The Icon and the Axe

by James Billington

  The Russian icon screen represented a further extension of the process of humanizing Orthodoxy-offering a multitude of pictorial links between the remote God of the East and the simple hopes of an awakening people. Placed between the sanctuary and the congregation, the icon screen lay "on the boundary between heaven and earth,"70 and depicted the variety of human forms through which God had come from out of His holy place to

  redeem His people. Each icon provided an "external expression of the transfigured state of man,"71 a window through which the believing eye could peer into the beyond. The icon screen as a whole provided a pictorial guide to the sanctification which only the church could give.

  The tapers that were lit by the faithful to burn in large candelabras before the icon screen throughout and beyond each service transformed the otherwise dark and cold church into a "candlelight kingdom."72 These flickering flames reminded the congregation of the forms which God the Father had mysteriously assumed within the "life-giving Trinity": the Son, who appeared to his apostles as pure light at the Transfiguration prior to His death; and the Holy Spirit, which came to them as pure flame at Pentecost after his final ascension.78

  The iconostasis enabled Russians to combine…tbskJpve of beauty..with their sense of history. LinesT5e7alne~1more supple and color richer as icon panels grew larger and the screens more comprehensive. Just as the individual lives of saints were gradually grafted into vast^ chronicles ofLsaered history, so icons were soon mcOfpofatedTnto thesexomprehensive pictorial records of sacred history that moved from Old Testament patriarchs and prophets in the highest row to local saints in Jhe lowest. The panels in the center moved down to man-??????? God Himself-through the Virgin to Christ, who sat at the center of the main "prayer row" of panels immediately over the royal doors. Modeled on the Pantokrator, who had stared down in lonely splendor from the central dome of Byzantine cathedrals, "Christ enthroned" acquired on the Russian iconostasis a less severe expression. The Lord's hitherto distant entourage of holy figures was brought down from the cupola of earlier Byzantine churches and placed in a row on either side of the traditional images of the Virgin and John the Baptist. These newly visible saints were inclined in adoration toward Christ, who, in turn, seemed to beckon the congregation to join their ranks as He looked straight ahead and held out the gospel, usually opened to the text "Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you."74 As if in response, the faithful pressed forward during and after services to kiss as brothers in Christ the saints who stood closest to them on the sacred screen. This, like most acts of worship and veneration in Orthodox Russia, was accompanied by the bow or prostration of humility and by a sweeping, two-fingered sign of the cross: the public confession of faith.

  The development of the iconostasis and the intensification of icon veneration in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Russia set off Russian art frorirtliat of Western "Christendom, where holy pictures were viewed increasingly as optional ornaments withouT~anjTatrinSc_lheological s!gnTr£ cance,73 and where artists were rediscovering-rather than movine awav

  oi-helief but on the"ccflcreteluustratiori_of_it5-gloiies. The emotional attachment to sacred pictur amp;TrieTps"~e1ipTain why neither the art forms nor the rationalistic philosophy of classical antiquity played any significant role in the culture of early modern Russia. There were no important Russian imitators of the Renaissance art of Italy and Flanders, despite ample contact with both regions; and the rationalistic ideas that were brought into late medieval Russia through Westward-looking Novgorod appealed only to a small, cosmopolitan elite and were consistently banned by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

  It would be hard to overestimate the importance of icons for Muscovite culture. Each icon reminded man of God's continuing involvement in human"" affairs. ??????????? be immediately apprehended even by thosFincapable of reading or reflection. It offered not a message for thought but an illus-tration_JQjj;eassurance of God's power in and over history for men who might otherwise have been completely mired in adversity and despair.

  Amidst this sea of pictures, thought tefHed to crystallize In images

  icon of God, justas the whole Orthodox Empire is the icon of the heavenly world."7" The icon screen provided, moreover, a model for the hierarchical order of Russian society. Each figure occupied a prescribed position in a prescribed way, but all were xnrrned by their common distance from the God of the sanctuary, and by their dependent relationship to the central panel of Christ enthroned. The term chin ("rank") was used both for the general order of the icon screen, and for the central deesis, or "prayer row," which was the largest, easiest to see, and the source of many of the most famous large icons now in museums. Chin became the general term for prescribed rank in Muscovy, and its verbal form uchiniti the main word for command. By the seventeenth century, this concept had become the basis of an entire social order. Tsar Alexis' law code of 1649 was an almost icono^rajpuc~^iriB^oiTrI5_D"ehaviof-ot each rank in society; and" a few years Iatertre~rjveTrafaTfed a. chin for his hunting'IaiconsT1"

  TTussia was fated to maintain hierarchical forms of^jflciety _while progressively sheddjng^tne religious idealism that haaoririnally sanctioned theja^Alexisnfaw code ??!?^?1???1??^??????^?18??, but the iconographic tradition was shattered and the church split even before the end of his reign

  in the seventeenth century. Naturalistic figures and theatrical compositions were introduced awkwardly and eclectically from Western models; older icons vanished beneath metal casings and layers of dark varnish; and serpentine rococo frames agitated the icon screen and seemed to constrict the holy figures they surrounded. The traditional chin of Muscovy had been replaced by the chinovnik ("petty bureaucrat") of Petersburg; and icon painting as a sacred tradition, by icon production as a state concession. The icon is only "good for covering pots," proclaimed Vissarion Belinsky in the 1840's,78 pointing the way to the new artistic iconoclasm of the Rus-sianjreyolutionary tradition.

  Yet the spell of the_Jconwasnever TOrrroletely broken. Nothing else quite took its place, and Russians remained reluctant to corlceive of painting as men did in the West. Russians remained more interested in the ideal represented by a painting than in its artistic texture. To Dostoevsky, Holbein's "Cjmst in th^Tbnib;7ju^sted'i~denial of Christian faith; Claude Lorraine's "Acis and Galatea," a secular Utopia. The print of Raphael's Sistine,34adonna over his writing desk was the ???????^?^|^?^???1 effortjo_reconcile faith and creative power.79 The revolutionaries themselves looked with the eyes of icon venerators on the heroic naturalism of much nineteenth-century Russian secular painting. Many found a call to revolutionary defiance in the proud expression of an unbowed boy in Repin's famous "Haulers on the Volga." Just as the Christian warriors of an earlier age had made vows before icons in church on the eve of battle, so Russian Revolutionaries-in the words of Lenin's personal secretary-"swore vows in the Tret'iakov Gallery on seeing such pictures."80

  Large-scale cleaning and restoration in the early twentieth century helped Russians rediscover at long last the purely artistic glories of the older icons. Just as the hymns and chants of the church had provided new themes and inspiration for early Russian iconographers, so their rediscovered paintings gave fresh inspirationbackJo.j)oets and musicians as well as painters in late imperial Russia. Undj»jheJioj7riex_sejmnarian Stalinjjjowiver, the icon lived on not as the inspiration for creative art but as a model for mass indoctrinatiorTTTiFolrler icons, like the newerjjxrjejrhnental paintings, were for ffleTnosr-part lockecTup in the reserve collections of museums. Pictures of ????~1????-^??~^??????01????1??1?8 and public ~pTaces~replaced icons of Christ and the Virgin. Photographs of Lenin's successors deployed in a prescribed order on either side of Stalin replaced the old "prayer row," in which saints were deployed in fixed order on either side of Christ enthroned. Just as the iconostasis of a cathedral was generally built directly over the grave of a local saint and specially reverenced with processions on a religious festival, so these new Soviet saints appeared in ritual form over th
e

  mausoleum of the mummified Lenin on the feast days of Bolshevism to review endless processions through Red Square.

  In the context of Russian culture thisjitempt to capitalize politically on

  the popular_reverence for icons rgpjresents only an extension of an estab-

  HshjdJiadTtiraroTrle^Polish pretender JDmitry, the Swedish

  warrior Gustavus Adolphus, most of the Romanovs, and many of their generals had themselves painted in semi-iconographic style for the Russian populace.81 An emigre Old Believer-for whom all modern history repre-sentFaloredoomed divergence from the true ways of Old Russia-looked with indifference and even joy upon the transfer of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan from a cathedral to a museum early in the Soviet era:

  The Queen of Heaven, divesting herself of her regal robes, issued forth from her Church to preach Christianity in the streets.82

  Stalin added an element of the grotesque to the tradition of politically dpbnsin^£m^aOnTn^sTjJ^introducedjiew icons and relics in thejiame_ of science, then proceeded tojetouch and^esecrateftem,JtEfoje_his own

  ?? lesser figures on the

  image and remains were posthumously defiled. Soviet iconostasis had removed the central icon of Stalin enthroned, and largely destroyed the new myth of salvation. But in the uncertain age that followed, lithographs of Lenin and giant cranes continued to hover over prefabricated concrete huts piled on one another much as the icon and the axe had over the wooden huts of a more primitive era

  Bell and Cannon

  If the icon and the axe in the peasant hut became abiding symbols for Russian culture, so too did the bell and cannon of the walled city. These were-ihe-fitsLlarge metal ?^????^???'? manufactured indigenously in the wooden world of Muscovy: objects that distinguished the city from the surroundingcountryside and fortified it against alien invaders.

  Just aTtnellam'^nrr'tne axe were closely linked with one another, so were ??~??~???~^????7^?1?~??? had fashioned and coulu destroythe

  wooden board orTwhich the painting was ??? foundry which forged the first cannon also made-the

  being ttielted back into metal for artillery in time of war. The beJLJili£jb£JconJ_was taken from Byzantium to provide aesthetic eiaboratian for th£_"right^praising" of ?^fand"bT5tK media came to be

  the "primitive*; first 6ells;nffi3these, werealwjrysinjjerii ?

  used ^witti_ey£n_greater intensity and imagination than in Constantinople. The development of the elaborate and many-tiered Russian bell tower- with its profusion of bells and onion-shaped gables-parallels in many ways that^of the iconostas^JThejich "mauvP^finging"oFbeTIs~so that "people cannot hear one another in conversation"83 became the inevitable accompaniment of icon-bearing processions on special feast days. There were almosl-as-???? bejjs_agd ways to~nri~g ftl^ asTconTlmd ways to di^glay them. By the early. fKteenf^jSitury^Russia??? evolveadistinctive models that differed from the bells of Byzantium, Western Europe, or the Orient. The Russian emphasis on massive7immovable*~cStalD31s sounded by metal gongs and clappers led to a greater sonority and resonance than the generally smaller, frequently swinging, and often wooden bells of the contemporary West". Although Russia never produced carillons comparable to those of the Low Countries, it did develop its own methods and traditions of ringing different-sized bells in series. By the sixteenth century, it has been estimated that there were morejhan five thousand bdk_ in the four huntod^hjKche^of^loiiCjPjv^one^'

  Just asjhe icon wasiautone element in a pictorial culture that included the fresco, the illuminated holy te^anJjEilillustrated chronicle, so the beU^^^^rt^TJTorrej^of soun^^o^id^^y^iate^niinable chanted church services, ppuTartyinnsmtcTballajIs, and the^ secular improvisations of wandering folk singers armed with a variety of stringed instruments. Sights and sounds pointecTthe wayTo God, not philosophic speculation or literary subtlety. Servjcgs~were committed to memory without benefit of missal or prayer book;, and the "obedient listeners" in monasteries were subjected to oral instruction. Not only were the saints said to be "very like" the holy forms on the icons, but the very word for education suggested "becoming like the forms" {obrazovanie).

  The interaction between sight and sound is also remarkable. If the iconography of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Russia drew special inspiration from holy singing, and the Russian icon came to be a kind of "abstract musical arabesque . . . purified, like music, of all but its direct appeals to the spirit,"85 so the new method of musical notation thafwas" simultaneously coming into being in Muscovy had a kind of hieroglyphic quality. The authority of the classical Byzantine chant appears to have waned after the fourteenth century-without giving way to any other method of clearly defining the intervals and correlations of tones. In its place appeared the "signed chant": a new tradition of vocal ornamentation in which "melody not only flowed out of words, but served as the mold on which words were set in bold relief."86 When written down, the embellished red and black hooked notes offered only a shorthand guide to the direction

  of melody rather than a precise indication of pitch; but the vivid pictorial impression created by the signs gave rise to descriptive names such as "the great spider," "the thunderbolt," "two in a boat," and so on.87

  Though even.less is known about secular than sacred music in this early period, there ware apparently patterns* of beauty in it, based on repetition with variation by different voices. The exalted "rejoicing" (blagovestie) of the bells used an overlapping series of sounds similar to that which was used in the "many-voiced" church chant-producing an effect"that:w^'anhe^aniSTime~clSo]Dh6nous and hypnotic.

  Russians Farther same mixture of joyful religious exultation and animistic superstition in the ringing of the bells as in the veneration of icons. Just as icons were paraded to ward off the evil spirits of plague, drought, and fire, so were bells rung to summon up the power of God against these forces. Just as icons were paraded around the boundaries to sanctify a land claim, so bells were rung to lend solemnity to official gatherings. In both cases, spiritual sanctification was more valued than legal precision. As with thelc^rT-TW-^nth'ffig'fjeTl;^' ????????????1?????1? analogical power to lift men up toGocTi

  The weak sounds of wood and metal remind us of the unclear, mysterious words of the prophets, but the loud and vigorous play of bells is like the rejoicing of the Gospel, radiating out to all the corners of the universe and lifting one's thoughts to the angelic trumpets of the last day.88

  The forging andringing of bells, like the painting and veneration of

  icons, was a sacrameritaTlcTirT Muaiuvy. a means of bringing tne wofl""of

  God into the presence of men._fW^wora^wasThe^goincT1St.ToHn's"'

  gospel: the word which was in the beginning, was revealed perfectly in

  Christ, and was to be praised and magnified until His Second Coming.

  There was no need to speculate about this unmerited gift, but only to pre-

  serve InTa^Tlrie'Trmeritg^"There was no

  reasorTto write discursively about the impeflect world of here arid now when one could see-however~darkly-through the beauty of sights and sounds a transfigured workLbeypnd.

  The importance of bells in lending color and solemnity to church pro

  ceedings was heightened by the gerjejaljjrphibjtiojnjmjhe jjse of musical

  instrumentsinOrthodox services. Only the Jnjrnan voice and b^Us were

  permitted (withia!Treic!£imM4isel)Ftra^the^

  furmici~iiiiaajQ^^absence from early MuSeovy

  of polyphony oreven a systematic scale~made tne~rough~ but many-shaded harrnanigssouride^n!pon"ffie~Deirs seem like ffie~uitimate in earthly music. Just as Muscovy resisteTthT^nteinporary Western tendency to introduce

  perspective and naturalism into religious painting, so it resisted the concurrent Western tendency to use bells to provide orderly musical intervals or to accompany (with fixed tonal values and often in conjunction with an organ) the singing of sacred offices.89

  The bell played an important part in material as well as spiritual culture through
its technological tie-in with the manufacture of cannon. Already by the late fourteenth century-only a few years after the first appearance of cannon in theWesf-Russians had begun to manufacture cannon along with bells; arid, by the sixteenth century, they had produced the largest of each item to be found^njwhexeJnJhe^wpild.So important were these twjnjoeta]jpro^cts_to^uscoyy that Jhe largest example of each was giventhejMs."T^tZL^.-b^-"^M^E0lokol,'',y/si^ixig nearly half a million^punds^the cannan›_lTsar Pushka," with abarrel nearly a yard wide.

  They represent the first example of "overtaking and surpassing" a superiorTedhnology. ButTfTey illustrate" as weii the artificiality of the accom-plishrnent. For the bell was too large to hang, the cannon too broad to fire. Technological accomplishments in both fields were, moreover, in good measure the work of foreigners from the time in the early fourteenth century whenXcertim~"Boris the Roman" first came to cast bells for Moscow and Novgorod.^0

  If the bell predated the cannon as an object of technological interest, die cannon soon replaced it as the main object of state concern. Many bells in jffovincial skies and monasteries~were^Systematically melted down to provide cannon for the swellingRussian armies of"tEelate seventeenth and" the eighteenth century; but irmbrnHrable'b^rrelmamed in Moscow, the skyline of which was dominated by the soaring 270-foot Bell Tower of Ivan the Great, which Boris Godunov had erected on a hill inside the Kremlin at the Very beginning of this period. This tower was intended (like another massive bell tower built by Patriarch Nikon just outside Moscow in the latter part ofjhe century) to be the/crowning glory of a IN^wJerusalem" on Russtansoil: q. center of civilization built in partial imitation of the ?? ^erusalernTand with enough embellishment to suggest the New. The tower in the Kremlin provided the shelter from which the fundamentalist Old Believers lateTTm^a^sToneTat official church plo^slioTrs^These defenders of the oTdlardeTfesisted the cannon fire of government troopsjfor_eight~ years in their northern monastic redoubt at Solovetsk. After this last, storied bastion fell, they spread out to "the provinces to watch for the approach of the Tsar's "legions of Antichrist" from the bell towers of wooden churches, whence they sounded the signal to set fire to the church and the true believers within.82