ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the eastern response, that faith in icons which represents a more personal type of dedication to Christian images. It discusses the place of icons in worship, their character and the way they came to symbolize the holy and mediate between earth and heaven. The chapter concentrates on some features of Late Antique Mediterranean culture, shared by Jews and Gentiles, pagan and Christian alike. The commemoration of dead rulers in funerary monuments and living emperors through images to which respect had to be shown, extended this practice into the daily political sphere. The word eikn means any image or representation. Hence, the association of women and iconophiles may not be only a disparaging male comment on female weakness and incapacity to understand the higher points of theology: there may be a real connection between icons and the way Byzantine women worshipped.
