08 — The Angels in Icons

The angel has a settled iconographic form, and every element of it means something. This section reads the grammar of the angel-image — wings, staff, mirror-sphere, the youthful beardless face, the streaming “hearing bands” — and the two great Michaeline types (the Archistrategos in armor and the archangel in a deacon’s vestments); and it treats the boundary the tradition drew around angelic veneration: the honoring of the angels held firmly apart from their worship, against Colossians 2:18 and canon 35 of Laodicea.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Files

• how-angels-are-depicted.md — The iconographic grammar of the angel and its meanings; the Trinity/Hospitality icon; Michael in armor and in vestments.
• the-boundary-of-veneration.md — Honoring vs worship: Colossians 2:18, Laodicea 35, and how the tradition resolved the line.

See Also

• Holy Icons — the theology of the sacred image, in full
• Angels in the Old Testament — the Hospitality of Abraham behind the Trinity icon
• The Seven Archangels — the emblems of the seven in iconography