The Byzantine Hagiography as a Source for Studies of the History of the Icon – Selected Problems

Abstract

In the circles of people studying Byzantium hagiography is experiencing its revival. Also history of art ever more courageously reaches for hagiographic texts. For one studying the theory and history of the icon they are an excellent source; and the source is still far from being fully used. The three examples of saints’ lives chosen for the needs of the above article come from the most creative period in the development of the icon: the 7th-9th centuries. They distinctly show us the process in which the conception of the icon was formed as well as the forms of its cult and the social context for the functioning of icons were shaped. The aim of the article, whose author is at present preparing a book devoted to the way the icon functioned in Byzantium’s monastic circles, is also to draw the reader’s attention to the significant role of monastic saints in the process of forming the icon in Byzantium. The three figures presented here are monastic saints. The life of the first of them shows the role of the icon in the act of conversion to Christianity; in the second case the motif of the icon appearing again and again in the hagiographic text is a kind of testimony to sainthood; and the third text shows the saint woman as an uncompromising defender of icons in the period of iconoclasm.