Icons: Bridging Cultures

So once again I find myself behind on blogs... so here is the first of a few that I must do.

Going waaaaay back to when Dr. B was here and we were discussing icons, I found myself beinf pushed back a semester into my 9:30 AM Russian History class, taught by the lovely and really awesome Dr. Khokhlova. Icons were a HUGE part of the Russian religion order since the birth of Christianity there in the last 10th century. Now granted, Russian Orthodox is a tad bit different from our side of the spectrum but in the end we're all serving the same God right?

Anyways, back to the issue at hand:

Icons, as we learned, were created in the time of the Byzantine Empire.. so how did they end up in Russia? Intermarriage between royal families brought not only Christianity but the icons as well and so would start a trend that I'm sure lasts to this day. The Russian people viewed them as their personal ways to heaven and to God, by being able to pray to the image of their saint.. kind of like a message carrier in way. Some people may think that icons are sacriligious and indeed the iconclasts vowed for destroying them but if one thinks about it, icons could never be outlawed, could never be destroyed completely... an entire civilzation would have collapsed at its already fragile feet.

It was a very vital part if every day life, even when the last Romanov emperor was ruling, before the Communist take-over. Empress Alexandra used to pray to an icon when praying for her son, little Alexei who was a hemophiliac. Every Russian, even down to the poorest peasent most likely had an icon of some saint to pray to, in hopes that their prayers would reach heaven. Are the Russians wrong in praying to an image? Jesus died on the cross so we wouldn't have to have a go-between to intercede on our behalf, we could go straight to the source yet icons remained and became a vital part of so many cultures.

Maybe it is like the monarchy in England.. it's been such a tradition and such a stable thing that to take it away would maim the very existance of the lives that surround it.

I for one think icons are very beautiful and are a special part of Orthodox churches. I shudder to think of what would have happened had the iconoclasts succeded fully and had these beautiful works of art vanquished from the face of the earth forever