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An Encounter with the Sublime: The Iconographic Program of Saint Sophia Cathedral

Table of Contents | Map of the Galaxy of Icons

Prologue

In 987 A.D., Vladimir, grand prince of Kiev and all of Russia, sent envoys to study the religions of the various neighboring nations, whose representatives had been urging him to embrace their respective faiths. Having returned, the envoys reported that they liked neither the Muslim, nor the Jewish, nor the German, i.e. Roman Catholic, worship because they lacked beauty and joy, but in Constantinople, where the full ritual of the Orthodox Church was set in motion, they found their ideal. They said:

"We knew not whether we were in heaven or earth, for surely there IS not such splendor or beauty upon earth. We cannot describe it to you; only this we know, that God dwells there among men, and that their service surpasses the worship of all other places. For we cannot forget that beauty. "

In 988 A.D., Vladimir converted his people to Orthodoxy with no apparent difficulty, and the Russians became the first Christian people after the Greeks to worship in their own language.

It has seemed to many that the peculiar gift of the Orthodox peoples -and especially of Byzantium and Russia -is this power of perceiving the beauty of the spiritual world, and expressing this beauty in their worship.

We go to church to hear and do and see what we do not hear and do and see in the secular world. Here, there is no hymn to engage our ears nor any ritual act to perform. What remains for us, like Vladimir's envoys, is to accept the invitation that John issued to Nathaniel: "Come and see. "(John 1:46). The sacred images you see are the building blocks of sacred space.

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