08 — Iconography and Veneration
How the Orthodox tradition has depicted St. Theodore the Recruit in its sacred art, and how that art relates to the cult, the sources, and the doubling of the two Theodores. The section treats the two great iconographic modes of the warrior-saint — the standing soldier-martyr in military dress and the equestrian dragon-slayer — and the iconographic conventions by which art distinguishes Theodore Tyro from his namesake Theodore Stratelates. Gregory of Nyssa’s fourth-century description of painted images of Theodore’s passion at Euchaita gives the cult an unusually early literary witness to Christian martyr-iconography.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Great Martyr; warrior-saint)
St. Theodore the Recruit is, with George, Demetrios, Procopius, and Mercurius, one of the great soldier-saints of the Christian East, and his image belongs to one of the most legible and widely diffused types in all of Orthodox iconography. He is shown in the panoply of a soldier — cuirass and cloak, shield and spear, sometimes the martyr’s small cross — standing in the company of his fellow military martyrs, or mounted and driving his lance into the dragon. Behind these settled conventions lies a precious early witness: Gregory of Nyssa, preaching at the martyr’s shrine at Euchaita around 379–381, describes the walls painted with images of Theodore’s deeds and passion, one of the earliest explicit literary attestations of Christian narrative martyr-iconography (Gregory of Nyssa, On St. Theodore, PG 46:736–748; Walter 2003). This section sets out the iconographic type and its theology, drawing chiefly on Christopher Walter’s standard study, and then examines the particular problem of telling the two Theodores apart in art — a problem that, as the source critics observed, is the artistic byproduct of the literary doubling of a single saint.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Warrior Saint in Icons | How Theodore is depicted in Orthodox iconography: the standing soldier-martyr and the equestrian dragon-slayer; the conventions and attributes of the warrior-saint type; placement in church programs; Gregory of Nyssa’s painted images at Euchaita as an early witness; and the theology of the holy image (Walter 2003; Gregory of Nyssa, PG 46:736–748). |
| Theodore Tyro and Stratelates in Art | How art distinguishes — and sometimes confuses — the two Theodores: Tyro the younger, short-bearded or beardless recruit; Stratelates the older, long-bearded general; the inscription as the true differentiator; the shared dragon-slaying images; and the differentiation read against Delehaye’s dédoublement thesis (Walter 2003; Delehaye 1909). |
See Also
- The Passio and Gregory of Nyssa — Gregory’s encomium and its painted images, the early witness to martyr-iconography
- Disentangling the Two Theodores — the dédoublement thesis the iconographic differentiation reflects
- The Dragon-Slayer Tradition — the dragon-slaying motif shared among the warrior-saints
- Icons and Iconoclasm — the theology of the holy image
- St. George the Great Martyr — the supreme dragon-slayer of the warrior-saint company
References
- Gregory of Nyssa. On St. Theodore (De Sancto Theodoro). In Patrologia Graeca, Vol. 46, cols. 736–748. Ed. J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1858.
- Walter, Christopher. The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.
- Delehaye, Hippolyte. Les légendes grecques des saints militaires. Paris: Picard, 1909.
- The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan. 3 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.