Excerpt from Byzantine Sacred Art: Select Writings of Fotis Kontoglou on the Sacred Arts According to the Tradition of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Selected and translated by Constantine Cavarnos
Chapter: Byzantine Iconography During the Period of Turkish Rule
The servitude of our race brought grief to the souls of our Orthodox people and made us take refuge in God, having lost hope in the justice of men. But “the Lord chastens him whom He loves, and scourges every son whom he receives,” and hence His torments are accompanied by corresponding humble gifts. Fortunate is he who perceives these gifts and receives them with gratitude.
God accepted the humble and mournful will of the harassed Hellenes; and the gifts that He gave them, so that it might become manifest that He accepted them as a burnt offering, were the spiritual wealth that filled their Christian souls and made them acquire “sublime things in a state of humility, and riches in poverty.”
You who are reading this must not take these sayings as merely fine words; read them with understanding and you shall see the essence they contain.
The Hellenes who lived in that period underwent much hardship and suffering, and they withdrew into their own inner depths and there contemplated themselves directly. Their souls passed through the fire of martyrdom and were purified. For this reason, whatever they produced then, whether icons, or books describing the lives of saints, or dirges, or other songs, had the fragrance of Christian faith, which cannot be possessed by souls that have not become humble and wept.
The castaway Christians crept into monasteries and became monks, and there, with tears in their eyes, they painted the crucified Christ, St. John the Baptist, the poorest of the saints, Abba Sosoe before the tomb of Alexander the Great, and the poor Lazarus, whose sore feet were kicked by the dogs. With contrition, they painted Extreme Humility, that is, Christ dead in the grave, with His arms crossed, His hands perforated by the nails and his side pierced by the spear, thoroughly tormented, like Orthodoxy and Greece, “without form and without beauty,” as the prophet Isaiah has said.
The Church served as the ark in which the persecuted took refuge, in order to save their souls and their holy Tradition. In it were treasured the dogmas of the blameless Faith, the language, hymnody, iconography, manuscripts, wood carvings, golden vessels, and sacerdotal vestments - everything that was a consolation and spiritual joy to man in this world and a hope for the future life and blessedness…
In the world that is represented by these painters there is neither place nor time, but a new heaven and a new earth;”. The kingdom of logic is abolished altogether, and there prevail the wonderful and the apocalyptic.
Fotis Kontoglou
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