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Double Sided Icon, Man of Sorrows. Ministry of Culture, 11th Ephorate of Byzantine
Antiquities, Byzantine Museum of Castoria

SPIRITUS | 4.2
rereading spiritual classics

Harness The Dying Breath: The 12th Century

Kastoria Icon in the Christian Imagination
Philip Francis

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly, 211
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this birth was
hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.1

B efore us hangs a Byzantine panel icon from the second half of the
twelfth century, a portrait in tempera on wood, of a male nude in half length.2
The icon is badly damaged; bare timber, having cast away its painted surface,
closes in on the man from all sides. Just below his shaded sternum there is a
particularly large gash in the work; a dark, knotty hole gapes at us like a
wound in the man’s chest.3 Where time and worship have been gentler, the
colors of the image remain vivid. The few chips of border paint that linger are
orange-red; the background is navy blue. The man’s skin is blistered; his long,
brown hair is pulled back from his bearded face. His head is cocked toward his
right shoulder and ringed by a golden, cruciform halo; his eyes are shut to the
light. His lips (one red, one gray), his locked jaw and furrowed brow connote
one who is troubled, perhaps by dreams. Although the man’s frame is erect, his
arms hang limp and lifeless at his pierced side. Behind him, just above his
shoulders, the horizon is marked by a dark, ominous, straight beam, stretching
off the canvas, East and West. Above his head, inscribed on another, smaller
piece of dark wood and barely visible through the chipping paint are the letters
BACILEYC THC DOXHC (King of Glory)—a curious king. The final detail
of the icon, which reveals the identity of this strange figure, lies in the small
white lettering that floats on the blue background above the halo: IC XC
(Jesus Christ), the crucified Savior.
Or is this the final detail? Strikingly, the panel is turned to reveal a second
image painted on the back of this sorrowful king. The icon is double-sided.
Again we have before us a portrait in half length, this time of a young woman
with an infant in her arms. Both figures are haloed; the child, like the King of
Glory, has a cruciform halo. His right hand blesses the observer; his left hand
clutches a tightly wrapped scroll. His figure is exceptionally hieratic, his face

Francis
Spiritus 4 (2004): 211–225 | Harness
© 2004 by The JohnsThe Dying
Hopkins Breath
University Press
 stern as a judge. In contrast, the women’s face is anxious, the veil of “secret
and hidden thoughts.”4 Her right hand gestures to the confident child in her
arms, while her dark eyes glance in the opposite direction, as if looking over
her shoulder at the reverse image—like a sword held to her back—and crying
out, “Inwardly I burn as I see thee now upon the cross. I wish to take my son
down from the wood and to hold him in my arms, as once I held Him when he
was a little child.”5 Two small angelic figures roosted above the women’s halo
attempt, to no avail, to comfort the sorrowing mother, her birth pangs cease-
less. This birth is indeed hard and bitter as death. She “sighs, but feebly; she
groans, but inwardly and inaudibly.”6 Her trembling, red lips are pressed
212 together as one.7

DEAD IN OUTWARD APPEARANCE, YET ALIVE AS GOD8

In describing just the basic composition of this, the double-sided Kastoria icon,
we encounter tensions and inversions, instances of antinomy and paradox.
Perhaps these, more than the rings on its trunk, account for the wear on the
icon. It is wondrous that long ago it did not implode on itself from the density
of its matter, and equally marvelous that it has not been rent in two by the
opposite forces it binds together with colors and lines. Indeed, here the great
mysteries of the incarnation are made present to the beholder: birth as death,
death as life, kingly glory as extreme humility, extreme humility as divine human-
ity. It is of these mysteries that the icon invites us to partake. As one late
Byzantine commentator would say, it is through gazing at this image that our
mimetic desire is inflamed, and we long to be “nailed up and crucified with him.”9
In what follows we will revisit this classic Christian icon by engaging the
long-established practice of allowing the icon to guide theological reflection.
We will also consider the iconographer’s task in representing, through colors
and lines, the paradoxes of union with Christ. We will bring these paradoxes
to light through careful observation and imaginative contemplation as guided
by the nexus of scriptures, hymns, homilies and prayers that hone the Chris-
tian imagination.10 As the primary function of this image appears to have been
liturgical and paschal, it is fitting that our reflection be informed by particular
reference to the Byzantine hymnody of Holy Week and the paschal homilies of
Gregory of Nyssa.11 In addition, we will allow our imagination to be stimu-
lated by one lengthy homily by Michael Psellus, as it was delivered in the
pivotal eleventh century, the very time that the image of the Man of Sorrows
and other ‘life-endowed’ images assumed center stage in the theater of the
church.12 As we move through this reflection we will make occasional compari-
sons with other, later icons of the same genre. Our focus, however, will remain
on this double-sided Kastoria icon, with primary reference to the side bearing
the Man of Sorrows.

SPIRITUS | 4.2
 What words could resemble the model,
In accordance with which the image refuted nature?
How could its measure conform to the reality,
and the language share in the death of the dying Lord?13

In reflecting on his personal icon of the dead Christ, Michael Psellus describes
the miracle worked by the hand of the iconographer; he has accomplished the
impossible task of depicting the image that refutes nature (“the dying Lord”).
For how does one adequately depict “the living God as a corpse?”14 According
to Psellus’s ekphrasis, this is accomplished only when both the iconographer
and the image participate in the energies of God; “these likenesses seem to be
the product of the human hand, but God actually fashions them without our 213
knowing it . . . and presents them in visible form by using the hand of the
craftsman as his vehicle for the picture.”15 Likewise, “God inspires with his
grace not only creatures who possess reason but also images which lack life . . . ”16
For Psellus, the vitality of the icon rises from two sources: “Both from artistic
skill . . . and also from grace, which has made [the image] unlike any other.”17
A miraculous image, one which upholds the coincidence of opposites, is the
product of a synergistic encounter between God and a human being, between a
master of the palette and the Artist who is without beginning.
Here Psellus hints at what Hans Belting and others have identified as a
new style of icon, the “life-endowed” image, that emerged in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries.18 The artists of such images had discovered a means for
depicting the rhetorical antinomies that had always been at the heart of the
Christian faith, antinomies so difficult to capture in a visual medium. In large
part, it was the poets, the hymnographers, the verbal theologians who had thus
far in church history given the most adequate expression to the paradoxes of
faith.19 Romanos could sing about the “life-bearing yet buried body.”20 Gre-
gory of Nazianzus could poetize “the death of the immortal one.”21 But the
faithful demanded more: “Each of the senses must be illumined by the true
philosophy”—and sight is “the noblest of senses.”22 As Psellus notes of his
audience, “You have not relinquished sense perception, nor have you risen
above the body, but you long to gaze upon Him with your very eyes, and to
see, if possible, Christ himself hanging naked upon the tree . . . ”23 The life-
endowed images fulfilled the inherent longing of the people. For in them, “[the
artist] has rendered,” before the eyes of the faithful, “[Christ] at once living
among the dead and dead among the living.”24 In one arresting passage Psellus
explains that these visual paradoxes are possible only when the iconographer
inhales the final, dying breath of Christ and harnesses its power to animate the
painted image of the very “body that has breathed its last.”25 If Psellus has
articulated the mystical relationship at work behind these images, how then
does this work its way out in lines and colors—that is, what physical and

Francis | Harness The Dying Breath

 rhetorical techniques does the artist use to convey antinomies such as the death
of life?

INSIDE THE MUSEUMS, INFINITY GOES UP ON TRIAL26

O boundless Christ, who fillest all things, thou wast in the tomb with the body,
in hell with the soul, in paradise with the thief, and enthroned with the Father . . . 27

Perhaps the most basic maneuver the artist makes is to loose the image from its
spatial and temporal moorings. This is first accomplished by the physical
214
realities of a portable image. The Kastoria icon is not a mosaic, or a wall
painting with a fixed location, at a safe distance from the people. It is an
autonomous image, one that moves, that “walks” in the midst of the congrega-
tion (during procession). It is a shape-shifting image, for as the panel processes,
at one moment he sees a dead man walking toward him, and she sees a mother
with child walking away; the next moment, his vision is hers and hers his. At
any given instance of the procession any one of the faithful can see but one
side of the image, one end of the spectrum; yet where two or more are gath-
ered the full spectrum is in their midst. In these ways, this portable image of a
dead man “could almost be experienced as a living person.”28
Moving beyond the portability of the image, we may ask how its very
composition is rendered spatially and temporally undetermined. Or to pose the
question more starkly: what Christ-event is depicted in this Man of Sorrows
image? The nailing? No, for the sword has already pierced his side. The
crucifixion? No, for his arms hang limp at his sides. The deposition or lament?
No, for who is taking him off the Cross, who is mourning?—the King of Glory
is very much alone. Mustn’t this be the burial, then? No, for the crossbeam of
the tree still looms behind the King’s shoulders. Indeed, a straightforward
answer is elusive. We know that Christ’s passion is depicted, but we cannot
place this precise moment within any of the Gospels’ narrative frames.29
Similarly, the indeterminacy of perspective adds to these temporal and
spatial ambiguities. It is possible that we are looking down from above, on a
man who is lying on his back, on a cross, as on a bed. But, then again, his
sidelong head seems pulled downward like Newton’s apple, suggesting that the
figure is upright. So then, perhaps we are gazing horizontally, face to face, with
the King of Glory propped up on a cruciform throne. But if this is so, what
keeps the man affixed to the cross?—surely not man-made spikes. It is possible
that his free hands are a gloss on the voluntary nature of his passion, but this is
conjecture.30 As it stands we are left to wonder what force binds him to the
tree, what mystery unfolds outside this narrow frame.

SPIRITUS | 4.2
 215

Figure 1. Meteora Monastery of the Transfiguration Diptych, late 14th century.

Of course, the subject matter in the frame (the passion of the eternal and
boundless Christ) both demands and lends itself to such temporal multiva-
lence. In the life of the God-man, time and eternity intersect—“The timeless
[one] takes on the duration of the temporal.”31 In his passion, most particu-
larly, mysterious things happen to time; it is stretched, frozen, and pulled
apart: The synoptic Gospels capture the stretching of time. Their narratives of
the life of Christ move quickly, especially in Mark’s gospel. Yet when Christ
enters his passion, the narrative plotting slows remarkably, detailed description
increases, and character development is intensified; the true identity of the
actors is revealed. Time is stretched into the eschaton of resurrection. The
hymnody of Holy Saturday captures the freezing of time. Christ is typologi-
cally aligned with “Joshua of old, who made the sun stand still while he slew
his enemies.”32 Christ, too, freezes the shadow on the sundial, while he con-
quers death, the great enemy.
In one of his homilies, Gregory of Nyssa provides a vivid example of time
pulled apart by Christ’s passion.33 Gregory first notes the significance of
Christ’s three days in the tomb; each day accomplishes one of three saving acts:
purging men from evil, purging women from evil, destroying death. However,
this introduces a problem: the time interval between his death on Friday at the
ninth hour and his resurrection on Sunday is far less than three days—only one
and half days to be precise. For Gregory “the problem is solved” by noting
that his three day sojourn begins on Thursday at the last supper, when Christ
declared “I lay down [my life] of my own accord” (287). Not being bound to
wait for betrayal, “He offers himself, unseen by men, as an offering and

Francis | Harness The Dying Breath

 sacrifice” (287). This adds half a day to the tally. Gregory then notes that
Friday is to be calculated as “one night and two days because it was split by
the exceptionally introduced night” (288). When Christ was on the cross, and
there was darkness in the middle of the day, Friday was torn asunder, time was
divided and so, paradoxically, multiplied to complete the three-day period of
salvation. With these (and many more) scriptural, hymnographic and homiletic
examples the iconographer is free to experiment, as we have seen, with the
temporality of the passion portrait.
If the above represents the challenge and freedom of depicting Christ in
relation to time, there was an equally challenging summons to depict his
216 relationship with space. This is necessarily the case when one struggles to hold
Christ’s embodiment, his historical locatedness at any given moment of the
incarnation, in harmony with his omnipresence. Again there are verbal ex-
amples of this relationship. As in the above quotation from Chrysostom’s
liturgy, so again in Gregory’s paschal homily: “The eager student may well ask
how the Lord gives himself three ways at once, to the heart of the earth, to
paradise with the thief and to the Father’s hands” (290). Similarly, Psellus
reminds his audience that “Jesus did not leave heaven when he went about on
the earth, but was in glory together with the throne of the Father while he was
being insulted on the Cross.”34 Gregory’s explanation of Christ’s tri-location
would take us too far afield, but his question, along with Psellus’ ekphrasis
and Chrysostom’s prayer, are sufficient to pose the challenge to the iconogra-
pher. It was not sufficient (theologically) to depict Christ exclusively on the
cross, or at any other moment in the passion, for these did not represent the
totality of his humano-divine self, which is simultaneously present, in different
manners, in several places at once. Likewise it was not adequate to depict him
as a simple corpse, because even in death he remains ‘the Life.’ Thus, in this
Man of Sorrows image we see an iconographer striving to present an adequate
representation of Christ’s relationship to space and time.

WAKE UP, WAKE UP DEAD MAN35

Thou hast slept, O Christ, a life-giving sleep in the tomb,

and aroused mankind from a heavy slumber of sin.36

The next move that the iconographer makes is to latch onto those realities of
human life which themselves have multi-temporal, multi-spatial connotations.
One such example is the phenomenon of sleep. In the Christian imagination,
sleep has always maintained a polyvocal sense. On the one hand, it was
problematized for its kinship to sloth and vulnerability to diabolical tempta-
tions and dreams.37 On the other, it marked a time of refreshment and revital-

SPIRITUS | 4.2
ization. Yet its most common usage was as a metaphor for the immediate
postmortem state of the soul.38 In this context, it was useful inasmuch as it
signified passage through an impermanent state, from which one would
inevitably awaken to something new.
For these reasons, sleep is taken up in the church’s Paschal hymnody to
describe the death of Christ. Such hymns tend to fall into three categories, each
of which utilizes the relationship between sleep and death. First, there are
those passages that compare and contrast the sleep of Adam with that of the
new Adam: “Adam slept, and from his side there came death; now thou dost
sleep, O word of God, and from Thy side there flows a fountain of life for the
world.”39 Second, there are those hymns that link Christ’s “death-sleep”40 with 217
the Creator’s sabbath rest: “For this is the blessed Sabbath, this is the day of
rest, on which the only-begotten Son of God rested from all His works.
Suffering death in accordance with the plans of salvation, He kept the Sabbath
in the flesh.”41 Like the manna of old, Christ remains incorrupt on this holy
Sabbath. Third, there are those passages that use sleep-death as a way of
hearkening to the resurrection (or awakening): “Let us see the Life sleeping in
the tomb . . . and with the prophets let us cry aloud to Him: Thou hast lain
down, Thou hast slept as a lion; who shall awaken thee, O king? But of thine
own free will, do Thou rise up, who willingly dost give Thyself for us.”42
Compelled by centuries of Christian reflection on sleep, it was natural that the
iconographer would utilize its liminal associations in his image of the dead
Life-giver.
Indeed, if the cross were removed from the background of our Man of
Sorrows image, and the divine face given full attention, one would be inclined
to say, “the King is not dead”; he is “only sleeping.”43 Yet perhaps in the
Christian imagination, even the dark wood of the tree could provide a place
for the Bridegroom to find rest. Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross both
contemplate the Cross as the bed on which God consummates his love affair
with mankind. Consummatum est.
In our double-sided panel, the sleep motif allows for an interesting reversal
of roles between the two Christs. The child Jesus, who would be asleep in his
mother’s arms, assumes the posture of a Pantocrator, ready to judge the earth.
Conversely, the adult Christ rests, awaiting the embrace of his mother in the
Anapeson images. As noted above, the King’s troubled look—captured in his
furrowed brow and clenched jaw—bespeaks one who is asleep but troubled by
dreams. In many later versions of the Man of Sorrows, his face assumes a more
serene look, he sleeps the sweet sleep, and his head is far less cocked to one
side. In these images, the man rests in green pastures, his dreams no longer
sorrowful, yet the motif is still unmistakably sleep-death (see fig. 1). By
depicting Christ asleep, the iconographer achieves another measure of the

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 spatial and temporal ambiguity demanded of the God-man by the Christian
imagination.

EXTREME HUMILITY

He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of
men; being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the
point of death, even death on a cross.44

We have already noted that the Man of Sorrows image played a vital and
multifaceted role in the liturgical life of the church, especially during Holy
218
Week. Indeed, it is likely that our double-sided image was created primarily for
this function.45 However, very early in its life, the passion portrait gained
popularity as a private devotional image. There are several extant miniatures
of the image (dating from the 13th and 14th centuries), which would be far
too small for a gathered assembly.46 Likewise, in an early fourteenth century
fresco, Saint Demetrios is pictured with a copy of the Man of Sorrows hanging
in his cell for private devotional purposes (see fig. 2).47 Beginning with this and
other early historical evidence for private use of the passion portrait, one can,
in reverse, find several reasons why it naturally lent itself to individual contem-
plation.
The close-up view of Christ, who fills nearly every inch of the frame,
invades the viewer’s personal space, exerting an immediate psychological effect
as presence. The impact of this presence is increased (not reduced) by the sheer
minimalism of the portrait.48 For by virtue of its concision the image recapitu-
lates the stations of the cross in a single, trans-historical image. If a picture is
worth a thousand words, one glance at this dense image conjures a thousand
pictures. Needless to say, contemplative engagement with this image could
facilitate a transformative encounter. In another sense, the minimalism in-
creases Christ’s intimacy with the viewer; the King of Glory is alone until the
contemplative enters his cell and encounters the living corpse, one on one.
Having noted a few of the compositional elements that enhance
meditational impact, we may now turn to a more fundamental theological
motif that orders the composition and gives the image its invitational gravity.
At this point one might supplement Belting’s claim that “the sight of a corpse,
which usually engenders aversion rather than desire to draw near, could only
be endured because of the awareness that the dead man was alive.”49 More
basically, it might be that the palpable force of attraction is derived not merely
from its life-endowed quality, nor its plurisignate character, nor any of the
other imaginative antinomies that we have explored. Rather, it is, what might
be called, the pleromatic kenosis of the King of Glory that makes his image so

SPIRITUS | 4.2
 219

Figure 2. Saint Demetrios in Cell With Man of Sorrows, early 14th century.

captivating, for here Christ is at the extreme end of the Pauline, self-emptying
continuum. The image assumes the form not only of a lowly human being, but
that of a servant; not only a servant but one obedient to death; not only
obedient to death but death on a cross. Staggeringly, this image has captured
Christ’s perfect emptiness—the God-man poured out as a libation. It is pre-
cisely this achievement which makes the image so alluring, so mesmeric. For as
the viewer fixes his gaze on the corpse, it is as if the King of Glory empties
himself into the contemplative; and he invites the contemplative to reciprocate
in an exchange of subjectivities.50

AT THE STILL POINT OF THE TURNING POINT

The marked stillness of the composition is yet another reason that the Passion
portrait furnishes contemplation. There is a pluriformity of narrative connota-
tions, but the King of Glory is motionless in an absolute sense. If there has ever
been an adequate visual expression of T.S. Eliot’s “still point”51 (around which
the world, the universe, and the galaxy turn) it is this sleeping king. As the

Francis | Harness The Dying Breath

 contemplative fixes her eyes on the King, the world around her begins to swim
in dizzying contrast to this unmoved mover. Christ’s stillness becomes for the
contemplative more foundational and stabilizing than any cornerstone. And
yet, paradoxically, this stillness is fecund with activity. We have already
discovered that the Man of Sorrows is resting on this Holy Sabbath. But we
should also recall that this one has a history of subversive healing on the day
of rest. This Sabbath presents no exception. While the King appears passive
and inert to the Devil or to the casual observer, the devotee with eyes of faith
sees that the honorable tree (against which the King is propped) is slowly but
steadily sending roots deep into the underworld, causing Hell to cry out, “My
220 ministers and powers, who has fixed a nail in my heart? A wooden lance has
suddenly pierced me and I am being torn apart.” Hell exhorts Satan, “Run,
open your eyes, and see the root of the Tree inside my soul . . . All your
wisdom has been swallowed up through the Cross.”52 As the contemplative
visually enters into this narrative still-life, and participates in the victory of
active passivity, the King silently reminds him of the prophetic words of old: I
will fight for you; you have only to be still. Yea, be still and know that I am
God.53
In speaking of the King’s voiceless words we gesture toward a second
dynamic that parallels the antinomy of still motion, that is, silent speech. In
our bilateral Man of Sorrows, the devout contemplative will notice that the
King’s upper lip is red with life, while the bottom lip is gray with death. The
visual rhetoric of the gray lip, the mouth that cannot form words, calls to mind
the proleptic silence of the lamb who before his shearers is silent:54 “ . . . He
gave no answer, not even to a single charge.”55 Christ’s disinterest in self-
defense is central to the kenotic ideal, the practice of self-emptying that opens
up space for the other. In this arena, his silence gives the contemplative a vast
expanse into which he may speak, and be heard. The King hears every word of
his needy subjects; his own voice does not interfere. Through his silence, Christ
proclaims, “My Kingdom is not of this World.”56
At the same time, the King’s upper lip recalls the “lips like scarlet threads”
which give sweet kisses and speak eloquent words.57 It recalls the servant who
“knows how to sustain the weary with a word.”58 Yet how can the weary
contemplative—who gazes on this image, in need of a word—be sustained by a
dead man? Is it not impossible? And yet the Christian imagination reaches out
beyond the possible, claiming, “One should not . . . despair of his desire simply
because these things seem to be beyond his grasp.”59 It is hope in the face of
impossibility that is reflected in the diligent gaze of the Man of Sorrows’
devotee. And the church’s hymnody provides the words to maintain such hope.
In the final canticle of the Compline service (the last service on Holy Friday),
after Christ has given up his spirit, after numerous hymns by the virgin lament-

SPIRITUS | 4.2
ing the death of her Son, after the epitaphion has been laid out and venerated
by all,60 the faithful continue to cry out to their King, “Open your all-seeing
eye,” “Nourish us with a word,” “Wake up, dead man (!).” Such faith moves
the mountainous stone and the dead man speaks to his mother for all to hear:
“How hast thou not seen the depth of my tender love? . . . Because I wish to
save my creatures, I accepted to die. But I shall rise again and as God shall
magnify thee in heaven and in earth.”61 And again, in the final canticle of
Matins on Holy Saturday, the faithful are sustained by the words that Christ
speaks from beneath the earth: “By mine own will the earth covers me . . . but
the gatekeepers of Hell tremble as they see me, clothed in the bloodstained
garment of vengeance . . . ”62 The silence of stone colored lips is rolled away by 221
the death of life; righteous words rise like songs to nourish the oppressed.

SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING

Thus has the gracious symphony between the artist and the Subject produced
an image of sacramental and transfigurative quality. Like the Russian pilgrim
of old who achieves a perpetual state of prayer, which wells up in him steady
as a mountain spring, so the one who diligently meditates on the Man of
Sorrows has this image brandished on the soul.63 As Macarios implores, “It is
necessary that we gaze on him . . . casting aside all else and attending to him so
that he may paint his own heavenly image and send it into our souls.”64 For
the one receiving this image, all of creation becomes an unremitting source of
life and death, sorrow and joy. Tears flow like “blood from the wounds of the
soul,”65 and yet “spiritual laughter”66 abides therein. With Paul, this one can
claim, “We are always carrying in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life
of Jesus may also be manifested in our body . . . dying and behold we live . . .
sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 4:10; 6:9–10). If the culmination of
this contemplation was to carry the death of Jesus in one’s body, then this was
articulated by bearing the Man of Sorrows image on one’s body.67 Many
Byzantines were buried with this icon resting on their breast.

NOTES
1. T.S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi,” in Norton Anthology of English Literature (NY:
Norton and Co., 1968), 2599.
2. Double-sided Icon with the Virgin Hodegetria and the Man of Sorrows. 115 x 77.5 cm
(45.25 x 30.5 in.). Byzantine Museum, Kastoria, Greece (Image No. 457). My debt to
Hans Belting’s fine study of this image will be evident throughout. The Image and Its
Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, trans.
M. Bartusis and R. Meyer (New Rochelle, NY: A.D. Caratzas, 1990).
3. Most commentators see this hole as the result of a fixture, once embedded in the wood,
by which the icon could be attached to a pole and processed during liturgical ceremony.
See Annemarie Weyl Carr’s comments on the Kastoria icon in Helen C. Evens and

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 William D. Wixom, eds., The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle
Byzantine Era, A.D. 843–1261 (New York: The Metropolitan Museaum of Art, 1997),
125–126.
4. Michael Psellus §60, Ekphrasis on the Crucifixion Image, in E. A. Fisher, “Image and
Ekphrasis in Michael Psellus’ Sermon on the Crucifixion,” Byzantinoslavica 55.1
(1994), 53. Psellus was a Byzantine polymath and writer of the 11th Century. He served
in Constantinople as a civil administrator and court philosopher. He took the monastic
habit on Mt. Olympos. The complete translation of the Ekphrasis can be found in the
following: P. Gautier, “Un discours inedit de Michel Psellos sur la crucifixion,” Revue
des Études Byzantine 49 (1991) 5–66.
5. Lenten Triodion, trans. Kallistos Ware and Mother Mary (London: Faber and Faber,
1977), 618.
6. Psellus §60. Fisher, 53. Note the parallel that Psellus makes between the paradox
222 contained in the image and the paradox contained in the virgin’s mind and body: “For
she fixes her eyes upon thoughts she cannot express, while her spirit within her
rehearses what she has experienced early on and with what evils she is now over-
whelmed; in a way, she compares these two sets of experiences to one another and
conquers [the worse] with the better. All the same, she marvels at [her son’s] death and
[wonders] how he did not disdain even this.” Also, “Seeing her own lamb being led to
the slaughter, Mary His Mother followed him with the other women and in her grief she
cried: ‘Where dost thou go, my child? Why dost Thou run so swiftly? Is there another
wedding in Cana, and art thou hastening there, to turn water into wine? Shall I go with
thee my child, or shall I wait for thee? . . . ’” (Triodion, 594: Hymn from Holy Friday).
7. While this double-sided icon is the earliest extant copy of what became known as the
“Man of Sorrows” type in the West and “Extreme Humility” in the East, it is by no
means the prototype. There remains a great deal of debate as to the origin of this form.
After Hans Belting’s recent work (The Image, 36–40), it is no longer viable to speak of
the mosaic panel in S. Croce in Jerusalem in Rome (ca. 1300) as the “Gregorian
archetype.” “Our Lord in the form of the pieta” appeared to the pope “whereupon at
the sight of him Gregory was moved to pieta and pious devotion” (The Image, 192).
Belting has provided a more compelling case, arguing that it was a Byzantine creation of
the eleventh century, where invention was in response to liturgical need. Belting’s thesis
offers a corrective to the work of his predecessor Manoles Chatzidakis. See the
important “L’Evolution de l’icone au 11e–13e sircles et la transformation du templon,”
in XVe Congres international d’études byzantines (1976), Rapports et co rapports. Vol.
3, Art et archeologie, 159–91, Athens, 1979.
8. Lenten Triodion, 632.
9. Psellus §57. Fisher, 51.
10. On problematizing the relationship between art and literature, see Henry Maguire’s fine
interdisciplinary treatise Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981). Maguire well illustrates the interplay, indeed the cross-
fertilization, of rhetorical strategies between Byzantine hymns and sermons, on the one
hand, and icons on the other.
11. As we know, Gregory’s homilies were highly influential on the later hymnographic
tradition; many of his reflections are repeated verbatim in the hymns of Holy Week.
12. It should be noted that this essay does not attempt to establish direct historical lines
between particular texts and icons. My purpose is rather akin to that of Psellus’
ekphrasis: to fix the reader’s attention on the icon itself—‘the image that hangs before
us’—and to allow it to inform our encounter with relevant texts. Of course, the circle
would not be complete if we did not recognize that our textual images will, in turn,
inform our reading of the icon. The result of this circular path should be fruitful
theological reflection.

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13. Psellus, Scripta Minora, ed. E. Kurtz and F. Drexl, (Milan: Societa “Vita e Pensiers”
1941), p. 247. 26–28.
14. The Lenten Triodion, 633. Also, “Nailed in the flesh, O Giver of Life, how dost Thou
die upon a tree?” (587).
15. Psellus §57. Fisher, 51.
16. Psellus §57. Fisher, 51.
17. Psellus §63. Fisher, 55.
18. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art,
Trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994), 261–296. Belting
notes that inhabitants of the twelfth century were well aware that a new image had
emerged: “Such an icon is mentioned about 1100 in the inventory of an imperial
convent in the capital, as an ‘icon painted in the new style’” (261). Italics mine.
19. Of course, there are notable exceptions to this claim. The Sinai school of iconography, for
example, had for centuries been making high level contributions through visual theology. 223
20. St. Romanos the Melodist, On the Life of Christ, trans. Ephraim Lash (San Francisco:
Harper Collins, 1995), 167.
21. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Man: The Theological Poetry of Gregory
Nazianzus, trans. Peter Gilbert (Crestwood: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 2001), 39–42.
22. John of Damascus, Three Treatises On the Divine Images (Crestwood: St. Vladimir
Seminary Press, 1997), 25.
23. Psellus §57. Fisher, 51.
24. Psellus §61, Fisher, 53–54.
25. Psellus §61, Fisher, 53–54.
26. Lyrics by Bob Dylan, Album: Blonde on Blonde, Track: “Visions of Johanna,” 1965.
“ . . . Voices echo, ‘This is what salvation must be like after a while.’”
27. Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom.
28. Belting, The Image, 14.
29. Because of its transhistorical qualities, Belting (The Image) suggests that the icon
emerged in response to the liturgical needs of Holy Week. As the Byzantine rites
developed to embrace more details of the Gospels’ passion narratives, more icons were
needed. The value of the Man of Sorrows, he argues, was that it could function as a
generic image for any of the events of Holy Thursday through Saturday—even harken-
ing Sunday. This essay will confirm Belting’s thesis inasmuch as it notes deep resonance
between this icon and the liturgies of Holy Week. At the same time, one may hold
reservations about Belting’s tendency to reduce origins to utilitarian efficiency (i.e. his
claim that the Man of Sorrows was invented as a Holy Week catch-all icon, so that
other icons would not be needed). Were the Byzantines ever interested in fewer icons, or
less religious paraphernalia generally?
30. “Of thine own will, O word, thou wast laid dead in the tomb: yet dost thou live, my
Savior.” Lenten Triodion, 631.
31. Pseudo-Dionysius, “On The Divine Names,” in The Complete Works, trans. Colm
Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 52.
32. Lenten Triodion, 636 (The Praises of Holy Saturday).
33. The Easter Homilies of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. A. Spira and C. Klock (Philadelphia
Patristics Foundation, 1981) (please note that the Easter Homilies of Gregory of Nyssa
will henceforth be referred to as Easter Homilies). See Gregory’s “On the Three-day Period
of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ,” trans. Hall, in Easter Homilies, 49–55.
34. Psellus §11, 892–5. Fisher, 46.
35. Lyrics by Bono of U2, Album: Pop, Track: “Wake up Dead Man,” 1997.
36. Lenten Triodion, 632.
37. “When he rose from prayer, and had come to His disciples, He found them sleeping
from sorrow. Then he said to them, ‘Why do you sleep? Rise and pray, lest you enter
into temptation’” (Lk. 22:45).

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 38. See Nicholas Constas, “‘To Sleep, Perchance to Dream’: The Middle State of Souls in
Patristic and Byzantine Literature,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 91–124.
39. Lenten Triodion, 636.
40. The phrase is Belting’s. The Image, 103–4.
41. Lenten Triodion, 652. Also, “This is the most blessed sabbath on which Christ sleeps,
but on the third day he shall rise again” (649). Gregory of Nyssa makes a similar
parallel: “The true sabbath rest, the one which received God’s benediction, in which the
Lord rested from his own works by keeping sabbath for the world’s salvation in the
inactivity of death, has now reached its goal . . . ” (Easter Homilies, 51).
42. Lenten Triodion, 649. See also, “Thou hast slept a little while, and brought the dead to
life; Thou hast arisen, O loving Lord, and raised up those that from the beginning of
time had fallen asleep” (Lenten Triodion, 636). “The Lord has waked as if from sleep:
he is risen and saves us” (Lenten Triodion, 659; Communion Hymn, Holy Saturday).
224 43. Mt. 9:24
44. Phil. 2:8.
45. That St. Paraskeve (who is named after Holy Friday) is often depicted with the Man of
Sorrows image held to her breast is confirmation of Belting’s thesis. See The Image,
108–9.
46. The Kastoria icon’s larger dimensions, 115 x 77.5 cm (45.25 x 30.5 in.), remind us that
it was created as a public— rather than private—devotional image.
47. Belting, The Image, 110 (also 24). Likewise, in his letters, Psellus describes himself as
“a meticulous viewer of images” and admits that on occasion he has stolen wooden
icons from churches for private contemplation, and denied it under oath! Psellus,
Scripta Minora, Epistle 194, p. 220, 19 and Epistle 129, p. 152, 20–4.
48. See G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1959): “Art is
limitation: the essence of every picture is its frame.” The later versions of the Man of
Sorrows abandon the simplicity of the early images by adding items such as the tomb,
the spear and sponge, the crossed arms, and the loin cloth. It could be said that these
images detract from the original, contemplative impact of the portrait.
49. Belting, The Image, 4.
50. In this light, one could speculate as to why the title “Extreme Humility” was attached
to the image in the East, while in the West the title “Man of Sorrows” dominated.
Certainly both themes, the Isaian Servant Songs ( “ . . . a man of sorrows, and ac-
quainted with grief . . . ” 53:2–4) and Pauline kenosis are present in the image, but one
may suppose that the respective soteriological emphases of the East and West influenced
the titles this image received.
51. T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 7.
52. St. Romanos the Melodist, On the Life of Christ, 156.
53. As Eliot reminds, “The hippopotamus’s day is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God
works in a mysterious way——The Church can sleep and eat once.” The Waste Land
and Other Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 1998) 44.
54. Is. 53. Among the Servant Songs: “He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard
in the street” (Is. 42:2).
55. Mt 27:12.
56. See Chrysostom’s commentary on Mt 27:12, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed.
Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956), 511–515.
57. Song of Songs 4:3
58. Is. 49:2, 50:4
59. Virginia W. Callahan (trans.) Saint Gregory of Nyssa’s Ascetical Works, “On Virginity
1–23” Fathers of the Church 58 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press,
1967), 38.
60. Epitaphion: a fabric embroidered with an image of the dead Christ and used in the
burial processions of Holy Week.

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61. Lenten Triodion, 621.
62. Lenten Triodion, 651.
63. Recall the classic of Russian spirituality: The Way of a Pilgrim.
64. Pseudo-Macarios, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, trans. G.A.
Maloney (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 191.
65. Gregory of Nyssa, Funeral Oration on the Empress Flacilla: Easter Homilies, 477.
66. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman
Russell (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 140.
67. See, for example, the icon of the burial of St. Ephraim the Syrian as seen in Belting, The
Image, 110 n. 59.

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