IKON, volume 14 (2021).

CONTENTS INCLUDE

Visual Representations of Saint Menas and Saint Thecla: Objects and Sources
Danijela Tešić Radovanović and Branka Gugolj

On a number of pilgrimage objects from Late Antiquity, St Thecla, a highly revered saint, also known as Thecla the Protomartyr, is shown accompanied by St Menas, whose tomb in Egypt was the pilgrimage centre associated with healing miracles. The saintly couple appear in ad bestias compositions or in a simplified variant as two saints with a cross. Although the popularity of Sts Menas and Thecla, as well as their shrines, is well known in Late Antiquity, the connection between the two cults seems to be insufficiently analysed. By means of comparing and analysing hagiographic texts, epigraphic material and objects of visual culture that depict Menas and Thecla, the paper debates the nature and origin of this cult community, aspects of pilgrimage related to the saints, as well as the iconographic patterns on which the common image of the saintly couple is based.

Martyrs, Prophets, Monks: Calendar Icons in the Collection of St Catherine’s Monastery at Sinai (11th-12th Centuries)
Maria Lidova

The author discusses four groups of Byzantine calendar icons kept in the collection of St Catherine’s monastery at Mt Sinai, each differing from the others according to format, number of panels, and in its visual approach to the menologion imagery. The result is a strong sense of distinction between the icons, perhaps suggestive of their different functions. A set of four panels which once formed part of a hexaptych is particularly intriguing. This calendar cycle was made by the Georgian painter Ioannes (John) in the second half of the 11th-early 12th century. These icons were originally placed at the center of a polyptych, flanked by an icon of the Last Judgment on the right side, and a second panel containing a unique combination of five miraculous icons of the Virgin and a narrative cycle dedicated to the Miracles and Passions of Christ on the left. Every image of the calendar series stands for three months of the year and combines around 90 scenes. All martyrs are represented at the moment of their death, while other saints are depicted standing front-on bearing attributes. This contribution offers new insights into the nature of painted hagiographical cycles and different approaches applied for calendar imagery in Byzantine panel painting. It is argued that book illumination developed in parallel with the calendar icon tradition and clear links can be drawn between the menologion imagery in these two media. The unique style and approach of the painter Ioannes opens up possibilities for deciphering the mysterious world of Byzantine art making, the process of devising new kind of imagery, and the embedding of new meanings into well-known compositions. A detailed analysis of this important group of icons can help to unveil the different connections among book illumination, icon painting, and church decoration, as well as provide an almost endless supply of images of saints, some of which are unique or possess very few representations in the surviving corpus of Byzantine art.

Saint Nicholas the New Martyr of Vounena and His Two Faces
Piotr Łukasz Grotowski

According to the legend, Saint Nicholas the New Martyr was a 10th-century soldier, tortured and murdered in Vounena (Thessaly) by barbarians. Despite attempts to frame him as an active defender of Christianity according to new standards in mid-Byzantine hagiography, it seems that he originally failed to gain wider popularity. His earliest image known to us was painted by the team of Panselinos in Protoaton on Athos. The identification of his images is complicated due to a mistake made in a later depiction of the saint in Staro Nagoričino, where a painter unfamiliar with the iconography of the obscure saint painted him using the pattern for Saint Nikallos (also called Nicholas), one of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. As a result, for several centuries, there persisted two different types of Nicholas’s physiognomy. While local painters followed a traditional form of young, beardless Nicholas, masters connected with courts of local rulers repeated the mistakenly painted fresco from King Milutin’s foundation. This dual iconography persisted until the mid-16th century, when popularity of the saint started to grow.
    
Devotion to Saints as Busts on Pillars: Solving the Enigma of Non-Stylite Stylites in Psalter Vat. gr. 752
Barbara Crostini

The eleventh-century psalter Vat. gr. 752 has four images of saints on pillars, of which only two are of a well-known stylite saint, St Simeon the Elder, while the other two are attributed to Saint Dositheos and Saint Silvester respectively. By examining the miniatures in the context provided by their captions and references to psalm verses, I argue that the identification of the non-stylite saints is accurate, and that therefore there must be a different reason for their being represented on pillars than that of a mistake by the artist or scribe. Through significant comparanda from the iconography of stylites and the representations of some scenes on the Genoa mandylion, I suggest that these non-stylite stylites, and by extension also the images of Simeon, break the adherence of the figuration of saints according to their Lives, and instead present us with representations of monuments to these saints, specifically, as busts on pillars, whether at shrines within churches or as street shrines. This iconography encapsulates the legitimacy of saints’ cult and intercession, witnessing to what is perhaps the most ancient form of iconography for saints, as reported by Theodoret for Simeon the Elder.

“Pillar of Faith”: The Cult of the Ascetic Saints Simeon Stylites and Sabbas the Sanctified in the Icon Painting of the Peremyshl Diocese of the Ukrainian Church in the 15th-18th Centuries
Roksolana Kosiv

This article examines how regional religious identity and hagiography influenced iconography of the two saints of the early Church - Simeon Stylites and Sabbas the Sanctified, both from Asia Minor - in the Peremyshl diocese of the Ukrainian (then called Rus’ka) Church of the Kyiv metropolitanate from the 15th until the first half of the 18th centuries. The Peremyshl diocese, the westernmost part of the Kyivan metropolitanate, officially accepted the union in 1691, but for more than half a century its faithful preserved the ancient traditions of iconography and ritual. The cult and iconography of the holy monks Simeon Stylites and Sabbas the Sanctified in particular, reveal the connection with the Byzantine tradition. We can trace this connection on icons of the 15th-first half of the 18th century, most of which come from churches dedicated to these saints in villages established during the medieval princely period. From the middle of the 18th century, with the intensification of Latinization, the iconography of both saints ceased to develop. The life stories of Simeon Stylites and Sabbas the Sanctified on the icons correspond with their written lives in 16th -17th-centuries manuscripts and printed books from the churches of the Peremyshl diocese. According to these texts, Simeon Stylites the Elder was the most popular of the stylites, which is also confirmed by the preserved icons.