VII. Tolkien and the Great Rood Screen

I shared this story briefly in my previous post, but as I continue my meditations on a Language of Beauty I thought it would be worth considering further here, since, with a few well-chosen words, Tolkien perfectly encapsulates a complex idea which I have been wrestling with. 

The setting is a conversation, early on in their friendship, between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Like most good friends they had their ins and outs, their ups and downs, and like most men they came to certain boundaries within their relationship--certain rivers over which lay deeper intimacy, but beyond which one or the other were not able to cross. 

Both men were Christians, of course. Lewis was Church of England, neither as Anglo-Catholic as Anglo-Catholics would like to claim, nor nearly as Evangelical as Evangelicals would like to claim.* For Lewis, the Middle Ages held a great deal of beauty and attraction, but there seem to have been certain medieval ideas and practices with which he was willing to intellectually engage, but into which he was never able to fully enter. 

The veneration of the saints seems to have been the biggest of these objections, especially in the early years after his conversion (or rather, reversion) to Christianity. Tolkien, on the other hand, was a fairly traditional Roman Catholic in every sense. For him, the faith of the Middle Ages seems to have been still a vibrant, living thing, and therefore not something which could be dissected piecemeal without killing it. This was the subject of one of Tolkien's earliest conflicts with Lewis, the first one of those "rivers" which could not be crossed. I will here quote a rather lengthy passage from Humphrey Carpenter's The Inklings, since some context is important lest I seem to paint too bleak a picture of their friendship:

‘We were coming down the steps from Magdalen hall,’ Tolkien recalled, ‘long ago in the days of our unclouded association, before there was anything, as it seemed, that must be withheld or passed over in silence. I said that I had a special devotion to St John. Lewis stiffened, his head went back, and he said in the brusque harsh tones which I was later to hear him use again when dismissing something he disapproved of: “I can’t imagine any two persons more dissimilar.” We stumped along the cloisters, and I followed feeling like a shabby little Catholic caught by the eye of an “Evangelical clergyman of good family”1 taking holy water at the door of a church. A door had slammed. Never now should I be able to say in his presence:

Bot Crystes mersy and Mary and Jon,
Thise am the grounde of alle my blysse
– The Pearl, 383-4;

and suppose that I was sharing anything of my vision of a great rood-screen through which one could see the Holy of Holies.’

Tolkien wrote this thirty years later, when other events had soured his recollections. In the early days of the friendship such moments were rare, and for the most part he was profoundly grateful for Lewis’s conversion. In October 1933 he wrote in his diary that friendship with Lewis, ‘besides giving constant pleasure and comfort, has done me much good from the contact with a man at once honest, brave, intellectual – a scholar, a poet, and a philosopher – and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage, of Our Lord’.

Embedded within this somewhat painful recollection of Tolkien's is what I believe to be one of his most profound ideas, too often overlooked: the idea of the Pearl poem (which, according to Carpenter, Lewis especially disliked) and by extension the whole world of medieval language and literature to which it belonged as a kind of "rood-screen" through which one could glimpse a vision of holiness. 

15th-century rood screen from the chapel of St Fiacre at Le Faouet Morbihan. Note the saints beneath the cross.

In mulling over this metaphor of Tolkien's, I've conceived a sort of three-way (i.e. triangular) relationship between the rood-screen, the veneration of the saints, and medieval literature.**

Medieval art and literature*** seems to assume a world paradoxically characterized by what Lewis called the 'thick' and the 'clear':

We may [reverently] divide religions, as we do soups, into ‘thick’ and ‘clear’. By Thick I mean those which have orgies and ecstasies and mysteries and local attachments: Africa is full of Thick religions. By Clear I mean those which are philosophical, ethical and universalizing: Stoicism, Buddhism, and the Ethical Church are Clear religions. Now if there is a true religion it must be both Thick and Clear: for the true God must have made both the child and the man, both the savage and the citizen, both the head and the belly. ...Christianity really breaks down the middle wall of the partition. It takes a convert from central Africa and tells him to obey an enlightened universalist ethic: it takes a twentieth-century academic prig like me and tells me to go fasting to a Mystery, to drink the blood of the Lord. (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock)

Medieval Christianity is full of both, in a way which truly must be experienced in order to be understood fully. It is why a theological titan like St Ambrose or St Augustine could compose hymns to jubilantly celebrate the miraculous finding of a martyr's relics, something I suspect most modern "theologians" would be too sober to do. It is why it was precisely the people who lived the 'clearest' existence--the hermits, stylites, and monks--who defended the 'thick' uses of incense, liturgical arts, and the veneration of the holy icons. It was a world that had rejected the extremes both of paganism and Platonism not because either was too much of something but because both were not enough of anything. 

In the nave of even the smallest medieval church, the altar--where the holy oblation was offered up day-in and day-out through the brightest days and darkest nights of the world--was the focal point of the whole building just as the elevation and sacring was the focal point of the Mass. But at the same time, the nave of even the smallest medieval church was full of beads and images, candles and whispered prayers--a whole world of personal and para-liturgical devotion, all oriented toward the altar and yet organic and growing, like the undergrowth of a great forest, in a way which the Reformation and Enlightenment would find unsanitary and chaotic. 

St Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral, Washington DC

It is a world in some sense crowded, just as medieval frescoes or illuminations are too busy for modern eyes or the interlaced plot of your average Arthurian legend has too many changes of character and story for the modern attention span to track. But its inhabitants did not find it crowded--they found it full. Full--but with plenty of corners which still needed filling in. They saw very little difficulty in telling and retelling their favorite stories (be it Arthurian legends, hagiographies, or the Romance of Alexander) with an attitude towards authorship which would curl the toes of a modern Intellectual Property lawyer. Whole worlds of the old pagan undergrowth could be repurposed as in Beowulf or the Prose Edda, just as the high philosophy of the Classical world could be reinterpreted for the local idiom as in the Anglo-Saxon Boethius. So too The Divine Comedy is likely to offend the modern reader by its 'thickness' and its 'clarity' all at once.

Lower screen detail from St Michael's Church, Barton Turf

This world might seem chaotic the way a great forest seems chaotic. And yet there is a logic--a grammar, a syntax, a musical leit motif--that underlies it all. Like the procession around the walls of the parish at the Paschal vigil, there is a clear order and goal to it all--and yet also a kind of organic pulse as sleepy children move about and people press and throng and try to keep up with the crowd. In short, this is what it looks like when something is alive.

This sense of a heaven--of a world--which was full, and always becoming more full, undergirds Dante's Paradisio, which manages to have both endless space and upward dimension in the blessedness of the saints, but which at the same time is radically centered around the Beatific Vision of the Holy Trinity, of Christ. These two things are not opposites; indeed, it is difficult to imagine a version of Paradisio which merely skips to the final canto, as various modern egalitarian theologies might suggest.

I have already made some stumbling attempts to discuss how the iconography--and particularly the iconostasis--of the Eastern Orthodox temple conveys this sense of fullness. In the medieval west--and, it seems, for Tolkien--the rood screen served a similar role. Historian Eamon Duffy describes it this way:

The screens were first and foremost Christological images, proclaiming the centrality of Christ's atoning death. The early sixteenth-century Rood-screen rail at Compsal near Doncaster had an inscription along it which hammered the point home:

Let fal down thyn ne & lift up thy hart
Behold thy maker on yon
Remembir his woundis that for the did smart
Gotyn without syn and on a virgin bor.
Al his hed percid with a crowne of thorn
Alas man thy hart ought to brast in two
Bewar of the dwyl whan he blawis his horn
And pray thy gode aungel convey thee fro.

These familiar facts are worth insisting upon when considering the saints painted on the dados or loft-fronts of Rood-screens, for they represent a powerful iconic and liturgical gloss on the perception of the role of the saints... The saints stood, in the most literal sense, under the cross, and their presence on the screen spoke of their dependence on and mediation of the benefits of Christ's Passion, and their role as intercessors for their clients not merely here and and now but at the last day. The whole screen was therefore a complex icon of the heavenly hierarchy, and many screens where clearly designed to underline this symbolism... representing... a sense of being surrounded and assisted by the "whole company of heaven."

Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, p. 158

For Tolkien, medieval art and literature seems to have served this purpose--to place the heart, the imagination, in a world that was full to overflowing with wonders and glories, the ultimate purpose of which was to reveal the Source of wonder and glory--to veil and therefore reveal as holy that which takes place beyond the rood-screen or iconostasis, where the Singer enters the tale--where the great Story unfolds.

Rood-screen of Croyland Abbey

*There is strong evidence to suggest that Lewis became more of a high churchman after his encounter with Fr Walter Adams, an Anglo-Catholic priest who served as Lewis's father-confessor and spiritual director from 1940-1952.  Adams convinced Lewis of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and discipled Lewis in a love of liturgy, the Daily Office, and the monthly recitation of the Psalter. Lewis also subscribed to a certain understanding of the doctrine of Purgatory, though there are some nuances regarding that issue regarding which I'm not really qualified to speak.

**We should not forget that far and away the most popular genre of literature in the Middle Ages was hagiography, though these saints lives (some of which immensely fantastic, evocative, and entertaining; others of which are downright gory) now rarely catch the notice of modern readers.

***As though one could speak in any kind of an accurate, general way about a thousand-year period of human history.

VI. An Icon of Paradise

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.
- Genesis 28:12-22

Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
- John 1:48-51

Following the previous look at Paradise and its hierarchical structure in the Old Testament scriptures, and in the poetry of St Ephraim the Syrian, we have laid the groundwork to consider the interaction of sacred art and sacred space in the construction of the Eastern Orthodox "temple," the name which Eastern Christians usually apply to their places of worship. I've chosen this as my first case study for three reasons:

• I can speak from personal experience here, since my encounter with sacred art and sacred space in this context answered a certain longing I have felt since childhood.
• As one of the oldest, stable iconographic and architectural traditions in the world, there is a lot of material to work with--not just in Russia or Greece, but in Italy, Sicily, Spain, Romania, other parts of Western Europe, and even the British Isles. The features I will be focusing on in this post are not specifically Eastern, and at one point in time were part of the common expression of the sacred that was found throughout Christendom.
• The beauty one encounters in an Eastern Orthodox church is an excellent example of beauty as an objective reality rather than a subjective "in the eye of the beholder" response. What I mean is this: many people, when first stepping into the nave of a canonically adorned and decorated Orthodox church, will say something like "it's very beautiful," with the often explicit caveat that it is not to their taste. In other words, they recognize the transcendent qualities of the art and architecture while at the same time acknowledging that it belongs to a world so far removed from their own time and context that they would not choose to decorate their own houses of worship (let alone their own houses) this way. It will perhaps seem ironic, but I consider this to be one of the surest proofs of beauty in this tradition--objective beauty is beautiful whether or not I like it.

The Temple

It's become a commonplace in certain circles to notice the similarities between the temples of the Ancient Near East (and first and foremost, the Tabernacle of Moses) and the layout of the Christian house of worship. This is particularly true in the Eastern Rite, where the ancient understandings of sacred space have only been reinforced by medieval and early modern developments (such as the development of the curtained templon into the great carved iconostasis in the Russian Orthodox tradition).

Photo credit: http://stdemiana.church/orthodoxy/inner-layout-structure/

As discussed in a previous post, this basic understanding of hierarchical space was a means of incarnating ancient understandings about God, man's relationship to the divine, and even the interior structure of human nature itself. The amount of attention given to the Tabernacle/Temple in both Old and New Testament Scriptures, and the extensive Patristic commentaries on the long passages found in Exodus and elsewhere detailing the exact dimensions and materials to be used in the Tabernacle all point to the great significance of this concept in ancient Jewish and Christian thought. In The Language of Creation, Mattieu Pageau suggests that the structure of the Tabernacle (and by extension Eden, the Genesis narrative, etc.) functions like the spelling, grammar, and syntax which forms arbitrary lines on paper into a means of communicating an abstract spiritual reality:

Given our current materialism, the best way to understand the role of the temple is through analogies with our written language. Like a written word, the temple is made from a collection of physical parts arranged by the rules of an arcane language. The purpose of this "body" is to host an invisible "breath." This pattern is then reiterated within the temple itself (in the Ark of the Covenant) where the written tablets (the testimony) physically host the spoken laws of God... With the analogy of written language, it is easier to understand why the plans of the temple are so detailed and complicated. These patterns are examples of "lowering meaning" into the lowest depths of material reality. At these levels, they are like the rules of an alphabet because they organize "marks" in a very detailed manner. Similarly, if we were to describe how to embody the meaning of "holy temple" on this page, the plans for its construction might look something like this:

You shall make nine vertical marks, ten horizontal marks, and six slanted marks. Three of the slanted marks shall be left-leaning, and three shall be right-leaning, etc. You shall make two of the following patterns: three horizontal marks joined to the right of one vertical mark in equal distance, etc. 

- The Language of Creation, pp 94-5 

The diagram to which Pageau refers in the quote above. The book is full of many such helpful diagrams which show the work of man to "raise earth" (potential) and that of God to "lower heaven" (meaning) in Genesis.

The Old Testament Tabernacle--and therefore the Christian temple--is thus a meta-cognitive pattern. The structure alone is, of course, not enough. The structure is significant because it reveals to us "the pattern" which is the basis of beauty and meaning. For a Temple is not a monument, a mere edifice to remind us of some bygone era when Classical or Medieval man managed (usually to our great astonishment) to create something of lasting beauty. It is a place where something happens.

Here we can think of the difference between going to tour one of the great cathedrals of Europe and attending (and participating in) a Mass there. These are two radically different experiences. In the first case, the cathedral is merely an idea--an artifact or relic from a bygone era. It may be deeply moving, as a beautiful painting in a museum is moving, but a safe distance is maintained between ourselves and the structure.

In the second case, the structure--magnificent as it is--exists to uniquely and truly facilitate the meeting of heaven and earth. That this meeting could happen anywhere--say, on the side of a mountain in the Sinai peninsula--does not in any way refute the fact that some places or structures are better suited to incarnating certain spiritual realities than others. To partake in the Divine Liturgy in a great cathedral (or a small church--it is the peculiar genius of Eastern Orthodox architecture that small buildings can reveal Paradise as effectively as large ones; the impressiveness of the size is not the primary focus) is to ascend up and through the art, architecture, and music to something which is beyond any of them, but provides meaning to them all.

The nave of St John of Damascus Orthodox Church, Tyler TX. The space is relatively small--by Protestant standards--for a congregation of this size, however the lack of pews means that space which would be occupied by auditorium style seating can instead be arranged along traditional lines. Note that as this is a new temple, the process of adorning it with frescoes has not yet begun.

A tiny church in Urkaine. Photo credit.

In this experience, no particular attention need be paid to the icons--many of them are in fact in the high recesses of the ceiling where you cannot see them very well--or to the music, or to the smell of incense, or any of the other multi-sensory experiences of worship. For the thing which demands our attention is the Liturgy itself--all of the other incarnational aspects of art and architecture facilitate this journey in a way which aids our perception of the spiritual.

It is with this in mind that I will attempt to speak of the iconographic scheme of an Orthodox Church. It must be understood that the visual beauty is only one aspect of this experience, one which flows out of the basic forms of the architecture and moves us, not toward sensationalism or emotion, but sot a place of higher communion where God may be known.

The Narthex

Entry into an Orthodox church begins in the narthex (sometimes, there is a secondary area just inside the doors called the exo-narthex, sort of a narthex before the narthex). This word means "porch" and is analogous to the porch of Solomon's Temple, or to the outer court of the Tabernacle. The journey "up the mountain of Paradise" towards God begins when the faithful leave the world and step into this area. Ritually and iconographically, this is a border, a transitional space. Baptisms are traditionally held here, since Baptism is both a ritual death as well as a crossing through death into new life. Here also (at least traditionally) those who are not of the Faithful--catechumens, penitents, and well-behaved visitors--stand during the Liturgy. This is the base of the mountain.

Iconographically, the narthex is usually decorated with scenes from the Old Testament scriptures. One church near my house features:

• The creation of Adam and the expulsion from Paradise [Located on the Western wall, so that it is the last thing one sees when one leaves the church--the typology here, which goes all the way back to St Ephraim the Syrian, should be clear: the church is paradise.]
• Moses and the Burning Bush
• Moses parting the Red Sea
• Moses receiving the tablets of the Law
• The hospitality of Abraham at the Oak of Mamre
• The sacrifice of Isaac
• The Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace
• Jonah in the belly of the great fish

Each of these stories has a special relevance to the Christian understanding of God's redemptive work on behalf of His people--but the selection and arrangement is hardly unusual. Many of these same stories feature prominently in the narthex of my own parish. Thus, each approach to God, each ascent up the Mountain, begins in Genesis and takes us through the Law and the Prophets. In my parish, on the eastern verge of the narthex as one is about to step into the nave, one sees a large fresco of the Prophet Isaiah on one's right, and of King David on one's left. 

The Nave

As they arrive for the Liturgy, the Faithful move through the narthex into the nave, the name of which echoes well the understanding of the Church as the "ark of salvation." This is where the Faithful will stand, chant the Psalms, pray the prayers, and sing the hymns of the Liturgy. It is also the place where, at the summit of the journey, they will partake of communion. This is the largest space in the church, and corresponds to the Holy Place of the Tabernacle. The fact that all of the Faithful worship here has to do with the understanding of the Christian priesthood, which is a blog post for another day (and perhaps another blog).

As the largest area of the church, this is where we are likely to see the greatest iconographic variety--with some important exceptions:

• The dome (and there is always a dome over the nave if the building has been purpose-built for an Orthodox church) contains an icon of Christ enthroned in glory--most often of the variety called Pantocrator -- "the ruler of all."
• The Western wall (the direction you face when leaving the church) usually has an icon of one of the following subjects: the Last Judgment, the Dormition of the Theotokos, or a synaxis (gathering) of evangelist/missionary saints. Each of these makes a slightly different statement about what thoughts should occupy the Faithful as they return to the world.
• The Eastern end of the nave is dominated by a raised platform and, joining the nave to the Most Holy Place, the templon or iconostasis.

Here I can draw specifically upon the iconography of my home parish. At the apex of the dome (i.e. the top of the hierarchy) is Christ Pantocrator, surrounded by the Hebrew prophets. Each of the latter holds a scroll in their hand with a quotation from their prophecy, which directly relates to the Great Feast which is portrayed on the next tier down. [In the Orthodox Church, a Great Feast is a moment in the life of Christ, or the Church, which the Church specially commemorates; the feasts of the Mosaic Law were the original bases for these, and more have been since added. There are twelve of these plus Pascha/Easter, which is the "Feast of Feasts" and the "Day of Days."]

The dome of St Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Dallas TX

Supporting these top two tiers is a third, which goes all the way around the base of the dome, showing the Holy Apostles. The fourth tier of frescoes are more Great Feasts as well as other scenes from the Gospels. The fifth tier (which is eye-level if you are standing in the nave) includes moments from the life of the parish's patron saint, as well as numerous panel icons of Christ, the Mother of God, a crucifix, and a reliquary. These are places where the faithful may light candles, say their prayers, and stand in worship. 

Since the main windows (often the only windows) of the church are in the dome, the hierarchy of meaning follows the movement of light: from above, at the throne of God (where Christ is seated at the right hand) down through the prophets (the Old Testament Scriptures) and into the Gospels. At the lowest level--the saint frescoes, panel icons, and the living icons (the Faithful) standing in the nave, we see the implications of the Scriptures and Gospels lived out--incarnated, the way the architecture incarnates a divine pattern--by ordinary people in a variety of times and places, most of which are far removed from First Century Palestine.

On the West (rear) wall of the nave there is a fresco of the Bosom of Abraham and two tiers of evangelist/missionary saints (making it a combination of the themes of the Last Judgment and the Great Commission). Much more could be said about this scheme, which has been executed so well by a local iconographer who has done many churches in the area and throughout North America.

The Iconostasis

The iconostasis is easily the most visually dominating feature of the nave. It separates (or joins, depending on your perspective) the nave to the Sanctuary/Most Holy Place. Just as the dome and layout of the building are arranged hierarchically, so too the iconostasis suggests a hierarchy into which the Faithful are invited to move and partake.

The iconostasis.

In the top tier of the iconostasis featured above, Christ is shown at center, seated enthroned as the Son of Man, surrounded by the cherubim, which accords with the visions of the Prophet Ezekiel and St John the Theologian. This format is commonly called a deisis, where those on his right hand (here the Mother of God, St Michael, St Peter, and St Tikhon) and those on his left (St John the Baptist, St Gabriel, St Paul, and St Innocent) as well as the figures on either end of the bottom tier (Sts Herman and Seraphim) have their heads inclined and hands raised in worship. Immediately below the enthroned Christ there is a doorway, known as the Royal Doors (corresponding to the veil of the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle; there is an actual veil which is drawn over this doorway at certain times in the Liturgy). On either side of it there are icons of Christ and the Mother of God, and then two other side doors known as the "Deacon's Doors" (more about them in a a future post, perhaps).

The doors themselves are of interest here, for they traditionally bear certain icons which help to reveal their purpose.

At the top row are two panels portraying the Annunciation--the moment of the Incarnation, when Christ the Word entered the womb of his mother. In the bottom four panels are icons depicting each of the four Gospel writers. These icons help us understand the purpose of the doors, of the veil, and of the whole iconostasis: it is not to keep us from God, but rather to reveal him as the man born of Mary, whose life is given to us in the Gospels. Thus, the first two ways that the Church encounters Christ--in the Incarnation and in Holy Scripture--open the way for the third and most intimate encounter: Holy Communion. 

Like the iconography of the nave, therefore, the iconostasis reveals to us not just a hierarchy, but participation and movement along that hierarchy.

The Sanctuary

The "summit of the mountain" is the Sanctuary, or Most Holy Place, corresponding to the sanctum sanctorum of Moses' Tabernacle. To fully understand the significant of this place--its role and purpose--one must understand the role of altars generally in the Hebrew Scriptures. They are--like Noah's altar, or the rock of Jacob at Bethel--a place where something (a sacrifice) is offered, and something (a blessing or anointing) is received. This basic understanding of sacrifice is retained in the Christian Eucharist: bread and wine, ourselves and all our lives, are offered to God; he sends down his Holy Spirit (often typologically understood as oil, as in the story of Jacob above) upon the gifts, making them the body and blood of the one who offered himself up "for the life of the world." By receiving these gifts in communion, the Faithful participate in the life of God. This is the same pattern of "man raising" and "God lowering" we see in the interaction of the giving of the pattern and construction of the Tabernacle.

What happens in the Sanctuary, then--and what happens at the apex of the Liturgy, for we must always remember that the temple is primarily a space where the cosmic drama is being played out--forms the summit of the experience of worship. All throughout the service, the clergy will process in and out of this place with books, cups, plates, fans, lances--a series of veritable Grail processions saturated with mystical meaning. 

Behind and above the altar there is--most often--in the apse, an icon of the Mother of God of the type known as Our Lady of the Sign. Her hands raised in the orans position, she invites us to adore the Christ child on/within her. The placement of this icon in the apse is important to our understanding of hierarchy as the basic grammar of the "language of beauty."

In the Tabernacle of Moses, the principle object in the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant. This box contained, as noted earlier, the tablets upon which Moses had received the Law, along with several other items of great significance to Patristic commentators: the Rod of Aaron that budded, and a jar of manna. The ark was topped by a lid with images of two cherubim worked from beaten gold. This lid is rendered in the LXX as hilasterion -- the Mercy Seat. Understood in the light of the visions of Isaiah (which shows the Lord enthroned and surrounded by six-winged seraphim) and Ezekiel (which shows the Lord enthroned upon the cherubim) and the following declaration,

There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel. (Exodus 25:22)

it seems clear that the Mercy Seat is meant to be understood as a throne--a place where God meets with his people, rules over them, and dispenses justice. It is first and foremost a place where heaven meets earth. Christianity retained this understanding of the Holy Place and of the Ark, but extended it, so that in the divine liturgy which plays out in the Book of Revelation, the opening of the Holy Place reveals first the Ark, which is then followed by/transformed into the Woman Clothed with the Sun, who Patristic commentators universally understood to be the Virgin Mary and (by typological relationship) the Church:

And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars... (Revelation 11:19-12:1)

This, and other extensive typology found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, gave rise to the common understanding of the Virgin Mary as the Cherubic Throne, the Ark of the New Covenant, and the "living mercy seat." Her womb is, in the Christian understanding, literally the place where heaven and earth meet (where "Word becomes flesh"), and her lap becomes the new Cherubic Throne where the Magi come to adore Christ:

I behold a strange and wonderful mystery:
The cave a heaven, the Virgin a cherubic throne,
And the manger a noble place in which hath lain Christ
The uncontained God.
Let us therefore praise and magnify him.
- Katabasiae of the Nativity

Much earlier in this series I opined that the image of the Virgin and Child was the whole basis of the classical Christian understanding of beauty and wonder. It is little wonder then that in the Christian Holy of Holies, we most often find this image, for it contains within itself the whole mystery of the Eucharist--and the whole mystery of salvation. Here, at the very top of the hierarchy, the Word of God comes to us not from between the cherubim, but from the arms of his mother. 

A glimpse through one of the deacon's doors, up into the apse.

Here, at the very top of the hierarchy of space, there is a great mystery--not precisely the inversion of the hierarchy, but something which goes far beyond our own notions of hierarchy. The rest of the iconography in the Sanctuary is concerned with demonstrating the sacramental implications of the incarnation. Christ is shown here vested as High Priest, but also as a child in a grail or Eucharistic dish.

"Ascending and Descending Upon the Son of Man"

All of this--the art and architecture of the Orthodox temple--creates a space where the Faithful can ascend the Mountain of Paradise; where they can, in the Eucharist, partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life which is Christ himself. This matches perfectly with St Ephraim's spatial understanding, and it is thus an excellent case study of how the proper understanding of the Incarnation allows space and art to be transfigured, allowing a glimpse of He Who Is beauty itself.

Detail from secco of The Transfiguration, by Aidan Hart. Photo credit.

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Note 1: As I have mentioned before, I believe that this "language of beauty" applies to all of the arts. I have begun with the liturgical arts because within the traditional framework in which I am working--and in which, for instance, Tolkien was working--they occupy the highest place in the hierarchy, since they show the pattern most clearly. In future posts we will turn to how this same "spatial understanding" of hierarchy plays out in imaginative literature. Right now I am inclined to bump The Silmarillion farther down the list and start with the Grail story, since it's a very natural transition between liturgical arts and imaginative fiction.

Note 2: This is not a theology blog. However, given the subject matter of this and some of the other recent posts, speaking of higher things has been unavoidable. The views put forth here about certain things--such as sacred space, the sacraments, the typological readings of Scripture, and the Incarnation--are those views accepted "everywhere and by all" in the Church catholic for at least a thousand years, and remain the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church today. I lay claim to no unique theological views or insights. As for my own beliefs, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, they can be found in the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. 

Note 3: Hopefully it will have become clear in this post that hierarchy itself is not enough for beauty. There must be movement along hierarchy--both up and down. It is for this reason, I think, that the most-portrayed scene in all of art history is that of the Annunciation, which shows us simultaneous movement in both directions.

Note 4: Anyone more interested in a fuller explanation of the Orthodox liturgical arts and the way iconography, architecture, music, and the minor arts work together to create an icon of paradise should read this series by Andrew Gould. Gould is an architect and liturgical artist and, unlike me, actually knows what he's talking about.

V. Beauty and Barriers: The Mountain of Paradise

This post is the first in a series of meditations on hierarchy as the fundamental grammar of the Language of Beauty. My original intent was to look at the iconographic layout of an Orthodox Church as an illustration of how this worked, but in the process I found I needed to go deeper into the "roots of the mountain"--the mountain itself, as it turns out, being the Mountain of Paradise.

For much of this post I will be relying on the writings of St Ephraim the Syrian. St Ephraim is a 4th century Church Father from Mesopotamia. Unlike the Greek Fathers, St Ephraim read and wrote in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. And although he treats on many of the same theological issues as the Greek Fathers, he does so primarily in the same Semitic poetic idiom which is prevalent in the Hebrew Scriptures. In these, and particularly Genesis and the prophets, St Ephraim demonstrates a great fluency, mining them for rich imagery which he employs in theological meditations on a number of subjects.

St Ephraim the Syrian, Legacy Icons

Although he is little-known in the West, St Ephraim has over 300,000 lines of verse attributed to his hand (some of these are probably pseudoepigrapha, but it remains a fact that his poetic output was prodigious). He is probably best-known for the lenten prayer attributed to him, which the Eastern Orthodox Church uses many times a day during the season of Great Lent:

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.

One of St Ephraim's most significant works is the Hymns on Paradise, a series of 15 hymns which together form a meditation on Genesis 2-3. In these hymns Ephraim draws on a deep well of the Hebrew scriptures, Second Temple Judaism, Syriac rabbinical traditions, and early Christian understandings of the Cross, the Tree of Life, and Paradise to express the sacramental character of the created world, and the Triune God as the ultimate source of all beauty.

The Mountain of God

Following a very old interpretive tradition which predates Christianity, St Ephraim (in keeping with the prophet Ezekiel) understands Paradise, or Eden, as both mountain and sanctuary, seeing in it the basic pattern on which Moses' tabernacle was later modeled. In this he is perfectly in keeping with a Second Temple Jewish tradition concerning God's command to Moses:

And look that thou make them [the fittings and furnishings of the Tabernacle] after their pattern [in the Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures this word is typos], which was shewed thee in the mount. (Exodus 25:40)

Today we would probably be inclined to understand pattern as something like a set of blueprints which Moses was shown, and then commanded to execute. Second Temple Judaism, as well as later rabbinical traditions and the early Church Fathers, all understood this to mean that Moses has been shown the heavenly sanctuary which Isaiah, Ezekiel, and John the Revelator saw, and commanded to build an earthly image of the heavenly original. There exists a truly staggering amount of rabbinical and Patristic commentary on the detailed instructions for the Tabernacle found in these chapters.

All of this forms the backdrop for the direct parallels which St Ephraim draws between Paradise and the structure of the Tabernacle/Temple. To quote from the excellent edition from SVS Press which I have linked to above:

The Paradise Hymns provide us with a number of topographical details which, taken together, can give us some idea of how St Ephrem conceptualized this Paradisiacal mountain. We learn that the mountain is circular (I.8) and that it encircles the "Great Sea (II.6), enclosing both land and sea (I.8-9). The Flood reached only its foothills (I.4), and on these foothills is situated the "fence" or "barrier"...guarded by the Cherub with the revolving sword (II.7, IV.1, based on Genesis 3:24). This fence demarcates the lowest extremity of Paradise. Halfway up is the Tree of Knowledge which provides an internal boundary beyond and higher than which Adam and Eve were forbidden to go (III.3); this Tree acts as a sanctuary curtain hiding the Holy of Holies, which is the Tree of Life higher up (III.2). On the summit of the Mountain resides the Divine Presence, the Shekhina...

In this structure St Ephraim saw the model for the Old Testament Tabernacle and Temple, as well as for the physical layout of the Christian Church--but also (as I shall discuss in the next post in this series) the threefold structure of the human person. There are also frequent comparisons made to the progression of Moses up Mount Sinai (an important image in Christian thought, cf. the Epistle to the Hebrews, St Gregory of Nyssa's The Life of Moses). Expanding on one of the charts found in the SVS edition, I would make a feeble attempt to plot the relationships between these hiearchies thus:

	Paradise	Sinai	The Tabernacle/The Temple	The Christian Church	Human Person
summit:	Shekhina/Tree of Life	the Glorious One	Shekhina/The Mercy Seat/Cherubic Throne (Holy of Holies)	The Cross (new Tree of Life) and its fruit (the Eucharist)/The "Warm Mercy Seat"	divinity (1 Cor 16:19)
heights:	Tree of Knowledge	Moses	Sanctuary Veil	Iconostasis/Templon	intellectual Spirit
slopes:	Fig Tree/Fence	Aaron priests	Holy Place	Nave	soul
lower slopes:	Thorn Tree	tribes	Porch/Outer Court	Narthex	body

As noted in my previous post, the idea of barriers or veils within a hierarchy is something which is likely to raise the hackles of those raised in a democratic, individualistic society. Since we are looking at hierarchy as a source of beauty, I am going to take the liberty of a somewhat long (and theological) digression to consider how these barriers function.

Barriers and Veils

Of particular interest in the Hymns on Paradise is the connection between the Tree of Knowledge and the sanctuary veil which hung before the Holy of Holies. A veil is something which both conceals and reveals--one might even say that it reveals by means of concealing. One common way of understanding this is the bridal chamber: the bridal chamber is concealed, private, intimate, and therefore "holy." It is a place of revealing intimacy to those within, but by its privacy it also reveals the sanctity of the place to those without. Understood this way, the tearing of the sanctuary veil at the hour of the crucifixion (Matthew 27:50-51) is neither a signal of the abolition of all holy places (no-one prior to the Protestant Reformation thought of it this way) or some kind of censure on the Jerusalem temple specifically (where the Apostles continued to worship after the Resurrection until the establishment of the Church).

The Sanctuary Veil, credit: https://steve-creitz-kreh.squarespace.com/

This moment is best understood in light of the Genesis narrative. Following his rabbinical and Second Temple sources, Ephraim and other early Church Fathers interpreted the Tree of Knowledge as something which had been placed in the Garden as both a test and a reward for mankind. If Adam and Eve obeyed the command to abstain from the Tree, they would be given to eat of it, and their "eyes would be opened" to see the Tree of Life, allowing them to progress further up the mountain, into closer communion with God, becoming in fact "like God." The Serpent promises them this godlikeness on their own terms, and being deceived, they partake of the fruit. The Tree of Knowledge works as intended and the veil is torn, but where the vision of the inner sanctuary ought to have given them joy, now it gives them only sorrow, and they are driven outward beyond the Fence of Paradise in order to prevent their seizing the Tree of Life on their own terms:

When the accursed one learned

  how the glory of that inner Tabernacle,

as if in a sanctuary,

  was hidden from them,

and that the Tree of Knowledge,

  clothed with an injunction,

served as the veil

  for the sanctuary,

he realized that its fruit

  was the key of justice

that would open the eyes of the bold

  --and cause them great remorse.

Their eyes were open--

  though at the same time they were still closed

so as not to see the Glory

  or their own low estate,

so as not to see the Glory

  of that inner Tabernacle,

nor to see the nakedness

  of their own bodies.

These two kinds of knowledge

  God hid in the Tree,

placing it as a judge

  between the two parties.

But when Adam boldly ran

  and ate of its fruit

this double knowledge

  straightway flew toward him,

tore away and removed

  both veils from his eyes:

he beheld the Glory of the Holy of Holies

  and trembled;

he beheld, too, his own shame and blushed,

  groaning and lamenting

because the twofold knowledge he had gained

  had proved for him a torment.

Whoever has eaten 

  of that fruit

either sees and is filled with delight

  or he sees and groans out.

The serpent incited them to eat in sin

  so that they might lament;

having seen the blessed state,

  they could not taste of it--

like that hero of old

  whose torment was doubled

because in his hunger he could not taste

  the delights which he beheld.

For God had not alllowed him

  to see his naked state,

so that, should he spurn the commandment,

  his ignominy might be shown him.

Nor did He show him the Holy of Holies,

  in order that, if he kept the command,

he might set eyes upon it

  and rejoice.

These two things did God conceal,

  as the two recompenses,

so that Adam might receive, by means of his contest,

  a crown that befitted his actions.

God established the Tree as judge,

  so that if Adam should eat from it,

it might show him that rank

  which he had lost through his pride,

and show him, as well, that low estate

  he had acquired, to his torment.

Whereas, if he should overcome and conquer,

  it would robe him in glory

and reveal to him also

  the nature of shame,

so that he might acquire, in his good health,

  an understanding of sickness.

(Hymns on Paradise, III.5-10

Templon at Church of St. Eleftherios in Athens, photo credit Wikipedia

The moment of Christ's crucifixion is thus shown, by the rending of the temple veil, to be the moment of revelation, revealing the new "Tree of Life"--the Cross, made available to us by the obedience of the Second Adam [note: the Cross as the Tree of Life is one of the most fertile subjects for hymnody within the Eastern Tradition of the Church, and it is an image to which St Ephraim returns over and over again]. Whether this moment of revelation is a source of joy or sorrow depends, as it did for Adam, on the disposition of the viewer. 

The Nave and Iconostasis of St Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral, Dallas, TX

For Christians worshiping in the Eastern Rite (myself included), the opening and closing of the Holy Doors of the iconostasis (or the opening/closing of the veil of a templon) functions in this way. The presence of the barrier reveals the Sanctuary as holy. For the Faithful, the opening of the doors at particular moments in the Liturgy (most of all during the consecration of the Eucharist) reveals the promise of greater joy, deeper communion, the way made free to go "further up and further in." For the penitent, the excommunicated, the vision is one of sorrow--what is denied and must be reclaimed.

But someone reading St Ephraim closely--or for that matter, anyone who has ever attended a Mass or read a good story--will realize that while beauty uses hierarchy as a framework, the hierarchy alone is not inherently beautiful. Movement--up and down, in classical terms "comedy" and "tragedy"--is necessary for beauty to be found and experienced.

In the next post we'll examine the series of contrasts and movements in Paradise, and find them in the layout, iconographic scheme, and Liturgical movements of the Church. In the post that follows that, we will consider how the same grammar of beauty is present in a Western dialect in Rogier van der Weyden’s Seven Sacraments.


Currently reading: Hymns on Paradise, St Ephraim the Syrian
Current audio book: The Silmarillion, Tolkien