Thursday, April 16, 2020

Richard Price on the Late Origin of Icon/Image Veneration


Richard Price, in his introduction to his translation of the acts of the Second Council of Nicea (alt. Nicaea), in an attempt to find “early” references to what would later be dogmatised in 787, provided the following example:

To pray before an icon was to address the saint represented as if he or she was present in it or at least by it. An early text that makes this point explicitly is an epigram in the Greek Anthology by Agathias (third quarter of the sixth century) on an image of the archangel Michael (The Greek Mythology I.34, trans. Cyril Mango [1972] 115):

The wax, greatly daring, has represented the invisible, the incorporeal chief of the angels in the semblance of his form. Yet it was no thankless [task], since the mortal man who beholds the image directs his mind to a higher imagination. His veneration is no longer distracted: engraving within himself the [archangel’s] traits, he trembles as if he were in the latter’s presence. The eyes encourage deep thoughts, and art is able to by means of colours to transfer [to its object] the prayer of the mind. (The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787): Translated with Notes and an Introduction [trans. Richard Price; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020], 8)

The third quarter of the sixth century would be between 550-575! Contra Price, who tries to be very fair to the RC/EO position in his fine book, is too generous in calling such "early"--is not early, it is very late, and just another evidence of how the practice of veneration o1f images and the “heavenly prototypes” thereof is not apostolic in origin.

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