I’ve been wanting to bring in a bit more art into our history because art and history are a good combination, you can see how one influences the other (there are several topics you could bring into this). A semi-recent lesson from Mystery of History 2 (affiliate link and there are more in here) gave me the excuse.
The Icon controversy
At some point in early church history people began to look at the paintings and artifacts of Christian saints, and Biblical figures as not just something to look at and admire, and it started to cross over into worship.
Thus began the great debate. Should we include icons, paintings, and statues of saints, in our church and our worship, or is that forbidden?
Eventually, it became so heated the current Byzantine Emperor, Leo 3, waded into the conflict and said “That’s it! No more icons or paintings or statues. They must all be destroyed so we are not worshipping false gods.”
And so throughout the Byzantine empire hundreds and thousands of paintings were whitewashed over, and statues were smashed.
Eventually, after that emperor died the controversy died down and the Eastern Orthodox church allowed icons back into their worship, but the Western Catholic church did not for several decades more (I don’t have an exact time when that stand changed)
Studying icons for art history
I did a quick Google search for images, and then showed them to the kids as well as a few books I got this past summer. They were intrigued by what they saw and there were some common threads.
- They were most frequently shown standing.
- They often had a golden “halo” this shining light represented God’s holiness shining through them.
- Many saints and apostles had a symbol associated with them, that was included in their paintings and statues.
- Backgrounds were a golden bronze color.
- They were often framed by elaborate scrollwork.
Then we set about making our own icons. The kids each chose different disciples or characters from the Bible to illustrate and create their own symbols.
I think this one is Moses and Peter (I’m guessing Peter because of the key I see).
Batman was kind enough to label his pictures, so we know it is Samuel and John the Baptist.
Princess did a trio of pictures of Jesus. It let me talk about a fun sub-type of art called a triptych (which I need to look up the spelling of it).
And afterward, we taped them into our history notebooks (made using the MOH 2 Super-supplemental, which sadly no longer exists )
*icon image used with permission and was cropped
Great lesson. Icons are huge in Russian Orhtodox Church – I was never a big fan of them, since they seemed so… old.
Ha ha ha ha ha, I always found the hyper-stylized intriguing. It’s not my favorite style of art, but it’s interesting to me.
I was taught that icons are idol worship so I never felt comfortable with them. We left the old church when the pastor kept asking us to pray to them.
I’d leave a church asking me to pray to them as well.
I never went to a church that used icons. I’m not a huge fan of the stylized art, but there are some paintings out there that are incredibly beautiful.
I go back and forth on the artwork. There’s some I’ve seen that are gorgeous and intrigue me, and there are some that I’m left feeling indifferent.
Really great post and activity. We did something similar when we studied the Greek Orthodoxs.
Thanks!
I didn’t realize how controversial it once was – though I know different religions and sects have different views on the manner. I was raised catholic and have been to cathedrals with icons galore as well as churches with only a cross (I always personally preferred the simple churches). I’ve also been in a Greek orthodox church and the artwork in there was stunning! Mind you, I was there to admire in a tour. Then when you consider Hinduism, icons are used to pray to regularly.. oh this post has me really thinking about all the cultures we’ve been studying and the differences! Thanks for the food for thought 🙂
Glad to get you thinking. I love the amazing artwork that comes from the icons. I love stained glass, and the work going into it, and I rather feel like many modern Protestant churches to show they are NOT Catholic have gone to the opposite extreme, and I miss the pretty artwork.
Wow, that was a really long comment….
We’ve studying icons but not in an icon way (if you see what I mean) We’ve studied pictures which would be considered icons (Cimabue, Giotto) but not gone into the whole icon controversy. In fact, like Marie, I never realised their was one! I enjoyed this post- it was very interesting.
Thanks. I knew there was a controversy, and at one point it actually caused a split in the church, but hadn’t known all the details until we did this lesson.
Sorry, there, not their!