Last night, Mark, an Orthodox friend, handed me a copy of Road to Emmaus, a little magazine I had never seen before. It’s an attractive publication, well illustrated and meticulously edited, with a keen sense of the enduring relevance (and living presence) of the Fathers. The articles range from the devotional to the theological, with some good, sound advice on family life thrown in.

Mark had read my post “But Syriously, Folks,” and so he knew of my interest in the Syriac Fathers. And he knew that the editors of Road to Emmaus share this interest — and many others! In my hand right now are RTE’s fascinating articles on the saints and scholars of ancient Antioch, on the Stylite movement in Christian antiquity, on the dispersion of ancient manuscripts in libraries throughout the world, and on the patristic interpretations of the Lord’s Descent into Hell.

The articles are intelligent, but accessible to non-specialists (like me). What’s very cool is that they’re sumptuously illustrated, with up-close photographs of inscriptions, archeological sites, icons, manuscripts, pottery, church interiors, monasteries. Now, this is living.

The editors apparently travel the world to interview top scholars in various fields related to Orthodoxy. Their authors write with intelligence and real academic rigor, suffused with a faith reminiscent of the Fathers themselves. They also show extraordinary ecumenical sensitivity — hospitality is perhaps a better word. This Roman felt right at home in their pages.

RTE posts some sample articles on the website (though, unfortunately, few that deal primarily with the Fathers!). They also sell their back issues, which are well indexed on the site. Start with 2005. It was a very good year. Happy shopping!

No sooner had Christians “made it” in the ancient world than “it” collapsed all around them.

The Emperor Constantine declared his Edict of Toleration in 313, putting an end to Christian persecution by making Christianity an officially recognized religion in the Roman Empire. But it was evident, even then, that the Empire was beginning to totter. Constantine, who gave Christianity its license to operate, built up Byzantium as his capital, for more efficient administration of the East.

Still, the Empire continued to lose control, beset by rebellions within and attacks from barbarians at the frontiers. Religious squabbles, too, were no small matter, causing civil disturbances in the urban centers under Roman control. In 380, the Emperor Theodosius decided it was necessary to unify the Empire spiritually, and he declared Christianity, which had already won perhaps a majority of the people, as the official religion of the Empire. From then on, heresy and sacrilege became civil crimes. Citizens would be baptized — or lose their civil rights.

Yet these measures could not revitalize an Empire in decline. Early in the 5th century, Germanic tribes swept through the Roman province of Gaul (modern France). The Visigoths sacked Rome in 410. In 455, Vandals seized the city. The last emperor of the West died in 476. Rome, once synonymous with world order, descended into anarchy.

And, to a great degree, so did western Europe. With the fall of Rome, came a gradual collapse of civil order. The law had no force. The military dissolved. Travel, communications and trade could no longer proceed peaceably as under Roman rule.

Christians might have worried that all their work would be undone. With the collapse of the Empire, wouldn’t the Empire’s official religion also collapse? Other practical problems presented themselves. How could evangelization proceed without safe travel? The early Church had been spread significantly by merchants following the trade routes. How, too, would bishops in outlying lands keep up communication with Rome?

Remarkably, the Christian faith continued to spread amid the chaotic aftermath of the Empire’s collapse. In a few centuries, almost all the barbarian tribes would, in one way or another, accept the Gospel.

Who were the barbarians? The word conjures up images of mobs of hairy, primitives bearing clubs. But that wasn’t quite the case. In the Roman view, barbarians were those who lived outside the Empire. The barbarian tribes — the Vandals, Goths, Bulgars, Saxons, Alamans and Lombards, among others — occupied lands in what are today’s Germany, France, Eastern Europe, the British Isles and North Africa. Many of the tribes had advanced cultures. Barbarians traded with Rome and served as mercenaries in the Roman military.

Many barbarians were Christians, of a sort. Members of the Germanic tribes had, in the fourth century, been evangelized by followers of Arianism, a then-popular Christian heresy that denied Jesus was God or co-eternal with the Father. Arianism found a stronghold among the barbarians, even after it had been fairly thoroughly rooted out in the lands of the Empire.

Though the heretics were, in a sense, political victors now, their victory had little effect on Catholic Christians. The Arians tended toward tolerance and rarely persecuted their opponents. But, at the same time, the Arian bishops were a weak cultural force, exerting minimal influence on the barbarian tribes.

Meanwhile, the Catholic bishops emerged as leaders in the cities of the former Empire. Most of the bishops were educated men, chosen for their sound judgment. In the absence of law and order, citizens tended to look to the bishops for civic leadership. In some cities, the bishop served as mayor and magistrate. The bishops of Spain and France set up vast networks for social welfare, so that the poor did not free-fall now that Rome’s safety net had disappeared.

Perhaps the archetype of this learned leader was Pope St. Gregory I — Gregory “the Great” — who reigned 590-604. He saw Rome in its ruin and looked with hope to the mission fields to the North and West, where he sent an increasing number of his monks. Gregory also urged the local nobility and landowners in these countries to actively evangelize their tenants — even if it meant raising their rent until they accepted baptism.

Yet, according to Richard Fletcher’s history of the period, “The Barbarian Conversion” (Henry Holt), the conversions proceeded steadily, peacefully and, for the most part, without coercion.

Fletcher does, however, question whether the conversions were sincere or very deep. The missionaries faced a motley mix of pagans, Arian heretics, and backslidden and badly catechized Christians. Most of the local pagan beliefs were informal and non-exclusive in their demands. Thus, some people thought of Christianity as another round of rituals to add to their accumulated pagan practices. A substantial number of homilies from the period condemn worship at pagan shrines and sacrifices to idols.

Fletcher multiplies examples of barbarians mixing religions: an East Anglian king erected a Christian altar in his pagan temple; a Spaniard consults both his Christian priest and the local pagan shaman, just to be safe.
The bishops took dramatic measures to make their point. St. Martin of Tours’ favored method of eradicating pagan worship was setting fire to shrines. In southern Italy, St. Barbatus melted down a golden image of a snake-god and used the gold to make a paten and chalice for Mass.

But, according to Fletcher, Gregory the Great suggested “adaptation,” rather than destruction, of pagan temples. The pontiff wrote to his English mission in 601: “The idol temples of that race should by no means be destroyed, but only the idols in them. Take holy water and sprinkle it in these shrines, build altars and place relics in them.” Gregory tells the missionaries to encourage the locals to continue slaughtering their animals, as if for sacrifice, but now for celebration and praise of God instead. “Thus while some outward rejoicings are preserved, they will be able more easily to share in inward rejoicings.”

“It is doubtless impossible to cut out everything at once from their stubborn minds,” Gregory said. “Just as the man who is attempting to climb to the highest place, rises by steps and degrees and not by leaps.”
Gregory was right, of course. The old habits died hard. And, as Christianity became the norm in more barbarian territories — especially among the ruling classes — there were more material reasons for converting. Indeed, many missionaries tried to work a tribe from the “top down,” persuading the chief and other leaders first.

It worked — sort of — in Denmark, where each convert would receive a new suit of clothes after baptism. Fletcher quotes a ninth-century monk’s tale of a soldier who went through the water only to find that the clerics had run out of new suits. Handed a ragged old tunic, the soldier was so outraged that he confronted the emperor himself: “Look here! I’ve gone through this ablutions business about twenty times already, and I’ve always been rigged out before with a splendid white suit; but this old sack makes me feel more like a pig farmer than a soldier!” The monk lamented that more Danes came each year, “not for the sake of Christ but for mundane advantages.”

But there are worse incentives than bribery. The first Holy Roman emperor, Charlemagne, used coercion when he conquered the stubborn Saxons in 782, slaughtering 4,500 prisoners, then inviting the remaining barbarians to baptism. In Charlemagne’s Saxony, refusal to be baptized was punishable by death, as were eating meat in Lent, cremation of the dead and attending pagan rites. Charlemagne’s method would serve as a model for later forced mass conversions, such as those of the conquistadors in Spanish America. And, into the 20th century, the forced conversion of the Saxons has been blamed for historical disasters from the Protestant Reformation to the rise of Nazism. (The latter diagnosis came from no less than Sigmund Freud.)

Still, Charlemagne’s slaughter was the exception. We can better see the norm in missionaries such as the Irish monk St. Columbanus, who Christianized and tribes through France, across the Alps and into Italy. His colleagues and successors in Irish monasteries would spend the centuries of the Dark Ages carefully preserving classical learning by copying out manuscripts, then returning this heritage, with the Gospel, to the peoples of Europe. Their achievement was memorialized in Thomas Cahill’s bestseller, “How the Irish Saved Civilization” (Anchor).

Both Fletcher and Cahill’s books gained favorable notice and good sales. Both are reconsiderations of an age whose history has too often been distorted by anti-Catholic prejudice. Yet neither Fletcher nor Cahill is immune to this. Fletcher rarely misses an opportunity to question the motives of an act of charity or apostolic impulse in any saint, bishop, missionary or martyr. His book is heavy on sarcasm. Cahill, for his part, casts St. Augustine as the great villain in Church history, bequeathing Christians a legacy of sexual hangups and self-loathing, over against the fun-loving leprechaun St. Patrick, who, Cahill suggests, was something of a pagan at heart.

Yet Fletcher clearly understands that the barbarian conversion was not merely a matter of bowing to this shrine rather than that one. With Christianity, came a worldview and a moral code often widely at variance with those the barbarians had known. Some tribes had been polygamous; Christianity would put an end to that. Some practiced infanticide and marriage to near kin. As Christians, they would not.

And we can’t underestimate the radical shift that each convert had to undergo, from worshiping many fickle gods to worshiping just one jealous Lover.

(The following is based on an interview I conducted with Fr. Benedict Ashley, O.P., some years ago.)

“Why all this fuss about virginity?”

Modern Christians, looking at early Church documents, might well ask the same question a theology student recently put to Dominican Father Benedict Ashley.

The Christian Church, from the time of St. Paul through the eighth century, did place a particular emphasis on the life and conduct of virgins. “Consecrated virgins” were those Christians (especially women) who chose to live celibate lives of prayer, work, intensive study and service, all the while remaining “in the world.” Most, it seems, continued to live in their family homes. The homilies, tracts and legislation of the early Church Fathers discuss consecrated virgins about as often as they mention the clergy.

Why all the fuss about virginity? Because the way Christians esteemed virgins was revolutionary in its time, and it spoke volumes about the greater rights women would win through Christianity’s triumph.

“Vowed virgins were Christians who had consecrated their entire life, including all the energy and intimacy of love, to Christ, with whom they hoped to live for all eternity on the great wedding day,” explained Father Ashley, who discussed the ancient role of consecrated virgins in his recent book on gender issues, Justice in the Church (Catholic University of America, 1996).

The Church esteemed these women, viewing them as prophets, teachers, role models and leaders. In the fourth century, St. Jerome wrote, in his letter of praise for the Roman virgin Asella, that priests and bishops “should look up to her.” In the liturgy in the third century, consecrated virgins were given a place of honor at the liturgy, receiving Communion before the laity.

Perhaps the modern Christian cannot fully appreciate how revolutionary this was — not only for WOMEN to be so esteemed, but for VIRGINAL women to be esteemed at all.

In ancient cultures, a woman’s value was almost exclusively derived from the males with whom she was in relation: her husband, her sons or her father. If a woman never married (and so never bore sons), she was almost certainly destined to poverty and obscurity. This was true in pagan cultures as well as in Israel, where marriage was considered a duty and virginity a curse.

Yet Christianity — with its cult of two prominent virgins, Jesus and Mary — turned that value system on its head. This is evident in Scripture, in the Acts of the Apostles (see, for example, 21:9) as well as in St. Paul’s lengthy treatment of consecrated virginity in his first Letter to the Corinthians (see all of chapter 7).

Now, not only was the “curse” lifted from virginity; virgins (and widows) were seen as meriting the direct support of the Christian community.

Not too long after St. Paul, St. Justin praised Christian virgins, as did St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch and, later, Tertullian and St. Cyprian. By the fourth century, consecrated virgins were probably relatively numerous. At any rate, the writings about virginity had multiplied by then, with Saints Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine weighing in with praise and good counsel.

A recent anthology of ancient texts illuminates the life of consecrated virgins. In Handmaids of the Lord: Holy Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cistercian Publications, 1996), scholar Joan M. Petersen drew together biographies and correspondence of consecrated virgins from the fourth through sixth centuries.

Reading these texts and knowing the place of women in pagan Rome, a modern can only marvel at the decision of Christian virgins to remain in the world. After all, by the fourth century, Christian women could fairly easily opt for a cloistered life removed from the culture. But many consecrated virgins discerned a vocation to stay put. Jerome wrote of Asella that “she found herself a monastic hermitage amidst the hurly-burly of the city.” It was in Rome, at the same time, that the virgin Lea lived a quiet life of renunciation and fasting. “In all that she did, she shunned any display of individual peculiarities,” Jerome wrote, “in order that she might not receive her reward in this world.”

Yet another Roman, Marcella, was widowed in the first year of marriage. Beautiful and wealthy, she decided to live as if she had neither money nor prospects for marriage. She consecrated her life. Afterward, Jerome wrote, Marcella “used her clothes to keep out the cold and not to show off her figure. Of gold she would not wear so much as a signet-ring, choosing to store her money in the stomachs of the poor rather than keep it in her purse.” Jerome wrote of still other virgins who lived in the world, yet used their inheritances to support monastic communities of women or men.

Jerome’s voluminous correspondence with consecrated virgins shows that many of these women were engaged in study at a level attained by few women (or men, for that matter) of their time (or our own time). One casually quotes Plato. Most show an easy familiarity with the Bible and even the most technical works of biblical exegesis. Jerome sets out a daunting curriculum in a letter to Laeta, a mother who wanted to raise her daughters to be consecrated virgins, The girls were to read the Scriptures, of course, but also the theological works of Saints Cyprian, Athanasius and Hilary.

But great learning was not the primary goal of the virgin’s life. It was a means to the end of holiness. More to the point, in a letter to Demetrias, a young virgin of North Africa, Jerome advised a daily plan of prayer woven with study and work: “In addition to the rule of psalmody and prayer, which you must always observe at . . . evening, at midnight and at dawn, decide how many hours you ought to give to memorizing holy Scripture, and how much time you should spend in reading, not as a burden, but for delight and instruction of your soul. When you have spent your allotted time in these studies, often kneeling down to pray, … have some wool always in your hands, and spinning out the threads of the weft with your thumb, attach them to the shuttle and then throw this to weave a web … If you busy yourself with these numerous and varied occupations, you will never find your days long.”

The daily work varied from person to person. Some virgins busied themselves with the care of their aging parents. Others managed the family household. Still others worked among the poor. Often, their witness would move other family members or neighbors to emulate their life. There are many examples of family homes that became “house monasteries” in this way.

Though pagan Rome was hostile to both their virginity and their life style, the empire’s law and order were indispensable to the security of consecrated women. With the decline of the empire comes a corresponding decline in historical evidence of women living as consecrated virgins in the world.

“The middle ages were a socially disruptive and dangerous time,” said Father Ashley. “People went around armed. It became dangerous for a woman to be out in public alone. Talk about sexual harassment! She was safer in the cloister.”

Indeed, by the eighth century, it seems that marriage and the cloister were, practically speaking, the only two Christian vocations open to women.

Yet Father Ashley sees something of a resurgence of the idea, in the last two centuries, with the rise of active religious orders that are not cloistered and are oriented toward service in the world. And he cites secular institutes and the personal prelature, Opus Dei, as giving further opportunities for vocational commitment in the secular realm. The Church restored the rite for consecrated virgins living in the world in 1970, and there is even a U.S. Association of Consecrated Virgins.

This can be good ground regained for Catholic women, according to Father Ashley. “The male ascetic cannot fulfill the symbolic role in the Church that a vowed female virgin can,” he said. “Just as a woman cannot appropriately symbolize Christ by ordination to the priesthood, a man cannot symbolize Mary, the New Eve, the Mother of God. Nor can a man symbolize the Church as bride. Yet Mary in her contemplative role is superior to the priest in his active, ministerial role. Thus, as a sign, the consecrated virgin is superior to the priest.”

That’s why — from St. Paul onward — there’s “all that fuss” about consecrated virginity.

Just wanted to see if you were paying attention … Well, that’s not all I was doing. I also wanted to place Arthur correctly in history, if indeed he was an historical figure. The best and most influential of the legends of the Holy Grail were written down in the Middle Ages, and their authors decked them out with all the trappings of a medieval court — medieval customs, armor, weaponry, and so on. Hollywood has picked up on this, and most of the Arthur flicks have dressed him in the mail of the medievals.

But if Arthur was, once upon a time, a real-life British warlord, as at least one early history indicates he was, then he lived not in the thirteenth century but in the fifth. It was in the age of the Fathers that he “bore the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders” in battle. He was a contemporary of Benedict, not Aquinas. And his piety would have had a style more accurately called patristic than medieval.

What does all that have to do with the Holy Grail? More than Dan Brown or Monty Python would have you believe. Buy The Grail Code to find out. You’re invited, too, to find out on your own, by visiting GrailCode.com and immersing yourself in one of the best and best-organized online libraries of Arthurian lore. As I say this, I bow to my co-author, Chris Bailey, from whom so many of these good gifts come.

Jesuit Father Paul Mankowski (late of Harvard, now at the Biblicum) challenges the celebrity-expert status of Elaine Pagels, who’s made gnosticism a cottage industry. Check it out at Catholic World News.

Hat tip: Ziegler A List.

Look at the ads in the daily papers and see the obsessions of the current generation. Pensions, IRAs, 401(k) plans — we live in chronic insecurity, worrying over years of tomorrows that may never come. Meanwhile, we make today miserable with our anxieties. St. John Cassian (c. 360-c. 435) saw these worries following monks even into the monastery, corrupting them, destroying their souls, and eventually destroying entire communities. In his “Institutes,” he analyzed eight vices and prescribed the cure for each. What follows is Cassian’s teaching on avarice, addressed to monks of the fifth century but full of wisdom for the pension-obsessed lay Christian in the twentieth. While the ancient monk may have shortchanged his monastic duties in order to shore up a cushy old age, the modern layperson might neglect charity to the poor or the blessing of additional children, just for the sake of fattening up a futures fund.

Our third struggle is against the demon of avarice, a demon clearly foreign to our nature, who only gains entry into a monk because he is lacking in faith. The other passions, such as anger and desire, seem to be occasioned by the body and in some sense implanted in us at birth. Hence, they are conquered only after a long time. The sickness of avarice, on the contrary, can with diligence and attention be cut off more readily, because it enters from outside. If neglected, however, it becomes even harder to get rid of and more destructive than the other passions, for according to the Apostle it is “the root of all evil” (1Tim 6:10) …

When this sickness finds the soul lukewarm and lacking in faith at the start of the ascetic path, it suggests to us various apparently justifiable and sensible reasons for keeping back something of what we possess. It conjures up in a monk’s mind a picture of a lengthy old age and bodily illness; and it persuades him that the necessities of life provided by the monastery are insufficient to sustain a healthy man, much less an ill one; that in the monastery the sick, instead of receiving proper attention, are hardly cared for at all; and that unless he has some money tucked away, he will die a miserable death. Finally, it convinces him that he will not be able to remain long in the monastery because of the load of his work and the strictness of the abbot. When with thoughts like these it has seduced his mind with the idea of concealing any sum, however trifling, it persuades him to learn unknown to the abbot, some handicraft through which he can increase his cherished hoardings. Then it deceives the wretched monk with secret expectations, making him imagine what he will earn from his handicraft, and the comfort and security which will result from it. Now completely given over to the thought of gain, he notices none of the evil passions which attack him: his raging fury when he happens to sustain a loss, his gloom and dejection when he falls short of the gain he hoped for. Just as for other people the belly is a god, so for him is money. That is why the Apostle, knowing this, calls avarice not only “the root of all evil” but “idolatry” as well (Col 3:5).

How is it that this sickness can so pervert a man that he ends up as an idolater? It is because he now fixes hi intellect on the love, not of God, but of the images of men stamped on gold. A monk darkened by such thoughts and launched on the downward path can no longer be obedient. He is irritable and resentful, and grumbles about every task. He answers back and, having lost his sense of respect, behaves like a stubborn, uncontrollable horse. He is not satisfied wit the day’s ration of food and complains that he cannot put up with such conditions forever. Neither God’s presence, he says, nor the possibility of his own salvation is confined to the monastery; and, he concludes, he will perish if he does not leave it. He is so excited and encouraged in these perverse thoughts by his secret hoardings that he even plans to quit the monastery. Then he replies proudly and harshly no matter what he is told to do, and pays no heed if he sees something in the monastery that needs to be set right, considering himself a stranger and outsider and finding fault with all that takes place. Then he seeks excuses for being angry or injured, so that he will not appear to be leaving the monastery frivolously and without cause. He does not even shrink from trying through gossip and idle talk to seduce someone else into leaving with him, wishing to have an accomplice in his sinful action.

Because the avaricious monk is so fired with desire for private wealth he will never be able to live at peace in a monastery or under a rule. When like a wolf the demon has snatched him from the fold and separated him from the flock, he makes ready to devour him; he sets him to work day and night in his cell on the very tasks which he complained of doing at fixed times in the monastery. But the demon does not allow him to keep regular prayers or norms of fasting or orders of vigil. Having bound him fast in the madness of avarice, he persuades him to devote all his effort to his handicraft.

There are three forms of this sickness, all of which are equally condemned by the holy Scriptures and the teachings of the Fathers. The first induces those who were poor to acquire and save the goods they lacked in the world. The second compels those who have renounced worldly goods by offering them to God, to have regrets and to seek after them again. A third infects a monk from the start with lack of faith and ardor, so preventing his complete detachment from worldly things, producing in him a fear of poverty and distrust in God’s providence and leading him to break the promises he made when he renounced the world.

Examples of these three forms of avarice are, as I have said, condemned in holy Scripture. Gehazi wanted to acquire property which he did not previously possess, and therefore never received the prophetic grace which his teacher had wished to leave him in the place of an inheritance. Because of the prophet’s curse he inherited incurable leprosy instead of a blessing (2 Kg 5:27). And Judas, who wished to acquire money which he had previously abandoned on following Christ, not only lapsed so far as to betray the Master and lose his place in the circle of the apostles; he also put an end to his life in the flesh through a violent death. Thirdly, Ananias and Sapphira were condemned to death by the Apostle’s word when they kept back something of what they had acquired (Ac 5:1-10). Again, in Deuteronomy Moses is indirectly exhorting those who promise to renounce the world, and who then retain their earthly possessions because of the fear that comes from lack of faith, when he says: “What man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted? He shall not go out to do battle; let him return to his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his heart” (Dt 20:8). Could anything be clearer or more certain than this testimony? …

With the fate of Ananias and Sapphira in mind, we should shudder at the thought of keeping to ourselves anything of our former possessions. Similarly, frightened by the example of Gehazi who was afflicted with incurable leprosy because of his avarice, let us guard against piling up money … Finally, recalling Judas’ death by hanging, let us beware of acquiring again any of the things which we have renounced. In all this we should remember how uncertain is the hour of our death, so that our Lord does not come unexpectedly and, finding our conscience soiled with avarice, say to us what God says to the rich man in the Gospel: “You fool, this night your soul will be required of you: who then will be the owner of what you have stored up?” (Lk 12:20).

It’s not often, at art exhibits, that you see passersby moved to tears, bowing in prayer, crossing themselves or whispering devotions.

Yet so it was at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, as thousands filed past the images of Christ and the Virgin, the saints and the angels, showing in “The Glory of Byzantium,” which I visited with my buddy David Scott back in 1997.

Though the exhibit included works of pottery, sculpture, tapestry and bookbinding, the dominant form, by far, was the icon, the traditional type of sacred image in Eastern Christianity.

Indeed, many of those who filed through, rapt in prayer, seem to be Eastern Christians — Orthodox or Catholics of the Eastern Rites. While a museum docent led groups through and spoke with erudition of a mosaic’s “evocation of the numinous,” her onlookers themselves appeared to be caught up in the numinous.

For icons are more than art. In the Eastern Church, they are central to the practice of the faith. One saint called them “open books that remind us of God.” Tradition refers to them as “windows on another world.”

The term “icon” properly refers to works produced by certain formal techniques, hallowed by almost 2,000 years of tradition in the East. The Middle Byzantine period, the time covered by the Met’s exhibit, is known as the golden age of icon production.

Icons range in style, though they share some common characteristics: a two-dimensional quality, symbolic use of color and shape, and surreal, slightly distorted bodily and facial features: elongated fingers, impossibly large eyes, long necks.

They are essentially different from Western religious art, which is almost always associated with an individual creative genius: Giotto, say, or Michelangelo or Rembrandt. Not so with iconography: Most Middle Byzantine iconographers remained anonymous. Their work is impersonal, adhering to strict forms that manifest the heavenly archetypes. In some monasteries, painters specialized — one monk for eyes, another for hands, another for hair — so that no single artist could claim a work for his own.

Still, such work required a high level of technical skill. Icons speak a rich, symbolic language. Every color, gesture, garment, shadow and prop is significant … The oversized eyes? They represent the beatific vision of God that a saint enjoys in heaven. A sideward gaze? The aloofness and peace of someone who has left behind the cares of the world. The bright gold background? The divine aura, the glorious atmosphere of heaven.

In any good library you’ll find thick volumes that explain how to “read” icons. But no one really needs a lexicon. For two millennia, icons have served as the theology textbook of the saints, the catechism of the unlettered, and the pauper’s psalter.

From the icon of the Pantocrator (Lord of the Universe), the faithful gain confidence to abandon themselves to a Will that is all-powerful and all-good. From the Eleousa (Virgin of Tenderness), they learn of humility, selflessness and the maternal care of the Mother of God. From the Man of Sorrows, they see the redemptive value of suffering.

The saints of the East bring up another important lesson taught by icons: that every man and woman is an icon of God — made in the divine image and likeness.

That’s the sort of radical doctrine that has made icons the target of puritan purges down through the ages. In the eighth and ninth centuries, the puritans were running the Byzantine Empire. They called themselves iconoclasts (“icon-smashers”), because they believed that the veneration of icons violated the first commandment’s prohibition of “graven images.” They accused their opponents of worshiping wood and pigment. And they had other items on their agenda: Some iconoclasts believed that all matter was contemptible and so doubted that Christ was truly human, as the Bible and the Church Fathers had taught.

A holy monk, St. John of Damascus (675-749) — the last of the eastern Fathers — wrote a devastating refutation of the iconoclasts’ position, showing that it opposed Scripture, tradition and good sense. A capsule of his hundred or so pages: “In former times, God, being without form or body, could in no way be represented. But today, since God has appeared in the flesh and lived among men, I can represent what is visible in God. I do not worship matter, but I worship the creator of matter who became matter for my sake . . . and who, through matter, accomplished my salvation. Never will I cease to honor the matter which brought about my salvation!”

With the Council of Nicea, in 787, the Church declared definitively in favor of icons: “Holy icons ought to be exposed to view, since the more Jesus Christ, His mother and the saints are seen in their likeness, the more will people be led to think of the originals and to love them. Honor is paid to icons, but not worship, which belongs to God alone. Honor paid to images is directed to the original which they represent.”

Yet the prohibition of images continued until the rise of the “iconodule” (image-loving) regent Theodora. Her proclamation restoring icons in 843 is today commemorated in the Eastern Church by a special feast day.

The Second-Nicene Fathers, like John of Damascus before them, were always careful to remind us that in icons we see “as through a glass, darkly.”

(Here’s a portal to more information on Byzantine art and history.)

I live across the street from a beautiful Antiochene Orthodox Church that goes by the name of St. George’s. It used to have, front and center, a cool stained-glass window depicting a gigantic eye, which was underscored by the words “The Eye of God Is on You.” Alas, several years ago, the church replaced the eye with a nice cross. I keep a color photo of the old window above my desk, just to remind me.

April 23 is St. George’s feast day, so it’s good for us to remember him, even though he’s trumped this year, among us Romans, by Mercy Sunday. St. George was a soldier and a martyr, and he’s usually depicted making shish-kebab out of dragon meat. The old Catholic Encyclopedia has this to say about him:

Martyr, patron of England, suffered at or near Lydda, also known as Diospolis, in Palestine, probably before the time of Constantine. According to the very careful investigation of the whole question recently instituted by Father Delehaye, the Bollandist, … the above statement sums up all that can safely be affirmed about St. George, despite his early cultus and pre-eminent renown both in East and West … This, however, by no means implies that the martyr St. George never existed. An ancient cultus, going back to a very early epoch and connected with a definite locality, in itself constitutes a strong historical argument. Such we have in the case of St. George. The narratives of the early pilgrims … from the sixth to the eighth century, all speak of Lydda or Diospolis as the seat of the veneration of St. George, and as the resting-place of his remains. The early date of the dedications to the saint is attested by existing inscriptions of ruined churches in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and the church of St. George at Thessalonica is also considered by some authorities to belong to the fourth century. Further the famous decree “De Libris recipiendis,” attributed to Pope Gelasius in 495, attests that certain apocryphal Acts of St. George were already in existence, but includes him among those saints “whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are only known to God.”

More here.

Still smarting from April 15? Consider the words of St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on 1 Corinthians (somewhat adapted).

Christ says, “I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man shall take from you” (Jn 16:22). A brief saying, but one that has much consolation in it. What then is this, “your joy no man shall take from you”?

If you have money, many are able to take away the joy that comes from your wealth — for instance, a thief, by digging through the wall; a servant by carrying off what was entrusted to him; an emperor by confiscation; and the envious man by insolence. Should you possess power, there are many who can deprive you of the joy of it. For when the conditions of office are at an end, the conditions of pleasure will also be ended. In the exercise of office itself, too, accidents happen, which, by bringing difficulty and care, strike at the root of your satisfaction. If you have bodily strength, the assaults of disease put a stop to joy from that source. If you have beauty and bloom, the approach of old age withers it and takes away that joy. Or if you enjoy a sumptuous table, when evening comes on the joy of the banquet is at an end. For everything belonging to this life is liable to damage, and is unable to afford us a lasting pleasure.

But piety and the virtue of the soul are altogether the reverse of this. If you have done alms, no one is able to take away this good work. Though an army or kings or myriads of calumniators and conspirators were to best you on all sides, they could not take away the possession, once deposited in heaven. But the joy continually lives on, for it is said, “He has dispersed, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever” (Ps 112:9).

The only thing cooler than struggling through the Fathers in Greek and Latin is struggling through the Scriptures in Greek or Latin. If you’re interested in learning these mother tongues, check out Textkit.

It’s a collection of good, clear PDF files of old (out-of-copyright) Latin and Greek textbooks and grammars. There are several introductory Greek books, along with keys to the exercises. (You have to register for the newsletter to get the keys.)

“Come, then, after you have freed yourself from all the prejudices possessing your mind.”

We can take that line, from the second-century “Letter to Diognetus,” as evidence that anti-Christian prejudice has been with the Church from Day One. In the Roman Empire of those days, pagans caricatured Christian morality as prudery and mocked its mysteries as nonsense. Christian religion was often confused and conflated, in Roman and Greek accounts, with Judaism and the myriad “mystery cults” thriving in Asia Minor at the time.

But amid the babble and bigotry came a group of early Church Fathers known as “the apologists.” Following St. Peter’s counsel, they sought always to “be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks for a reason for your hope” (1 Pt 3:15). Some, like Justin Martyr (c. 100-c.165), spoke the highly technical language of the Platonist philosophers, who were somewhat confused about the Christianity they sought to refute. Others spoke to Jews, and still others to the devotees of the mystery cults.

But one apologist offered a different method. He produced a documentary of sorts — a vivid, impressionistic account of how the earliest Christians REALLY behaved. In the face of hatred, he showed a community that lived in true love.

We don’t know his name, the author who wrote the stunning “Letter to Diognetus.” But he was addressing a high Roman official, and deferentially, assuming that the great Diognetus was intelligent and open-minded (and, certainly, that God’s grace was all-powerful).

“I see thee, most excellent Diognetus, exceedingly desirous to learn the mode of worshiping God prevalent among the Christians, and inquiring very carefully and earnestly concerning them, what God they trust in, and what form of religion they observe,”

Christianity was a curiosity then, when this author set his stylus to parchment. He refers to the Faith as “this new kind of practice [that] has only now entered into the world.” Most scholars say the “Letter to Diognetus” was composed in the first half of the second century in Athens, Greece.

The most venturesome scholars dare to attribute the letter to the first known Christian apologist, St. Quadratus (died c. 129), a bishop of Athens and a disciple of the Apostles. There is almost no documentary evidence for this claim, except that early Christian writers refer to a brilliant letter that St. Quadratus wrote to the Roman Emperor Hadrian around 124, in defense of the Faith.

And the “Letter to Diognetus” is nothing if not brilliant, in both style and substance.

The letter assumes that its reader has heard, and perhaps believes, many of the common rumors and misunderstandings about Christianity. So the author is careful to distinguish Christianity, first from the other pagan religions, then from Judaism.

One obvious belief that set Christians apart from ordinary Roman citizens was monotheism. Our first forebears in the Faith steadfastly refused to worship idols. Yet other citizens of the empire, the “Letter” points out were only too willing to bow down before gods of silver, gold, brass, wood and earthenware. In describing these idols, the writer goes into some detail about six shrines, perhaps describing specific temples in the city of Athens.

“Are they not all liable to rot?” he concludes. “Are they not all corruptible, these things you call gods?” The author points out that such polymorphous polytheism had become a cynical and even contemptuous practice for the Romans. Yet, he goes on, “you (Romans) hate the Christians because they do not deem as gods” the idols in the pagan shrines.

For their intransigent monotheism, and their reverence for the Hebrew Scriptures, Christians were often called a Jewish sect. The writer of the “Letter” acknowledges this and praises the Jews for resisting pagan temptations. Yet, he insists, Christians are NOT Jews. First, he says, the “blood and the smoke” of the Temple sacrifices has been surpassed by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Next, he points out that the prescriptions of the Law and the rabbinical tradition — regarding circumcision, diet and Sabbath observance — were considered obsolete by Christians.

Yet, if Christians were not pagans and not Jews, who were they? That is the subject of the final section of the epistle.

In this section the author overwhelms his reader, not so much with dogma, but with small glimpses of the everyday life of the Church’s founding families.

First of all, he says, you can’t tell a Christian just by looking. “For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. They neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity . . . [They follow] the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food and the rest of their ordinary conduct.”

Christians blend in, he says — to a point.

Where they are set apart is in their charity for each other and their upright moral behavior. Here, the “Letter” writer makes more important distinctions.

Christianity did not, as some rumors claimed, entail severe asceticism and universal celibacy. The “Letter” explains that Christians, like everyone else, “marry and beget children.” Yet they differ essentially from the merely worldly because Christians reject immoral pagan practices, such as abortion and infanticide. Christians “do not destroy their offspring,” the letter states. Nor did Christians sleep around, as the pagans did: “They have a common table, but not a common bed.”

Christians are good for the economy and the social order, the “Letter” claims. Believers, after all, “obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives . . . They are poor, yet make many rich.” And good Christians don’t make trouble for the pagans, the “Letter” writer seems to say, even though pagans often make trouble for Christians. “They love all men, and are persecuted by all. . . . they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour. . . . When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life.”

Our author follows this with his most remarkable statement: “To sum it up — what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world.” According to this ancient Athenian, Christians, then, are the life-giving principle in the world. You can’t see them — but without them, the whole human enterprise is doomed.

“The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world. . . . The soul, when but ill-provided with food and drink, becomes better; in like manner, Christians, though subjected day by day to punishment, increase the more in number.”

What gives Christians strength to live this way? The “Letter” writer gives a brief, but breathless testimony to the divine origin of the Christian faith. Without this faith, he demonstrates, all humankind, through all history, has dwelt in misery.

Then the “Letter” ends in the only way such a Christian testimony can, with a plea to Diognetus (the debauched, homosexual Emperor Hadrian?) for personal conversion.

“With what joy do you think you will be filled? Or how will you love Him who has first so loved you? If you love Him, you will be an imitator of His kindness. And do not wonder that a man may become an imitator of God. He can, if he is willing. For it is not by ruling over his neighbours, . . . that happiness is found. . . . On the contrary he who takes upon himself the burden of his neighbour . . . by distributing to the needy, becomes a god to those who receive.”

If Diognetus or Hadrian were not convinced, many more would be. If not by a letter, then by the lives of so many anonymous Christians. Just a few centuries after the “Letter to Diognetus” was composed, the pagan West passed away. Yet the “Letter,” providentially, lived on till very recently.

Then, in 1870, the only surviving manuscript of the “Letter” was destroyed. Today, perhaps the pagan West is returning, and a billion invisible Catholics — the soul of the modern world — must write the letter anew, now as then, in the everyday details of their ordinary lives.

Kevin at Biblicalia has been posting some stunning passages from the Orthodox liturgy for Holy Week — which is going on right now — and some beautiful icons as well. If you’re not already a daily reader of Kevin’s blog, this is the week to start.