miracles and images - 1, eastern christians and religious objects Flashcards
what did the writer see
- Hanganu was driving back to town of Piatra Neamt, saw lorry filled with nuns carrying icon of Saint Anna, the mother of Mary
- Icon = property of Orthodox Xian nunnery of Varatec
- People knelt as icon was removed from lorry
- Nuns carry it down alley, all singing hymns
- Individually venerated in church
- Had a service with rain-seeking prayers
icon in procession
o Kept in church for veneration
o 3rd day – liturgy
♣ announced rain-seeking service
♣ parishioners disagreed – they thought it would be more effective to have a procession with icon to far end of village
♣ priests emphasise need for God to hear their prayers
♣ nuns emphasise that faith and moral life = essential for prayers to be heard
♣ priests give in – procession is organised
• rain-seeing prayers
• water blessed and sprinkled on people’s heads
o this appeases both the nuns and parishioners – procession that is carried out by recently purified people
o another settlement keeps icon for 3 day period of vigil, veneration and procession
♣ nuns emphasise that icon travelling may take several weeks to secure rain
o only rained a couple days after service had ended
main opinions expressed re. inefficacy of ritual
o priests – carrying icons to fields = useless. Need to focus on prayers to God
o nuns – need to focus on morality of parishioners. Will not achieve anything until morally purified
o villagers
♣ some agreed with priests
♣ some agreed with nuns that it was people’s not the icon’s fault
♣ some questioned icon
♣ some questioned idea of using icon in procession. It will rain when it rains
insistence on carrying icon
- ‘the villagers’ insistence on carrying the icon in procession showed that both the intercession of the depicted spiritual beings and the physical location of the icon mattered to them for the successful fulfilment of the ritual’ (36)
- priests viewed iconoclastic excitement as superstitious
political agenda
- ‘one can identify in these accounts the potential hidden agendas of the groups involved in the negotiation generated by the icon’s presence in the village’ (37)
o priests – in performing service just outside church and dismissing icon, they may have been trying to preserve their religious authority
o nuns – didn’t want potential ritual failure to impact their reputation
o ‘the villagers might not have been fully convinced of the positions they advocated, but perhaps took sides according to kin-related or interest-driven preferences’ (37)
2 levels to study
o theological/spiritual background of practice
‘the visual and material frameworks in which these practices unfold and have an impact on personhood and social agency’ (37)
o how people explained failing of ritual reflects religious knowledge
♣ some didn’t know who the saints on the icon were
♣ some didn’t understand why this icon was more powerful than the icons they prayed to at home
♣ people joined ritual as they did not want to seem disbelieving
♣ people fell back on priests’ emphasis on praying when the ritual did not work
o those who went along with ritual based opinion on knowledge of saints/personal experience with icons/knowledge of icons through others etc.
♣ knowledge of saint and her importance was a significant factor for those who went along with ritual
♣ those called Ana felt sense of connection to ritual
• the services thus ‘reinforced the sense of physical and spiritual kinship among the nominally connected visible and invisible communities’ (38)
♣ therefore based failing of ritual on same idea as nuns (moral failing)
♣ those who knew who the icon was of knew the history of St Ana – these people attached more importance to the ceremony
♣ ‘by contrast, those who believed that the same result would have been achieved if they had employed the icon of any other saint were more inclined to associate ritual failure with other factors, such as the devotional or moral features of the community’ (39)
o need to place nun’s/priests’ responses in context of their knowledge/experience
♣ priests
• socialist decades – priests training did not focus on the ‘role of religious representation in Orthodox cosmology and teleology’ (39)
• ‘the two village priests were able to discuss the basics of the theological meaning of icons, but when asked about the minute articulation of icon-based religious practices they provided explanations rooted in the moral rather than the mystical areas of Orthodox theology’ (39)
• reflected in emphasis on prayer rather than procession with icon
♣ nuns
• received ascetic and moral education
• emphasis on community and moral conduct
• warned people that they may live among sinners
material presence and sensory experience
o comparison drawn between the Varatec icon and the Bistrita icon
♣ varatec = newer
♣ painting of Bistrita = damaged
o ‘those who noticed such visual and material differences between the two icons, and suggested parallels with similar differences of spiritual power, tended to interpret the ritual failure as the result of having used an insufficiently ‘experienced’ icon’ (41)
o nuns
♣ one nun in particular prayed to St Ana
♣ asked if she thought the icon facilitated prayer or was spiritual in itself
♣ she answered both – her icons at home were facilitating, but the big St Ana statue made her feel ‘protected’
♣ icon = charged with spiritual power but also a materialisation of relationship with saint
orthodox - imago dei
♣ for early Xians (like John of Damascus), humans = perfect in a potential sense
♣ image = innate capacity to know God
♣ likeness = in reference to potentiality. Linked to free will – we can choose whether to be close to God or not
♣ reinterpreted by Augustine
• humans made perfect. Perfection accomplished from beginning
• effects of Fall = more significant
o more emphasis in Orthodox Xianity on direct encounter with God. Less of a hierarchy
orthodox - redemption of the cosmos
♣ World in itself has the potential to be sacred
♣ Rooted in Dionysius – Creator endowed each aspect of creation with the logos
♣ ‘within this context, the whole world becomes an unfinished work of the Creator, and man, as a synergetic partner with God, is called to set his own imprint on it, as through his own labour and creative imagination he can bring to fulfilment potentialities yet unrealised within Creation…matter is potentially holy by virtue of the original creation and the connections maintained with God through the divine energies’ (44)
orthodox understanding of icons
♣ ‘in addition to being material objects produced and employed in the visible world, they are also images providing representations of the invisible spiritual realm. The Orthodox Christian understanding of icons is founded on the premise that the transcendent God can be represented visually in the immanent form of the icon, since his incarnation as human has demonstrated the possibility of combining in one and the same being both divine boundless and human delimitation’ (45)
♣ 7th-8th century Byzantines viewed images as ontologically related to that which they represented
♣ on the contrary, ‘Latin Christianity maintained a circumspect view on the ontological transparency of the connection realised by means of religious images’ (45)
o in Eastern Xian churches, icons are venerated and used in processions
o people have icons in homes and engage in daily veneration
orthodox - icons and religious practice
o ‘in many Orthodox Christian Churches a strong correlation between theological formations and religious practices has been preserved to the present day. This is partly because the process of confining religion to the private sphere that has affected Western Christianity since the Renaissance was less well developed in the East’ (46)
♣ reflected in continuing importance of visual representations
♣ even the religiously uneducated are involved in or aware of processions etc.
external and visual agency of St Ana
o the agency of the St Ana icon both visually and externally (spiritually) is reflective of the ‘paradoxical form of spiritual agency, neither fully external nor fully self-contained…which…is consistent…with the ‘image-likeness’ model of the human persona, which anchors its realisation both externally, in God’s image, and internally, in the gradual accomplishment of the divine likeness through synergetic collaboration with God’ (47)
o link to potentiality-fulfilment model
