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Hesychasm and the Iconography of Divine Wisdom in the The Fresco at Hrelyo Tower Paper presented at the conference of The American Association for Advancement of Slavic Studies November, 2003 by Priscilla Hunt1

N.S. Trubetskoj in his famous set of essays of 1916 called the “umozrenie v kraskakh,” an intellectual in colors.2 He was aware that colors in the icon signified the presence of in the iconographic subject, and that the iconographer, by definition, had an “intellectual vision” of this light in order to create the icon. The light that the iconographer painted in the icon, first of all dwelled in himself, through his own act of contemplation and mental ascent.3 Trubetskoj’s observation harkened back to an unspoken mystical tradition about the nature of intellectual vision and the immanence of divine light. This tradition came to an apotheosis between the 13th and 15th centuries. By 1341, the controversy over the nature of the light, revealed during Christ’s Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor, resulted in an official repudiation of by Orthodox Church councils. As a result, a of divine light became dominant in the Church as a whole under the leadership of such men as Philotheos Kokkinos (1300-1379), who served several times as Ecumenical Patriarch, and (1296-1359), who became Archbishop of Thessalonika. The controversies during this period forced the Church to make explicit its ancient teaching on the deification of man through divine energies or uncreated light that had been held in silence until now. Erudite monks, typically trained on Athos, such as Philotheos and Gregory Palamas, celebrated both the liturgical action and mystical contemplation that made this light immanent in humankind. The hesychast iconographer embraced this same agenda, but communicated this theology “silently,” through embedding it in his work.4 He was, like the others, a contemplative. His images reflected his own inner illumination with uncreated light whereby he transcended himself and entered into divine quietude (hesychia); their 2 2/24/18 own inner illumination, expressed through the use of colors, symbols and sacred geometry, embedded this mystical silence in their deep structure.5

Figure 1: “Wisdom Builds Her House”: The Hrelyo Tower Fresco

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A key subject embodying the hesychast theology of divine light was the iconography of the Transfiguration depicting the indwelling light of Tabor in Christ and the three apostles, Peter, James and John. At the same time, iconographers created compositions on the subject, “Wisdom Builds Her House” from Proverbs 9:1-5 to symbolize the liturgies’ role in initiating the Church into the light. Philotheos Kokkinos’ three extensive exegeses of Proverbs 9:1-5 influenced the development of this iconographic theme in the 14th and 15th centuries.6 This study will address the influence of on Wisdom iconography by examining a work whose symbols and structures expressed the new theological self- consciousness: the “Wisdom Builds Her House” fresco of the Hrelyos Tower of the St. John of Rila monastery (1335) (see Figure 1).7 It reflects knowledge of the same hesychast spiritual culture, fostered on Mt. Athos, that informed Gregory Palamas and his disciple, Philotheos.8 Located in a prayer chapel dedicated to the Transfiguration, the fresco made use of new iconographic symbols to model the outpouring of the ’s uncreated unenergies into the mystical body of the Church, represented collectively by the saints approaching a eucharistic altar on the composition’s outer rim. These symbols of indwelling light include a geometric form of light around Christ’s head, consisting of one rhomboid (a proto-star); and a large cup (bowl) on the Eucharistic altar. Both symbols were indebted to the writings of Dionysios the Areopagite whose work was fundamental to hesychast theology; in addition, the depiction of the entire body of Christ at the center surrounded by the semi-naked bodies of seven child-like reclining figures reflected the new emphasis on the illuminated body as a place of divine immanence (see Figure 2). A reading of the icon’s language of silence will show that the proto-star around Christ’s head is a dominant organizing symbol for the composition as a whole (see Figure 2). The composition’s deep structure indicates that the iconographer was aware that this proto-star alluded to Wisdom as an implied sphere of light; and that this sphere modeled Wisdom as the indwelling of uncreated light in the creation to express the divine self- reflection (or self-identity); the iconographer took advantage of the circular (semi- spherical) structure of the dome to produce a composition that symbolically embedded 4 2/24/18 this spherical system of reflections. This fresco thus throws light on the language by which hesychast iconography symbolized Wisdom to express its theology of divine light.

Figure 2: Christ Wisdom in the Hrelyo Tower Fresco

THE STAR AS A MASTER SYMBOL A brief explanation of the origins and meaning of the proto-star and star will enable us to illuminate this fresco’s deep structure and mystical embodiment of the hesychast theology of light. A single rhomboid and then a double rhomboid, both in a circle, began to occur in iconography around Christ’s head by the 13th and 14th centuries.9 This tradition came to an apotheosis in a late 14th century Transfiguration composition (see Figure 3), reflecting the latter’s role as a centerpiece of hesychast theology.10 There we see the Wisdom star’s classical form as two overlapping rhomboids at 90° angle surrounded by a circle.

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Figure 3: The Transfiguration

The proto-star and star in a circle of light represented the elaboration of an earlier Christian symbol, the circle of light that surrounded Christ.11 The star’s classical form as two rhomboids superimposed at 90-degree angles modeled the mutually reflecting perpendicular planes within the sphere; each plane consists of two triangles, each reflecting the other, and modeling the relationship of three and one. Together they symbolized Wisdom as the inner action within a sphere of light making God immanent in the creation; this light alluded to the energies by which the Three-in-One (Trinity) manifests its self-identity outside its unknowable essence. The Wisdom star, as a symbol of uncreated Light, derived from Alexandrian theology, interpreting Old Testament Wisdom texts through the lense of Neo-Platonic and neo-Pythagorean thought.12 This tradition culminated in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite that were central to in East and West. Dionysius used the terms “wisdom”, “light”, “energies”, “powers”, and “providences” to speak of how God knows 6 2/24/18 himself in His work and is transcendently present in all being. Wisdom was the mode of God’s communication of Himself outside of His unknowable essence through the Trinity’s shared energies (light). Their outflowing, while remaining one with their Source, initiated the multiplicity of created beings into the Trinity’s transcendent Oneness. The three dimensional geometry of the star in the circle symbolized this hidden symmetry between God and the bodily receptacles of His light, signifying the identity of whole and part.13 This meaning, only implicit in the Areopagite’s writings, was held in silence by the Eastern Church. In the West, by the 12th century, the hidden sphere was made explicit. The second of 24 definitions of God’s self-identity refer to a “sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.” This definition went hand in hand with the first and the third, “God is a monad which engenders a monad and reflects in Himself His own ardor,” and “God is entirely complete in every part of Himself.”14 Gregory Palamas alluded to the hidden geometry of the star when, drawing from Dionysius, he used spatial metaphors for the mental prayer which brings the hesychast into communion with the Light of Tabor. He attests that in prayer, the mind concentrates the many into the one by engaging in a circular movement like the divine intelligences of the angels.15 This circle signifies ascent as well as inner movement and is in fact a rising spiral. Dionysius uses the spiral, and the circle to describe the movement of this mental ascent as well as the corresponding divine outflowing as powers, divinities, or energies- light.16 In a hidden way, the circle that typically surrounds the two rhomboids of the Wisdom star is an archetype of these ascending and descending spirals in three dimensions (see Figure 4). They ascend and descend around horizontal and vertical planes defining the axes of the sphere.

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Figure 4: Spirals within the Sphere

Points on the circumference, standing for individual persons in a state of mental ascent were meant to be seen through the mystery of the Triad. Each was paired with an opposite point (person) comprising the base of any given vertical triangle (For instance the opposites A-4 and C-4, B-4 and D-4, etc.). These opposite points had a shared relation to the triangle’s apex (E), conceived of as a source outflowing light and a creative principle. The apex (E) also symbolized the concentrated oneness of all the oppositions comprising the base of the triangles. The spiral of mental ascent is thus the distance from the base to the apex of the three-dimensional triangle or cone. This distance models the action of the mind “rising” to God and encompassing all oppositions in a process of introversion or interiorization. This vertical axis models transcendence – i.e. degrees of concentration of its base, the rhomboid ABCD (see Figures 5 and 6). However, because “rising” in fact signifies degrees of entrance into an interior Oneness, the axis of transcendence is an axis of interiorization. The apex (E), signifying maximal height and degrees of concentration should be understood as (G or E inverted), signifying maximal depth -- the infinitesimal point at the center of the sphere concentrating the whole as a simultaneity (see Figure 7).

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Figure 5: The Vertical Axis of Transcendence

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Figure 6: Degrees of Concentration of Transcendent Oneness

Figure 7: Interiority

Ascent up this axis thus signifies participation in smaller and smaller concentric circles (to be read in three dimensions as concentric spheres) modeling the increasing simultaneity of the whole. (On the vertical axis of Figure 8, replace A & B with E to symbolize transcendence and simultaneity; replace them with G to symbolize interiority or the inversion of E). Any given circle/sphere is thus equal to the whole, at greater or lesser degree of intensity or concentration. Smaller and smaller spheres symbolize increasing intensity of Light, until Light becomes its opposite, divine Darkness in the ineffable essence of God, the infinitesimal point at the sphere’s center.

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Figure 8: Concentric Spheres

Thus, the contemplative mind, a point on the circumference, “rises” to the center, i.e. to the hidden depth of divine Oneness, by encompassing its opposite points, and concentrating all the points of the base into smaller and smaller circles of duration. Participating in increasingly smaller concentric spheres, it experiences first increasingly intense Light and finally Darkness. The mind spiraling inwards (and “upwards”) towards the uncreated meets the outwardly (“downwardly”) spiraling divine processions. On the one hand, the inward and “upward” spiral models the saint’s mind-heart entering into the increasingly concentrated Oneness of the Trinity. On the other hand, points on the circumference model the resulting sanctification of the saint’s body as a “part” equal to the “whole” and participating in the divine self-identity. 17 This sphere thus expresses Palamas’ idea of how the hesychast “circumscribes the incorporeal in his body,” “enters himself the One who has clothed himself in the body and who thus penetrates all organized matter.”18 The whole sphere, implicit in the Wisdom star, stands for what Palamas called “perichoresis” wherein the “entire godhead is contained in those who are worthy and the saints are entirely contained in the entire godhead.”19 The mental ascent that enables the iconographer to see the divine presence 11 2/24/18

() within his iconographic subject and to embed this logos symbolically in his work testifies to his own “perichoresis,” and participation in the inner sphere of light. An act of intellectual vision was required to move from two to three dimensions and see the planes comprising the sphere’s volume. In this late 14th century composition of the Virgin of the Sign by Feofan Grek, for example, two rhomboids surround both figures (see Figure 9).20 If one projects the front rhomboid onto the dark plane of the sphere (see Figure 10), and the back rhomboid onto its light plane, one has placed the mother and child (incarnate God) at the center of a self-reflecting sphere of light. This symbolism silently identifies them as places of indwelling Wisdom, where God knows himself in His Other, in whom Spirit and body, uncreated God and His creation, are one. More complexly, the iconography of the Transfiguration placed the transfigured human body of Christ within a brilliant Wisdom star and symbolically incorporated the surrounding figures and landscape features into the latter’s sacred geometry. Thus the whole composition alludes to the system of reflections signifying Wisdom symbolized by the brilliant star. The light touching the three overturned apostles in three rays shows that they have entered into this system of reflections, have achieved mental ascent, vision of the light, and deification. (see Figure 3). 21

Figure 9: Virgin of the Sign 12 2/24/18

Figure 10: Intersecting Planes in the Sphere

The Hrelyo Tower Fresco and the Star

The Hrelyo Tower fresco (see Figure 1) exhibits many unusual and marked features whose purpose was to embody the iconographers’ intellectual vision of the indwelling sphere of light, symbolized by the proto-star around Christ’s head. This agenda made it, like the Transfiguration composition, a centerpiece of hesychast theology and poetics. Two scrolls in the fresco announce its theme through citations from Proverbs 9:1-5: One held by Solomon, refers to Wisdom’s house; the other, above the altar table, refers to Wisdom’s feast. The scrolls announce that the iconography is an of the words: “Wisdom has built her house, and set up her seven pillars, … and prepared her table. She has sent forth her servants, calling with a loud proclamation to the feast saying …’Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine which I have mingled for you.’” In the traditional exegesis, the Wisdom who built her house was understood to signify Christ, creator, while His “house” was the place of His indwelling in the creation by the action of the Holy Spirit, -- in the human body (beginning with the incarnation) and the Church (Christ’s mystical body). Wisdom’s “feast” signified Christ’s sharing of His own divinity 13 2/24/18 through the Eucharistic mystery. Wisdom’s invitation to the bread and wine referred to the means of entering this mystery -- the liturgical communion in the sanctified gifts. The Hrelyo Tower composition assimilated this exegesis to the hesychast agenda. Its very location alluded to its theological agenda. It was in the cupola of the eastern chamber of a prayer chapel dedicated to the Transfiguration on the top floor of the Hrelyos tower of the monastery church. This chapel acted as a nave where the liturgy was served. Thus the cupola composition illuminated the meaning of the liturgy going on below. Its place in a tower alluded to the action of mental ascent occurring during the liturgy; while its association with the Transfiguration implied that it extended to the Church the theology of bodily transfiguration by Tabor’s light. The proto-star as a metaphor for the composition’s hidden spherical structure filled out these implications, adding new layers of meaning to the traditional exegesis of Proverbs 9:1-5. This composition’s unprecedented structure as concentric circles in a semi-sphere suggest that it should be seen three dimensionally as a spherical continuum symbolizing its hidden Logos (see Figures 5 and 6 for a visualization of this structure). Clues on the surface level invite our inner vision to see 1) the distance between circumference and center as degrees of concentrated oneness and interior wholeness; 2) a spiral movement in two directions signifying human mental ascent on the one hand and divine procession as light on the other (visualized in Figure 4), and 3) symbolism that the body mirrors this concentrated Oneness through indwelling theophanic Light. A marked and therefore theologically significant feature of this iconography is the large, oversized Eucharistic cup below Christ in . Its shape mirrors the large rhomboid around Christ’s head and embodies the latter’s hidden significance. The cup traditionally signifies Wisdom’s feast of knowledge, as indicated by the banner above, citing from Proverbs 9. Here the cup reflects Dionysios the Areopagite’s interpretation of this same cup, an interpretation taken up by Philotheos in his treatises on “Wisdom’s house.”22 For them it symbolized the Providence “which proceeds in stages upon everything remaining forever in the sameness of itself.” This meaning (visualized as the opening spiral from point (E) in Figure 4) reflects back on the proto-star at the center. The proto-star is the source of the “providences” or light which sanctify the wine in the 14 2/24/18 cup that, when imbibed, in turn sanctifies the Church as Christ’s mystical body. Together, proto-star and wine-filled cup signify the central axis of the sphere (E-G of Figure 4). The uncreated light of the proto-star at the top of the axis of simultaneity itself summarizes or condenses the concentric circles, comprising the iconographic composition (as in Figures 5 and 6). The circles open out into multiplicity in stages: Modeling the first stage, the composition depicts the seven reclining figures whose bodies in their plurality implicitly mirror Christ’s light [(E) in Figure 4]; Modeling the second stage are a number of grouped figures, the saints, who approach the large cup to receive Wisdom’s feast of wine. They, too, in their greater multiplicity, implicitly are mirroring Christ’s light at the center (and the top of an implied vertical axis). The descent from unity to multiplicity, from center to circumference by the reclining bodies and the saints, occurs around this vertical axis of mutual reflection: the Wisdom pro-star “at top” and the “circular-rhomboidal” cup at “bottom.” It signifies the expanding center of light that absorbs the circumferences (to visualize, see Figures 4, 5 and 7). The seven figures in the intermediate circle allude to this action of energies/light. They reflect a hesychast response, committed to writing by both Philotheos and Gregory Palamas, to the traditional interpretation of the seven columns of Wisdom’s house. The tradition interpreted the columns by analogy to the seven spirits of wisdom that rest on Christ’s body, the flower of Jesse’s rod in Isaiah 11. The fresco breaks with precedent by representing these spirits as seven illuminated bodies. Moreover, these spirits do not rest on Christ’s human body but rather appear to emanate from it. They rest over the completely clothed bodies of the saints in the outer circle, extending the inner illumination of Christ’s one body to their multiplicity. The seven spirits are given bodies to emphasis the idea of divine immanence in the saints’ flesh (beginning with the Incarnation and manifest at the Transfiguration). They literally recline to dramatize the idea of the spirit “resting” or abiding within. The saints in turn signify the illuminated “houses of Wisdom” whose collective is the “house” of the Church, (just as the spirits refer to this house’s columns). Thus the fresco’s exegesis of Proverbs 9:1-5 through Isaiah 11 works together with the symbolism of the hidden sphere to extend the theology of Christ’s bodily transfiguration to the Church as a whole. 15 2/24/18

Both Philotheos and Palamas point to a hesychast tradition of interpreting the seven spirits that the iconographer likely had in mind as he chose and structured his images.23 Palamas offers the most theological and explicit assimilation of their meaning to hesychast theology in his “One Hundred Chapters.” He asks, why does Isaiah describe seven spirits and not one resting on the flowering rod?24 Palamas concludes that their plurality identifies the seven spirits as uncreated energies “bestowed proportionately” upon those who participate in them, and instilling the same “divinizing radiance to a greater or lesser degree.” Although there are seven spirits, he emphasizes, they do not divide up the Spirit, just as the energies manifesting the essence do not divide the essence but express its self-identity or sameness. Palamas notes that the seven spirits all have one “agent,” whose oneness they manifest in multiple ways, according to the capacity of those on whom they rest. This interpretation invites us to look at the fresco’s seven spirits as symbols of the operation of divine energies. Such a viewpoint explains why they appear as “children” relative to Christ, i.e. to imply His “agency” as creator, manifesting oneness through otherness.25 It also helps to explain why the spirits are the same in appearance except for multiple gestures. Their sameness reflects the divine self-identity which energies communicate by their plurality, while their subtle differences suggest multiple ways of manifesting Christ’s oneness. These characteristics work together with the meaning of the implied spherical continuum to suggest that the seven spirits may already bear the theological weight attributed to them by Philotheos and Palamas in later writings. As energies, the seven spirits mediate between Christ’s light and the saints by embodying the Providence “which proceeds in stages upon everything remaining forever in the sameness of itself.“ They spiral outward around the vertical axis signified by the proto-star and the Eucharistic cup; they mediate between the internal, invisible, simultaneous Oneness spiritually emanating from Christ (E of Figure 4) and the external multiplicity and spatial duration of the saints (implicitly occupying multiple points on the outer circumference of the sphere). The spirits allude to the archetypal spirals of extroversion of the One into the many that extend the center’s unity to the circumference. The saints on the outer limits are in groups and categories of sainthood to embody the differences that manifest the One.26 16 2/24/18

At the same time, the iconography symbolizes the return spiral of mental ascent, by which the saints “circumscribe the One” in their bodies. Two angels or either side of the altar table use one hand to issue the invitation to Wisdom’s feast and the other hand to point upward. They are telling us that the saints who commune in the bread and wine are receiving also an interior vision of the light transfiguring the body of the glorified Christ, and implicitly, their own bodies. As a result they are individually and collectively houses of Wisdom, reflecting in their multiplicity the unity of the divine essence, the identity of the sphere’s center and circumference. They are “parts” together and separately manifesting “whole.” The iconographer may be referring to the saints’ experience of Tabor’s light by depicting the Peter, the first of the three apostles who were present at the Transfiguration at the head of the apostles, represented as a group of three.27 The unprecedented portrayal of Christ-Wisdom at the center as the glorified risen Emmanuel associates Him with the Transfiguration (see Figure 2). Beginning in Ochrid in the late 13th century, altar or wall compositions portrayed Wisdom as the winged Emmanuel, Angel of Great Counsel to emphasize His power of ontological manifestation of the Trinity’s common action.28 In the Hrelyos Tower fresco, however, Wisdom is without wings, flooding light through a dynamic, spiritualized body as He did at the Transfiguration. The nakedness of the seven spirits echo the emphasis on Christ’s body and alludes to its mirrors, the clothed bodies of the saints on the outermost rim of concentric circles. As a whole the composition embodies the nature of perichoresis, first revealed at the Transfiguration. Implicitly, if seen in three dimensions, Christ’s position at the center of the sphere symbolizes His maximum degree of simultaneous wholeness by which he “penetrates all matter.” It indicates His manifestation of interiority, hiddenness, of the uncreated divine nature of as Light. As the center He is separate from the saints on the circumference and is the object of their vision. As the center He is also one with them, the subject of their inner experience of God. By this action of Light identifying circumference and center, the saints become means by which God knows Himself. Their relationship with Christ symbolizes how “God is entirely complete in every part of Himself” and is like a sphere “whose center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.” 17 2/24/18

Thus, the iconographer made use of the iconographic exegesis of “Wisdom builds her house” to express a heightened hesychast sensibility. He endowed his work with an unprecedented structure and array of surface features that unravel the meaning concentrated in the proto-star. Together the icon’s surface and deep meaning are an organic whole. Their interrelationship provides an ontological perspective on Wisdom’s house and Wisdom’s feast as symbols of the Trinity’s indwelling in the Church through energies. Imagery and meaning associate this composition with the Transfiguration. It is thus placed in a chapel dedicated to the Transfiguration, to show how the Church fulfills the latter’s promise.

Conclusion This analysis has shown how the deepest theological meaning of the Hrelyo Tower composition exists on the level of intellectual vision. If looked at from this point of view, by a monk most likely trained on Mt. Athos, with knowledge of tradition, mystical geometry, scripture and hesychast theology, the proto-star is a key to the composition’s deep structure and imagery. Even if this iconography may not be exceptional for the age in its sophistication and theological depth, it is without precedent in its poetic embodiment of the hidden sphere of light symbolized by the Wisdom star and its forerunner, the proto-star. Its modeling of the mystery of divine self-identity enriched the theological discourse on the theme of Wisdom’s house and fulfilled the agenda of hesychast spirituality that would be more explicitly defended in the written tracts of Philotheos, Palamas and others. As such, this circular fresco offered a complete model of the deep intellectual vision empowering the iconographer to create an image embodying the mystery of the Trinity’s Wisdom.

1 I have slightly edited this paper, and only added footnotes that refer to my own later published work that explicates more fully concepts introduced here. 2 E.N. Trubetskoi, Tri ocherka o russkoi ikone, Paris: YMCA Press, 1965. 18 2/24/18

3 See also, L. Ouspensky, “The Meaning and Language of ” in L. Ouspensky and Vl. Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,” Crestwood, New York, 1989, 25-49, esp. 42. 4 Ibid, 44. 5 J. Meyendorff, “Introduction” to Gregory Palamas, The , Paulist Press, New Jersey, 1983, 1-5; L. Ouspensky, “The Meaning and Language of Icons,” 48. 6 See Meyendorff, “Wisdom-Sophia,” 391-394.See Episkop Arsenii, Filofeia, Patriarkha Konstantinopl’skago XIV veka, Tri rechi k Episkopu Ignatiiu s ob”iasneniem izrecheniia pritchei: Premudrost’ sozda sebe dom i proch.: Grecheskii tekst I Russkii perevod, Parovaia tip. I.I. Ignatovskago, Novgorod, 1898, hereafter, Tri rechi. The dating of this work has yet to be established. See also P. Hunt, “Confronting the End: The Interpretation of the Last Judgment in a Novgorod Wisdom Icon,” Byzantinoslavica, 65 (2007), 275-325. 7 L. Prashkov, “Novootkritite freski na Khrelovata kula na Rilskia manastir,” Izkustvo 2 (1968), 34-40. 8 Philotheos was a monk and abbot on Mt. Athos where he came under the influence of Gregory Palamas, who was there in the 1330s On the fresco’s possible painter, see P. Mijovic, “ Tsarska ikonografija u srpskoj sredn’e vekovnoj umetnosti (II.7),” in Starinar, XXII (1971), Beograd, 1974, 75. 9 In the first known fresco on the “Wisdom’s House” theme, in the Church of St. Clement of Ochrid (1295), the star appears in its proto-form, as one rhomboid in a circle. It surrounds the head of Christ-Wisdom, portrayed as Angel of Great Counsel, messenger of the Trinity. 9 See J. Meyendorff, “Wisdom-Sophia: Contrasting Approaches to a Complex theme,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987), 391-401, fig. 2, 394, pl.2 and T.A. Sidorova, Volotovskaia freska ‘Premudrost’ sozda sebe dom’ i ee otnoshenie k novgorodskoj eresi strigol’nikov v XIV v.,” TODRL XXVI, 222. The rhomboid is in a circle with a cross, while Christ’s whole figure is in a “glory.” 10 Dated sometime before 1375, it occurs in a collection of the theological writings of the hesychast Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus that may have been destined for the hesychast Nicholas Cabasilas of Thessalonika. See R. Samardzhic, ed., L’art de Thessalonique et des pays balkaniques et les courants spirituels au XIV e siecle, Belgrade, 1987, 90-91. 11 On this star, see Der Nersessian, S., “Note sure quelques images se rattachant au theme du Christ-Ange, in Etudes Byzantines et Armeniennes, Louvain, 1973, Imp. Orientaliste, 43-47, and D. Fiene, “What is the Appearance of Divine Sophia,” Slavic Review, vol. 48, no. 3 (Fall, 1989), 449-477, esp. 473-475, fig. 3,4,6,10,11,12, and P. Hunt, “The Wisdom Iconography of Light: The Genesis, Meaning and Iconographic Realization of a Symbol,” Byzantinoslavica 67 (2009), 55-118. See Ibid., p. 111-112 on the way the star symbolizes the spherical continuum and Ibid, 102-3 on the proto-star as a forerunner of the star. 12 G. Poulet, The Metamorphoses of the Circle, (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1966), xiv makes brief mention of these influences, without mentioning the hesychasts. See also R.M. Grant, “the Book of Wisdom at Alexandria.” The Alexandrian tradition meditated on the Wisdom of Solomon 7:25-26: Wisdom is “radiance from eternal light and an unspotted mirror of the working of God ….” From here, the Alexandrians developed a concept of wisdom as power, light or energy by which God knows himself outside of himself and is self-identical. 13 See P. Hunt, “The Wisdom Iconography of Light,” 111. 14 G. Poulet, The Metamorphoses of the Circle, xi notes the influential medieval definition of God, “Deus est sphaera cujus centrum ubique” and that it appears for the first time in the pseudohermetic manuscript of the 12th century, The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers, as one of twenty-four definitions of God. See Liber XXIV Philosophorum, ed. Clemens Baeumker, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 1928, 207-214. The first definition is: “Deus est monas monadem gignens et in se reflectens suum ardorem.” The third is “Deus est totus in quolibet sui.” 15 Gregory Palamas: The Triads, 46, 99, 101. 16 See Pseudo-Dionysios: The Complete Works, (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 122 and the following: “The intelligent and intelligible powers of the angelic minds draw from Wisdom their simple and blessed conceptions…Human souls…. on account of the manner in which they are capable of concentrating the many into the one…are worthy of conceptions like those of the angels. Our sense perceptions also can properly be described as the echoes of wisdom (Divine Names, 7:2, 106-7).” “First it moves in a circle…it turns within itself…in an inner concentration…a sort of fixed revolution causes it to return from the multiplicity of externals…the revolution brings the soul to the Beautiful and the Good which is beyond all 19 2/24/18

things, which is…one and the same…and has neither beginning nor end. (Divine names, 4:8, 78). “The spiral movement attributed to him [God] must refer to the continuous procession from him together with the fecundity of his stillness. And the circular movement has to do with his sameness…so that all things are one and all things that have gone forth from him may return to him once again (Divine Names, 9:9, 118- 119).” 17 The fourth century Abba Dorotheus drew on this same tradition about the sphere when he used the saints’ movement along the radii of a circle to symbolize their approach to divine love. See Dorothee de Gaza, Oeuvres spirituelles, ed. L. Regnault de Preville, Paris, 1963, 286-7. Compare with Dionyios the Areopagite’s treatise “On the Divine Names,” Chapter 5:6. 18 See The Triads, 45 where Palamas quotes and comments on this idea of John Climacus. 19 V. Krivocheine, “The Ascetic and Theological Teaching of Gregory Palamas,” Eastern Churches Quarterly , 3 (1968), 203. 20 Figure 4 is my photograph of the Znamenie composition by Feofan Grek at the entrance to the Trinity Chapel of the Church of the Transfiguration on Il’in Street in Novgorod (1378). 21 For a fuller analysis, see P. Hunt, “The Wisdom Iconography of Light,” 110-112. 22See Tri rechi, 286 and Pseudo-Dionysios:The Complete Works, Paulist Press, Mahwah, N.Y., 1987, 58. On the slavonic translation of this passage of Dionysios, and its impact on the iconography of Proverbs 9:1- 5 in Russia, see G. Prokhorov, “Poslanie Titu-ierarkhu Dionisiia Areopagita i ikonografiia ‘Premudrost’ sozda sebe dom,” TODRL 38 (1985) 7-41, 23 On the gifts of these seven spirits, Philotheos writes: “…v Nem obitaet vsia polnota Bozhestva telesno (Col. 11:9) t.e. v polnote ego…Ibo s togo vremeni kak te dary v polnote nakhoditsia v ploti Vladychnei, On cherpal iz nej, kak iz vmestilishcha, i daval dary (Ephes. 4:8) prorokam i apostolam….[pochiet na nem dukh Bozhii’ (John 1:16). Tut oboznachaet sushchnost’ samogo Dukha Sviatogo.” See Tri rechi, 114. 24 See R.E. Sinkewicz, Saint Gregory Palamas, The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, Toronto, Ontario, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988, 165-7. 25 The spirits may also look like children to express the situation of the saints below, according John 1:12: But as many as received Him, he gave the right to become children of God.” 26 Disipat’s summary of Palamas’ theology of divine energies, translated into Slavonic in the 14th century, provides the theological background for this work. It expresses the Palamite understanding of the implicit identity between Christ, the spirits and the saints below in their multiplicity. See his “O ezhe ne vpasti v eres’ Varlaama i Akindina, kir Davida Mnikha i filosofa izlozhenie” in G.M. Prokhorov, “Sochineniia Davida Disipata v drevnerusskoi literature,” TODRL XXXII (1979),48-49. Disipat brings up the seven resting spirits in the context of a discussion about divine self-identity based on Dionysios’ treatise on the Divine Names, especially chapter 11 on “peace.” Disipat specifies that the resting seven spirits signify that uncreated energy is present in the flesh according to the capacity of each even as it also remains inseparable from its source, the divine substance. This energies’ dual presence within and outside the substance expresses the sameness or self-identity of God in his self-abiding and outflowing into the world. Disipat implicitly associated these resting spirits with the “peace” which the Areopagite describes: “In peace, God is ineffable and unmoving….still and tranquil, keeping to himself and within himself in an absolutely transcendent unity of self, turning in upon himself and multiplying himself without ever leaving his own unity, superabundantly One as he goes forth to all things while yet remaining within himself.” Pseudo- Dionysios: The Complete Works, 122. 27 See Filofeia, Tri Rechi, 42 where Philotheos implicitly links the idea of the body as Wisdom’s house with the Transfiguration. Noting that those on whom (Isaiah’s) spirits rest are temples of God, Philotheus refers to 1Cor. 3:16, Ephes. 2:19 and Lev. 26: 11,12. 28 In the cupola of the narthex of St. Clement of Ochrid (1295), he appears above the composition Wisdom Builds her House (where Wisdom already appears as an Angel) as an unprecedented theophanic image with wings, signifying his resurrected glorified body. It included an inscription from a troparion of the first ode of ’ canon on Easter, which begins, “‘Let us purify our feelings and we will see Christ shining with blinding light of the resurrection.” In the 14th century the “Wisdom Builds Her House” composition associates the winged Christ with a star. See Der Nersessian, S., “Note sure quelques images se rattachant au theme du Christ-Ange,” in Etudes Byzantines et Armeniennes, Louvain, 1973, Imp. Orientaliste, 43-47. On pp. 45-46 he describes other appearances of the star in the 14th century as way of giving a specific interpretation of divinity, and theophanic vision.