medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Marjorie,
On Wednesday, January 10, 2007, at 7:12 pm, you wrote:
> Here I go again, perhaps with another egregious error of identification...
> This image: http://tinyurl.com/y75pth
> shows a character (on the right) in a robe characteristic of Cyril of
> Alexandria, whose image members of this list kindly provided. I came
> to the
> conclusion that a figure in a robe with large crosses on it (Greek,
> Eastern?) was C of A.
A way of verifying/falsifying that hypothesis before advancing it to the status of a conclusion would have been to have a look at icons of other commonly represented saints to eliminate the possibility that the attribute in question is not unique to C. In fact, it is not unique. The robe (in this case, a sakkos) with many crosses is a way of identifying a bishop. Cf. this icon of the Three Holy Hierarchs:
http://tinyurl.com/ybjotx
A fuller view of that is here (but the page can be slow to load):
http://tinyurl.com/yhfyvj
Of course, what's really distinctive for a bishop is the omophorion, the vestment more familiar to some in its Western manifestation, the pallium. In this icon, all three saints are so identified as bishops but only one (Chrysostom) wears a sakkos with many crosses:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/jskira/icons/images/Saints_02_jpg.jpg
And in this portrait from Hagia Sophia in Constantinople of Chrysostom alone, there are crosses on the omorion only (it always has these, just as does the pallium):
http://tinyurl.com/wrpjd
Ditto for this image of Chrysostom from a thirteenth-century manuscript (Moscow, Historical Museum, Ms. 604):
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~rs002/Images/Christian/chryst.jpg
Here are some sainted bishops as depicted in the fourteenth-century frescoes of a UNESCO World Heritage Site well represented on the Web, the Serbian monastery of Gracanica:
Peter of Alexandria:
http://tinyurl.com/yxnycf
Gregory the Theologian (G. of Nazianzus):
http://tinyurl.com/yxy576
Clement of Rome and Meletius (of Antioch):
http://tinyurl.com/yfrnms
Take the virtual tour of the frescoes at the King's Monastery at Studenica and you'll see other examples:
http://tinyurl.com/yyr6hw
> Since I don't read whatever language is
> presented, I
> was lost. How does one know (assuming there is no language marker)?
Often one doesn't. Frequently depicted Orthodox saints have fairly standardized later medieval iconographies but even these are achieved through combinations of vestments, length and shape of beard, and representation by a particular stage of adulthood that are not unique to them. Thus many males are shown with white beards, but Gregory of Nyssa -- Basil the Great's kid brother -- is shown as a younger man (with a long beard) and John Chrysostom as a man of middle years (usually with a short beard). These last two were both bishops and are shown, as of course are many others, in attire appropriate to their station.
Consequently, legends (labels) can be essential in identifying a particular saint with some certainty. As these include the saint's name and often a geographic adjective as well, and as such proper nouns and adjectives are often very similar from one language to another, ability to read the _letter forms_ will often suffice for an identification even when one doesn't read the language itself. It also helps to learn how Eastern equivalents of 'St.' (e.g., 'Ag.', 'Sv.') are written. An inability to distinguish these prefixes from the name itself might require one to start at the rear of the name and work backwards.
Best,
John Dillon
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