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An iconic power

This article is more than 15 years old
The spirituality of Byzantium, even presented in the context of a secular exhibition, is alive and life-changing

Visiting the Royal Academy's Byzantium exhibition, now entering its last week, I was challenged by being in an environment with so many icons, seemingly "out of their place", alongside an organised display of Byzantine coins, the names of emperors and patriarchs, books of the lives of saints, lists of historical events and many other amazing artefacts. Meanwhile I was asking myself, "What happens between two icons?" This was the thought preoccupying my mind: there is a space that is not geographical within which you discover the icon as a part of yourself, and the icon is living within, rather than an external object.

It seems both heroic and misleading to set up such an exhibition, because it gives an impression of continuity at an aesthetic and narrative level, when in fact I feel the only continuity is that of personal martyrdom. In walking from one icon to another it felt like leaping from the edge of one precipice to another, aware that what was missing were the drops of the blood of the martyrs and the only way one could make the leap was by accepting the invitation to meditate and pray.

I was reminded of the Orthodox liturgy of preparation which the priest celebrates as he prepares the bread and wine for the Eucharist. In placing fragments of the "prosphora" bread on the paten, he commemorates the prophets, apostles, church fathers and hierarchs, the ancestors from Adam and Eve, with all the saints, praying for all humankind. Thus prayer evokes things which are in your memory if you are already a worshipper within the tradition so as to make a chain of associations leading to virtuous behaviour. It is like embedding or resurrecting these images within the personal consciousness of the beholder. This evocative function transcends historical time and serves to make us in some sense contemporary with the saints and their lives which we celebrate.

In the penultimate room I felt that those icons exposed in the museum, icons which are usually meant to be venerated in a church, suddenly woke up and started again to breathe, or, rather, made me realise that they were still breathing. I perceived the smell of the candles and of the wax and of the incense which is "encrypted" in these icons. I inhaled deeply and I smelt the icon in front of me, before kissing it: it was not an olfactory hallucination. I found myself, as if in church, praying. My aesthetic awe and theological reflection had been transcended.

In the last room there was an almost earth-shattering collection of icons from the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. The last was an icon of the Heavenly Ladder of St John Klimakos, an egg tempera and gold leaf on wood icon. It depicted a ladder of 30 rungs diagonally uniting earth with heaven set on a glowing gold background. Saint John leads a company of monks in their attempt to ascend it, whilst they are being tempted and occasionally pulled down by small dark devils with black chains and poisoned arrows. Their fall can happen even in the last second of their endeavour to enter the kingdom of heaven. I had a conversation there with two ladies who were fascinated when I explained what the icon signified. They had been in awe of its sheer beauty, but when they realised this was a symbolic representation of all Christendom in its attempt to take the kingdom of heaven by force, and that even in the last minute anyone can be deterred from being saved, their perspective changed. While talking to them I thought of that icon as a Damascus road in reverse in which anyone's soul can be lost, in the blink of an inattentive eye, at the very last moment. I began to tremble and I was almost compelled to kneel there.

In the Orthodox tradition not infrequently, and indeed in quite recent times, some of those who have been martyred for their faith, when their bodies have been recovered, are found to be incorrupt: sweet-smelling, looking as if they were asleep, not threatening but peaceful and approachable. Those miraculously well-preserved bodies are a reminder of the subtle harmony between their past biological life and unconditional, eschatological belief. This harmonious unity continues to inspire us, even if we do not know the biographical details of the persons who, whilst living within those bodies, experienced devotion, joy and suffering.

In that intercessory spirit we can rediscover Byzantium as a still inspirational reality which is alive and life-changing, beyond the museum-like beauty of the icons and the archival collection of data about the Christian Roman Empire. Likewise, when sharing the eucharist, beyond the elemental commixture of bread and wine, through the sacrament of the church, one mysteriously becomes a concelebrant in the banquet of true joy.

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