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Theotokos of the Unburnt Bush: an Interpretation

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Theotokos of the Unburnt Bush: an Interpretation Theotokos of the Unburnt Bush: An Interpretation Dennis J. Sardella Figure 1. Theotokos of the Unburnt Bush, Icon #2012.81 1 Theotokos of the Unburnt Bush: An Interpretation Prof. Dennis J. Sardella, Docent, Museum of Russian Icons The Origin of the Icon The icon of the Mother of God of the Unburnt Bush is an ancient one that is widely venerated in Russia, and is popularly believed to offer protection against fire. Its significance, however, is far deeper and more expansive, and this beautiful, complex, yet unified icon is in fact a theological reflection on the position of the Mother of God in the economy of salvation. According to legend, the icon was thought to have originated at the Monastery of Saint Catherine, in the Sinai Desert, one of the oldest extant Christian monasteries, where its prototype was depicted on the stone of the rock where God appeared to Moses from the mysterious burning bush (Exodus 3: 1-15). Its feast day is celebrated on September 4, together with the memory of the prophet Moses.1 Christian monastic life began in the desert, in the region around Mount Sinai, where as early as the mid-3rd century, men and women left the world to live as hermits in the desert, seeking God without distraction and practicing the ascetic life. Saint Anthony of Egypt, regarded as the father of monasticism, retreated into Egypt’s Eastern Desert, and word of his holiness inspired many others to cast off their worldly possessions and to join him at the foot of Mount Sinai, and at nearby mountains, to seek sanctity by leading lives of strict spiritual and physical discipline. This eventually led to the development of small communities where anchorites lived in caves, stone cells or huts and spent their days as solitaries in silence and prayer, particularly around Mount Horeb, which was believed to be the site where God appeared to the prophet Moses in the Burning Bush. This trend intensified after the beginning of the 4th century, when Constantine’s Edict of Milan (303 AD) put an end to persecutions, and many Christians turned to lives of extreme hardship in the wilderness as alternatives to physical martyrdom. According to tradition, in 330 AD, in response to a request by the monks living in that region, the Byzantine empress Helena (Saint Helen), mother of Emperor Constantine, ordered the building of a small church, dedicated to the Mother of God, at the site of the Burning Bush, as well as a fortified enclosure where the hermits could seek refuge from the attacks of marauding tribes of nomads. Later, in the 5th century, responding to an appeal from the growing population of hermits (now under the authority of the Bishop of Sinai), Emperor Justinian constructed a magnificent church enclosed within walls strong enough to withstand attacks and to protect the monks against nomadic raids, and this is today known as the Monastery of Saint Catherine.2 The monastery (still active) is supposedly located at the site where God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, although this is not universally agreed upon. It does, however, have one of the most extensive collections of early Byzantine icons in the world. It is 1 http://oca.org/saints/lives/2013/09/04/102500-icon-of-the-mother-of-god-ldquothe-unburnt-bushrdquo (Orthodox Church of America) 2 Figure 2. Image sources (left): http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RTd22U9tNJg/SwHRJ2mZTVI/AAAAAAAABxI/1MCrI5G2VYU/s1600/ StCatherinesMonasterySinai800hH.jpg; (right) http://www.escapeartistes.com/2012/03/19/in-the-footsteps-of-moses-saint-catherines-and- mount-sinai/. Figure 2. The Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai Desert.2 2 here that legend places the origin of the holy icon, where its image is supposed to have been depicted on the rock adjacent to the bush where God revealed himself to Moses.3 The putative connection of the icon to the monastery is not surprising: the most ancient and sacred part of the monastery is the Chapel of the Holy Bush, whose existence was mentioned by a woman named Egeria4, from what is now Galicia in modern Spain, who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land around 381-384, and who wrote about her visit to the monastery and to the chapel in a long letter addressed to a circle of friends at home: [T]here were very many cells of holy men there, and a church in the place where the bush is, which same bush is alive to this day and throws out shoots. So having made the whole descent of the mount of God we arrived at the bush about the tenth hour. This is that bush which I mentioned above, out of which Figure 3. The bush, a type of bramble (rubus the Lord spake in the fire to Moses, and the same is situated at sanctus) traditionally believed to be where that spot at the head of the valley where there are many cells God appeared to Moses in the form of fire, and a church. There is a very pleasant garden in front of the is located at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt.3 church, containing excellent and abundant water, and the bush itself is in this garden. The spot is also shown hard by where holy Moses stood when God said to him: “Loose the latchet of thy shoe, and the rest.” Now it was about the tenth hour when we had arrived at the place, and so, as it was late, we could not make the oblation, but prayer was made in the church and also at the bush in the garden, and the passage from the book of Moses was read according to custom.5 The monastery’s website displays an image of what appears to be an early version of the icon on the rock, as described above (Figure 4).6 However, no other information as to its age is available. Early Christian scriptural interpretation was characterized by typology, in which events in the Hebrew Scriptures were seen as prefiguring and paralleling corresponding ones in the Christian scriptures. Thus, the unburnt bush was the vehicle by which God’s revelation (fire) came into the world without compromising the integrity of the bush, as the Virgin Mary was the vehicle by which God’s revelation (Jesus) came into the world without compromising the integrity of her virginity. It seems likely that as theological reflection on Moses and the burning bush as a type, or prefiguring, of the virgin birth deepened, versions of the original icon became progressively more complex until it reached its present form. However, this author is not aware of any research to support this supposition. The “Unburnt Bush” icon (known in Russia as Neopalimaya Kupina, Неопалимая Купина), is supposed to have reached Russia when one of the most ancient copies was brought to Kievan Rus’ from the Sinai by Palestinian monks in 1390. It is supposedly on the altar of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Moscow Kremlin.7 This author does not know the whereabouts of the original icon, or whether it still exists. 3 Figure 2. Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burning_Bush,_St_ Catherine%27s_Monastery.jpg. By Dale Gillard [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Figure 4. The Mother of God of the Unburnt Bush icon type is thought to have originated 4 Also Aetheria or sometimes Sylvia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egeria_%28pilgrim%29 at the Monastery of Saint Catherine where a 5 The Pilgrimage of Etheria, M.L.McClure and C. L. Feltoe, trans., (1919) The Society For 6 prototype is depicted on a rock. Promoting Christian Knowledge. http://www.ccel.org/m/mcclure/etheria/etheria.htm 6 http://www.sinaimonastery.com/en/?lid=1 7 http://cosmoprovodnik.ru/artefakti/ikona-neopalimaya-kupina 3 There are several versions of the icon in the Museum’s collection (Figure 5), the earliest dating from around 1700 and the most recent from around 1890. All share the same essential elements while differing in details. The icon on which we will focus was written around 1880, and is exceptionally elegant and striking by virtue of its execution and design. One somewhat unique feature is that the identifying text, which in most of the versions appears as blocks of writing in the margins and tends to give them a rather cluttered appearance, in our icon has been confined by the iconographer to a band surrounding the clouds, thus becoming a design element that enhances the clarity and unity of the icon. The version of the icon that we will focus on here) was created in the 19th century (Figure 1 and Figure 5, bottom row, middle). The icon is stunningly beautiful, executed in a striking blend of colors that are both complementary and subtle. Unlike most icons of the Theotokos, where the Mother of God and the Son of God are the only figures, in the Mother of God Unburnt Bush virtually every part of the icon is filled with additional figures, of angels and archangels, evangelists, and Old Testament Patriarchs—in our version, amounting to 21 full figures! Nevertheless, there is no sense of crowding or congestion, because its symmetry and the relation of the figures to one another give it an elegance and harmony that engender in the viewer an air of peace and deep prayerfulness. Figure 5. Selected icons from the Museum’s collection, illustrating similarities, differences, and increasing artistic refinement over time. (top row, left to right): R2000.8, ca.1700; R2010.39, ca.1750; R2006.23, ca.1825.
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