Virtuous Icons: Unique Persons or Gendered Stereotypes

Virtuous Icons: Priests as Unique Persons or Gendered Stereotypes? Maria Gwyn McDowell (see youtube videos of presentation here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mariagwyn) This essay is a portion of a longer argument, found in “The Joy of Embodied Virtue: Towards the Ordination of Women to the Eastern Orthodox Priesthood.” This dissertation considers the texts, images, practices and theologies used by Orthodox theologians to explain the exclusion of women from the priesthood, and re-reads them in light of contemporary theories of the human person, gender, and ritual. Rather than define priesthood in terms of masculinity, the patristic theologies envision the priest as an eikon of the virtuous humanity embodied by Christ, to which all Christians are called. Theosis, divine-human participation, is manifested through virtuous relations, a way of life made visible through the lives of the saints and their icons. The liturgy, as an icon of community-in-relation, establishes the pattern of this virtuous way of life. If the liturgy is to more full embody the eschatological vision claimed by Orthodox theologians, its practice must be ethical rather than reductive and exclusionary. Liturgical practice must visually enact the particularity of all persons and the unique ways in which all are called to be for-the-other through their capabilities and gifts. Only in this way is the liturgy truly a place in which the virtuous life is recognized, affirmed and nurtured in, through and for all participants. The 20th century has seen the development of a theological anthropology in both East and West which affirms persons as unique, irreducible and free. Uniqueness and irreducibility go together. Each human person is a unique creation in the image of God. We are, according to Elizabeth BehrSigel, the French Orthodox and feminist theologian, “colored” by our particular qualities of body, sex, race and ethnicity, each color contributing to our individual uniqueness as icons of God.1 As unique icons of God, we cannot be reduced to any single quality, virtue, or ‘way’ of being because no single characteristic or set of characteristics can adequately describe who we are. John Zizioulas, defending the essential importance of difference among human persons, claims that "A Eucharist which excludes in one way or another those of a different race or sex or age or profession is a false I am grateful to Fr. Dorian Llywelyn and the Huffington Ecumenical Institute for the gracious invitation to present, in abbreviated form, a key argument in my larger project regarding the ordination of women to all the sacramental ministries of the Orthodox Church. Where possible, all images referred to in this presentation can be seen online at http://mariagwyn.com/scholarship/galleries/ 1 “Each person is ineffably unique and called upon to serve God and men according to his or her own vocation and special charisms. These are certainly colored by the person’s sex, but not determined by it.” Élisabeth Behr-Sigel, The Ministry of Women in the Church, trans. Steven Bigham (Redondo Beach, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1991), 16. McDowell 2 Eucharist.... The Eucharist must include all these, for it is there that the otherness of a natural or social kind can be transcended. A Church which does not celebrate the Eucharist in this inclusive way risks losing her catholicity."2 Yet the Orthodox liturgy does exclude. While all Orthodox Christians present are welcome to receive the Eucharist, only male Orthodox are welcome to preside at the Eucharist. Orthodox women cannot be considered as candidates for the sacramental priesthood because they lack the basic requirement of being male. Orthodox response to the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood has changed over the last four decades, yet two basic objections remain. First, like many Roman Catholics, Orthodox share the presumption that a lack of precedent precludes any possibility of change in current practice. While I do not think this is an adequate reflection of how we understand tradition (or even Tradition with a capital “T”), I will not take this up here. Second is the continued belief that the liturgical symbolism of the priest requires a male body, in Thomas Hopko’s phrase, the priesthood is a “masculine ministry.”3 This assumes, incorrectly as I argue elsewhere, that there is something particularly masculine about the priesthood.4 It also assumes that the particular Christic symbolism of the priest at the altar cannot be imaged by a woman because Jesus was male. Here, the Roman Catholic theology of the priest acting in personae Christi is loosely adopted by twentieth-century Orthodox theologians through what is called the ‘iconic’ argument. The priest, who is an icon of Christ, can only be imaged by a male.5 My concern here is not whether 2 “The Eucharist sanctifies communion as well as otherness, and Eucharistic fails to do this is destroyed and even invalidated.” John Zizioulas, “Communion and Otherness,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38, no. 4 (1994), 355. 3 Thomas Hopko, “On the Male Character of Christian Priesthood,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1975): 147-73; Thomas Hopko, “Presbyter/Bishop: A Masculine Ministry,” in Women and the Priesthood, ed. Thomas Hopko (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999). 4 “Icons of Virtue: Patristic Views of Priesthood”, inMaria Gwyn McDowell, “The Joy of Embodied Virtue: Toward the Ordination of Women to the Eastern Orthodox Priesthood” (Boston College, 2010). 5 Kallistos Ware, in his reconsideration of the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood, deemphasizes the priest as acting in persona Christi as too Roman Catholic, and instead focuses on the priest as in persona Ecclesiae, a view he argues is more in accord with Orthodox liturgical symbolism. Kallistos Ware, “Man, Woman and the DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 3 this is an accurate interpretation of the Orthodox priesthood, a point disputed by many. Nor will I address the disturbing soteriological implication that a woman might not be able to image Christ, which is the heart of theosis. Instead, I will address the implicit creation of a one-to-one correlation between the physical body and a supposedly gendered quality, characteristic or virtue which underlies the iconic argument. According to this theory, the iconic material, the body, dictates the manner of relating. My argument is that an Orthodox theology of icons does not support the romanticized complementarity of rigid gender binaries which underlie this theology. Rather, liturgically situated icons envision salvation as becoming like Christ through virtuous practice in embodied, transfigured persons who are unique, irreducible and free. Theosis as Virtuous Relations In patristic texts, the practice of virtue is central to theosis, it is the way in which we participate in God. The name “God of righteousness” according to Gregory of Nazianzus “refers to virtues” and “disciplines us to practice them.” “The intention is,” continues Gregory, “that by … carrying God inside him, a man may have some success here and press on all the harder to perfection, towards that affinity with God which comes from the virtues” (Or. 30.19).6 John Chrysostom argues that a full human person as defined by the scripture is “whosoever practices Priesthood of Christ,” in Women and the Priesthood, ed. Thomas Hopko (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999). Behr-Sigel shares this reorientation, but also directly addresses the disturbing inconsistency between the long-held belief that in Christ all of humanity is assumed, and the new proposition that women cannot image Christ. Nonna Harrison has made a similar argument any number of times from patristic sources, particularly Gregory of Nazianzus’s comment to Cledonius, “The unassumed is the unhealed, but what is united with God is also being saved,” or the popularized shorthand, “what is not assumed is not saved” (Epistle 101). Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, N.Y: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 158. See for example, Nonna Verna Harrison, “The Maleness of Christ,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 2 (1998): 111-51. The principle is that if Christ did not take on the full humanity of women as much as he did men, then women cannot become fully like Christ, which is the basis for theosis. 6 Frederick W. Norris, Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning: The Five Theological Orations of Gregory Nazianzen, Vigiliae Christianae (New York: E.J. Brill, 1991). DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 4 piety and virtue with boldness.”7 While theosis as becoming more fully human can be described in ways other than through the lens of virtue, it cannot be envisioned without virtuous acts because relationship is embodied in our actions towards one another. Virtue characterizes relationships which respect and when necessary aid the other. Virtue perfects our relationships with others.8 Attending to the embodied virtues of the saints reminds us that Jesus came to “bring good news to the poor…proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4.18-19). It is not enough to speak of how we are born and how we are to die, but how we live. Icons themselves consistently emphasize the virtues of saints rather than their sex and any corresponding gender-specific behavior. For example, St. Nicholas is by far the most popular Orthodox saint.9 Henry Maguire notes that while the written stores of Nicholas are often vivid and emotional, icons of his life are visually austere.10 Symeon Metaphrastes’s tenth-century Life of Nicholas offers a dramatic rendition of the three generals threatened with execution by an envious Governor.11 The story is rendered in iconic detail as spare, generic and vague, showing neither celebrating crowds nor details of the city, but only the three men, the executioner and the saint.12 Likewise, the story of the imprisoned men (generals again, victims of envy), freed as a result of 7 Chrysostom, Second Catechetical Instruction, 2.1 in John Chrysostom, Chrysostom: On the Priesthood, Ascetic Treatises, Select Homilies and Letters, Homilies on the Statutes, Electronic, 1995 ed., vol. 9, Nicene and PostNicene Fathers, First Series (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1889), 203/195. All NPNF volumes refer to the electronic edition available for download at http://www.ccel.org. The first page number refers to the page in the electronic PDF, the second refers to the page in the Schaff print editions. 8 “Thus virtues do not perfect what we have or what we do; rather they perfect who we are in the mode of our being, which is as being in relationships. Virtues do not perfect powers or ‘things’ inside of us, but rather ways that we are.” James Keenan, F., “Proposing Cardinal Virtues,” Theological Studies 56, no. 4 (1995), 723. 9 So many stories are attributed to St. Nicholas that Pavel Florensky declares that “Nicholas groans under the burden of the numerous real or imagined cares he has taken on.” Cited in Konrad Onasch, and Annemarie Schnieper, Icons : Fascination and Reality, trans. Daniel G Conklin (New York: Riverside Book Company, 1995), 205, no citation for Florensky given. 10 Henry Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies: Saints and Their Images in Byzantium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 178. 11 This Life can be found in G. Anrich, Hagios Nikolaos, I (Leipzig, 1913). 12 Henry Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies: Saints and Their Images in Byzantium, 173. DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 5 Nicholas’s appearance in a dream to the Emperor Constantine is full of narrative drama. Yet in the well-known Novgorod icon, the event shows only Nicholas and the emperor, no shackled men. A particularly striking example of this iconographic austerity is the episode concerning the poor man with three daughters forced to work as prostitutes in order to generate a dowry. The bishop’s secretive generosity to the poor man and his three unwed daughters is probably the most well-known and varied of his stories. Nicholas, seeking to hide his generosity, drops a bag of gold down a chimney, throws it through a window, or perhaps places it in a freshly laundered sock. The full story however, is not depicted in his icons. Despite the immense popularity of the narrative, Maguire notes that the famous Sinai icon shows only the poor man lying in grief on his bed, his poverty indicated by the subtle detail of bare feet.13 The Novgorod icon places the women in bed and the despairing father at the window. The spare details in the icon allow for a broad appeal.14 Not all of us have three daughters for whom we must provide, but we can certainly empathize with parents trying to provide for their families, and can be assured that Nicholas will pray for us whatever our specific circumstances. Icons depict the essential elements of a saint’s life, and the accompanying narrative fills in the details. This interplay between visual icons their narrative is especially important when we turn to the question of virtue. Note the nature of the narrative and visual details in the stories surrounding Nicholas. They are descriptions of actions which embody particular virtues in unique circumstances. Nicholas embodies the virtue of compassion as he identifies and seeks to alleviate the suffering of women who must engage in sex-work in order to survive, and a father who can only lay by and watch. He 13 Henry Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies: Saints and Their Images in Byzantium, 180. The scenes of Saint Nicholas’s life were not meant by Byzantine artists to engage the emotions of the beholder in the same way as the elaborate scenes of the Virgin or events in the life of Christ. According to Maguire, “the scenes of Saint Nicholas were reiterated assurances of help in different mundane situations, to which a generic character was appropriate to insure the breadth of their appeal; hence these images were drained of their specificity.” Henry Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies: Saints and Their Images in Byzantium, 186. Other icons, such as those for feast days or depicting biblical events follow different visual rules, evoking different responses in the beholder. Maguire discusses these distinctions throughout Icons of Their Bodies. 14 DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 6 acts with the virtue of generosity by giving money to this impoverished family. Nicholas practices the virtue of justice by interceding on behalf of those wrongly imprisoned. Imagine for a moment, a saint who did not actively embody virtue. What if, upon hearing of the three men unjustly accused, Nicholas had stood aside saying, “ah, well, we must allow the justice system to take its course”? The saints, through icons and narratives, make present for beholders and listeners a vision of a more full humanity. Saints witness to a more fully human life lived in virtuous relation to the other. Icons of individual saints, by using spare details, do not dictate how we are to enact virtue. Instead, the saint issues an invitation to the beholder to practice virtue. By doing so, the saint invites the beholder to participate in the same transformative process that makes a saint a saint. The catch is this: in the ancient world, men are the ideal of virtue. The very word “virtue” is from the Latin vir, “male.” Likewise the Greek word arete, which translates to “excellence” or “virtue,” is derived from arsen, “male.” It is men who go to war and return via long odysseys. It is men who lead the polis because it is men who have the capacity and the freedom to be virtuous. Virtue, to be virtue, must be freely chosen. Unlike today, where contemporary theologians like to speak of masculine and feminine virtues, for the ancients there was no such thing.15 The free practice of virtue was the defining quality of a human life lived well, the only fully human life, and a life that in practice could only be lived by free, propertied males.16 15 The contemporary Orthodox theologian who promotes this view is most famously, Paul Evdokimov, Woman and the Salvation of the World: A Christian Anthropology on the Charisms of Women (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994)Evdokimov’s theory is applied to the priesthood of women in Thomas Hopko, “On the Male Character of Christian Priesthood.”; Thomas Hopko, “Presbyter/Bishop: A Masculine Ministry.” Nonna Harrison (also Verna E. F. Harrison) demonstrates how this way of thinking was alien to ancient philosophers and theologians. See especially Nonna Verna Harrison, “The Maleness of Christ.”; Nonna Verna Harrison, “Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990): 441-71. Elisabeth Behr-Sigel likewise notes this relatively new development among Orthodox theologians in Élisabeth Behr-Sigel, “The Otherness of Men and Women in the Context of a Christian Civilization,” in The Ministry of Women in the Church (Redondo Beach, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1991). 16 Aristotle follows Plato and Socrates in regarding the virtues as central to a life-lived well. See his Nichomaean Ethics, as well as Plato’s Rebpublic. DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 7 Christians, confronted with a God who became human to make all humans God,17 including women, were certainly not content with a framework in which it seemed only men and perhaps a few exceptional women could be virtuous. Sr. Nonna Harrison argues that the church Fathers allegorize virtue: The moral allegories… arose out of culturally based perceptions of masculine and feminine conduct, but actually they also enabled the stereotypes to be transcended. Allegory placed gender concepts in new contexts, where the relationships and boundaries between them could be redefined in ways that could potentially broaden and deepen the self-understanding of actual men and women without threatening the social structures that were believed to hold the community together.18 As a result, she says, “The fathers often praise women saints for their ‘manly’ virtues and shame sinful men for their ‘effeminacy.’”19 Yet even in this framework, virtue is still connected to masculinity which females may “take on.” The Virtues of Women Jumping fifteen-hundred years, iconic virtue continues to prove a double edged sword when applied to women. Paul Evdokimov, in his attempt to positively respond to the feminist concerns of Simone de Beauvior, posits Mary as the ideal virtuous Woman.20 According to Peter Phan, Evdokimov’s work underlies the thought of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, most evident in 17 While many early Christian authors refer to the concept of theosis, it is Athanasius of Alexandria who summarizes the Incarnation, Soteriology and Theosis with the oft-repeated phrase, Christ “became human that we might become God.” See On the Incarnation, 54. For a detailed discussion of the history of theosis, see Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, Oxford Early Christian Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Russell offers a very readable summary in Norman Russell, Fellow Workers With God : Orthodox Thinking on Theosis (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009). For a brief summary of the contemporary role of theosis, see Andrew Louth, “The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology,” in Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, ed. Vladimir Kharlamov, and Stephen Finlan (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2006).. Aristotle Papanikolaou provides an in-depth examination of theosis in two famous twentieth-century Orthodox theologians, John Zizioulas and Vladimir Lossky in Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being With God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine Human Communion (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). 18 Nonna Verna Harrison, “The Maleness of Christ,” 133. 19 Nonna Verna Harrison, “The Maleness of Christ,” 130. 20 Paul Evdokimov, Woman and the Salvation of the World: A Christian Anthropology on the Charisms of Women. This is the English translation of the original: Paul Evdokimov, La Femme Et Le Salut Du Monde: Étude D’Anthropologie Chrétienne Sur Les Charismes De La Femme (Paris: Casterman, 1958). DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 8 Mulieres Dignitatem.21 Evdokimov reverses the ancient assumption that women must take on male qualities to be virtuous, and grants women their own, unique set of virtues. Using the building blocks of Jungian archetypes and the iconic image of Mary’s virginal motherhood, he constructs a Victorian ideal of womanhood as receptive, patient, asexual and nurturing. In Mary we find the salvation of the world, not according the traditional expression of the Theotokos as the first fully deified human, but because as ‘Woman’ she saves men from their regrettable functionality by simply “being,” by existing. A woman who “acts” in any way that de-emphasizes her essential nature as expressing passive “being” denies her very nature as a woman.22 The Virgin eleousa, one of the major types of Marian iconography, is the compassionate “Mother of tenderness” who sadly gazes at her son anticipating his suffering. This style, famously depicted in the icon of the Virgin of Vladimir, is the most clearly and intentionally emotive style of any icon of the Theotokos prevalent in the Orthodox tradition.23 It is this style on which Evdokimov focuses in his interpretation of the Virgin as Woman. Evdokimov reads in the eleousa type Mary as the anti-type of Eve, “the Woman at enmity with the Serpent, the Woman robed in the Sun, the image of the Wisdom of God in its foundation principle, that is, the integrity and chastity of 21 Peter C. Phan, Culture and Eschatology : The Iconographical Vision of Paul Evdokimov (New York: P. Lang, 1985); Peter C. Phan, “Gender Roles in the History of Salvation: Man and Woman in the Thought of Paul Evdokimov,” Heythrop Journal 31 (1990): 53-66; Paul John, “Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem = on the Dignity and Vocation of Women: On the Occasion of the Marian Year,” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_15081988_mulierisdignitatem_en.html (accessed March 5, 2009). 22 Paul Evdokimov, Woman and the Salvation of the World: A Christian Anthropology on the Charisms of WomenFor an excellent summary, see the first chapter of Sarah Wilson’s dissertation Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, “Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Thought of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel” (Princeton Theological Seminary, 2008) See also, Christopher P. Klofft, “Gender and the Process of Moral Development in the Thought of Paul Evdokimov,” Theological Studies 66, no. 1 (2005): 69-95; Peter C. Phan, “Gender Roles in the History of Salvation.” 23 The term eleousa is from the Greek for “mercy” or “pity.” In Russian, the term for this style is Umileniye which is insufficiently translated as mercy, compassion, pity, or tenderness. Ouspensky and Lossky prefer “Lovingkindness.” Léonide Ouspensky, and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, trans. G.E.H. Palmer, and E. Kadloubovsky, Revised ed. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982; reprint 1999), 93. DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 9 being.”24 Mary “personalizes human holiness,” appearing as the “Living Consolation” who “safeguards and protects every creature and thus becomes a figure of the church in her maternal protection.”25 She is “the Woman restored in her maternal virginity,” an “image of the church who carries salvation in herself while still waiting for it.”26 Motherhood here is tender, kind, and longsuffering, it consoles and waits. All of these elements are essential components to parenting, though certainly first-wave feminism railed against the restrictive ways in which these virtues, and only these virtues, were permitted to characterize women. The problem is not with these ways of relating themselves, but their exclusivity. Further, Evdokimov’s modern interpretation of Mary is an incomplete view of the Theotokos.27 Alternative narratives are abundant in the Orthodox liturgical tradition, narratives which as we will see may be only slightly more palatable to feminists. In Icons and Power, Bissera Pentcheva traces the development of the Constantinopolitan Marian cult as a story of imperial power.28 The hodegetria type of icon, in which the Virgin carries in her left arm her Son, and with her right gestures towards him, expresses a dynamic of prayer and participation. Mary’s eyes are on the viewer, drawing us in, and directing our gaze to her son whose hand is raised in blessing. The post-Iconoclastic (that is, after 842 CE) version of this image, which became the prototype for virtually all subsequent images of this type (including the eleousa which is a derivative of the older hodegetria style), emphasizes the sacrificial nature of motherly love. It does so however, in the context of war-torn Byzantium, not childrearing. The same virgin motherhood that 24 Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, trans. Steven Bigham (Torrance, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1990), 259. 25 Paul Evdokimov, Art of the Icon, 259. 26 Paul Evdokimov, Art of the Icon, 262, 266. 27 It is also an incomplete understanding of both Jung and a reduced view of female archetypes, which include not only the Virgin, but the Amazon, the Crone, etc. For an excellent summary of Jungian Feminine Archetypes and their theological import, see Ann Belford Ulanov, The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971); Ann Belford Ulanov, Finding Space: Winnicott, God, and Psychic Reality, 1st ed. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001). 28 Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006). DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 10 is much later idealized as a quiet and obediently receptive woman is, in earlier centuries, framed as the righteous purity that girds men’s loins for battle.29 Seventh-century accounts of the Avar siege of Constantinople present a militant and warlike Virgin who, in the words of Theodore Synkellos, “gave courage to our [soldiers]…. And the Virgin [parthenos] appeared everywhere, winning uncontested victory and inflicting horror and fear on the enemies. She was giving strength to her servants and protecting subjects from harm, on the one hand, and destroying enemies, on the other.”30 This Virgin does not sit quietly to the side, but wades into the fray. “In the sea battle, the Virgin sank men and boats together before her Blachernai monastery. Consequently the whole bay [i.e., the Golden Horn], if it is not too harsh to say, could be crossed without wetting our feet because of the dead bodies scattered at random…. It was proved most clearly that the Virgin [parthenos] alone fought this battle and won the victory.”31 As Pentcheva notes, it is the Theomater’s virginal motherhood which is the source of both her purity and power. A poem of George of Pisidia illustrates the connection well: If a painter wanted to show the triumph of the battle, he might put forward the One who bore without a seed and only paint her image. For she alone always knows how to conquer nature, first by birth, and then by battle. For as she then gave birth without a seed, in the same way she now gives birth to salvation with no weapons, so that through both deeds she might be found to be a virgin 29 “The Theotokos embodied two concepts vital for the context of war,” says Pentcheva, “virginal motherhood, which is the source of Mary’s invincibility, and motherly sacrifice — in selflessly offering her Child to the world, the Theotokos presented a model of selfless love indispensable for any state recruiting armies.” Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 61. 30 From Theodore Synkellos, De obsidione Constantinopolitana, in Traduction et commentaire, ed. Makk, sect XIX, p. 82. Cited in Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 64. 31 From Theodore Synkellos, De obsidione Constantinopolitana, in Traduction et commentaire, ed. Makk, sect XXXIII, p. 87. Cited in Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 64. Among “eyewitness” accounts which include Mary’s active participation in battle are a poem by George of Pisidia, a sermon attributed to Theodore Synkellos, and an excerpt in the Chronicon Paschale. Kristoffel Demoen, “The Philosopher, the Call Girl and the Icon: Theodore the Studite’s (Ab)Use of Gregory Nazianzen in the Iconoclastic Controversy,” in Spiritualité De L’Univers Byzantin Dans Le Verbe Et L’Image (Ithaca, NY: Brepols, 1997), 716-26. George of Pisidia, Bellum Avaricum in George of Pisidia, and Agostino Pertusi, Poemi, vol. 7, Studia patristica et Byzantina (BuchKunstverlag Ettal: Freisting, 1959), 176-224. DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 11 indomitable in the battle as she was in giving birth.32 The Akathist hymn to the Virgin, written down in this time period, hymns Mary in the final two stanzas as, among other things, “Thunder, striking down the enemy,” “precious Diadem of godly kings,” “Tower of the Church,” “impregnable fortress of the Kingdom,” and the one through “whom enemies are cast down.”33 While initial accounts of the Avar siege place Mary on the battlefield itself, later accounts ascribe power to the presence of her icon. This change is attributed by Pentcheva to the growing role of icons in processions and imperial propaganda following the iconoclastic controversy. The Theotokos and her icons were adapted for war by attributing to icons poetic names which signify victory such as nikopois, or “victory bringer,” and framing her image with military saints.34 These names modify the function of her icon. In other words, icons have a function that is contextual. Framing Mary by military saints such as Theodore or Demetrios similarly directs her narrative away from her historical person as a mother raising a child in remote region of Palestine and towards her roles as a battle leader and protector of her people.35 By the tenth-century, the Blachernitissa, an icon which when not carried by emperors on military campaigns was stored at the Blachernai monastery, was referred to as the “general,” the guardian of the army,” and the “invincible weapon.”36 32 George of Pisidia, and Agostino Pertusi, Poemi, 176, vv. 1- 9. Cited in Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 65. 33 Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 66. Pentcheva adds other sources in addition to the Akathist hymn, specifically, three middle byzantine texts: a tenth century prayer said before battle, a commemorative service for dead soldiers, and a parakletikos kanon of the early eleventh-century. See pp. 67-69, and notes 43-57 on pp. 216217. 34 Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 61. Toponymic names referred to where the icon was stored. Poetic names however, allow for a range of interpretation. “The poetic names offer even more flexibility between epithet and iconographic formula. Words such as Nikopoios, meaning “victory bringer,” and Akatamachetos, meaning “invincible,” written next to any Marian image denote an ideal quality of the Mother of God: her ability to lend help in battle. Qualitative names modify the function of an icon and transform it, in these cases, into an object that can be carried in battle.” Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 79. 35 Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 82ff. 36 Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 63. Citing Psellos, Chronographia, III.10-11, in Imperatori di Bisanzo, ed. Impellizzeri, I, 84; English tr. in Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, tr. Sewter, 69-70 (on Romanos III Argyros); Attaleiates, Historia, Bon ed., 152-153 (on Romanos IV Diogenes). A number of styles have been referred to with DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 12 This vision of Mary as the leader and head of armies exists throughout Orthodox liturgical texts. The famous introduction to the Akathist, “To you O Champion,” or better translated, “To you go defender General” uses the word strategos, the same Septuagint word used to refer to Judith who by combining deadly seduction and skilled battle tactics, saves the Hebrews from destruction by Holofernes and the Persian army (Judith 15-16). The hymns of the Dormition depict Mary not as a passive or receptive, but as a woman of liberation who stands next Judith, the dancing Miriam who led the Israelites in worship after their exodus from Egypt (Ex. 15:20), the beautiful Esther who prevents genocide (Esther 9:18-22), and Hannah who is among the poor and barren lifted up by God (1 Sam 2:1-10). As I already noted, this vision of Mary may be only slightly more palatable to feminists given its emphasis on violence and conflict. Further, its use in worship illustrates the dangerous marriage in Orthodox practice between political success and ecclesial power. In no way do I want to affirm the misuse of combative language. Yet an allegorical reading of the Virgin as a model battle leader offers encouragement to those seeking to “struggle … against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). The language of combat and vigilant resistance pervades the ascetic and spiritual traditions of virtually all Christian groups precisely because evil must be resisted in our efforts to shape our bodies and souls into bearers of God. My point here however, is that this vision meets the needs of an embattled society by unabashedly framing the virtuous qualities of the Virgin as the actions of a triumphant (and rather brutal) conqueror. the epithet Blachernitissa, a frequent situation for epithets which refer to a place rather than a quality. A single sacred location may have housed a variety of famous images. Some consider this ‘type’ to be what is now known as the “Virgin of the Sign” which conflates the ancient orans image of the Theotokos with that of her holding a medallion of the Christ Child, see Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 145ff. In an ironic twist, it is likely that one of the icons referred to as Blachernitissa was of the eleousa style. DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 13 The Church has interpreted the virginal motherhood of the Theotokos in a variety of ways that are often related to particular needs. Similar “readings” of other iconic styles, such as the Virgin Enthroned or the ancient Virgin of the Sign, depict a much wider range of human virtues, capabilities and roles than what is offered by exclusively focusing on the eleousa or hodegetria styles. Even more important, a single virtue may be embodied in many different roles. “Selfless love” is not only applicable to child-rearing.37 Readings of the Theotokos which imply that her faithful response to the call of God means only one thing for women (or men) are too simple. The Orthodox tradition encompasses diverse images and narratives of our becoming more fully human. Mary’s virginal motherhood cannot be reduced to Victorian piety or imperial power. Her humanity encompasses both, though it also may reject certain elements of each. The plethora of images, verbal and iconic, in Orthodoxy testifies to the diversity of virtues, virtuous practices, and embodiments of holiness seen in transfigured persons. No single saint exemplifies full humanity, any more than does a single virtue or practice. Only Christ, towards whom the virtuous lives of all saints point, was ever fully human. Further, a particular virtue is not restricted to a particular function, role or social location, such as “selfless love” with motherhood. Saints point us to the enactment of virtue within our particularity as the core of the Christian life. They invite us to participate in our own unique way in the life of Christ, through our bodies. Embodied virtue does not allow a clean division between a mode of female enactment and a mode of male enactment. Icons do not portray virtue as gendered or sexed. They do portray sexed and gendered persons as virtuous. The body matters, not because the body dictates what virtues will or will not be expressed, but because it is only through the body that any and all virtues are expressed. 37 Pentcheva argues that in the hodegetria type icon, Mary’s gesture towards her son “overcomes the instinct of preservation and care” which when placed in a military context invokes “the voluntary sacrifice and selfless love exacted from both the soldiers and their mothers.” Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 97. DRAFT – v.2 McDowell 14 Priesthood What then, is wrong with a male priesthood? On the one hand, nothing. A male priest can exemplify the virtuous humanity that we are all (including the priest) becoming. In their bodies of flesh rather than wood and paint, they make our “new humanity” visible through the practice of virtue. The patristic texts emphasize, not the masculinity of the priest, but his virtue. A male priesthood is wrong however, when it is exclusively male. The icon, which at one point opens our gaze to the divine ultimately ceases to do so, because our gaze is filled with the visible. As Jean-Luc Marion notes, idols mirror precisely the degree of the divine that the one gazing is able to see, and no more.38 If we see only male fatherhood in the priest who is an icon of our humanity in Christ, we see only males as icons of Christ and see Christ only in males. Our gaze is arrested at flesh and blood in a manner no less idolatrous than allowing our gaze to be filled by wood and paint. The long and hard-fought tradition of icons is a battle for the radicality of an incarnation in which all matter is transformed through participation in the work of the Spirit. We need to see female icons of transfigured humanity in living flesh and blood, not safely restricted to pigment on a wall. Women can set forth the image before us, becoming god and helping others to become god. 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