An Introduction to Icons in the Church
Within
the Ancient Christian Tradition, Holy Icons play an irreducible role in
contextualizing the experience of the believer. They operate as an extension of
the fundamental operation of human consciousness, manifesting the psychological
realties of human understanding through interpersonal relationship, the
illustrating the historical narrative, showing cause and effect, revealing the
Church as Communion with Christ and one another, forming a basic pedagogical
baseline for catechetical formation and proclaiming the ever-present reality of
Heaven and the Glory of God. Icons allow the individual, like the Church, to
transcend time and enter into the reality of an eternal community that Christ
has made possible by the action of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling of the
Creation. By presencing the
theological assumptions of the Christian faith, they make it possible for the
believer to interact with concepts in a way that only finds a clear analogy in
recent technological developments – by creating an iconic user interface with
the theological programming that streams within a cultural mainframe, the
person may develop a profound understanding of the operation of the system
without having to deal with the cumbersome philosophical underpinnings, which
would otherwise restrict the navigation of its historical breadth and its
theological depth to a very few intellectual adepts. Icons not only popularize,
simplify, and symbolize, but provide a commentary on the Christian
understanding of reality – a material world that was created to communicate the
Presence of God, the Energy of the Holy Spirit, and the reality that man can
only know abstractions, reflections of the things-in-themselves mentally,
unless the “Other” choses to touch him, be ingested by him, and in turn is
“assumed” and unified into one ontological reality. Eyes that see God’s
energies must already be filled with God. Otherwise, everything we see is
merely an empty icon, an unreal image, of the things we experience in the
mundane world every day!
As
in all areas of doctrinal definition, the Church had to wait for controversy
and political intrigue to bring about a dogmatic definition on the correct use
of image within the Church. Rather than “evolving”, the Church’s conciliar
definitions were seen as conformation of a faith that has “once and for all delivered
to the saints.” St.
Paul understood Christ to be an Icon of the Father: “The Son is the
image (εικονα) of the
invisible God, the firstborn over all creation”, he says in
Colossians 1:15. Likewise, Christians had used images liturgically
since the beginning of Christianity, with the earliest positive reference to
the iconic function of man and angels clearly stated within the Scriptures
themselves (Genesis 1:26, Exodus 25:18-20, Exodus 26:1, Exodus 36:8, I Kings
6:23-35, I Kings 7:25, 2 Chronicles 3:10-16). While Exodus 21:4 does say, “You shall not make for yourself a carved
image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the
earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth,” God then
elucidated on the creation of the Ark of the Covenant covered with two golden
Cherubim, curtains embroidered with golden angels, golden implements made with
flowers and pomegranates motifs, golden basins sitting on the back of twelve
oxen, and altars with horns and animal-like feet. This is not a contradiction if the edict was meant to proscribe
the depiction of false gods, not the making of images or their liturgical use.
Perhaps
because of the pagan misuse of images as idols in the ancient world, and
Israel’s constant struggle with worshipping false gods in effigy (Statues of
Baal, Ashera poles, the “Groves” of the Old Testament’s “High Places”), there
was always caution over potential abuse or misunderstanding. Such cautions were
never far from the consciousness of Early Christians, even as imagery for
teaching and memorial purposes was constantly employed. We find many ancient
quotes from Scripture, Early Church Fathers and Bishops that warned against the
potentially devastating results of substituting the created creature, or the
work of art, for God himself. As St. Paul himself says in Romans 1:25, “They
worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator”, or as Leontius of
Neapolis famously stated in the 7th century - ‘We do not say to the
Cross or the icons of the saints, ‘You are my God.’ For they are not our gods,
but are open books to remind us of God and to His honor set in the churches and
adored.” (J.M. Hussey, “The Byzantine World”, p. 30-31, quoting N.H. Baynes’s
translation in “Byzantine Studies, p. 232)
Thankfully,
the Greek language was far more detailed and explicit in its usage than Modern
English, and so Early Christians were conscience of the difference between
“Worship” (Latria), “Service” (“Dulia”), and “Respect” (“Proskynesis”) as
categories that are often similar in outward expression, but that differ in
heart-intent and inward orientation.[1]
To bow before someone or something was not understood as worship, since
servants bowed before their masters, people before their kings, and prophets
before angels. Also kissing or reverencing an object was not understood to be
worshipping the object, but showing respect for what that thing represented –
just as the Jews kissed and reverenced the Book of the Law, so the Early
Christians kissed and bowed before the Cross. Never did they suspect that it
would be understood as worshipping wood as God! As Icons became more common,
the same respect that was given to the Gospel and the Cross was also given to
the images of Christ, His Mother, and all the Saints as witnesses and extensions
of the Scriptures themselves!
During
the early days of the Church, under such intense persecution and in an attempt
to keep the sacred mysteries of Christ a closely guarded secret, St. Clement of
Alexandria (Paedagogus 3.59.2-3.60) recommends that only popular images
already within the culture were adopted and filled with a hidden theological
meaning by believers. The 36th Canon of Elvira, often sited as an
iconoclastic proof-text, also insists “pictures not be placed in churches, lest
that which we worship and venerate be painted on the walls”[2]
– a clear effort to keep a sacred iconographic reality from being desecrated in
a time of social instability (the 57th canon of this council
mentions the problem with desecration and graffiti, as the recently discovered
“donkey-headed god” of the Alexamenos Graffitio also illustrates), and clearly
stating that there were visual symbols that might be painted on walls that were
the object of veneration.
Christian
usage of the images of “The Young
Shepherd” (Hermes), “Mother and Child” (Isis and Osiris), “A Women standing in
Orans” (often used in Roman art to depict the wives of the Caesars, in
celebration of their apotheoses, but interpreted by Christians to represent the
Virgin delivering the Magnificat), boats, fish, fishermen, anchors, sheep, etc.
were seen as proper icons, which, to the outsider would appear to be overused
images commonly associated with secular themes. These motifs occur frequently
in Christian tombs, catacombs, and the few seal rings and reliquaries of saints
that have come down to us from this time. Very few crosses survive, even though
the literary record infers that the Tau, the Greek letter “T”, was the secret
symbol of Christ’s victory over death, “the Sign of Christ on our foreheads”
that the Book of Revelations, Clement, and Barnabas refer to. The most common,
by far, however, was the etching of a fish, the word ΙΧΘΥC, and the eight-spoke
discs in which the Name of Christ and the Cross itself were hidden.
These
usages all point the way to a cosmological faith
that did not shy from symbol and icon, but embraced them as means through which
God worked and in which man could glorify God! While the later Fathers battling
Byzantine Iconoclasm did not know it, the archeological reality of
“painted churches” before the turn of the 3rd century has now been
well established, not only by the well-known presence of paintings in the Roman
Catacombs, but by the recent discovery of early house church floor mosaics, and
by Dura Europos, a functioning Syrian church for over 90 years and literally
covered with icons, preserved for history in a sandstorm in the 280’s.
When
Christianity finally became a tolerated religion under Constantine through the
Edict of Milan in 318, a profusion of imagery burst into plain view, betraying
what had existed right beneath the surface of the Christian imagination during
more severe times of persecution. In less than a century, we have clear
illustrations of Christian architecture featuring common Christian motifs, with
Armenian and Roman cathedrals soaring to the skies, with rough hewn icons of
angels and Christ himself exulting in the sunlight. Aksumite pillars and
monasteries sprang up in the Lalibela style in Nubia and Ethiopia, and the
stone crosses of India were carved as objects of veneration for the
Christianized Jewish traders and local Hindu converts within the first three
centuries. In another century, the grand mosaic ceiling icons depicting the
Life of Christ would illuminate the Arian Baptistry of Ravenna, and the fully formed tradition of Christian
iconography would be taken for granted as always present within the Church!
Iconclastic Controversy
Iconoclasm
has no clear Christian precedents, regardless of what Protestant scholars would
later read into scattered references to the abuse of icons in the Patristic
sources during the Reformation (and at this point I believe J.M. Hussey’s
history differs from contemporary evidence and the teachings of the Fathers).
The few references that exist are either out of context or do not appear until
the iconoclasts used them in the 8th century (when there was heavy
forgery and myth-making on both sides). Even Jerome’s famous translation of the
iconoclastic letter of Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403), describing his
destruction of an embroidered icon hanging in a church in the early 4th
century, was not only ignored by contemporaries[3],
but directly controverted by such luminaries as St. Basil the Great[4],
St. Gregory of Nyssa[5],
and by classical Judaism - from whence some of the best-preserved illustrated
calendars and mosaics in in Late Roman history have been found by archeologists
on Synagogue floors.
Islam,
with its severe reaction to Christian Roman civilization, and its insatiable
desire for world domination, was the preeminent iconoclastic force in the
medieval world. Islamic Iconoclasm was not just a religious force, but was also
a political and social weapon, used to wipe out all remnants of the former
civilizations of the conquered, uniting them into a new, pan-Arab identity.
Iconoclasm was its most effective form of propaganda. Islamic military and
political success challenged the way in which Christian millennialism had
defined the comfortable humanist relationship between Church and State as an
icon of the Kingdom of God, in which the human person could thrive in a
combination of new and old, Classical pagan and Christian. As Byzantium lost
the ground that Emperor Heraclius once gained in his conflict with the Persian
Sassanids and against the Arabs, the new realities were hard for the Byzantine
political system to bear. This feeling of dread was quickly interpreted into a
theological reaction.
The
first period of iconoclasm lasted from 726 to 787, under Leo III the Isurian
(685-741), Constantine V (718-775), and Leo IV the Khazar (750-780). Leo III
was a powerful general from the Syrian boarder country, raised under Jacobite
influences, only coming into the Chalcedonian milieu after his ascension to the
throne. In Syria he had successfully waged war against the Arab Caliphate, and
established his reputation as an aggressive, effective leader. After his
successful usurpation of the throne, he proclaimed his mandate to rule as a
purification of the Church and proclaimed a military and religious policy that
resonated with the Byzantine military faction, which was shuddering from the sudden
loss of military prestige and domination that Heraclius had established a
century before. Leo also provided a clear reason for the Byzantine loss of
God’s support – the Christians had images, but the Jews and Muslims did not. To
what extent Islamic and Jewish origins of iconoclasm are still hotly debated by
scholars, but regardless of the legends that cropped up in the 9th
and 10th centuries regarding Jewish soothsayers and Arab Caliphs,
the success of the Caliphate at uniting the territory of Eastern Rome and the
Persian Empire, along with the conversion of Khazaria to Judaism (in 682),
undoubtedly shook the Ancient Christian Empire’s surety of its own mandate. It
is also interesting, while inconclusive, that two of the iconoclastic emperors
took wives from among the Jewish royalty of Khazaria.[6]
Heaven had seemingly turned against the Byzantines, and a radical policy must
be enacted to correct the faltering nation. The proof of this policy’s
correctness was established by the military success of the iconoclast emperors,
which seemed to prove the efficacy of their theory. Leo’s first act of
Iconoclasm was the destruction of the Icon of Christ above the entrance to the
palace, thereby officially declaring the Empire’s rejection of Christ’s iconic
presence within the State. The consequences of this action were to echo
throughout the next one hundred years, and end in a monastic rejection of the
authority of the emperor over the Church!
St.
Germanus (634-740), the writer of “On the Liturgy”, attempted to resist
the Imperial Heresy with his great “Silentia”, a stubborn resistance to state
pressure on the Church to eradicate iconography, but was forced to resign after
the desertion of two disloyal bishops. Germanus was replaced with
Anastasius, who went on to issue patriarchal decrees against icons and removing
the icons from the Hagia Sophia. Artabasdos, brother-in-law to Constantine V,
briefly usurped authority and supported the reinstating of icons. He only ruled
for one year, between 742-743, and was defeated by Constantine V when he
returned from his campaign against the Arabs. Anastasius waffled between the
two positions of violent iconoclasm and passive iconodule support, finally
having his eyes put out by Constantine. His “repentance” and return to iconoclasm
saw him reinstated as Patriarch, living until 754.
In
754, Constantine V convened Iconoclast Council of Hieria, without the approval
or attendance of any of the patriarchs, Anastasius having just died a few
months before. Constantine convened a self-proclaimed "Ecumenical
Council" in the vacant see of Constantinople, attended by an assortment of
bishops that had been hand-picked by the Emperor himself. The bishops invited
declared the theological statement written by the Emperor, called the
“Peuseis”, was true,
outlawing icons, anathematizing those who kept the ancient tradition of icon
veneration. However, the council also tried to forestall violence, warning
against destruction of churches. This caution fell on deaf ears as the
military successes of the iconoclast government became a rallying cry to all
levels of society to take up the cause against idolatry, leading to the
destruction of churches, desecration of relics, and the replacing of religious
scenes with secular hunting and racing themes in public places.
Empress
Irene (752-803) became the regent for their son, Constantine VI (771-805)
after the death of her husband, Leo the Khazar, in 780. Empress Irene called
the 2nd Council of Nicaea in 787, who elected Tarasios (a known supporter of
icons from a family that had been famously persecuted at court for their
support of the iconodule monastics) as Patriarch in preparation, herself
attending the council as the Imperial Representative. She had fallen under the
influence of St. Theodore Studite, the radical monk who proposed the
emancipation of slaves and the separation of Church and State for the first
time in history. With his ethos as a guide, Irene successful saw the
restoration of icons in the Great Church. Her religious fervor, however,
seems to have ended with icons, because the rest of her reign was practically
disastrous for the Church, and saw both the alienation of the Pope in Rome, and
also the crowning of a rival Emperor, Charlemagne the Great, due to her desire
for power, her belittling of Roman Tradition, and her deposition and blinding
of the rightful emperor, her son!
Irene
was a successful ruler while she functioned as regent to her son, Constantine
VI, who was only 2 at the time, he rebelled against his controlling mother, idolized
the person and policies of his father, and murdered his elderly consul at the
age of 17. He divorced the wife his mother had arranged for him to marry, Maria
of Amnia, taking a concubine, Theodota, as his consort instead. This action
sent shockwaves throughout the Church in the East and well as the West, causing
a “Moechian Schism” between Patriarch Tarasios and the supporters of St.
Theodore Studite. After intermittent two cycles of deposition and enthronement
by the military iconoclast supporters of Leo’s Isurian rule, Irene finally deposed
and blinded her son, sending him to a monastery where he died of his wounds. This
set off the course of events in the West by which a rival Holy Roman Empire
would be established, and the cultural rifts separating the two halves of the
Roman world settled into administrative and imperial competition. Regardless
of the ardent support of the monks, Irene’s reign ended in ruin, and the empire
quickly fall apart.
Nikephoros
I (Irene’s treasurer) usurped the throne and forced Irene into abdication and a
nunnery, and he and his co-emperors, his son Staurakios and his son-in-law
Micheal I Rangabe, continued the policy of supporting the pro-icon faction of
the Church and Court. Micheal I’s son, Niketas/Ignatios (798-877), later became
the Patriarch of Constantinople under Theodora, but fell out of favor with
Michael III and was replaced by Photios the Great. Unfortunately,
Nikephoros was unable to sustain the military might of the empire, and a series
of failed campaigns against the Arabs and the Slavs seemed to prove to the
military that the veneration of Icons truly was the source of God’s wrath
against the Empire.
Second
Period of Iconoclasm began in 814 and 842, started by Leo V the Armenian
(775-820), a usurping general who forced Michael I to abdicate, continued by
his general, Michael II the Amorian (Ruled from 820 and died in 829),
who assassinated Leo V, and the Amorian’s son, Theophilus (813, becoming
co-emperor with his father in 822, assuming the empire in 829, and dying in
842). Theodora (815-867), wife of Theophilus, regent to their son Michael III
(840-867), restored icons in 843. Methodios (788-847) was elected patriarch and
restored the icons, making the proclamation that is read at the “Sunday
of Orthodoxy” from the Synodikon of the 7th Ecumenical Council.
“As the Prophets beheld,
as the Apostles taught,
as the
Church received,
As the Teachers dogmatized,
as the Universe agreed,
as
Grace illumined,
as the Truth revealed,
as falsehood passed away,
as Wisdom
presented,
as Christ awarded, thus we declare,
thus we assert,
thus we proclaim
Christ our true God
and honor His saints, in words,
in writings,
in
thoughts,
in sacrifices,
in churches,
in holy icons. On the one hand,
worshipping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord, and on the other hand,
honoring and venerating His Saints as true servants of the same Lord. This is
the Faith of the Apostles! This is the Faith of the Fathers!
This is the Faith
of the Ancient Christian!
This is the Faith which has established the
Universe!” (From the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America’s official service
usage)
The Emergence of the Ancient Christian
Position
While
the proclamations of the 7th Council are valuable for administrative
and theological clarification, and the “Triumph of Orthodoxy” that we use to
commemorate the restoration of icons is a powerful witness of the living
tradition of the Church throughout all times, the primary source for the
philosophy of images lies within the writings of two shining personalities –
St. John of Damascus and St. Theodore Studite, who provided the
philosophical basis for expanded understanding the age-old role of icons in the
Ancient Church. “There was however another implication which both John of
Damascus and Theodore the Studite were quick to seize upon – namely the right
of the Church alone to decide matters of doctrine.” (J.M. Hussey, “The
Byzantine World”, p. 32) St. Theodore is remarkable for having stated, “Your
responsibility, Emperor, is with the affairs of state and military matters.
Give your mind to these and leave the Church to its pastors and teachers.” (J.M.
Hussey, “The Byzantine World”, p. 56)
St.
John of Damascus best presented his ideas due to his location – He lived far
beyond the reach of Leo the Isurian, and was a Syrian, born of the Mansour
Bedouin tribe, with profound understanding of Greek culture and learning, but
with all the insights and critical abilities of a cultural outsider. Based in
the Palestinian monastery of Mar Sabas, near Jerusalem, St. John had no
political motivation for his “Byzantine Orthodoxy”, and clearly stood within a
tradition of Ancient Christian resistance to imperial heresies, just as his
predecessor and fellow Palestinian Father, St. Maximus Confessor, had in the
face of Emperor Heraclius’ Monothelite and Monergist heresies. St. John clearly
saw the problems of Islam, its “Spirit of Antichrist”, and the profound
over-simplification and lack of appreciation for the mechanics of communication
and of God’s purpose for the created world. His profound critique of such
categories can be seen in his “Fountain of Knowledge”, which works out the Ancient
Christian doctrinal system in all the sciences of the day through his
encyclopedic knowledge of the Classical and Christian World. Unlike much of his
other work, however, “On the Divine Images”, the primary text from which
contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism derives its approach to
icons, is written for the common man in plain style. His famous formula is a
simple; “In former times God, who is without form or body, could never be
depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an
image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of
matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter;
who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the
matter that wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God. How could God be
born out of things which have no existence in themselves?” (On Divine Images,
Translated by David Anderson, SVS Press, p. 23-24)
St.
Theodore Studite was an activist influence within Constantinople, with a
powerful personality, dynamic charisma, and the ability to organize monastic
communities with profound effectiveness. While he claimed to be taking
monasticism back to apostolic precedents, his innovative thinking and ability
to put new emphasis on old, worn-out forms was remarkable. His categorical
rejection of the authority of the Emperor in religious matters, his insistence
on the purity of the Church, and his focus on the centrality of the icon in the
theology of the Church, made him the primary advocate of iconodulic continuity
within the Byzantine Church. Over the course of his long life, he was
persecuted, exiled three times, imprisoned, tortured, recalled, elevated to
position of chief counsel, and then functioned as the primary spiritual advisor
to several emperors and empresses, the most important of whom was Irene.
Arguably, through his faithfulness and indomitable character, he extended the
reputation of monasticism past all previous bounds and led the way through the
establishment of his monastic Rule
into the final manifestation of monasticism that would realize the Hysechastic Ideal that would typify the
last few hundred years of the Byzantine Christian experience.
St.
Theodore contributed a further clarification to St. John’s argument to the
honorable and material nature of God's saving economy, against the more
sophisticated arguments of the second period of iconoclasm, which insisted that
icons were an acceptable decorative element, but not necessary. “The arguments
of the iconoclasts…stressed that an image of Christ either circumscribed and
uncircumscribable Godhead and confused the two natures (Monophysite), or
divided the human from the divine Person (Nestorian). To the iconoclasts the
only true image of Christ was the Eucharist. They maintained that the true
image of a saint was the reproduction of his virtue, that is, an ethical image
within the believer and not any kind of material representation.” (J.M. Hussey,
“The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire”, p. 40-41) St. Theodore argued
that while the icon was not a depiction of God’s nature but was a depiction of
the hypostatic reality of the one being depicted, a “shadow of the flesh”,
which for Christ was the perfect, visible, material, human Person of Christ.
His theory placed more emphasis on the heavenly reality being portrayed, and
less on the justification of material veneration and its connection with
theosis, which had been St. John’s defense against Leo III’s attack on icons.
Just as a signet ring left a copy of itself in imprinted wax, not changing the
nature of the medium, so an icon was impressed with the hypostatic existence of
the prototype without being the prototype. St. Theodore’s argument undercut the
concerns voiced by many moderates in the argument between Iconoclast and
Iconodule positions – affirming that created matter was not mistaken for
uncreated divinity, and that the icon functioned as a witness to a heavenly
reality. Therefore, to St. Theodore, likeness of the icon to the prototype was
a necessity for the hypostatic reality to be conveyed, and not that reality
itself. (St. Theodore Studite, “On the Holy Icons”, translated by
Catherine P. Roth, p. 40, 52)
St.
Theodore also shows why it is necessary to venerate icons (rather than having
images without acknowledging their meaning or venerating them in their
representational capacity), and to venerate and respect others (humans, angels,
and physical objects), as a part of God's natural order. He also built the
first theory of human rights and argued for the emancipation of slaves based on
this theology of icons! If man is created in God’s image, and that image is to
be respected, then the abusive use of our fellow man is the same error as
Iconoclasm – a failure to recognize and love the image of God in His Creation! Veneration
allows for an acknowledgment of both God's reasons for creating the world, and
way He uses it to save us. It also shows us a robust Christian faith that
completely rejects the Docetic or Monophysite theological conclusions (with
their dualistic conceptions of matter vs. spirit) of a fear of veneration,
embracing the unmixed natures and the single hypostatic reality of Christ.
Veneration of the image of God in our fellow man, and recognition of icons are
the only things that enable us to understand the hypostatic reality of the
representation, not sharing in the Godhood of Hypostasis, and reflecting the
true nature of the Trinity. The Trinity is worshipped in unity, as One
God, the disparate hypostases NOT being the focus of worship. God is three
personal hypostatic realities in one essence and nature. As icons reflect
hypostatic reality, but are unable to communicate nature, icons (and people)
are able to communicate a fundamental truth - that we worship the Trinity in
unity, and that Christ is the revelation of that Trinity through His very being!
By its very limitations, an icon reveals truth!
[1] Refer to the “Definitions” of the Second Council of Nicaea,
in which it is stated that λατρεια, true worship, belongs
to the Divine Nature alone, and is not synonymous with the respect given to a
person or thing other than God.
[2] Schaff disingenuously translates this passage as “Pictures
are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship
and adoration.” This is obviously wrong when compared to the Latin original,
which reads, “Placuit picturas in ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod colitur et
adoratur in parietibus depingatur.”
[3]
If authentic, but St. Theodore the Studite argues strongly
against its acceptance as a genuine iconoclastic passage, due the contradiction
between the supposed rejection of icons by Epiphanius and his student, St.
Sabinus, who covered the church built in honor of St. Epiphanius with icons of
the Life of Christ shortly after his death. (St. Theodore Studite, On the Holy
Icons, Translated by Catherine P. Roth, SVS Press, p. 74) It is also
interesting that this questionable quote by St. Epiphanius directly references
St. Palladius, a first-hand witness who advocated icon veneration based on the undisputed
practice of St. John Chrysostom himself!
[4] “The image of the
emperor is also called the emperor, yet there are not two emperors. Power is
not divided nor is glory separated. Just as he who rules us is one power, so
the homage he receives from us is one, not multiple, for the honor given to the
image is transferred to the prototype.” (St. Basil the Great, On the Holy
Spirit, Translated by Stephen Hildebrand, Part 18:45)
[5] "Believing that to touch it is itself a sanctification
and a blessing and if it be permitted to carry off any of the dust which has
settled upon the martyr's resting place, the dust is accounted as a great gift
and the mold as a precious treasure. And as for touching the relics themselves,
if that should ever be our happiness, only those who have experienced it and
who have had their wish gratified can know how much this is desirable and how
worthy a recompense it is of aspiring prayer" (St. Gregory of Nyssa, The
Panegyric of the Martyr St. Theodore, from Clavis Patrum Graecorum XLVII, p. 735-48)
[6] In Kevin Alan Brook’s seminal work, “The Jews of Khazaria”
(Rowman & Littlefield Press, p. 137), it is proven that Irene (Chichek of
Khazaria), wife of Constantine V, and Irene (of Athens, via a Khazarian
mother), wife of their son Leo IV, were both of Jewish Imperial stock.
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