Icon is a word which describes a religious picture, which is used to depict the image of God. Today, the word “icon” is primarily associated with the paintings of the Orthodox Churches. Icons have prominent place in the life and worship of the Orthodox Church.
The word “icon” is derived from the Greek “eikon” or from the Coptic word “eikonigow” both of which are similar in their pronounciation. The word icon is used in the Greek Bible in the Old Testament where it says, “Then God said, let us make man in our image …, so God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created” (Genesis 1:26-27). This word is also used in the New Testament (the Greek Bible) in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians, “He is the image of the invisible God“ (Col 1:15).
Historians date the appearance of the iconographic style to the first three centuries of Christianity. Some archaeologists believe that icons were first popular in people’s houses and later began to appear in places of worship, probably at the end of the 3rd century. By the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. their use was widespread. The idea behind the use of icons in the Early Church is due to the unique experience the Church faced. Most Christians converts came from pagan cultures and most of them were illiterate. Many of them had difficulty understanding Biblical teachings and their spiritual meanings, as well as the historical events that took place in the Bible and in the life of the Church. Therefore, the leaders of the Early Church permitted the use of religious pictures (icons) because the people were not able to assimilate Christianity and its doctrine unaided by visual means. Therefore, these presentations aided the faithful in understanding the new religion and, at same time, illustrated it.
With the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine (307-337 A.D.) to Christianity, the situation changed radically. The Emperor hastened the triumph of Christianity over paganism by forbidding idolatry. The statues of the pagan gods were removed from the capital. Icons were used to decorate churches and state buildings. It is important to point out the role of the Patriarch Cyril I (404-430 A.D.), (also known by the name of Kyrillos the Pillar of faith), the 24th Coptic Pope. He permitted icons to be hung in the Patriarchate and all the churches in Egypt.
With the spread of icons in the centuries after the Emperor Constantine, Christians began to use icons in ways that were never intended, becoming more concerned with the art itself rather than as a tool for prayer or Christian instruction. Icons were never meant to be worshiped or venerated as something holy in themselves. The reverence shown to an icon must be done with the understanding that it is not the icon or artwork itself we are respecting, but rather the person or event it portrays. An icon is meant to be a window into the spiritual world, used to help us contemplate spiritual matters or to put us into a prayerful frame of mind, as a reminder of events in the Bible, the life of Christ and the Saints, but never as an object of worship.
A movement arose in the 8th century opting for the elimination of icons from churches on the grounds that they were being worshiped as graven images. They based their ideas on the Biblical verse, “Thou should not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the earth beneath, or that in the water under the earth, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4-5). One of the key figures “Lawon el-Esafry” and his followers were involved in the destruction of many icons during this period, which is known as the Iconoclast (icons-destruction) controversy. It is interesting to note that during the reign of Emperor Leo III in the 8th century, the Iconoclast Controversy began and became a serious conflict in the Church. This coincided with the Moslem invasions of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Persia. The Christian holy places in Jerusalem fell into Moslem hands. During this conflict the two most prominent theologians who stood to defend the use of icons in the Church were St. John of Damascus (675-749 A.D.) and St. Theodore of Studios (759-826 A.D.) at the 7th Ecumenical Council of the Eastern Orthodox Church in 787 A.D.
Although Christianity prohibited the worship of idols, the use of icons in the proper way was not banned due to the reasons mentioned before. History relates that the use of icons in the Church has its Christian roots from the time of Christ. There is a number of historical documents for these. First, it is known that the Evangelist Luke was a talented painter as well as a physician. He painted an icon presenting the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus, which many churches all over the world later on copied. Also, in a reference mentioned that the historian “Van Celub” found an icon of the Archangel Michael during his visit to a Cathedral in Alexandria, that was made by the Apostle Luke. Second, an icon the Savior made without hands, goes back to the first century when king Abagar of Edessa (located between the two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, an area in eastern Iraq) sent a message with his envoy Ananius to the Lord Jesus Christ to ask if He could visit the king to heal him. The king suffered from diseases and he wished to the Lord would come and live in his kingdom.