Russian Icons

The Russian Orthodox Church is known for its beautiful icons. Icons themselves date to the Byzantium Empire, but Orthodoxy was not fully adopted by the Russian culture until later, when Prince Vladimir of Kiev (Ukraine) chose Christian Orthodoxy as the official religion for his people. Prince Vladimir had such great admiration for the beauty and reverence of the Greek Orthodox services that much of Russian culture is borrowed from them. (In fact, the Cyrillic alphabet of the Russian language was created by St. Cyril, modifying the Greek alphabet to linguistically match Russian. Studies of Russian often draw on its Greek roots.)

The creation of icons themselves is a careful, sacred process, which was specifically defined by the famous council of Nicea in 787: “Icons are not the creation of painters but an accepted institution and tradition of the faith. Only the art belongs to the painter, whereas the form without doubt comes from the fathers who founded the Church.”

I particularly love the angelic icons, my favorites being the various depictions of St. Michael the Archangel. In iconography's celestial hierarchy, Archangels rank closely under Christ. “The lightness of the angels’ wings symbolizes the freedom from all worldly attraction, pure and unimpeded, lifting toward the heights.” The Archangel Michael, “he who is like God,” is the symbol of victory of good over evil, and has four distinct roles within Christianity: he is the supreme enemy of Satan and will achieve victory at the hour of the final battle; he is the angel of death, giving each soul the chance to redeem itself; he weighs souls in his perfectly-balanced scales on Judgment Day; and he is the guardian of the Church.

In this icon of the Archangel Michael, we see the sword carried in one hand, his symbol of a warrior, and in the other a shield with the Slavonic letters spelling Christ, representing the Eternal Kingdom in Michael’s care. The letters at the top right spell out ‘Mikhail.’ He is wearing red, the iconographic color that celebrates eternal life and the blood shed for it.

Other icons of the Archangel Michael depict him standing on a serpent or dragon (Satan) who is trying to grasp at a scale (instead of a shield) held by Michael, in an attempt to tip the scale in Satan’s favor. Michael may also be represented holding a child (symbolizing the humans soul) being fairly judged without Satan’s interference.