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Iconostasis

(Gr. eikonostasion, eidonostasis , picture screen, from eikon , image, picture, and histemi , place), the chief and most distinctive feature in all Greek churches, whether Catholic or Orthodox. It may be said to differentiate the Greek church completely from the Roman in its interior arrangement. It consists of a great screen or partition running from side to side of the apse or across the entire end of the church, which divides the sanctuary from the body of the church, and is built of solid materials such as stone, metal, or wood, and which reaches often (as in Russia ) to the very ceiling of the church, thus completely shutting off the altar and the sanctuary from the worshipper. It has three doors: the great royal door in the middle (so called because it leads directly to the altar upon which the King of kings is sacrificed ), the deacon's door to the right, and the door of the proskomide (preparation for Liturgy ) upon the left, when viewing the structure from the standpoint of a worshipper in the body of the church.

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Where the iconostasis is very lofty, as among the Slavonic nationalities, whether Orthodox or Catholic, the pictures upon it are arranged in tiers or rows across its entire length. Those on the lower ground tier have already been described; the first tier above that is a row of pictures commemorating the chief feasts of the Church, such as the Nativity, Annunciation, Transfiguration, etc.; above them a tier containing the Prophets of the Old Law ; and lastly the very top of the iconostasis. These pictures are usually painted in the stiff Byzantine manner, although in many Russian churches they have begun to use modern art; the Temple of the Saviour in Moscow is a notable example. The iconostasis in the Greek (Hellenic) churches have never been so lofty and as full of paintings as those in Russian and other countries. A curious form of adornment of the icons or pictures has grown up in Russia and is also found in other parts of the East. Since the Orthodox Church would not admit sculptured figures on the inside of churches (although they often have numerous statues upon the outside) they imitated an effect of sculpture in the pictures placed upon the iconostasis which produces an incongruous effect upon the Western mind. The icon, which is generally painted upon wood, is covered except as to the face and hands with a relief of silver, gold, or seed pearls showing all the details and curves of the drapery, clothing and halo: thus giving a crude cameo-like effect around the flat painted face and hands of the icon.

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In the early Greek churches there was a slight barrier about waist high, or even lower, dividing the altar from the people. This was variously known as kigklis , grating, dryphakta , fence, diastyla , a barrier made of columns, according to the manner in which it was constructed. Very often pictures of the saints were affixed to the tops of the columns. When Justinian constructed the "great" church, St. Sophia, in Constantinople, he adorned it with twelve high columns (in memory of the twelve Apostles ) in order to make the barrier or chancel, and over the tops of these columns he placed an architrave which ran the entire width of the sanctuary. On this architrave or crossbeam large disks or shields were placed containing the pictures of the saints, and this arrangement was called templon (templum), either from its fancied resemblance to the front of the old temples or as expressing the Christian idea of the shrine where God was worshiped. Every church of the Byzantine Rite eventually imitated the "great" church and so this open templon form of iconostasis began to be adopted among the churches of the East, and the name itself was used to designate what is now the iconostasis.

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The Iconostasis and the Deisis

The Iconostasis is the most prominent feature of an Orthodox Church. It separates the Sanctuary from the nave. The Sanctuary is where the Eucharist is celebrated, which symbolizes the Divine world. The nave is the part reserved for the believers and symbolizes the human world.



Iconostasis 11.20 x 12.88 m.
Made by Palekh, Russia.




Iconostasis 'Nikitniki'.
Made by Kinovar, Russia.





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The wall that separates two worlds in an iconostasis. One might mean by the iconostasis the boards or the bricks or the stones. In actuality, the iconostasis is a boundary between the visible and invisible worlds, and it functions as a boundary by being an obstacle to our seeing the altar, thereby making it accessible to our consciousness by means of its unified row of saints (i.e., by its cloud of witnesses) that surround the altar where God is, the sphere where heavenly glory dwells, thus proclaiming the Mystery. Iconostasis is vision. Iconostasis is manifestation of saints and angels- angelophania- a manifest appearance of heavenly witnesses that includes, first of all, the Mother of God and Christ Himself in the flesh, witnesses who proclaim that which is from the other side of mortal flesh. Iconostasis is the saints themselves. If everyone praying in a temple were wholly spiritualized, if everyone praying were truly to see, then there would be no iconostasis other than standing before God Himself, witnessing to Him by their holy countenances and proclaiming His terrifying glory by their sacred words.

But because our sight is weak and our prayers are feeble, the Church, in Her care for us, gave us visual strength for our spiritual brokenness: the heavenly visions on the iconostasis, vivid, precise, and illumined, that articulate, materially cohere, an image into fixed colors. But this spiritual prop, this material iconostasis, does not conceal from the believer (as someone in ignorant self-absorption might imagine) some sharp mystery; on the contrary, the iconostasis points out to the half-blind the Mysteries of the altar, opens for them an entrance into a world closed to them by their own struckness, cries into their deaf ears the voice of the Heavenly Kingdom, a voice made deafening to them by their having failed to take in the speech of ordinary voices. This heavenly cry is therefore stripped, of course, of all the subtly rich expressiveness of ordinary speech: but who commits the act of such stripping when it is we who fail to appreciate the heavenly cry because we failed first to recognize it in ordinary speech: what can be left except a deafening cry? Destroy the material iconostasis and the altar itself will, as such, wholly vanish from our consciousness as if covered over by an essentially impenetrable wall. But the material iconostasis does not, in itself, take the place of the living witnesses, existing instead of them; rather, it points toward them, concentrating the attention of those who pray upon them- a concentration speak figuratively, then, a temple without a material iconostasis opens windows in this wall, through whose glass we see (those of us who can see) what is permanently occurring beyond: the living witnesses to God. To destroy icons thus means to block up the windows; it means smearing the glass and weakening the spiritual light for those of us who otherwise could see it directly, who could (we could figuratively say) behold it in a transparent space free of earthly air, a space where we could learn to breathe the pure ethereal air and to live in the light of God’s glory: and when this happens, the material iconostasis will self-destruct in that vast obliteration which will destroy the whole image of this world- and which will even destroy faith and hope- and then we contemplate, in pure love, the immortal glory of God.




Exerpt taken from the book:
Iconostasis, by: Pavel Florensky.

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