left, with the temple icon (of the church’s patronal feast or saint) beside Christ (Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, vol. 2). Above, the developed Russian “high” iconostasis rises in ordered ranks: the Deesis tier, with Christ enthroned and the whole Church — Theotokos, Forerunner, archangels, apostles, saints — turned toward Him in intercession (see The Icons of Christ); the festal tier, with the Twelve Great Feasts; the prophets tier; and the patriarchs tier, sometimes crowned by the Cross (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982; Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, vol. 2).

Far from being a wall that hides the altar, the iconostasis is understood as a threshold that reveals: it presents to the worshipper the whole heavenly Church — Christ surrounded by His Mother, the prophets who foretold Him, the apostles who proclaimed Him, and the saints who followed Him — so that the visible assembly in the nave prays together with the invisible assembly shown on the screen, the two joined at the altar where heaven and earth meet in the Eucharist (Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, vol. 2; Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Sheehan and Andrejev, SVS Press, 1996). The iconostasis is thus the visual expression of the truth the whole liturgy enacts: that in the Divine Liturgy the Church on earth stands within the worship of heaven (see The Divine Liturgy).

The Icon Corner: The Home as a Little Church

The icon’s use is not confined to the temple. The Orthodox home traditionally has an icon corner (Russian krasny ugol, the “beautiful corner”; Greek proskynetari or simply the family icons) — a place, classically on an east wall, where the household’s icons are gathered with a lamp (lampada), where the family prays its morning and evening prayers and its rule, and toward which one turns on entering (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1982). The icon corner ordinarily holds at least an icon of Christ and of the Theotokos, often with the patron saints of the family members and the saint of the parish; a vigil lamp is kept burning before them, especially on feasts and Sundays (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993). The practice embodies the ancient Christian conviction, rooted in the household churches of the New Testament (Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19), that the Christian family is a “little church” (ecclesiola), its home a place of prayer sanctified by the presence of the holy images. In the home as in the temple, the icons make present the communion of saints and draw the daily life of the household into the worship of the Church — so that the theology defined at Nicaea II and celebrated at the Triumph of Orthodoxy comes finally to rest in the ordinary act of a family standing to pray before the images of Christ and His saints (Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, vol. 1).

See Also

References

  • Ouspensky, Leonid. Theology of the Icon. 2 vols. Trans. Anthony Gythiel. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1992. (The development and theology of the iconostasis; the tiers and their meaning.)
  • Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Trans. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982. (Veneration; the iconostasis; the festal and Deesis tiers.)
  • Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. (The practice of veneration; the icon corner; the home as little church.)
  • Florensky, Pavel. Iconostasis. Trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1996. (The iconostasis as revealing threshold.)
  • Scripture: Psalm 140[141]:2; Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19.