I feel a great debt of gratitude to the Orthodox for keeping the icon tradition alive and totally respect their definitions and establishment of the icon since the earliest days of Christianity. The most famous example of this prototype is the miracle-working icon of Our Lady of Vladimir, beloved in Russia. One type is called Elousa/Our Lady of Tenderness. These are examples of the types of three images of the Theotokos (Mother of God) said to be made by the hand of St. They spread throughout the Christian world. Thus were icons kept consistent and doctrinally correct, as handed down through the Church. Iconographers made sacred liturgical images according to carefully handed down instructions and later reproductions of St. As the Church recovered from the controversy and rapidly expanded, icons were once again needed. What did survive was the tradition, both in oral instruction and within written prayers and liturgical texts, describing the prototypes which the Evangelist established. Luke himself would have been destroyed during this 8th century Iconoclast Period. So, any original icons actually made through the hand of St. Images were not again removed from churches until the Protestant Reformation. Eventually the tide turned, and the icon became the official liturgical art. People were actually killed just for owning or painting images, and even for simply expressing their opinions on this matter. The second group, the iconoclasts, gained power initially, and systematically destroyed nearly every existing icon. One faction honored and venerated images, and the other wanted them destroyed as idolatry. Catherine of the Sinai) survived the early church’s period of iconoclasm in the 700s, which divided Christians into bitterly opposing groups. Some background history: None of these images, nor any others, (with the exception of a very few in the distant monastery of St. Once Christianity became an official, legal religion, it became safe to move the sacred images from hiding places in private homes into public churches where all could see them. Luke, which was sent to Rome to Theophilus (the same person mentioned in the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles). Germanus of Constantinople speak of an icon attributed to St. This is the oldest historical evidence of the existence of these icons. As Christians were being actively persecuted, these particular treasures were kept hidden and secret, perhaps only mentioned in a handed-down oral tradition to trusted members of the early church at this point.Ī Byzantine historian named Theodore, in the first half of the 6th century, refers in writing to such an icon having been sent a hundred years earlier to Constantinople by the Empress to her sister. Shortly after Pentecost, he painted 3 icons of the Mother of God, painted directly from life. Luke the Evangelist was the first iconographer. The tradition of the Orthodox Church holds that St.
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