ABSTRACT
As Alexei Lidov has recently argued in his analysis of the Tuesday rite of the Hodegetria in Constantinople, an icon could help to define a sacred space through its ceremonial activities; that sacred space was not limited to a church interior, but could extend to encompass the urban milieu that was associated with an image’s processional life.1 Lidov emphasizes that, in the Byzantine realm, a representation could develop a new ‘iconic image’ that was linked not to an actual picture, but to the spatial vision of the processional environment and ritual context.2 This creation of sacred space also had a temporal aspect, since the repetitive nature of ritual activity promoted a reading of the cult across different layers of time: the eternal, the historical and the actual. While following a particular route, an icon procession could evoke the eternal presence of the holy figure as a protector of the city, the historical origins for the ritual performance as well as the actual, present enactment of the ceremony.
