Hello everyone, this is Father Paul and I hope you're having a good day. You're listening to Copts in Conversation. And it emerges throughout the process because this process is not just a matter of putting paint on drywall. It's a process of prayerful. It's contemplative, right? And when it all comes together, it becomes this harmonious program that leads you deeper into this liturgical mystery. And it's beautiful.
And by the time this podcast is out, you'd be able to see for yourself what we're looking at right now and all of these photos. And I'm not sure if Corliss is going to be putting photos of the process as they're being painted or just a final product, but it's beautiful. This idea of process is such a big thing because it's also just as it is a process to create these images, it's also a process of interpretation. And that process of interpretation, it lasts your whole life.
Imagine that you're in the same parish, attending the same church, standing in the same spot for your whole life. And all of these images are constructed so as to have so many layers of depth like I've just been describing. You're not going to walk in and understand everything on the first day. The iconography isn't built that way. Neither is scripture. Neither is our liturgy.
There are so many layers of depth in there so that you can keep coming back to this church or keep coming back to scripture or to liturgy and always find new depth in the story. As Chris Awesome says, it's an inexhaustible well. Absolutely. Yeah. And so iconography functions in the same way. I think of it as the images should be constructed at a level of depth and pattern that liturgy for your whole life can just be like a continuous series of aha moments.
You think of something like the sacrifice of Isaac that I mentioned earlier. I can imagine being in that church in the monastery of St. Anthony and wondering what Abraham and Isaac are doing up there in the sanctuary. And then you come to Holy Thursday and then the priest prays the fraction of Abraham and Isaac. And at the end, it really spells out the typology for you. Thus the sacrifice of Isaac was a type of the slaying of Christ on the cross.
And just as Isaac carried the wood, so Christ carried the cross and all this kind of thing. And then you show up on that feast and you look and you're like, oh, okay. Suddenly things start to make sense. And I love the fact that the way you put it with that Coptic icons use the same language as Coptic immunography, as the Coptic liturgy and having different icons that speak different languages isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It just breaks the harmony that all of these elements come together and what they're all trying to achieve, what they're all trying to do. Which brings me to my next question. And that is, it's just a matter of fact that we have so many non-Coptic icons in churches and how these affect us as congregants.
We have icons everywhere of St. John the Baptist and people are familiar a lot more with the non-Coptic, some Roman Catholic icons of the baptism or where the water is being poured onto Christ's head. Exactly. And all these elements are there and they're speaking in a different way than how we're speaking. And then when they come in together, there's a little bit of a break in that harmony.
And I think it's important to understand that these icons are part of a process that requires us being thoughtful about, us being purposefully and intentionally making decisions where the icon is part of the program. It's not an afterthought. It's not just a matter of giving basic information about the logistics of what's happening and kind of like the giving a summary of a story or an event in the Bible. They do more than that.
Yeah. I think we have to have a pretty balanced conversation about this. I think maybe right now the problem is that there really isn't any conversation at all. But taken for granted that this is just how it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or it's like decisions are made based on the personal taste of the clergy or board of a church or whatever. And that's fine.
I don't think it would be reasonable to say that you can't use different kinds of art, all this Renaissance and Baroque painting that we're so used to, which is to say, people call it more realistic, let's say. But we have to be a bit more specific and define the terms a little bit. The Renaissance is what we get with people like Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.
And if you read the lives of the artists of the Renaissance, which was written by a contemporary of theirs, Giorgio Vasari, he writes about those artists the way that you would write about saints. It really is hagiography. It's fascinating. And when he talks about all these artists and praises them for their achievements, the focus is on their accurate depictions of anatomy and perspective and landscapes and things like that.
So the Renaissance is a bit more of, there's something a bit more rational and scientific about it, something a bit more rooted in observation when compared to the Baroque. The Baroque is where we get lots of drama. And so if we look at the images that are most popular in Coptic churches during Holy Week, Christ in Agony and things like that, that's all from the Baroque. Lots of drama, things are very, very theatrical. You get lots of dramatic lighting and things like that.
And even facial expressions. Yes. Everything is very exaggerated. And of course, this makes sense when you look at high tridentine mass in the Catholic Church and the music that went along with it and the grandiosity of the ritual. All these things fit together. They're meant to fit together. Yeah, yeah.
Of course, the approaches that I just described with regards to the Renaissance and the Baroque, it doesn't take a lot of thinking to understand that what I've just described doesn't really have much to do with the goals of Orthodox liturgy. Now people like Abouneb Shoai Kamel, for example. Abouneb Shoai Kamel is very well known for having had an icon. It seems like it was an engraving, like a black and white engraving of Christ on the cross and Mary Magdalene embracing the foot of the cross.
And like I said, it has all of that kind of Baroque sentimentality and drama of Baroque art. Abouneb Shoai Kamel used it as part of his prayer life and that image was an important part of his spiritual life and we have all his theology of the cross and things like that. So a great saint like Abouneb Shoai Kamel was able to use those kinds of images as an important part of his beautiful life with God. So it's not to say that these images are inherently problematic.
Now of course sometimes the images do carry a theological message that isn't in line with the faith of the Church, like the Nativity scene that we're all kind of used to. This very nice cute Christ in the manger and the Virgin Mary and Joseph are standing and just adoring the Christ child has some undertones of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Right?
Because it's showing the Virgin Mary as basically not having suffered any kind of pain or anything like that in childbirth and this is an area of theology that's like way above my pay grade. In contrast you have the Orthodox imagery of the Virgin Mary where she's reclining in a bed as a woman who has just given birth and that appears in all different Orthodox traditions. And the theme carries on to different icons as well. Right. Such as the Dormition and the Burial of Christ.
Yes. And of course with the Dormition it's like Christ is carrying the Virgin Mary's soul the way that people are used to seeing the Virgin Mary carrying Christ. So there's this constant reversal. And yeah like you're saying all those patterns are at play. Like Christ kind of laying in the tomb in this dark cave and all this kind of thing. So all of that is working there.
Another great example of how this all fits in Liturgy since we're on the icon of the Nativity is I've noticed recently that the Copts seem to have a particular interest in bringing the prophets into New Testament scenes. So you have and a great example of this is in the Hanging Church in Old Cairo. It's a Nativity scene where the Virgin is reclining and Christ is there in the manger with the ox and the donkey.
And then Isaiah is standing right at the feet of the manger and he's holding a scroll that says behold the Virgin shall conceive and give birth to a son and call his name Emmanuel. And he's pointing at the manger with the ox and the donkey. Now in our ancient hymnography there's a hymn that mentions both prophecies of Isaiah and talks about how Isaiah is present with us today at the Nativity and things like that.
I mention this because it has both the prophecy about the Virgin birth and the ox and the donkey. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib but Israel does not know me. Which is what they're doing there in the Nativity by the way. But even in our hymns that we use today our contemporary like liturgy and psalmody still carries all those themes. So you've got the Monday of theotokai is a great example of this. Isaiah has seen the mystery of Emmanuel with prophetic insight.
Before Isaiah the prophet shouted proclaiming and saying for unto us a child is born and to us a son is given. And later in the same theotokai it picks up on David and it says that like when David heard about the incarnation he arose and went to the temple and sang to the Holy Trinity. So it makes the prophets present, it makes them there. And this imagery of the prophets appears all over our hymns.
And it's such an obvious example of the way that Coptic iconography and Coptic hymnography – – is very characteristic of our worship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All fit together. It's the exact same language of liturgy. On the note of problematic non-Orthodox icons I see a lot of icons of the sacred heart of Jesus which is something that's not really orthodox. It's not part of our faith tradition. That's not something you'd ever find in a church.
But I do see people having these in their homes and it's again it's not that the conversation is that the conversation isn't happening. Like we need to talk about these things and all these elements and what they mean and how they fit in order to understand them better and to treat them as what they are. Not just as nice decorations and chosen and picked and placed purely based on aesthetics. And speaking of placement, do icons belong outside of the church like in homes for example?
So you mentioned you painted some icons at homes. Yeah, yeah. How does that fit? See now you hear a lot of people talking about a prayer corner at home. It's all part of that hierarchy that we discussed earlier with regards to all different kinds of art or music or whatever. There's the liturgy on Sunday and then there's everything else that flows out from that. So whatever icons or images that people have in their homes, any prayer that you do at home, that's an extension of liturgy.
And in that sense icons certainly belong at home just as they do at church. And the icon corner is an interesting thing because it seems to me that, I don't want to emphasize this too strongly, this is just me kind of thinking out loud. It seems to me that this idea of a dedicated space in Egypt, it wasn't as possible because people kind of grew up in smaller homes, small apartments. Space is limited. Yeah, space is limited and stuff.
So everything is kind of all over the place and so everyone knows the experience of going to Teta's house. Teta doesn't have an icon corner. Teta has images everywhere, on the kitchen table, in the mirror, inside the drawer, above the stove, everywhere. Even cars in Egypt, I wonder how they're able to see from all the icons that are all around, the windows and the front and everywhere.
And if you're walking around in Shobran, you can go to a barber shop where it's like Pope Corliss and St. George and just all these images. Very prominently on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we have a bit more of the luxury of being able to have more space and so being able to have a dedicated space for prayer. And I think also our contact in the West with other Orthodox groups in which the icon corner is a really big thing has really impacted our spiritual culture, our piety.
This idea of an icon corner, that's very much like a Russian thing. The icon corner with the oil lamp and all the rest of it, it's very much a part of their piety. And then by being in contact with Russian communities here, we're able to glean from their spiritual life as well and start placing a big importance on things like icon corners in our homes. So in that sense, it's kind of like a new trend. But I think people do try to make it an extension of church.
People instinctively, when arranging the icons, will say, oh, well, the Virgin Mary should be on Christ's right and on the other side should be John the Baptist. And they'll try to arrange it like a program. The same way it's arranged in church. Yeah. So you end up engaging in a little exercise in programming.
And if a husband and wife are praying at home together and they have an icon of Christ and an icon of the Virgin Mary, suddenly that little mini program that they have in their home starts to mirror their life as Christ and the church. And people contact me for all sorts of things like this. People ask to have icons with the names of the saints that their kids are named after or their own namesakes or things like that. So it becomes a different kind of program in the house.
So it actually, I think, becomes a very beautiful thing. Absolutely. And I think just like the conversation about orthodox and non-orthodox icons, we also need to have this conversation, understand what it means to have a prayer corner. It's not completely, but almost excludes the rest of the house. This is the corner dedicated for prayer, but the rest of the house we have dedicated to other things. So we have an entertainment center.
This is where we go and the big screen TV displayed prominently in a very central location. But then you think of it like, where is prayer? It's in a corner. It's like a prayer corner, an icon corner. And part of it, of course, that having that is something positive, something good that this is where I go to pray and I have a relationship with that space that just automatically reminds me and alerts my mind to the presence of God.
And even if I'm not praying, even if I'm just walking by, passing by, this is prayer. This is the icon. God is here. But hopefully not to the exclusion of the rest of the house, because God is everywhere. God is here and he's over there in the living room and in the office and everywhere. So maybe what we really need is a combination of both approaches. Like something between the icon corner and Teta's house. There's a lot of beautiful traditions with these things.
I've seen in my life a lot of Coptic people always have an icon of Archangel Michael at the door of the house. Yeah, I've seen that a lot. Yeah. Archangel Michael goes at the door of the house. Why? Because Archangel Michael is the protector. He protects the house.
And actually, if you think about how that plays out in monastic culture, the chapel in the keep, the Hesn, where the monks escape with the drawbridge and stuff if there's an attack, the chapel that's up there is always named after Archangel Michael. Yeah, as a protector. So there's this understanding of Archangel Michael as a protector, whether you're a monk in the monastery or whether you're just a lay person living in the world.
Some people will put icons of a particular saint in the kitchen, let's say, or people often have the last supper in their dining rooms. So these are all like, I don't know, maybe... So the choice is maybe less programmatic and more functional. But that's what it is. That's exactly what it is. That's what it is. It's the same mentality that makes us call the kitchen where they make the urban... Bethlehem. Bethlehem, yeah. That's the same kind of thinking.
It's a thinking that says, ah, Christ is born here. It's like, you know, this kitchen. And that's why we see around Christmas a wave of newborns, all Gabriel. We see tons of Gabriel around Christmas. Maybe people don't notice, but the priest, they notice because we're always baptizing. Gabriel, Gabriela is always around Christmas time. Yeah, yeah. But here's the cool thing about all of this.
What this means to me is that the kind of thinking that goes into iconography and goes into like how, you know, liturgy fits together and all of this stuff, that whole experience, like it's embedded in our subconscious somewhere, you know? To use the terminology of like David Fagerberg and Aidan Kavanagh, you know, they have like primary theology and secondary theology. Secondary theology is all the things that we might say about theology if we speak or write about God.
And then primary theology is theology in the sense of the live of agrius. The theologian is the one who prays, right? And I think like we kind of, by virtue of being in liturgy, we have a bit of that experience of primary theology that makes us want to program our whole life in an iconographic way, right? So this is not something foreign. This type of thinking is not something from the outside. It's there. It's something innate. Yeah, yeah. It's coming from within.
Yeah. And all we have to do, I think now, is to draw people's attention to what we're already doing so that we can now do it more clearly and more intentionally. I did a workshop. I've done it with a couple of groups. And this workshop was mainly about programming. So what I do is like I'll give a talk about programming and I'll show usually from the lectionary like how this all kind of works, putting different stories together and things like that.
And then I'll show some examples of ancient churches and how that works. And then what we did is that I had the servants of these groups print out the architectural plans and elevations of random churches. And I had these groups divided into smaller groups. And I said, okay, now you're going to do it yourself.
You're going to take the architectural drawings of a church and you're going to program this church and you're going to decide what the theme is going to be, how the images are going to fit together and what's going to go where and all this kind of stuff. And I want you to think of like your average youth group.
After just a little bit of talk about programming, they took their little churches and came up with brilliant ideas that some of which I would love to use in my own work as an iconographer. And it's because I think nobody had kind of encouraged them to think about scripture visually in that way before. But as soon as you draw their attention to it, like you're saying, it's innate. They already have it. They're just drawn to it and they feel like they're responding to it.
Yeah. There was one example that it was one guy who like the plan of the church that he got was cross shaped. So his group said, okay, it's in the shape of a cross and the east is the sanctuary. So it represents heaven because whenever we stand in your holy sanctuary, we're considered standing in heaven. And then that means the West would be like the world. And we know that because we turn to the Western baptisms and renounce Satan.
So they designed like images of paradise in the East and then Christ's descent into Hades in the West of the church. And then they said, okay, now North and South. And they said they put Christ crucified in the dome. In the dome. Yeah. Again, very unusual. Like this is someone, these are people who like, you don't know much about iconography before that and they're just doing the programming. But it works. It's not something you would have seen in tradition like crucifixion at a dome.
But it works. It does what a program is supposed to do. And then here's the crazy part. They said, okay, if Christ unites heaven and earth through the cross, that means from the right and left, what would he be uniting? So they said the Jews and the Gentiles. So I asked this person, have you read on the incarnation by St. Athanasius? And he said, no. What does that mean?
Because St. Athanasius says that Christ was crucified on the cross to bring the Jews and the Gentiles from right and left and unite them in himself. What that means is that this visual theology brought someone who hasn't read St. Athanasius to St. Athanasius' conclusions through images. That's how powerful all of this is. Because then you suddenly, someone just has to tell you to look for these patterns and then you can't unsee it. You can't unsee it. And that's how you get this journey.
And I would say this youth group, this person, this group who came up with this idea, now every time they walk in church, they can't unsee it. Immediately their minds turn, they tell them there's a program, there's something happening here. All these icons are working together for a purpose. It's not just random decorations on the wall. There's something happening here and it alerts their mind and it wakes them up.
We had a group that made their entire program based on just the readings of Bright Saturday. One group came up with a little story. They told me this church. They told me this church is on an island in Greece and everybody who lives on this island and goes to this church are fishermen. So we're going to make a program that's based on water and fishing and things like that.
And they made one of the important icons in the church, the apostles drawing all the fish into Christ's boat and things like that. And then there was another part to this workshop where I would then have people pick random places from their life and then program those. And the first time I got them to program it with icons. And then the second time I said, okay, now program the same space and it was like your office, the kitchen, your garage, whatever. The garage was really funny.
Somebody put an icon of Elijah and the fiery chariot. In the garage. Because it's for their car. Because it has wheels. Makes sense. So they tried figuring out what images to put in these spaces and whatever. But then I said, okay, now you have to do it again without any explicitly Christian symbolism. And there was a lady who the place that she got was like a garden. So her garden at home. How are you going to program your garden without any explicitly Christian symbolism?
So she came and she told me, I've picked the flowers that I'm going to put in the garden for symbolic reasons. So she said, oh, I'm going to have white roses because they remind me of the purity of St. Mary. And I'm going to put red roses because it reminds me of the blood of Christ, et cetera, et cetera. So now you've completed the trajectory. Because now the icons in church and the way that things are programmed are training you to look at the flowers or the trees or whatever.
Programming the world. And see Jesus everywhere. Yes. That's beautiful. That's amazing. And it only comes from taking the iconography seriously and being intentional about it. And one last question. And I think you've touched on this before, but which team are you? Are you team writing icons or team painting icons? It seems like you're a new team, team creating icons. Oh dear. You bypass this whole debate. Uh oh. I'm not going to put you on the spot.
No, no, no, no. Professor Schneider is up in heaven and I hope he's listening. Anyway, the idea of writing icons is like, it's a convenient pun. It's a pun, you know, in Greek because the word grapho in Greek can be used for drawing or writing. It can be translated in different ways. The word is a word that is originally in Greek, but used in Coptic as well as a loanword. And that often gets used to designate artists and the act of painting.
If you translate it literally, it would be writing life. But it's a single word and it gets used to designate painters. So the painter who painted the monastery of St. Anthony in the 13th century, he signed his name in the church, Theodor Zografos. And in the Sali of Nehruz, we have a very syncoptic that says, in the popular translation that we have now, it says engrave in our souls the beauty of your image.
But I think it could just as well be translated paint into our souls the beauty of your image, which is the translation that I like. I don't ever remember saying that I'm writing icons. I don't think I've ever heard you say that either. In context, that word, in context, it's the language of painting and of making things, of making images. And people are welcome to say writing icons if it helps them understand that there's a visual theology and icons that is to be read and interpreted.
But I think it also comes with this implication that seems very pious, but that I think is ultimately a bit harmful. So people will say things like, we don't paint icons, we write icons in the same breath as statements like iconography is not art. This appears in hymns too, like, oh, we're not singing the hymn, we're praying the hymn. And these are all very well-intentioned statements. But iconography is art, and it matters that we use art in liturgy.
Of course, I think oftentimes the distinction that they're trying to make is in our modern context, there's art for art's sake, which is like just a form for its own sake. There's no purpose. Exactly. And so people who say things like that are trying to distinguish iconography from the modern understanding of art as art for art's sake. And that's absolutely correct. That's a good distinction to be making. But saying that it is art reclaims art for its true purpose. Iconography is art.
It's not art for art's sake. It's art for God's sake and for the Church's sake. Although it's mainly for us. It's to teach us and to reveal Christ to us. You said it beautifully before, to retrain our eyes. Yeah. It's for God in the sense that all beauty in the Church is an offering of love to God. Beauty and decoration and music and vestments, none of this stuff is necessary. But it's a reflection of love the same way a man might offer their wife flowers.
You're going to offer the most beautiful flowers. Yes. So it's an offering of beauty in that sense. It's for God. Same thing with music. Like, sing to the Lord a new song. It is singing. And so we use singing and art. It's in the hymn itself. We use singing and art and architecture and vestments and all that stuff. All of these aspects of human culture, they're not rejected. They're taken and sanctified. Yeah, exactly. They're taken and sanctified. Rational offerings.
Yeah. And it goes back to what we were saying about styles and stuff like that. It's like the Copts are constantly taking the elements of their current surroundings and culture and offering it to God, bringing it into the Kingdom to offer to God and to serve His Church. We're very good at that. As some people think that we tend towards isolation, we're very good at being in contact, being in conversation. And iconography is one of those places that you can see this interaction fully alive.
And if you're able to see the historical development, you can see this happening time and time again. And before we end today, I just want to give you the opportunity to say a few words. You know, it's funny, the interest in the last couple of years has been growing exponentially. I've seen that too. And a lot of people are coming up who are taking iconography very seriously, especially lots of young people. So it's definitely a beautiful thing to see.
And even different theological schools that are starting to pop up or diocese initiatives or even at the Paris level are trying to make the study of iconography more and more accessible to people. What I would say is that if you're interested in iconography, look for workshops that are offered near you. They happen every now and then. Sometimes people will travel to go and attend the workshop or help an iconographer out in a project that's happening nearby.
You know, the same way that I went and met Fadi while he was painting SMSV. So these things really help. Like anything that you can absorb is good. I would say that unfortunately there isn't a full program to study Coptic iconography or even like a kind of one-stop shop textbook or anything like that. You have to remember that we're still building on the foundation that Isaac Fanouss laid when he was reviving Coptic iconography in the 20th century. Isaac Fanouss' work is not done.
So if people are into academia as well and research, there's a lot of room for people to come in and help do research on our iconographic tradition as well so that we can understand it better as a church. So if you want to paint icons, by all means, find resources. You're welcome to reach out to me or people also often reach out to lots of other iconographers and we try to help as best as we can.
But also if you love iconography but don't feel like you want to be drawing or painting, that theological aspect is so important and the harvest is plenty. So yeah, it's a beautiful thing and it's a beautiful language between the painter and God and a beautiful way of spending time with God and learning about him and about the saints and about the church.
It's a bit of a cliché that people say like a picture is worth a thousand words but really like to make an icon, there's so much that you need to know and understand. Like at a very basic level if you're painting a saint who used to be a bishop or a priest or whatever, naturally you need to have some understanding of church vestments so that you know how you're going to dress them and things like that.
That's just a little piece of the amount of things that you end up learning as you go through the process of iconography. So for me it's also just been a really great vehicle to learn about the church deeply. Yeah you keep on seeing new things and seeing Christ everywhere and then you can't even see it. And I'm sure it's been a fulfilling journey.
I agree I have been seeing a lot of interest especially in younger people moving towards iconography, learning more about the iconographic tradition of the church. This is fruits of seeds that have been sown a long time ago and we're starting to see fruits now of these seeds and the work is not done. And like you said earlier the work that was happening was not done. We still have a lot of work to do. And I want to thank you for this amazing conversation.
I learned so much and thank you for having me. Again if you want to learn more about Kroos' work his website is www.KKILADA.com. Thank you very much Kroos. Thanks everyone. And thank you everyone for listening. I'll see you next time. I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. For questions, comments, feedback or if you'd like to make a suggestion on a topic for a future episode please feel free to reach out to the email in the bio.
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