VRT{ANES K{ERT{O™ AND THE EARLY THEOLOGY OF IMAGES1 by

THOMAS F. MATHEWS New York University

Icon devotion, that is the religious cult of painted panels, seems to have been fairly widespread in early Christian times. The evidence is both physical, that is the witness of a sizeable corpus of surviving , and literary, that is the witness of written historical sources that describe or allude to the practice. The physical evidence is, of course, circumscribed by the conditions of historical preservation. Painted wooden panels are highly perishable with the result that, for example, in not a single early has survived the turbulent history of the city, while on the other hand, remoteness from civilization and dry desert conditions are responsible for the preservation of the largest single collection of icons, that of St. Catherine’s Monastery at in (founded 548-565). Sinai has preserved about three dozen icons dating between the sixth and the eighth centuries, for which Weitzmann’s stylistic analysis proposes a wide geographical provenance: from Egypt itself, from Pales- tine or , and from the distant capital of the empire, Constantinople2. European collections hold several more early icons from Egypt, and recent research has uncovered a few more that are still in Egypt3. Mean- while the churches of Rome preserve four early icons4. Unfortunately, this very unevenly distributed physical corpus of icons contains very meager inscriptional or intrinsic evidence of dating or links to known historic personages. By stylistic analysis one or two of them may be as early as the fifth century, but the sixth century sees a surge in their production. The physical evidence, therefore, yields only a very sketchy impression

1 Earlier drafts of this paper were delivered at the A.I.E.A. Workshop on Armenian Art and Architecture, Salzburg, 12 April 2005, and at the Oxford Seminar for Armenian Studies, 1 November 2007. 2 Weitzmann 1976. 3 Rassat-Debergh 1990; Langen 1990. 4 Amato 1988.

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of the extent of icon devotion in the early centuries. Literary sources, however, fill out this picture considerably, pushing the history of the prac- tice of icon devotion as far back as the second century, pinpointing many specific sites in the geographical distribution (e.g., Jerusalem, , Salamis in , Smyrna), documenting the religious motivations and even involving known personages in the phenomenon5. From , with its severe climate and stormy history, no actual panel-painted icons have survived, but Vrt{anes K{ert{o¥ is witness to their popularity. The word “icon” in the present context is a modern term that belongs to the discipline of . Since its popularization in Russian scholar- ship in the mid-nineteenth century it has referred strictly speaking to portable panel- of images that present their subjects directly for . At the same time the term icon can be stretched in two direc- tions: first, to include other media besides wood panels exhibiting sub- jects suitable for veneration, whether in miniature scale, such as , or monumental, such as wall paintings. Armenian art includes surviv- ing examples of both (e.g., the cover of the Ejmiacin , or the apse paintings of Lmbat, and T{a¥is/A¥udi)6. Secondly, the term can be stretched to include story-telling religious paintings, whether the story is drawn from the Bible or the lives and sufferings of the . Narrative paintings were popular decoration for interiors and were generally meant more for instruction than for direct veneration. Icons, both in the narrow and in the extended senses of the term, enter into Vrt{anes’ discussion; but it is icons in the first and strictest sense, namely panel paintings, that were the principal subject of the theological debate because by reason of their mobility and accessibility they raised most acutely the issue of veneration. It should be observed that neither the Greek nor the had a specialized word for icon, wood panel , but both used the generic words for images. The Greek word eikon can be used for any sort of made image, whether drawn, painted or sculpted, secular or sacred, as well as for mental imaginings or figures of speech; they supplemented this term with pinax, meaning a wooden panel. The Armenian word patker, or image, has a similar breadth besides having a technical theo- logical use peculiar to Armenian for the persons of the . This could be supplemented with the word taxtak, meaning a portrait painted on a wooden tablet. Vrt{anes also uses the general word for painting, nkar.

5 Mathews 2006a. 6 Der Nersessian 1978.

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Vrt{anes’ treatise is entitled ya¥ags patkeramartic{, “concerning the war against images, or ”, but this title is probably not original since this compound appears nowhere in the text. The fact that the Church did not positively prescribe icon devotion until the ecumenical in 787, but even spo- radically opposed it, implies that the source of the practice was lay piety rather than official liturgical worship under the direction of the clergy7. It grew up in the private zone where it seems to have been continuous with a pre-Christian religious use of painted panels as votive offerings. From the outset the practice inspired in Christian circles a rich develop- ment of theological writing and reflection, which takes various literary forms. One can distinguish at least three different genres of writing, each with its own conventions: (1.) Poetic dedicatory inscriptions that were painted on the frames of the icons. (2.) Stories about the benefits of icons in various apocrypha and saints’ lives. (3.) Theological answers to objec- tions raised against icon use. At first these theological answers are simple ad hoc responses to a given objection, offering a reason to justify the custom; later, however, they take the form of organized treatises that not only try to vindicate the established custom but go further exploring the theological potential of the devotion to icons. Vrt{anes K{ert{o¥’s treatise, as Der Nersessian maintained, has the distinction of being the earliest datable defence of images in any language. Even if one accepted Andrea Schmidt’s recent re-dating of the document to the last third of the seventh century, to which we will return momentarily, it would remain very simply the most important treatment of icons before . The wide neglect of this source is difficult to explain. When Der Nersessian published her French in 1945 she remarked that the document had already been published twice in Armenian (in 1853 and 1927), but had never received any attention in the scholarly world8. Indeed, van Esbroeck pointed out that it had also been published in German in 1912, unbeknownst to Der Nersessian and, it seems, to everyone else9. Unfortunately, the reception of her own meticulous and carefully annotated translation has not been much better. Although the attribution to Vrt{anes work was accepted by Paul Alexander10, Vincent Déroche11, and

7 Mathews 2006b. 8 Der Nersessian 1973b, p. 379. 9 Michel van Esbroeck 2003, 144-45. 10 Alexander 1955. 11 Déroche 1994, pp. 103-104.

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Michel van Esbroeck12, the treatise has rarely been listed in bibliogra- phies, while historians of theology have consistently bypassed Vrt{anes’ contribution. This is all the more remarkable in view of the intense inter- est in iconoclasm and icon theology in recent years. For example, among prominent theologians Jarislav Pelikan never mentioned Vrt{anes, neither in his comprehensive history of the development of Christian doctrine nor in his special monograph on the iconoclastic controversy13, and the same egregious oversight mars the works of John Meyendorff on icon theology14. Similarly, art historians seem quite ignorant of Vrt{anes icon theory and of the documentation he offers for the growing use of icons over a century ahead of the outburst of iconoclasm in Constantinople. In his widely cited collection of literary sources concerning , Cyril Mango omitted Vrt{anes, though he included some Syriac and Arabic sources15. Similarly Ernst Kitzinger in his seminal article on the rise of icons and more recently Hans Belting, in his ambitious survey of the icon phenomenon from ancient to Renaissance times made no mention of the Armenian author16. The wide-ranging collected studies on iconoclasm published by the Byzantine Centre of the University of Birmingham in 1975 and the similar collection published in France in 1987 completely disregarded the evidence of Vrt{anes’ treatise17. Early icon theology, which culminates in the decision of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, was an important development involving a basic re-thinking of the relationship of redeemed mankind to the mate- rial world. It has shaped Christian thought and culture in a very pro- found way ever since. The blanket silence of Byzantine historians con- cerning Vrt{anes implies that they regard icon theology as an exclusively Byzantine intellectual development, to which Vrt{anes could only be a foreigner. But the theological development of speculation on icons was quite as international as the phenomenon of icon cult itself, and it must be studied across such pseudo-boundaries. It was a phenomenon that was shared around the eastern Mediterranean whether in Egypt, Palestine, Cyprus or Armenia and it allows one to observe a coincidence

12 Van Esbroeck dates the actual outbreak of Armenian iconoclasm to Byzantinizing paintings introduced in the cathedral of Avan in 604 (which is only slightly later than the 591 date agreed upon by Der Nersessian and Déroche). But there is no archaeological evidence of the paintings of Awan. Van Esbroeck 2003, page 147. 13 1974; Pelikan 1990. 14 Meyendorff 1974; Meyendorff 1975. 15 Mango 1972. 16 Kitzinger 1954; Belting 1990. 17 Bryer 1977; Boesflug 1987.

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and overlapping between Armenian and Greek intellectuals along with some important differences. Three important treatises mark the field of early icon theol ogy, and interestingly enough none of them is from Con- stantinople: (1.) the early seventh century Armenian treatise by Vrt{anes K{ert{o¥; (2.) the nearly contemporary “Apology against the ” by Leontius of Cyprus in Greek, of which only fragments survive18; (3.) the “Three Orations on the Divine Images” a century later by John of Damascus, similarly in Greek19. The Damascene is the climax of the devel- opment. The Second Council of Nicaea made wide use of his treatise, guaranteeing its acceptance and dissemination, and he has become, in the minds of modern historians, the primary source for the early theology of icons. But the Damascene builds on the two seventh century theologians, Vrt{anes and Leontius. These two contemporary thinkers deserve to be examined side by side. Déroche’s recent critical edition of Leontius and Kotter’s of John of Damascus offer a new opportunity to situate Vrt{anes within the development as a whole20. Leontius’ treatise, however, offers a convenient starting point for our study of early icon theology in that it defines the issue in the broadest theological terms. His treatise cannot be dated except generally to 610- 64021. Leontius’ career was truly cosmopolitan; of Neapolis in Cyprus, he travelled in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. He wrote a life of Symeon (the “Fool”) of Emesa, Syria, and in 641-642 he composed a life of his compatriot St. John the Almsgiver, a Cypriot whom Herakleios had installed as patriarch of Alexandria. The “Jews” to whom Leontius addresses his Apology do not seem to be just a literary device or a sym- bol for a generic adversary who cannot accept the Incarnation. Norman Baynes suggested fifty years ago that Leontius addressed his Apology specifically to the Jews of Alexandria, whom he encountered during his visits to the city, a position that finds some support in the treatise itself22. Alexandria had a substantial Jewish population in the seventh century and it is known that the Christians engaged in serious conversation with them23. Because it is preserved only in fragments cited by others, the rhetorical organization of Leontius’ discourse is unknown. However the fact that it

18 Déroche 1994. 19 B. Kotter 1975; Anderson, 1980, Louth 2003. 20 Déroche 1994; Kotter 1975. 21 Déroche 1994, p. 46. 22 Baynes 1960, pp. 230-234. 23 Déroche 1991.

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formed the fifth book of a larger treatise on the Incarnation is in itself highly significant: the author is treating icons as a theological issue of the same kind of weight as the discussion of the Incarnation. God, man and matter — these are the terms of the investigation whether one dis- cusses the Incarnation or icons. His Jewish adversaries cannot accept that God entered the dirty condition of human flesh. In one surviving frag- ment from the first book Leontius insists, “If man is the most beautiful creature of God, whom he created ‘in his image and likeness,’ (Gen 1:26) how could it be unworthy of God to take flesh of his own creature?… And if creating man brought no shame on God, how could re-creating him do so?” Then, defending Christ’s birth from a human mother, Leon- tius introduces the symbol of the sun, whose rays are not made impure by illuminating the things it touches. “The creator at once of heaven, of corporeal and incorporeal beings, entering into a pure flesh that he him- self created, not only was not himself soiled, but rendered that flesh even more pure and more holy.”24 The problem of icon veneration, then, Leon- tius casts in this large perspective of the theology of the Incarnation. Icons are another case of divine presence at work in matter. It should be observed that the status quaestionis of the Leontius’ icon discussion is a very precisely defined form of veneration, which com- prises two kinds of physical gestures: , that is and bowing before the icon, and aspasmos, kissing, embracing and touching the icon. These two very physical gestures are extremely important to the development of icon theology since this is the way the Council of Nicaea eventually chose to define veneration. In its solemn concluding horos or definition the Council describes the honor that the faithful must pay to images as aspasmos and proskynesis25. Indeed so important was this physical form of veneration to the fathers of the Council that they included it among the final anathemata of the Council: one who refused to kiss icons was declared anathema26. The peculiar thing about the entire devel- opment of icon theology, in contrast to the earlier developments of Trin- itarian theology, is that it concerned not a refinement in the language in which the mysteries were defined — something that could be resolved in a more precise creedal statement, but an issue of cult practice — something that could be resolved only in prescriptions for the conduct of proper worship. The horos of the Second Council of Nicaea does not

24 Déroche 1994, pp. 65-66. 25 Mansi 1901-1927, XIII, 377. 26 Mansi 1901-1927, XIII, 400.

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solve the icon question by offering a more refined definition of icons but by imposing their veneration27. Leontius inherited his definition of what constitutes veneration from an earlier literature of questions and answers about doctrine. In the anon- ymous Quaestiones ad Antiochum, it is asked how one can venerate man- made things such as the cross and icons, and the veneration involved is described as proskynesis and aspasmos28. It was John of Damascus who transmitted Leontius’ position on icons, as well as long excerpts from Leontius, to the fathers of Nicaea II. This is the main line of the devel- opment of early icon theology in Greek sources: Quaestiones ad Antio- chum, Leontius, John of Damascus, Nicaea II, and we can trace a number of concepts transmitted in this sequence. Vrt{anes stands sometimes within the sequence, sometimes apart from it. Because he is arguing with Jews, Leontius takes his arguments from examples of veneration of images, citing Moses’ graven images of the Cherubim flanking the mercy seat and ’s vision of the tem- ple full of images of Cherubim, lions, men, and palm trees. (Exodus 25: 18-22 and Ezekiel 40-41) These passages become a standard part of the early theology of icons. Another important argument, however, is drawn from contemporary Jewish practice, and at this point his argument has a concrete particularism that speaks for a contact with actual Jews, for he refers to the veneration of the Scroll of the Torah in the Sabbath service. Leontius argues, “As you in doing proskynesis before the scroll of the Law do not worship parchment and ink, so when I do proskynesis before the icon, I do not adore wood and pigments but Christ.”29 Vrt{anes devel- ops this same argument somewhat differently, as we will see, but still insisting on the parallel between the material of the codex of Scripture and the material of the icon. Equally interesting is Leontius’ justification of proskynesis and aspas- mos by citing instances of respect and greetings paid to or by the proph- ets and patriarchs. For example Jakob kissing and venerating the cloak of offers a precedent for Christian kissing and venerating icons30. Leontius’ most startling analogy, however, compares the physical kissing and embracing of the icon of Christ or his Mother to a man’s kissing and embracing of his own wife (somatikon aspasmon, bodily kissing, is his expression), which, he points out, is certainly not forbidden by divine

27 Mansi 1901-1927, XIII, 377. 28 Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem, 39, PG 28, 621. 29 Déroche 1994, p. 74. 30 Déroche 1994, p. 74.

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law31. This very bold analogy is cited among the documents of Nicaea II, but it disappears in the second period of Iconoclasm when the debate of Theodore the Stoudite and turns to the philosophical problem of the nature of a likeness and its relationship to the hypostasis. But the necessity of material intermediaries in man’s address to God lies at the heart of Leontius’ argument. A great many material precedents are cited for the materiality of icons, such as the Tablets of the Law, Moses’ staff, the , the tabernacle. For Leontius the material icon, made of wood and paint, takes on a kind of cosmic dimension, somehow knitting together the entire universe in praise of the creator. In a very bold passage Leontius makes man’s veneration of material images the vehicle by which all of nature, animate and inanimate, can offer its worship to God. “Earthly things you must not worship as God, but Him through them… Understand that it is through heaven and earth and sea and wood and stone and bones and churches and the cross, and through and men and all creatures visible and invisible that I offer worship and adoration to him alone, who is the foundation and Lord and creator of all creatures. For the creatures by themselves cannot adore their maker, but through me the heavens tell the glory of God and through me the moon adores God and through me the stars glorify God and through me the waters, dews, rains, and every creature through me adores and glori- fies God.”32 By venerating God through icons man unites to himself the entire material world in adoration of the one true God. Taking the argument a step further, Leontius, citing 2Cor 6:16, even speaks of the divine as somehow dwelling within the material icon. He does not define how this happens but asserts, “With justice do I honor and pay proskynesis to the icon of the servants of God and regard it as the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, for he says, ‘I will dwell among them and move among them.’” Further he tells us that holding and embracing the icon of Christ is equivalent to holding and embracing Christ33. The prob- lem of a divine presence somehow dwelling within the icon recurs again and again in the debate on icons. Leontius’ cosmic argument expresses a very benevolent view of the whole world in which man and matter have both been redeemed by Christ. Although the question on the table was how to justify man’s veneration of God through material things, Leontius shifts the issue to tell us how

31 Déroche 1994, line 70, page 68. 32 Déroche 1994, p. 76. 33 Déroche 1994, lines 46-52, and page 93.

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the entire material world venerates God through man’s use of matter. This is the reciprocal of his view of the Incarnation in which the Word, far from being soiled by entering matter had purified all matter34. The Incarnation had effected a change in the triad of God, man and matter; Christ had put the devils to flight and sanctified all of matter.

This optimistic orientation is exactly the starting point of Vrt{anes’ apology for images. He begins with the statement, “The whole of crea- tion is illuminated by the life-giving light and heaven and earth rejoice in its shining rays, for the brightness of the light of truth has flooded the entire universe.”35 The two authors share many of the same presuppositions and some individual arguments. Both authors remark on the wide diffu- sion of icons in their surroundings. Leontius remarks, “We have images of the life and suffering of Christ everywhere, in churches, homes, public places, on textiles, on boxes and clothing,” something his adversaries in Alexandria could have readily confirmed by their own experience36. The Armenian defence of images cites only church uses of images, in keeping with its purpose to justify the ecclesiastical practice, but it witnesses a great diversity of church art — painted icons, painted crosses, painted books, painted church interiors. These icon uses are perfectly in step with contemporary image use elsewhere in the Christian world, whether in Rome, Constantinople, or Egypt. The date and circumstances of the treatise Against the Iconoclasts commonly attributed to Vrt{anes were described by Der Nersessian and Paul Alexander, but this has recently been contested by Andrea Schmidt who would attribute the document to John Myragomec{i (died 684) or a follower of his in the late seventh century37. Like Vrt{anes, Mayragomec{i played an important role in defining Armenia’s position against the Chalcedonian position of the Byzantine church. Alexander published the account of iconoclasm given by John Mayragomec{i in a letter to Bishop David of Mec-Koxmn38. In Mayragomec{i’s account the trouble started following the cession of all of western Armenia to the Byzantines by Chos- roes II in 591, at which point the Chalcedonian catholicos John moved his residence from Karin/Theodosioupolis to Awan, just a stone’s throw from the seat of the orthodox Armenian catholicos Moses II (574-604) in Dvin.

34 Déroche 1994, pp. 65-66. 35 Der Nersessian 1973b, pp. 379-380; Tourian 1927, lines 1-24. 36 Déroche 1994, p. 74. 37 Schmidt 1997. 38 Alexander 1955. See also Der Nersessian 1973a.

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This occasioned intense conflict between the two halves of the Armenian church over the Chalcedonian question as well as over ordination rights. It was in this strained situation, as Alexander describes it, that a group of ascetic monks rebelled against the secular and assumed a stance against images. The iconoclasts resurrected an early Christian argument, namely that the true image of Christ is the soul of the just; the iconoclasts applied to themselves the term “saints.” Rebuked by the catholikos Moses, the iconoclasts moved to Siwnik{, then part of Albania, where they con- tinued to preach their . Some time later the leaders of the were arrested in Gardman in Albania and brought before Mayragomec{i, who corrected them, he says, by instancing the images used in the tabernacle of Moses and in the temple of . Alexander and Der Nersessian assign the treatise to Vrt{anes during the period when he was locus tenens catholicos, after the death of Moses and before the appointment of his successor , 604-607. Schmidt, however, notes that Vrt{anes never mentions the iconoclast issue in his letters in the Book of Letters, which are concerned with the Chalcedonian issue.39 Further she observes that not all the manuscripts of the treatise, which are all very late, name Vrt{anes as author. Finally she argues that the treatise employs the same argument that Mayragomec{i employed from Moses’ and Solomon’s use of images, suggesting that in fact Mayragomec{i was the author of the treatise, which in turn implies that it is a document of Albanian church history more than Armenian40. But within the treatise the wording of the author’s reference to his adversaries implies that he is speaking to the immediate disciples of the heretics rather than a second generation sixty years later. The author calls the leaders of the heresy “the impious and stray Thaddeus and and their companions, who led astray a great number of persons in their gath- ering (kac{ud, line 387) such as yourselves.” 41 The addressees are imme- diate followers of the heretics themselves. That the issue of iconoclasm does not come up in Vrt{anes’ letters should not surprise us, for they are different genre of literature entirely, official correspondence concerned with church discipline rather than doctrine. The letters are not theological and do not even argue the issue of the natures of Christ. Schmidt makes the easy assumption that icon usage was identified with the and hence with the Chalcedonian position, but as we have already seen the

39 Schmidt 1997, pp. 947-949. A handy complete translation of the Book of Letters has been provided in Garsoïan 1999, pp. 516-583. 40 Schmidt 1997, pp. 957-965. 41 Der Nersessian p. 387; Tourian lines 385-388.

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icon phenomenon was much broader around the Mediterranean and the theology defending icons cannot be credited to Constantinople. Inciden- tally the treatise against the iconoclasts does make one argument with anti-Chalcedonian implications when speaking of the image of Christ on the cross as simultaneously an image of his humanity and his divinity, to which we will return42. On the other hand, Myragomec{i’s citation of Moses and Solomon is a widely used topos in defence of images, which we have seen in Leontius, without specific connection to the Vrt{anes treatise. There is no manuscript tradition to support an attribution to John Mayragomec{i. My study is based on Der Nersessian’s translation of Vrt{anes compared with the Armenian text of the Jerusalem ms. as published by E. Tourian (whose line numbering I follow)43. Der Nersessian compared the Jeru- salem ms. with a closely related ms. in , with Vienna, Mekhitarist ms. 44 and , Matenadaran ms.102, without finding significant variants. The treatise Against the Iconoclasts, like the Book of Letters, lacks a critical edition with linguistic commentary. Vrt{anes travelled to Constantinople, evidently knew Greek, and was au courant with Byzan- tine thinking. Yet his Armenian perspective puts him somewhat apart from the line that runs from Leontius to John of Damascus. That Vrt{anes was not satisfied with merely condemning the erroneous doctrine of Thaddeus and Isaiah but wanted to explore the subject at length indicates both the seriousness of the threat posed by the preaching of the iconoclasts and the depth of the religious experience involved in the cult of icons. While the fragmentary survival of Leontius prevents study of the structure of his treatise, Vrt{anes’ treatise has a very clear structure with a powerful logic to it. This is no simple collection of cita- tions. At the outset the status quaestionis is laid out rather precisely by the objection of the heretics who are quoted as saying that “it is not fitting to make paintings and icons in churches,” (lines14-15), because the prophets of the Old Testament condemned images as idolatrous44. The ecclesiastical use of images is the issue. Vrt{anes proposes to base his argument on scripture and sacred authors, which is the outline of his treatise: namely, the Old Testament sources first, then patristic authorities. To these he adds a third source, namely the living tradition of the Armenian church, and this gives his argument

42 Below, pp. 115-116 and note 63. 43 Tourian 1927. I am indebted to Dr. Ioanna Rapti for help with key passages in the text. 44 Der Nersessian 1973b, p. 380; Tourian 1927, lines 14-17.

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an especially contemporary and tangible quality. In effect, the icons become their own justification; the church’s historic tradition of icon use vindicates their continued use. The church’s authority must be accepted. There is a very real sense of progression through the flow of the argu- ment: icons become the glorious fulfilment of long evolution that Vrt{anes traces from Moses through Roman imperial images to Christian images, which have filled the churches and have overthrown the illegitimate pagan idols. Along the way Vrt{anes offers a good deal of important documentation for the in Armenia that has been generally neglected. In his initial argument Vrt{anes argues that the custom of using of sacred images started with Moses who under God’s instruction provided the human models for making golden Cherubim on either side of the of the propitiatory, where the Lord Himself spoke to Israel from their midst (Exodus 25, 18-22)45. Further, he points out that the temple which God showed to Ezekiel was full of paintings, inside and out, of Cherubim in human form and palm trees (Ezekiel 40 and 41). Thus “from the very beginning images were made for the honor and veneration of God.”46 Leontius, we have seen, used the same Exodus and Ezekiel citations, but at this point Vrt{anes introduces what may seem like a very oblique argu- ment of his own, citing St. Paul’s approval of the Athenian worship at the altar of the “unknown god”47 (line 83). This Vrt{anes introduces as a transition: the Athenians were not venerating the stone altar but God, just as Christians do not say their images are God but are images of God who made his appearance in Christ as the prophets predicted. This idea Vrt{anes then develops by enumeration: Isaiah prophesying the birth of Christ; Jeremiah, his dwelling among us; David, his passion; Ezekiel and , his resurrection; and Zachariah, his . This enumeration is puzzling at first, and Der Nersessian does not explain it; but it clarifies when we interpret them as direct references to subjects of icons that were familiar to Vrt{anes and his audience. The association of particular prophecies with images makes the prophecies themselves into images of a kind, foreshadowings of the Incarnation events of the New Testament. Icons in turn are thus “post-shadowings” of the same realities, the validity of the prophecies having been con- firmed by Christ’s coming. The Old Testament evidence, therefore, is

45 Der Nersessian 1973b, pp. 380-381; Tourian 1927, lines 25-107. 46 Der Nersessian 1973b, p. 380; Tourian 1927, line 82. 47 Der Nersessian 1973b, pp. 380-381; Tourian 1927, lines 83-107.

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made to connect directly to the Christian icons. This subtle line of reasoning is made more explicit in John of Damascus, where in his enumeration of various kinds of images he says “there are also in God images and models of His acts yet to come,” and “an image is something that foreshadows something that is yet to happen, something hidden in riddles and shadows.”48 Absent from Vrt{anes, however, is Leontius’ accumulation of references to Jewish practices of venerating persons and material objects, many of which do reappear in John of Damascus. These were brought forward as justifications of the aspasmos of icons, and this may be a significant shift. The practice of aspasmos is somewhat less important to the Arme- nian author; the term occurs only once in connection with the adoration of the Gospel, as we will see. After his scriptural evidence Vrt{anes turns to patristic authorities which are not cited in the surviving Leontius fragments49. Vrt{anes cites four theologians of the fourth and early fifth century, starting with Chrys- ostom, who might be said to represent both Antiochene and Constanti- nopolitan thinking, and Severian, bishop of Gabala in Syria. These two authors were known in Armenian translations, as Der Nersessian indi- cates. Both make reference to the legitimate veneration of the emperor’s image, whether painted or of bronze. In so far as this secular kind of veneration prescinds from the material of the image it provides a prece- dent for Christian icon use which does not derive its validity from the wood and pigments. In between his citations of Chrysostom and Severian Vrt{anes inserts a piece of evidence for which he does not cite a source, namely the most famous icon of the early Christian world, king Abgar’s icon of Christ in Edessa50. This evidence is not cited in the Leontius fragments, and indeed Vrt{anes is the first author to use the Abgar story specifically in defense of icon use. It seems to have suggested itself to Vrt{anes in this context because of its royal associations with the previous passage. In spite of the intense interest in the Abgar story among modern Byzantine historians, Vrt{anes’ contribution has not been noticed. As outlined by Averil Cameron, the earliest Abgar tradition appears in ’ Ecclesiastical History, which attributes the conversion of the king of Edessa to his correspondence with Christ via his secretary

48 Anderson 1980, pp. 19-21, On the Divine Images, I, 10 and 12. 49 Der Nersessian 1973b, pp. 381-382; Tourian 1927, lines 107-165. 50 Der Nersessian 1973b, p. 381; Tourian 1927, lines 131-136.

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Hannan without mentioning an icon51. The second stage is represented by the Syriac Doctrina Addai of ca. 400, which transforms the scribe Hannan into a painter whose portrait of Christ along with the preaching of Addai (Thaddaeus the apostle) is said to be responsible for the conver- sion of Abgar. Hannan, we are told, “took and painted a portrait of in choice paints, and brought it with him to his lord king Abgar. And when king Abgar saw that portrait he received it with great joy and placed it with great honor in one of the rooms of his palace.”52 Sometime in the sixth century the story was further elaborated with a miraculous origin for the icon, which was called “acheiropoietos,” that is not the work of mortal hands. Evagrius, who writes from an Antiochene stand- point, introduces this term, and credits the icon with the miraculous deliverance of Edessa from the siege of the in 54453. John of Damascus refers twice to the miraculous origin of the Edessa image. In de Fide Orthodoxa he adds the detail that the painter was unable to do a likeness of Christ “because of the splendour that shone from his face, whereupon the Lord placed a cloth upon his divine and life giving countenance and impressed upon it his image which he sent to Abgar [to satisfy the latter’s] desire.”54 Vrt{anes, though later than Evagrius, makes no mention of a miracu- lous origin for the icon, but he does adds a significant detail to the Doctrina Addai version (which was also available in Armenian): “What would you [iconoclasts] say of the image of our Lord which the pious king Abgar had painted directly of Christ himself and which, they say, is now found in the of Edessa?”55 By 604 the memory of king Abgar’s palace apparently had faded, the Edessene royal line having been snuffed out by Caracalla, 213-14, and the icon of Christ, which originally had been the king’s private property, was now known to be kept in the cathedral56. Vrt{anes’ status quaestionis, we must remember, is not merely the permissibility of icons in private cult but their use in church, carrying implications of acceptance and endorsement by the clergy. He evidently believed in the authenticity and antiquity of the

51 Cameron 1983; see also Der Nersessian 1973c. 52 Segal 1970, p. 76; see also Drijvers 1998, p. 15. 53 PG 87,1, Evagrius, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV, 27. 54 PG 94, 1158, John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, IV, 16; also Anderson 1980, p. 35, On the Divine Images I, appendix, where, however, the detail about the brilliance of Christ’s face is missing. 55 Der Nersessian 1973b, p. 381; Tourian 1927, lines 131-136. 56 Segal 1970, p. 14.

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Edessa icon, and in his mind Church practice justified its veneration along with subsequent icons. Vrt{anes’ patristic source is the most important of the Armenian Fathers, , and it includes an argument with impor- tant art historical data. Gregory enlarged on the symbolism of the cross on which Christ hung as a manifestation of his infinite power,57 and Vrt{anes paraphrases him loosely, explaining how the wooden idols of the pagans have been supplanted by the wooden cross of Christ with the image of Christ dead upon it. “Instead of the wooden statues he set him- self in the middle of the cosmos, and because men were used to venerate inanimate images of the dead he himself became a dead image on the cross. He died and gave up his soul on the cross to teach men to venerate the cross of wood and the human face which is on it, to teach the makers, lovers and worshippers of images to submit to the image of his divinity.”58 The text must be taken literally to refer not just to the cross, which is itself a symbolic image of Christ, but to depictions of the physical, human Christ dead upon the cross. The compound word for the “human face” (mardademn,line 162) is decisive. This is important art historical infor- mation because it is precisely at the end of the sixth century that images of Christ on the cross first appear in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. For example, Christ is shown in a bust superimposed on a cross in a wall painting in Kellia, Egypt;59 Christ appears both full length on the cross and in bust above the cross on the lead ampoules from the Holy Land; and in the miniatures of the Rabbula Gospel (dated 586) he is shown realistically hanging on the cross60. Evidently such imagery had also reached Armenia. Vrt{anes distinguishes between the cross and the image on it, and in the following sentence he insists that while his adversaries “worship the , you throw stones at the king, you adore the cross but you revile the crucified Christ, as do the Manichaeans and the Marcianites.”61 This image of the has replaced pagan idols of wood and is worshipped with the same honor the pagans gave to their idols; the contest between pagan and Christian images is a major theme in Vrt{anes. It is significant too that the cross with the image on it inspires Vrt{anes to a pointed anti-Chalcedonian argument, for he tells us Christ on the cross is both the dead image of the humanity and the

57 Teaching of St. Gregory, 586, 629, Thomson 1970, pp. 142 and 155. 58 Der Nersessian 1973b, pp. 381-382; Tourian, lines 159-165. 59 Zibawi 1970, p. 94, fig. 110. 60 Grabar 1968, plates 317-318, and 230 61 Der Nersessian 173b, p. 382; Tourian, lines 175-178.

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image of his divinity. This is a persistent theme of Armenian of the Crucifixion as I have traced in some detail elsewhere62: the unity of the divine and human natures at the moment of the Crucifixion is insisted on in the Teaching of St. Gregory; it inspired to add to the Hymn the clause “Who was Crucified for us;” and it is enunci- ated in an anonymous Armenian “Homily on the Raising of Lazarus,” of early date. Moreover in Sinai in the Anastasius of Sinai is basing similar theological arguments on painted images of the Crucifixion63. The last of the Fathers quoted by Vrt{anes is the historian Eusebius of Caesarea who claimed that he personally saw a bronze statue of Christ erected in Paneas in Palestine by the woman whom he had cured of a flow of blood, as well as panel paintings of Peter, Paul and Christ64. Like the Abgar citation, this evidence was believed to confirm the origin of icons in apostolic times. The third section of Vrt{anes’ treatise takes up evidence from the living tradition of the Armenian Church, particularly in its conflict with pagan worship. The modern study of icon theology has tended to reduce the debate to two camps, namely the Christian proponents and opponents of icons. But Leontius addressed a third camp, the Jews, and Vrt{anes insists on the importance of a fourth constituency namely pagans who remained devoted to their own images, whether sculpted or painted icons of their gods. Recent research has brought to light a body of surviving panel paintings of the gods from Roman Egypt65, and occasional refer- ences to such pagan “icons” persists in literary sources down to John of Damascus, who advocates burning them whenever they are found66. Hence there was really a four-way contest involved in the debate on icons. For Vrt{anes the contest with was very real and current. He speaks of a replacement of specific pagan images with Christian icons, and the discourse is in the present tense implying that the pagan cults he describes are still active67 Images that one can still see of Ormazd, the principal god, are being replaced by icons of the Christ-Child in his Mother’s lap; images of his “impure” daughter Anahit, are replaced by the martyrs Gregory the Illuminator, Stephen, and by the Virgins Gayanê and

62 Mathews and Sanjian 1991, pp. 158-163. 63 Kartsonis 1986, pages 40-67. 64 Der Nersessian 1973b, page 383; Tourian 1927, lines 190-232. 65 Mathews 2001. 66 Anderson, 1980, pp. 32, 58, On the Divine Images, I, 24 and II, 11. 67 Der Nersessian 1973b, pp. 383-384; Tourian, lines 251-259.

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Hrip{sime and their companions. Further, the seductive Ast¥ik/ is overcome by images of the cross, the apostles and prophets. Armenian churches confound the devils by their paintings of the life of Christ as fulfilment of the predictions of the prophets. Moreover the scenes are painted with the same pigments with which the scriptures are written. While his adversaries object to worshipping “worthless,” images that cannot speak (Ps. 135,16), neither the Ark of the Covenant nor the Cross of Christ spoke, yet they overthrew the enemies and worked . The use of the term “worthless” is taken up by the iconoclasts at the council of 754 in Constantinople. Finally as a climax to his evidence Vrt{anes appeals to the Armenian liturgy in an argument parallel to Leontius; but while Leontius cited the Jewish liturgy of prostration before the Torah, Vrt{anes cites the Armenian practice of prostration before the codex of the Gospel in the First of the : “Now by the grace of Christ we can adduce another witness from New Testament times. For we behold the Book of the painted with and silver, and even bound with ivory and purple parchment. And when we fall down in veneration before the Gos- pel or kiss it, we do not venerate the ivory and the pigment, imported from overseas from barbarian lands, but we venerate the word of the Saviour which is written upon the parchment. So too the old and the young who ran before the Lord of Glory seated on an ass carrying olive and palm branches praised him and threw themselves down before him; they did not venerate the ass but Christ the Son of God who was seated on the ass.”68 This Christian veneration of the Gospel was foreshadowed by the veneration of the Ark of the Covenant in I Samuel. This passage is also significant for its mention of covers made of ivory, which is confirmed by the survival of early Byzantine ivory panels from some thirteen five-part diptychs that would have suited the dimensions of book covers. Vrt{anes is the only written source that attests this usage, and, significantly, the only set of such ivories still serving as book covers are the ivories on the Armenian manuscript, the Ejmiacin Gospels (Erevan, Mat. 2374)69. His immediate association of “ivory and pigment” in the veneration of the Gospel may imply that the ivories were themselves painted. Byzantinists have universally ignored Vrt{anes’ information.

68 Der Nersessian 1973b, p. 385; Tourian, lines 319-335. 69 Durand 2006, catalogue entries 32, 33, and 64. For exhibition purposes the ivory covers have now regrettably been removed from the codex.

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This text is also important in Vrt{anes as the sole passage in which he pairs the terms yerkir ankanel and hambourel, the equivalents of the Greek proskynesis and aspasmos, prostration and kissing (line 324). The veneration of the Gospel book was a widespread practice in the Christian liturgy; Paul the Silentiary in sixth century Constantinople describes how “the crowd strives in honor of the immaculate God to touch the sacred book with their lips and hands” as the priest carries the Gospel from the ambo back to the .70 The placement of images on the covers of the Gospel united the veneration of the icons to the veneration of the Gospel itself; the early Coptic Freer Gospel manuscript, has wood panel paintings of the evangelists on its covers71. The evidence that Vrt{anes offers of art in early Armenia is essential to his argument and it seems to be well founded. Although the early Armenian icons have not survived in wood, stone relief versions of these subjects are well known, framed like icons with their subjects facing forward in static, non-narrative poses72. That such images existed also in wood is very likely. Vrt{anes’ assertion that the churches in Armenia were full of paintings of the life of Christ is supported by the partial remains of wall paintings in seven early Armenian churches73. Inciden- tally he also mentions the purple parchment with letters of gold and silver, which was a way of embellishing the Gospels that was peculiar to the early Christian period. That Armenia had a continuous tradition of sacred images is Vrt{anes’ most tangible argument. His adversaries themselves admit that images were a very ancient tradition in Armenia in asserting that images had been introduced by king Pap (369-374), who was accused of having been pos- sessed by demons; but Vrt{anes maintains that icons were even earlier and came from the Greeks and that such venerable fathers of the Armenian church, such as Sahak, Mesrop, Eznik, Arjan and Koriwn all endorsed the custom74. It is the iconoclasts who were guilty of innovation; by the start of the seventh century the use of sacred images was certainly a deeply entrenched tradition across the Near East from Alexandria to Armenia.

70 Mathews 1971, p. 149. 71 Mathews 2006b. 72 Der Nersessian 1978, pages 51-68; Durand 2006, catalogue entries 2, 13, 14 and 21. 73 Der Nersessian 1978, pages 71-71. 74 Der Nersessian 1973b, pages 386-387, Tourian 1927, lines 368-381.

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By way of postscript Vrt{anes returns to the problem of the place of matter in Christian worship, and here the terms of the debate are espe- cially significant. The pigments used in icons he asserts should not be regarded as “base,” but the word he employs is pi¥c (line.403). Der Nersessian translates it “vile,” which is how she had translated xotan, the word used in quoting the iconoclasts (line 302). But there is a difference. Xotan is used for worthless trash, but pi¥c means foul, impure, disgusting, and it is the epithet Vrt{anes used for Anahit (line 258). It is a highly charged term. Icons, Vrt{anes continues, are not pi¥c because they are made of the same materials used in writing Sacred Scripture, and they can be used for food and medicine75. The materials he cites are milk and eggs, but also arsenic, azurite, verdegris, and lime (the mineral, not the fruit). Der Nersessian observes that the names of the pigments are Iranian and pre-Arab, another confirmation of the early date of the treatise76. Vrt{anes’ chemistry was obviously defective; but he was not alone, self- poisoning being an occupational hazard of artists down to modern times. A belief in the benefits of ingesting icons was common and the Second Council of Nicaea cites an instance of the practice77. Vrt{anes wanted to base his theology on a beneficent view of all of creation, and like Leon- tius he was insisting on the necessity of material intermediaries in man’s address to his creator. He concludes, “Let us not call pi¥c that which God has given us to beautify the world, and let us not despise it as something evil (line 412)… For we know the invisible by what is visible, and pig- ments and paintings are memorials of the Living God and his servants (lines 428-431).” The church building itself is made by the hand of man yet is the dwelling place of God. Matter is at the core of the iconoclast controversy, and Vrt{anes composed an effective refutation of a sect of heretics who insisted on an interior spiritual sanctity that would have no need of material aids.

Appearing in 730 a century after Leontius and Vrt{anes, the treatise of John of Damascus “On the Divine Images” is approximately twice as long as Vrt{anes’ treatise, and he re-published it twice again with variations, each time adding appendicess of literary sources that support his position78. Written in response to the general outbreak of iconoclasm following Leo III’s 726-27 edict banning icons, the work is far more

75 Der Nersessian 1973b, page 387; Tourian 1927, lines 403-411. 76 Der Nersessian 1973b, p. 387, n. 38. 77 Mansi XIII, 68. 78 Conticello 2000.

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comprehensive and complex than its seventh century predecessors. It also raises the discussion to a new level of sophistication with a philosophical analysis of what constitutes an “image” and subtle distinctions of various degrees of “veneration,” which are the foundation for Nicaea II and for the later theologizing of Theodore of Stoudios and Nikephoros with their subtle arguments about the relationship of the figure of Christ to the hypostasis of Christ. Still, John of Damascus depended heavily on Leon- tius and Vrt{anes, and shared their central concern with the problem of matter in Christian worship. The Incarnation has effected a substantial change in the triad of God, Man, and Matter. The Damascene argues eloquently: “In former times God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take his abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honouring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God. How could God be born out of things which have no existence in themselves? God’s body is God because it is joined to His person by a union which shall never pass away. The divine nature remains the same; the flesh created in time is quickened with a reason-endowed soul. Because of this I all remaining matter with reverence, because God has filled it with His grace and power. Through it my salvation has come to me. Was not the thrice-happy and thrice-blessed wood of the cross matter?… Is not the ink in the most holy Gospel-book matter?… And over and above all these things, is not the Body and Blood of our Lord matter? Either do away with the honor and veneration these things deserve, or accept the tradition of the Church and the veneration of images.”79 In spelling out this argument, the Damascene’s debt to his seventh century predecessors is apparent. Déroche has made a study of his borrowings from Leontius; he repeats many of his passages verbatim, sometimes integrating them into his argument and at other times adding them on in his appendix, crediting Leontius by name80. His debt to Vrt{anes, however, has not yet been investigated. In the first place one should observe that the manuscript tradition of Vrt{anes is not very strong and he does not seem to have been very popular even with other Armenian authors; direct citations do not turn

79 Anderson 1980, pp. 23-24, On the Divine Images, I, 16. 80 Déroche 1994.

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up either in Armenian or Greek authors. There are, however, some strik- ing similarities between the Damacene’s treatise and that of Vrt{anes in features that have no parallels in Leontius. These features include both general organizational characteristics and particular arguments. The large framing of the argument in the Damascene is very similar to Vrt{anes: the Church’s use of icons is an ancient, sacred tradition that justifies itself; the veneration of icons is part of the Church’s apostolic heritage parallel to Sacred Scripture, and the heretics are cast as the innovators81. Since Leontius was addressing Jews, this argument was not part of his defence of images. Further, the Damascene follows the same general structure in his treatise as Vrt{anes, in that his first argument is an examination of Moses’ teaching about images, and his second section examines Patristic authorities, and finally he turns to arguments drawn from the Church’s practice. Moreover, Déroche argues that in his section on Patristic sources John used the same florilegium of patristic sources that the Armenian author had used82. Chrysostom, Severianus, and Euse- bius are cited in that order in both, even if the Chrysostom texts differ. In addition, the Damascene takes up three particular arguments of Vrt{anes that are missing in Leontius. As we have seen, Vrt{anes was the first author to invoke the story of the Edessa icon in a defence of icon use, and this is taken up by John of Damascus. We have also remarked that John’s development of “foreshadowing” as a category of image was already used by Vrt{anes in his pairing of OT prophecies with icons. The identification of the iconoclasts as Manichaeans is also significant. The Manichaeans were dualists for whom matter belonged to the princi- ple of Evil and Darkness. In the Byzantine world, Nina Garsoïan has pointed out, this was the most serious of all charges of heresy, carrying a mandatory capital sentence for conviction83. Vrt{anes does not directly label his adversaries Manichaeans, but identifies their attitude toward matter as Manichaean. John of Damascus has no caution about calling his adversaries Manichaean, and the term is subsequently common for iconoclasts. One must explain this pattern of resemblances between the two treatises. It is unlikely that John of Damascus knew Armenian and read Vrt{anes. But one must keep in mind that the Damascene did not compose his theological works in Damascus but in Jerusalem where he was a monk

81 Anderson 1980, On Divine Images, I, 1-2. 82 Déroche 1994, pp.103-104. 83 Garsoïan 1967, page 196.

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and priest at the patriarchal church of the Anastasis and a confidant of Patriarch John V. An Armenian community persisted in the Holy City, even after the Arab occupation had reduced their numbers84. I suggest that contact with Armenians could have supplied him with details of Vrt{anes’ arguments when he was composing his defence of images in 726-730. John of Damascus had a devouring, absolutely encyclopaedic interest in his subject and is unlikely to have neglected data that was readily at hand. While one could always imagine that it was not Vrt{anes but some other now missing source which also contained the specific arguments found in Vrt{anes, I would apply Ockham’s razor: “entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate.” Why invent missing links when we have Vrt{anes.

84 Hintlian 1976, pages 2, 13, 16-17

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