ABSTRACT
IMAGES, WHETHER pictures or statues, are deliberately created symbols of what or of whom they represent. Other features of a church, and indeed the church itself, are symbols only if they are used and interpreted as such. Of images St John Damascene, who was a fierce opponent of the Byzantine Emperors’ edicts against images in the first half of the eighth century, wrote: 1
Images speak – they are neither mute, nor lifeless blocks, like the images of the pagans, Every painting that meets our gaze in a church relates, as if in words, the humiliation of Christ for his people, the miracles of the Mother of God, the deeds, and conflicts of the saints. Images open the heart and awake the intellect and, in a marvellous and indescribable way, engage us to imitate the persons they represent.
