Alexei Lidov The Priesthood of the Virgin Mary as an Image-Paradigm of Christian Visual Culture UDC: 7.04:7.033.2 Alexei Lidov Moscow State University, Moscow, Rusia
[email protected] The paper discusses the crucial significance of the theme of the Priesthood of the Virgin Mary for the de- velopment of Byzantine iconography, and the Christian visual culture in general. The Priesthood of the Vir- gin Mary has, since the late Middle Ages, become a very popular topic in Roman Catholic theology, with influ- ence also on the iconography of the Latin West. In Byzantine theology this theme has never been articulated as doctrine, whether positively or negatively. However, in Eastern Christian homiletics and hymnography the notion and metaphor of the Virgin’s priesthood is easily perceived. Some church fathers compared the Virgin with the Priest and at the same time with the Altar Table, on which “she has offered to us Christ as Heavenly Bread for the redemption of sins”. In the author’s view, through the notion of the Priesthood of the Virgin only, as present in the minds of iconographers, we are able to understand the symbolic meaning of several pictorial motifs which have remained unexplained. Keywords: history, art, culture, church, medieval, Byzantine, hierotopy, iconography, icons, image-paradigm, priesthood, Virgin Mary The theme of the Priesthood of the Virgin Mary is simultaneously both obvious and unexpected.1 It is obvi- ous because the connection between the Virgin, the Church and liturgy requires no particular proof, it has been addressed in scholarly literature for a long time.