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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/3/2022, SPi

OXFORD STUDIES IN BYZANTIUM

Editorial Board
JAŚ ELSNER CATHERINE HOLMES
JAMES HOWARD-JOHNSTON
ELIZABETH JEFFREYS
HUGH KENNEDY MARC LAUXTERMANN
PAUL MAGDALINO HENRY MAGUIRE
CYRIL MANGO MARLIA MANGO
CLAUDIA RAPP JEAN-PIERRE SODINI
JONATHAN SHEPARD
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/3/2022, SPi

OXFORD STUDIES IN BYZANTIUM

Oxford Studies in Byzantium consists of scholarly monographs and editions
on the history, literature, thought, and material culture of the Byzantine world.

Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia

Elif Keser Kayaalp
Byzantine Religious Law in Medieval Italy
James Morton
Caliphs and Merchants
Cities and Economies of Power in the Near East (700–950)
Fanny Bessard
Social Change in Town and Country in Eleventh-Century Byzantium
James Howard-Johnston
Innovation in Byzantine Medicine
The Writings of John Zacharias Aktouarios (c.1275–c.1330)
Petros Bouras-Vallianatos
Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire
Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy
Adrastos Omissi
The Universal History of Stepʻanos Tarōnecʻi
Introduction, Translation, and Commentary
Tim Greenwood
The Letters of Psellos
Cultural Networks and Historical Realities
Edited by Michael Jeffreys and Marc D. Lauxtermann
Holy Sites Encircled
The Early Byzantine Concentric Churches of Jerusalem
Vered Shalev-Hurvitz
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/3/2022, SPi

Depicting Orthodoxy in
the Russian Middle Ages
The Novgorod Icon of Sophia,
the Divine Wisdom

ÁGNES KRIZA

1
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3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
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© Ágnes Kriza 2022
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2022
Impression: 1
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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/3/2022, SPi

Foreword

The four main parts (WORD, IMAGE, IDENTITY, and HISTORY) of this
volume are supplemented with an Appendix, which constitutes an organic part
of the book. The Appendix contains a Critical edition of the Sophia commentary
with an English translation, as well as a Catalogue of the fifteenth-sixteenth-
century Sophia images. Apart from bibliographical and other factual references,
this Catalogue provides a short iconographic description of the images. Based on
the available information, the Catalogue also presents an iconographic classifica-
tion of the early Sophia images and a survey of the development of the
Novgorod Wisdom iconography. In order to avoid repeated descriptions of and
bibliographical references to Sophia images, I refer to this Catalogue and its items
(as ‘Cat. number’) throughout the book.
Translations are my own unless indicated otherwise. Biblical quotations are
from the English translation of the Orthodox Study Bible, in which the Old
Testament is a translation made from the Septuagint and the New Testament is
that of the New King James Version. Accordingly, the numbering of Old
Testament biblical (including psalm) verses follows the Septuagint.
I use the simplified Library of Congress system of transliterating Russian
Cyrillic into the Latin alphabet, as well as the BukyVede Old Church Slavonic
Cyrillic font with the kind permission of Sebastian Kempgen.
This volume is an updated and extended version of my doctoral dissertation
defended in 2017 at the University of Cambridge.
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Acknowledgements

This book could not have been completed without the support that I have received
from a number of people. First of all, I want to extend my gratitude to my
supervisor at the University of Cambridge, Richard Marks for his scholarly
guidance, patience, support, and for showing perpetual confidence in this
research. I am likewise grateful to the reviewers of my dissertation, Antony
Eastmond and Rowan Williams, as well as the anonymous reviewers of this
book. For their advice and the helpful consultations, I am indebted to Donal
Cooper, Michael S. Flier, Simon Franklin, Anna Jouravel, Nazar Kozak, Victoria
Legkikh, Alexei Lidov, Basil Lourié, István Perczel, Tatiana Popova, Aleksandr
Preobrazhensky, Ludmila Shchennikova, Jonathan Shepard, Engelina Smirnova,
Oleksiy Tolochko, Tatiana Tsarevskaya, and Konstantin Vershinin. My endeavour
to obtain images for this book and the permissions to publish them was gener-
ously supported by Aleksey Alekseev, Andrey Borodikhin, Nazar Kozak, Alexei
Lidov, Gáspár Parlagi, Aleksandr Preobrazhensky, Alexei Rastorguev, Irina
Shalina, Anna Zakharova, and Vera Zavaritskaya. For their help with the acqui-
sition of the copies of manuscripts, I am grateful to Andrey Borodikhin and Olga
Grinchenko. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Richard Marks, Alexandre
Denizé, and Luke Saville for their assistance in language editing. The greatest
thanks, though, must go to my husband, Péter Tóth, who motivated and helped
this research in every possible way.
The publication of this volume was supported by the Society of Historians of
Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture.
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Contents

List of Illustrations xi
List of Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 1

PART I. WORD
1. The Icon and Its Commentary 21
2. The Winged Bride: Quotations in the Sophia Commentary 34
3. Medieval Russian Sophiology: The Context of the Sophia
Commentary in the Manuscripts 53

PART II. IMAGE

4. Representations of Wisdom in Rus 67
5. The Novgorod Sophia Icon as a Deesis 77
6. Sophia in the Womb of the Virgin 113

PART III. IDENTITY

7. Slavonic Sophia Churches and the Schism of 1054 137
8. Leaven and Byzantine Marian Iconography 167
9. Depicting Orthodoxy in Rus 188

PART IV. HISTORY

10. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, and the Union of Florence 221
11. Evfimii II, Archbishop of Novgorod 234
12. The Hagia Sophia in Rome 260
Conclusions: Towards the Viskovatyi Affair 286
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Appendix 289
Critical Edition of the Sophia Commentary with English
Translation 289
Table 1: The ‘Sophiological Block’ 301
Table 2: The ‘Sophiological Synthesis’ 302
Catalogue: The Iconography of the Novgorod Sophia in the
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 303

References 317
Index 353
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List of Illustrations

0.1. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, icon, second half of the fifteenth century. St Sophia
Cathedral, Novgorod. 3
0.2. St Sophia Cathedral, Novgorod, 1045–1050. 4
0.3. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, fresco in the Cell of Archbishop John,
Archiepiscopal Palace, Novgorod, 1441. 5
0.4. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, icon, first half of the fifteenth century.
Annunciation Cathedral, Kremlin, Moscow. 13
1.1. ‘What shall we offer to you, Christ’, fresco, the Church of the Theotokos
Peribleptos (St Clement), Ohrid, 1294–5. 22
1.2. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom framed with the text of the commentary,
church banner from Novgorod, the Church of St Niketas, 1550s–1560s.
State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. 31
2.1. Blessing John the Baptist flanked by two deacons, fresco in the diakonikon,
Church of St Panteleimon, Nerezi, ca. 1164. 44
2.2. Faith, Hope, and Love, miniature in The Heavenly Ladder by John Climacus,
twelfth century. Sinai Gr. 418, f. 283r, St Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai. 51
3.1. The first page of the Sophia commentary, 1450s. Collection of
M. N. Tikhomirov, no. 397, f. 124, GPNTB SO RAN, Novosibirsk. 55
3.2. St Sophia, Constantinople, 532–7. 58
4.1. ‘God is in his midst; he shall not be shaken’, miniature to the Psalm 45:6,
Kyiv Psalter, 1397. OLDP F 6, f. 63r, National Library of Russia, St Petersburg. 69
4.2. ‘Wisdom has built her house’, fresco in the narthex, Dormition church in
the Volotovo Field near Novgorod, 1380s, destroyed during the Second
World War. 69
4.3. ‘Wisdom has built her house’, icon from Malo-Kirillov Monastery, near
Novgorod, late fifteenth century. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. 70
4.4. ‘Wisdom has built her house’, carved wood icon from the former Blangy
collection (current location is unknown), first half of the sixteenth century. 71
4.5. Evangelist Luke with Wisdom, fresco in the pendentive, Dormition church
in the Volotovo Field near Novgorod, 1380s, destroyed during the Second
World War. 71
4.6. Evangelist Luke with Wisdom, miniature in the Rogozh Gospels, first
quarter of the fifteenth century. Collection of Rogozh cemetery, no. 138,
f. 144v, Russian State Library, Moscow. 72
4.7. ‘Wisdom has built her house’, fresco in the narthex, the Church of the
Theotokos Peribleptos (St Clement), Ohrid, 1294–5. 74
4.8. John Chrysostom with Wisdom and Apostle Paul (The Source of Divine
Wisdom), fresco in the pendentive, church of the Archangel Michael,
Lesnovo, 1349. 75
5.1. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom with saints, triptych, second half of the
sixteenth century. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. 78
5.2. Royal Deesis, icon from Novgorod, possibly from the Sophia Cathedral,
end of the fourteenth century. Dormition Cathedral, Kremlin, Moscow. 80
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5.3. Royal Deesis, fresco on the north wall of the naos, Transfiguration
church of the Saviour, Kovalyovo near Novgorod, 1380, destroyed
between 1941 and 1943. 81
5.4. Royal Deesis (Heavenly Court), fresco in the north dome of the narthex,
Treskavec, 1341–3. 82
5.5. Royal Deesis, fresco on the north wall of the naos, Marko’s Monastery,
1376–7. 83
5.6. Royal Deesis, miniature to Psalm 44:10–11, Serbian Psalter, fourteenth
century. Cod. Slav. 4, f. 58v, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. 84
5.7. Royal Deesis, icon from Novgorod, 1559. State Russian Museum,
St Petersburg. 85
5.8. Fresco decoration in the apse, church of the Panagia Drosiani, Moni,
Naxos, sixth or seventh century. 93
5.9. Deesis, icon from Vladimir-Suzdal, thirteenth century. State Tretyakov
Gallery, Moscow. 94
5.10. Orthodox priest performing the Proskomedia. 95
5.11. The particles of the prosphora on the paten. Line drawing based on a
contemporary Orthodox liturgical book. 96
5.12. Apse mosaic, Santa Maria Trastevere, Rome, 1140–3. 98
5.13. Apse mosaic, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, before 1296. 99
5.14. Paolo Veneziano, Coronation of the Virgin, 1324. National Gallery of
Art, Washington. 100
5.15. Santa Maria della Clemenza, encaustic icon, between the sixth and
eighth centuries. Santa Maria Trastevere, Rome. 105
6.1. Theotokos Nikopoios, Seal of Justinian I (527–65). BZS.1955.1.4249,
Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, DC. 115
6.2. Theotokos Nikopoios, Nomisma tetarteron of Romanos III Argyros
(1028–34). BZC.1948.17.2844, Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection,
Washington, DC. 116
6.3. Theotokos Nikopoios, fresco in the conch, Ohrid, St Sophia, between
1052 and 1056. 117
6.4. Theotokos Nikopoios and Ascension, fresco decoration in the apse and
bema vault, Ohrid, St Sophia, between 1053 and 1056. 118
6.5. Theotokos Nikopoios, fresco in the prothesis, the Church of the
Theotokos Peribleptos (St Clement), Ohrid, 1294–5. 119
6.6. Theotokos Nikopoios between Salomon and Ecclesia(?), miniature in the
Syriac Bible, sixth-seventh-centuries. Cod. Syr. 341, f. 118r, Bibliothèque
nationale de France, Paris. 123
6.7. Adoration of the Magi, miniature in the Echmiadzin Gospels, sixth–seventh
centuries. MS 2374, f. 229r, Matenadaran, Yerevan. 126
7.1. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, icon from the Solovki Monastery, end of the
sixteenth century. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. 135
7.2. Fresco decoration in the apse, St Sophia, Ohrid, between 1052 and 1056. 138
7.3. Mosaic decoration in the apse, St Sophia, Kyiv, after 1052. 139
7.4. The mosaic decoration in the St Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv, line drawing. 140
7.5. Apse decoration, Panagia ton Chalkeon, Thessaloniki, after 1028. 143
7.6. Eucharist with bread, fresco in the bema, Panagia ton Chalkeon,
Thessaloniki, after 1028. 145
7.7. Basil the Great, fresco in the apse, St Sophia, Ohrid, between 1052 and 1056. 146
7.8. John Chrysostom from the echelon of church fathers, mosaic in the apse,
St Sophia, Kyiv, after 1052. 147
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7.9. Communion of the apostles, fresco in the apse, St Sophia, Ohrid, between
1052 and 1056. 148
7.10. Communion of the apostles, fresco in the apse, St Sophia, Kyiv, after 1052. 148
7.11. Paten with the Communion of the Apostles from Riha, 565–78.
Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, DC. 149
7.12. Christ as priest, mosaic above the eastern arch of the dome, St Sophia,
Kyiv, after 1052. 150
7.13. Aaron, mosaic on the north-east pillar, St Sophia, Kyiv, after 1052. 151
7.14. The vision of St Basil, fresco in the bema wall, Ohrid, St Sophia, between
1052 and 1056. 153
7.15. The liturgy of St Basil, fresco in the bema wall, Ohrid, between 1052
and 1056. 154
7.16. Fresco decoration with Hetoimasia and Officiating Church Fathers in the
apse, Veljusa Monastery, 1080s. Line drawing. 159
7.17. Fresco decoration with Hetoimasia and Officiating Church Fathers in the
apse, Church of St Panteleimon, Nerezi, ca. 1164 (the Blachernitissa in the
conch is from the sixteenth century). 160
7.18. Fresco decoration with Melismos and Officiating Church Fathers in the
apse, Church of St George, Kurbinovo, 1180s. 161
8.1. Theotokos Blachernitissa, lead seal of Proedros John, second half of the
eleventh century. BZS.1947.2.847, Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection,
Washington, DC. 174
8.2. Theotokos Znamenie (Blachernitissa), fresco in the apse. Transfiguration
of the Saviour church on Nereditsa Hill, near Novgorod, 1199, destroyed
in 1941. 175
8.3. Master Ivan: Panagiarion of the Novgorod Sophia Cathedral, 1435.
Novgorod State Integrated Museum Reserve. 178
8.4. Master Ivan: Panagiarion of the Novgorod Sophia Cathedral, plates with
the images of the Theotokos Znamenie (bottom), the Old Testament Holy
Trinity (top inner), and the Ascension (top outer), 1435. Novgorod State
Integrated Museum Reserve. 179
8.5. Panagiarion, Xeropotamou monastery, Mt Athos, fourteenth century. 181
8.6. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, drawing in the Likhachev Apostol, Novgorod,
end of the fifteenth century. Coll. 238 (F. P. Likhachev), op. 1, no. 274,
f. 7v, SPbII RAN, St Petersburg. 183
8.7. The Elevation of the Panagia, fresco in the prothesis, Sviyazhsk,
Annunciation Cathedral, 1561. 184
8.8. The Elevation of the Panagia and Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, detail of the
icon Renewal of the Resurrection Church in Jerusalem and Praise to the
Theotokos, from the Annunciation Cathedral, Solvychegodsk, turn of the
seventeenth century. Solvychegodsk Historical and Art Museum. 185
9.1. Fresco decoration with Deesis and church fathers in the apse,
Transfiguration of the Saviour church on Nereditsa Hill, near Novgorod,
1199, destroyed in 1941. 189
9.2. Frescoes in the apses, Transfiguration of the Saviour church on Nereditsa
Hill, near Novgorod, 1199, destroyed in 1941. Water paint by
L. M. Brailovskii (1904). 190
9.3. Frescoes on the vaults, Transfiguration of the Saviour church on Nereditsa
Hill, near Novgorod, 1199, destroyed in 1941. Water paint by
L. M. Brailovskii (1904). 191
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9.4. Fresco decoration in the apse and the dome, Transfiguration church,
Mirozh Monastery, Pskov, ca. 1140. 193
9.5. Apse decoration, Transfiguration church, Mirozh Monastery, Pskov,
ca. 1140. 194
9.6. Fresco decoration in the dome, Trikomo, Cyprus, thirteenth century. 196
9.7. Transfiguration and Deesis, fresco in the apse and bema vault,
Transfiguration church, Mirozh Monastery, Pskov, ca. 1140. 198
9.8. Mosaic decoration in the apse and the triumphal arch, Monastery of
St Catherine, Mount Sinai, 548–65. 199
9.9. The interior of the St Sophia Cathedral with its main iconostasis, Novgorod. 202
9.10. Saviour in a Golden Robe, icon from the St Sophia Cathedral, Novgorod,
fifteenth-seventeenth centuries (painting), eleventh century (iconography,
panel?). Dormition Cathedral, Moscow, Kremlin. 203
9.11. Saviour enthroned, the copy of the icon Saviour in a Golden Robe, icon
on the main iconostasis of the St Sophia Cathedral, Novgorod,
seventeenth century. 204
9.12. Apostles Peter and Paul, icon from the main iconostasis of the St Sophia
Cathedral, Novgorod, second half of the eleventh century. Novgorod State
Integrated Museum Reserve. 206
9.13. Apostles Peter and Paul, the cover of the icon from the St Sophia Cathedral,
Novgorod, second half of the eleventh century. Novgorod State Integrated
Museum Reserve. 207
9.14. Saviour enthroned with saints, icon from Novgorod, thirteenth–fourteenth
century. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. 209
9.15. Alexa Petrov: St Nicholas, icon from the Church of St Nicholas on the
Lipna, near Novgorod, 1294. Novgorod State Integrated Museum Reserve. 210
9.16. Theotokos Znamenie, double-sided icon in the St Sophia Cathedral,
Novgorod, before 1169. 212
9.17. St Joachim and Anna (?), verso of the double-sided Theotokos Znamenie
icon in the St Sophia Cathedral, Novgorod, before 1169. 212
9.18. Ustiug Annunciation, icon from Novgorod, twelfth century. State Tretyakov
Gallery, Moscow. 213
9.19. Pokrov, icon from the Zverin Monastery, Novgorod, ca. 1399. Novgorod
State Integrated Museum Reserve. 215
11.1. The battle between Novgorod and Suzdal, icon from Novgorod, mid-fifteenth
century. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. 239
11.2. ‘In thee rejoiceth’, double-sided icon-tablet from the St Sophia Cathedral,
Novgorod, end of the fifteenth century. Novgorod State Integrated
Museum Reserve, Veliky Novgorod. 246
11.3. Aaron, Son of Feofan: the Deesis tier of the main iconostasis of the
Novgorod Sophia Cathedral (icons of the Saviour, the Mother of God,
John the Baptist, Archangels Michael and Gabriel), 1438 or 1439. 248
11.4. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, flanked by two Novgorod hierarchs, fresco in
the Cell of Archbishop John, Archiepiscopal Palace, Novgorod, 1441. 250
11.5. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, icon from Kem (Karelia), 1550s–1560s.
Collection of N. Likhachev, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. 253
11.6. Descent of the Holy Spirit, Old Testament Trinity and Sophia, the Divine
Wisdom, carved wood triptych, mid-sixteenth century. Collection of
A. Rastorguev. 254
11.7. King Solomon, fresco in the drum of the central dome, St Sophia
Cathedral, Novgorod, 1109. 256
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11.8. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, icon from the former Provatoroff collection,
end of the fifteenth century. 257
12.1. The first page of the Sophia commentary written by Monk Efrosin,
ca. 1470. KB 99/1022, f. 220v, RNB. National Library of Russia, St Petersburg. 261
12.2. Western entrance of the St Sophia Cathedral with frescoes from 1528,
Novgorod. 274
12.3. Old Testament Holy Trinity, Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, and Acheiropoietos,
external fresco over the Western entrance, St Sophia Cathedral,
Novgorod, 1528. 276
12.4. Nazarii Istomin and Leontii Timofeiev: Synaxis of the Theotokos,
Synthronoi, and Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, external frescoes over the
eastern apses, Dormition Cathedral, Kremlin, Moscow, 1626. 277
12.5. Nazarii Istomin and Leontii Timofeiev: Sophia, the Divine Wisdom,
external fresco over the north-eastern apse, Dormition Cathedral,
Kremlin, Moscow, 1626 (iconography possibly from the sixteenth century). 277
12.6. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, fresco in the apse, Archangel Cathedral,
Kremlin, Moscow, seventeenth century (iconography from 1564). 279
12.7. The Elevation of the Panagia and Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, second
half of the sixteenth century. Moscow Kremlin Museums. 281
12.8. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, icon from the church of the Mother of
God, Busovys’ko, Lviv region, second half of the sixteenth century.
Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum, Lviv. 282
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List of Abbreviations

Andr. Cret., Serm. Laz. Andrew of Crete: Sermon on Lazarus Saturday—BHG 2218,
CPG 8177
ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.
D. 325, 10 vols, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, Buffalo—New York,
1885–96.
BHG Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca, 3 vols, ed. F. Halkin, Bruxelles,
1957; Auctarium Bibliothecae hagiographicae graecae. Bruxelles,
1969; Novum auctarium Bibliothecae hagiographicae graecae,
Bruxelles, 1984.
BLDR Biblioteka literatury Drevnei Rusi, 20 vols, St Petersburg, 1997–.
CCL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout, 1953–.
ChOIDR Chteniia v Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh
Chrys., De virg. John Chrysostom, On Virginity—CPG 4313
Chud. Chudovskoe sobranie = Collection of the Chudov Monastery,
GIM, Moscow
CPG Clavis patrum graecorum, 3 vols, ed. M. Geerard, Brepols:
Turnhout, 1983 (№ 1000–1924); 1974 (№ 2000–5197); 1979
(№ 5200–8228); Supplementum, ed. M. Geerard and J. Noret,
Brepols: Turnhout, 1998.
DChAE Deltion tes Christianikes Archaeologikes Hetaireias
Ephr. Syr., Serm. Ios. Ephrem the Syrian: Sermon on the Beauteous Joseph—CPG 3938
GIM Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei, Moskva = State Historical
Museum, Moscow
GPNTB SO RAN Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia nauchno-tekhnicheskaia
biblioteka Sibirskogo otdeleniia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk,
Novosibirsk = State Public Scientific and Technical Library of
Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk
GRM Gosudarstvennyi Russkii muzei, Sankt-Peterburg = State
Russian Musem, St Petersburg
GTG Gosudarstvennaia Tret’iakovskaia galereia, Moskva = State
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Ios. Vol., Enlight. Iosif Volotskii, Enlightener
IRI Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, 13 vols, ed. I. E. Grabar’,
V. N. Lazarev, and V. S. Kemenov, Moscow, 1953–1964.
KB Sobranie Kirillo-Belozerskogo monastyria = Collection of the
Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery, RNB, St Petersburg
LCI Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 8 vols, ed. E. Kirschbaum
and W. Braunfels, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1968–1976.
Lit. Comm. Liturgical Commentary (Tolkovaia sluzhba)
Mazur. Sobranie F. F. Mazurina (f. 196) = Collection of F. F. Mazurin,
RGADA, Moscow
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xviii   

MDA Sobranie Moskovskoi Dukhovnoi Akademii = Collection of

Moscow Theological Academy, RGB, Moscow
Meth. Patara, De Lepra Methodius of Patara: On the leprosy
MMK Muzei Moskovskogo Kremlia, Gosudarstvennyi istoriko-
kul’turnyi muzei-zapovednik ‘Moskovskii Kreml’’ = Moscow
Kremlin Museums, The Moscow Kremlin State Historical and
Cultural Museum and Heritage Site
NB MGU Nauchnaia biblioteka Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo
universiteta imeni M.V. Lomonosova, Moskva = Lomonosov
Scientific Library of the Moscow State University, Moscow
NGM Novgorodskii gosudarstvennyi ob”edinennyi muzei-zapovednik
= Novgorod State United Museum-Reserve
NPNF-1 A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the
Christian Church, Series I, 14 vols, ed. Ph. Schaff, New York—
Edinburgh, 1887–92.
NPNF-2 A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the
Christian Church, Series II, 14 vols, ed. Ph. Schaff and H. Wace,
New York—Edinburgh, 1890–1900.
ODB The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols, ed. A. P. Kazhdan,
New York—Oxford, 1991.
OLDP Sobranie Obshchestva liubitelei drevnei pis’mennosti =
Collection of the Society of Lovers of Ancient Literature, RNB,
St Petersburg
PE Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, Moscow, 2000–.
PG Migne, J.-P., Patrologiae cursus completus. Series graeca, Paris,
1857–1866.
PL Migne, J.-P., Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina, Paris,
1844–1855.
PSRL Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, 1841–.
RBK Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. K. Wessel, M. Restle,
and B. Borkopp, Stuttgart, 1966–.
RGADA Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov, Moskva =
Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow
RGB Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka, Moskva = Russian State
Library, Moscow
RIB Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka, izdavaemaia
Arkheograficheskoiu komissieiu, 40 vols, St Petersburg—
Petrograd—Leningrad, 1872–1927.
RNB Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka, Sankt-Peterburg =
National Library of Russia, St Petersburg
Rum. Sobranie N. P. Rumiantseva = Collection of N. P. Rumiantsev,
RGB, Moscow
Sc. Par. John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent—CPG 7852
SKKDR Slovar’ knizhnikov i knizhnosti drevnei rusi, 3 vols, Leningrad—
St Petersburg, 1987–2004.
Sofiia 2000 Lifshits, L. I., ed. Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia: Vystavka russkoi
ikonopisi XIII–XIX vekov iz sobranii muzeev Rossii. Moscow:
Radunitsa, 2000.
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   xix

Sof. Sofiiskoe sobranie = Collection of the library of the Novgorod

Sophia Cathedral, RNB, St Petersburg
Sol. Solovetskoe sobranie = Collection of the Solovki Monastery,
RNB, St Petersburg
Sophia 1999 Azzaro, G. C. and Azzaro, P., eds., Sophia: la sapienza di Dio.
Milano: Electa, 1999.
SPbII RAN Nauchno-istoricheskogo arkhiv Sankt-Peterburgskogo instituta
istorii Rossiiskoi akademii nauk = The Scientific and Historical
Archive of the St Petersburg Institute for History of the Russian
Academy of Sciences
Tikh. Sobranie M. N. Tikhomirova = Collection of M. N. Tikhomirov,
GPNTB SO RAN, Novosibirsk
TODRL Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury
TSL Sobranie Troitse-Sergievoi Lavry = Collection of the Holy
Trinity-St Sergii Lavra, RGB, Moscow
TsMiAR Tsentral’nyi muzei drevnerusskoi kul’tury i iskusstva imeni
Andreia Rubleva, Moskva = Central Andrei Rublev Museum of
Ancient Russian Culture and Art, Moscow
VGMZ Vologodskii gosudarstvennyi istoriko-arkhitekturnyi i
khudozhestvennyi muzei-zapovednik, Vologda = Vologda State
Museum-Preserve of History, Architecture and Decorative Arts,
Vologda
VMCh Velikiia Minei Chetii, sobrannye vserossiiskim mitropolitom
Makariem, 16 vols, St Petersburg–Moscow: Arkheograficheskaia
komissiia, 1868–1917.
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Just as the pious, orthodox and grand prince Vladimir had himself received baptism
in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in Cherson, and having come
to Kyiv, commanded all to be baptised, and then the entire Rus land was baptised.
And in the beginning, from Constantinople a metropolitan was sent to Kyiv, and
bishop Ioakim was sent to Great Novgorod. And grand prince Vladimir ordered
that a church of stone be built in Novgorod, Saint Sophia, the Wisdom of God,
according to the Constantinople custom and the icon of Sophia, the Wisdom of God
was then painted, after a Greek prototype.
Priest Silvestr, during the Viskovatyi Affair, 1554¹

¹ O. M. Bodianskii, ‘Moskovskie sobory na eretikov XVI veka, v tsarstvovanie Ivana Vasil’evicha

Groznogo’, ChOIDR, no. 1 (1847): 20. For the original text see Cat. 3.
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Introduction

The Novgorod Sophia Icon and the Viskovatyi Affair

The year 1547 was a turning point in Russian history. That year Moscow Grand
Prince Ivan IV (1533–47) was crowned by Metropolitan Makarii (1542–65) in the
Kremlin Dormition Cathedral as the first tsar of Russia (1547–84). That same year
can also be considered as a watershed moment in the history of Russian art. The
coronation of the tsar was followed by a devastating fire which seriously damaged
the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin and their icons. After this fire, one of the
most influential clerics of the Kremlin, Silvestr († ca. 1566), the priest of the
Annunciation Cathedral, the personal church of the tsar, commissioned a series of
new icons. Both Metropolitan Makarii and Silvestr moved from Novgorod to
Moscow, a city located on the western border of today Russia, where Makarii
served as Archbishop between 1526 and 1542. Unsurprisingly, Silvestr appointed
painters from Novgorod and neighbouring Pskov for the work. The new icons
were distinguished by their unparalleled complex and dense innovative iconog-
raphies which exercised a lasting influence on the subsequent development of
Russian painting. Since Moscow had its own traditions in painting, these new
icons, which demonstrated a novel approach to the visual and created a new
relationship between text and image, provoked protests from the Muscovites. The
opposition of Ivan Viskovatyi, Tsar Ivan IV’s learned diplomat to these icons, led
to a council in 1554, now known as the Viskovatyi Affair, which discussed the
problem of allegory in icon-painting.¹
Ivan attacked the incomprehensibility of these icons and also criticized their
different allegorical representations of God, especially those which represented
Christ with angelic wings. In his letter opposing the new icons, Viskovatyi argued
that the symbolic images of God ‘diminish the glory of the representation of our
Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh’, referring to the Christological tenets established by
the defenders of icons during the Byzantine Iconoclasm (726–843). However, in
1554, Metropolitan Makarii defended these images and Priest Silvester related the
circumstances of the commissioning of the icons and provided a list of the

¹ For the Viskovatyi Affair with further bibliography: Á. Kriza, ‘The Russian Gnadenstuhl’, Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 79 (2016): 79–130.

Depicting Orthodoxy in the Russian Middle Ages: The Novgorod Icon of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom. Ágnes Kriza,
Oxford University Press. © Ágnes Kriza 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198854302.003.0001
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2       

controversial iconographies.² Although both Makarii and Silvestr cited their

ancient origin, the majority of these iconographies were innovations that appeared
for the first time in Rus. In fact, there was only one icon on this list which had a
well-established iconography: the icon of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, the local
icon of the Novgorod Sophia Cathedral (Cat. 3; Fig. 0.1).
Indeed, the icon was not as old as Silvestr claimed: it was not Vladimir the
Great, the grand prince of Kyiv (980–1015), who constructed the Novgorod
Sophia Cathedral (Fig. 0.2) but his grandson, Vladimir, prince of Novgorod
(1036–52). Vladimir was the son of grand prince Iaroslav the Wise (1019–54),
to whom the construction of the Kyiv Sophia Cathedral can be linked. It is also
very unlikely that the Wisdom icon was painted after a Greek prototype in the
eleventh century.³ The Novgorod Sophia icon was mentioned for the first time in
the early sixteenth-century Novgorod chronicles.⁴ In 1510, Vasilii III, the Moscow
grand prince ordered that a candle in front of this miraculous icon in the
Novgorod Sophia Cathedral be burned in perpetuity ‘according to the ancient
custom’.⁵ The earliest dated example of the iconography has been preserved in the
freshly explored fresco of the Novgorod Archiepiscopal Palace dating back to 1441
(Cat. 2; Figs 0.3, 11.4). The other oldest Sophia images, including the icon of the
Sophia Cathedral, are also from the fifteenth century, but do not have certain
dating (see the Catalogue in the Appendix). Nonetheless, it is likely that the
Novgorodian iconography remained unknown in Moscow until the mid-sixteenth
century and thus provided an opportunity for Silvestr to maintain the early origin
of the disputed icons by referring to the ‘ancient’ Sophia icon.
The Sophia icon easily justifies the accusation of its incomprehensibility. The
image shows an enthroned, winged, and crowned beardless figure, the Wisdom of
God, in regal vestments with a burning red face, seated between the standing
figures of the Theotokos with Emmanuel in her hands and John the Baptist,
holding a scroll. Her throne is held by seven pillars and her feet are on a circular

² Silvestr commissioned five icons from Novgorod icon-painters (Trinity with acts; Credo; ‘Praise
the Lord from the Heavens’; Sophia, the Wisdom of God; ‘It is truly right’) and four ‘large icons’ from
Pskov (Last Judgement with vision of Daniel; The Renewal of Christ Our God’s Temple of Resurrection;
Passions of the Lord with Gospel parables and the famous Four-part icon which is still visible in the
Kremlin Annunciation Cathedral). Bodianskii, ‘Moskovskie sobory’, 18–21. For the Four-part icon with
bibliography: Kriza, ‘The Russian Gnadenstuhl’. A fuller list was also provided by Makarii:
O. M. Bodianskii, ‘Rozysk ili spisok o bogokhul’nykh strokakh i o sumnenii sviatykh chestnykh ikon
diaka Ivana Mikhailova syna Viskovatogo v leto 7062’, ChOIDR, no. 2 (1858): 36–7. For the list and
analysis of the icons commissioned after 1547 see V. D. Sarab’ianov, ‘Simvoliko-allegoricheskie ikony
Blagoveshchenskogo sobora i ikh vliianie na iskusstvo XVI veka’, in Blagoveshchenskii sobor
Moskovskogo Kremlia: Materialy i issledovaniia, ed. L. A. Shchennikova (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi
istoriko-kul’turnyi muzei-zapovednik ‘Moskovskii Kreml’, 1999), 164–217.
³ The early dating and the Greek origin of the Novgorod Sophia icon were challenged by Lebedintsev
in 1884 for the first time: F. T. Lebedintsev, ‘Sofiia, Premudrost’ Bozhiia v ikonografii severa i iuga
Rossii’, Kievskaia starina, no. 10 (1884): 557–9.
⁴ For the other sources, referring to the Novgorod Sophia icon, see Chapter 11.
⁵ PSRL, vol. IV/I/3 1929, 537. Cf. Cat. 3.
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 3

Fig. 0.1. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, icon, second half of the fifteenth century.
St Sophia Cathedral, Novgorod.

footstool. Over Sophia’s head is the bust of the blessing Christ. Above this
composition is a segment of heaven with the prepared throne flanked by angels.⁶
The meaning of this icon was apparently unclear to contemporaries as is
attested by the surviving commentary. The earliest known copies are in

⁶ For a more detailed description of the iconography see the Catalogue in the Appendix.
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4       

Fig. 0.2. St Sophia Cathedral, Novgorod, 1045–1050.

Photo: author.

fifteenth-century manuscripts, but this text also appears in some Sophia repre-
sentations, most importantly in the icon of the Novgorod Sophia Cathedral
(Cat. 3, Fig. 0.1).⁷ It, however, does not help the comprehension of this iconog-
raphy: the commentary is just as obscure as the icon itself. The meaning of the
winged Sophia, as well as the dating and localization of the first appearance of the
iconography, has remained a great art-historical conundrum.

The Novgorod Sophia Icon and the Sophiological Controversy

This opacity of the Wisdom icon has led to diverse interpretations. During the
nineteenth century, when the iconography appeared in scholarly publications
for the first time, researchers who tried to decipher the meaning of the icon
primarily highlighted its Christological symbolism: Wisdom is Christ, in accord-
ance with the biblical (1 Corinthians 1:24; Proverbs 9:1–5) and common patristic

⁷ T. Iu. Tsarevskaia, ‘Rannii variant novgorodskoi ikonografii Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei i obstoia-
tel’stva ego poiavleniia’, Zograf, no. 43 (2019): 166. Further inscriptions of the commentary are in Cat.
12, 22.
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 5

Fig. 0.3. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, fresco in the Cell of Archbishop John,
Archiepiscopal Palace, Novgorod, 1441.
Credit: Novgorod State Integrated Museum Reserve, Veliky Novgorod.

interpretation of Sophia.⁸ In 1884, the Ukrainian scholar, Feofan Lebedintsev

connected the angelic image of Sophia with the Angel of the Great Counsel,
from the Book of Isaiah (9:5, according to the Septuagint), which is a prophecy
about Christ’s redemptory incarnation pre-eternally decided by the Holy Trinity.⁹
Nevertheless, why Christ was depicted again, above the head of ‘Angel-Christ’,
and the meaning of the three-figured Deesis composition of the icon with flanking
Theotokos and John the Baptist remained unclear.
A Marian interpretation of Sophia was also proposed for three reasons. Firstly,
because the seventeenth-century Wisdom icon of the Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv
represents the Mother of God in the centre. Secondly, because the dedication feast
of the Novgorod Sophia Cathedral was the Dormition of the Mother of God from

⁸ Metropolitan Evgenii (Bolkhovitinov), Opisanie Kievosofiiskago sobora i kievskoi ierarkhii (Kyiv:

Tip. Kievopecherskoi lavry, 1825), 16–17; P. Solov’ev, Opisanie Novgorodskago Sofiiskago Sobora
(St. Petersburg, 1858), 50–7; F. I. Buslaev, ‘Dlia istorii russkoi zhivopisi XVI veka’, in Istoricheskie
ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva, vol. II (St. Petersburg, 1861), 294–8; Archbishop Ignatii
(Semenov), ‘Ob ikone sv. Sofii v novgorodskom Sofiiskom sobore’, Zapiski Imperatorskogo arkheolo-
gicheskogo obshchestva 11 (1865): 244–69; Lebedintsev, ‘Sofiia, Premudrost’ Bozhiia v ikonografii severa
i iuga Rossii’.
⁹ Lebedintsev, ‘Sofiia, Premudrost’ Bozhiia v ikonografii severa i iuga Rossii’, 567. See also
N. P. Kondakov, Ikonografiia Gospoda Boga i Spasa nashego Iisusa Khrista (St. Petersburg: Tov.
R. Golike i A. Vil’borg, 1905), 74; N. V. Pokrovskii, Tserkovno-arkheologicheskii muzei S.-Peterburgskoi
dukhovnoi akademii, St. Petersburg: 1879–1909 (St. Petersburg, 1909), 135.
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6       

the late fifteenth century, the time of Archbishop Gennadii (1484–1504).¹⁰ Finally,
the main argument deployed to justify a Marian explanation of Wisdom was the
commentary itself which, in various redactions, names Sophia ‘the Church of God,
Sophia, the most pure Mother of God, that is the virginal soul’. Fedor Buslaev
suggested that the meaning of the icon underwent a transformation over time:
Sophia-Christ, with the aid of monastic idea of virginity attributed to Sophia in the
commentary, was gradually perceived as the image of the Virgin Mother of God.¹¹
In 1876, however, Filomonov, who argued that the Marian interpretation of
Sophia appeared under Western influence, put forward another possible explan-
ation of the icon: the winged Sophia originally referred not to a concrete person,
but was the personification of the abstract concept of Wisdom.¹²
A quarter of a century later, a similar idea was expounded by the philosopher
Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) in his lecture (1898) on the French positivist
philosopher, Auguste Comte (1798–1857).¹³ Solovyov linked his teaching about
Sophia as the Divine Humanity with Comte’s Religion of Humanity and the
recently accepted Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin
(1854). For Solovyov, the Novgorod Sophia icon, a matter of Russian ‘religious
creative work’, was a manifestation of this Sophiology:

Who does this main, central, and royal person depict, so clearly distinct from
Christ, from the Mother of God, and from the angels? The image is called Sophia
the Wisdom of God . . . Neither God, nor the eternal Word of God, nor an angel,
nor a holy man, the Great, royal, and feminine Being accepts veneration from
both the one who completed the Old Testament and from the foremother of the
New Testament. Who could it be other than the truest, purest, and most
complete humanity, the highest and all-encompassing form and living soul of

¹⁰ Evgenii (Bolkhovitinov), Opisanie Kievosofiiskago sobora; Buslaev, ‘Dlia istorii russkoi zhivopisi
XVI veka’, 296–8; G. D. Filimonov, ‘Ocherki russkoi khristianskoi ikonografii: Sofiia, Premudrost’
Bozhiia’, Vestnik Obshchestva liubitelei drevnerusskogo iskusstva, no. 1–3 (1874): 9–13. See also
P. A. Golubtsov, Sobornye chinovniki i osobennosti sluzhby po nim (Moscow: Izd. Imp. o-va istorii i
drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Mosk. un-te, 1907), 30–1. Example of the Kyiv Sophia iconography: Sophia
1999, 188–9; Sofiia 2000, 156–7.
¹¹ Buslaev, ‘Dlia istorii russkoi zhivopisi XVI veka’, 298. This idea was developed further by Lifshits
who suggested that ecclesiology created the link between the Christological and Marian interpretations
of the icon during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: L. I. Lifshits, ‘Sofiia, Premudrost’ Bozhiia v
Russkoi Ikonopisi’, in Sofiia 2000, 16.
¹² Filimonov, ‘Ocherki’, 1874, 7, 9. For the Western origin of the Marian interpretation of Sophia:
Filimonov, 13. This was challenged by Pokrovskii, Tserkovno-arkheologicheskii muzei, 134.
¹³ For the impact of the Novgorod Sophia icon on Solovyov’s Sophiology (with further bibliography
on Solovyov): J. D. Kornblatt, ed., Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov (Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press, 2009), 53–60; J. D. Kornblatt, ‘Visions of Icons and Reading
Rooms in the Poetry and Prose of Vladimir Solov’ev’, in Aesthetics as a Religious Factor in Eastern and
Western Christianity, ed. W. P. Bercken and J. Sutton (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 125–43.
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 7

nature and the universe, eternally united, and in the process of time uniting with
the Divine, and uniting to Him all that is?¹⁴

Solovyov’s Sophiology had a wide-reaching impact on Russian theology and

fundamentally determined the subsequent historiography of the Sophia icon. In
1914, Pavel Florensky (1882–1938), a theologian polymath and martyr of the
Soviet terror, devoted a chapter of the published version of his theological
dissertation, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: an Essay in Orthodox Theodicy
in Twelve Letters, to Sophia (Letter Ten), where he aimed to reconcile Solovyov’s
philosophy with the doctrines of the Orthodox Church. This theological discourse
was accompanied by an art-historical study of the Sophia icon and an analysis of
its commentary. Based on this commentary, Florensky proposed that there might
have been more interpretative layers of the icon and he was the first scholar to
point out its ecclesiological symbolism: ‘For some scholars, Sophia is the Word of
God or even the Holy Trinity. For others, she is the Mother of God. For still
others, she is the personification of Her Virginity. For others still, she is the
Church. For yet others, she is mankind in its totality, the Grand Être of Auguste
Comte . . . [the old-Russian commentaries] give a subtle synthesis of the different
aspects of Sophia.’¹⁵
Florensky’s attempt, however, to reconcile Solovyov’s ideas and ecclesiastical
dogmas did not prove successful as the subsequent history of Sophiology showed.
After the Russian revolution, the greatest promoter of Sophiology was Sergei
Bulgakov (1871–1944), a follower of Solovyov and friend of Florensky, who was
exiled from the Soviet Russia and settled in Paris where the so-called Russian
Religious Renaissance reached its fullest flowering at this time.¹⁶ Here, in this
inspirational intellectual environment, he developed his sophiological theology in
a series of publications. In common with Solovyov, he linked Wisdom with
Mary, by calling her a ‘personal manifestation of Sophia’ and Sophia’s ‘created
image’.¹⁷ Bulgakov’s ideas, however, were met with the growing opposition
from the Orthodox émigré theologians. In 1935, Bulgakov together with his
teaching about Sophia the Eternal Feminine, was condemned as heretical by the
Patriarchate of Moscow.

¹⁴ Translation by B. Jakim. V. Solovyov, ‘The Idea of Humanity in Comte’, in Divine Sophia: The
Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov, ed. J. D. Kornblatt, trans. B. Jakim (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 2009), 225.
¹⁵ Translation by B. Jakim. Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 278.
¹⁶ For Bulgakov’s relation to the Novgorod Sophia iconography: N. A. Vaganova, Sofiologiia proto-
iereia Sergeiia Bulgakova (Moscow: Izd-vo PSTGU, 2010), 114–51. For an introduction into Bulgakov’s
Sophiology in English: R. Williams, Towards a Russian Political Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1999), 1–21.
¹⁷ J. Meyendorff, ‘Wisdom-Sophia: Contrasting Approaches to a Complex Theme’, Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 401.
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8       

The main argument used by Bulgakov’s opponents was the Christological

interpretation of Sophia, not only widely discussed in nineteenth- and early-
twentieth-century art-historical and historical studies on the Sophia icon and
churches dedicated to the Sophia, but already advanced in an anonymous
sixteenth-century treatise which questioned the Marian explanation of Wisdom.¹⁸
Whilst Vladimir Lossky (1903–58) attacked Bulgakov’s teaching directly, another
remarkable theologian and patristic scholar, George Florovsky (1893–1979)
expressed his criticism implicitly.¹⁹ The latter’s premise was that modern
Sophiology abandoned the tradition of Orthodox Church Fathers. This abandon-
ment was a logical consequence of Western influence in contemporary Orthodox
theology which he termed the Western pseudomorphosis of theology whose origins
went back to the sixteenth century. Florovsky’s programme of a ‘return to the
Church Fathers’ constituted the basis of his ground-breaking studies in patristics.
Significantly, Florovsky saw a correlation between the pseudomorphosis of
theology and the transformation of icon-painting which, for him, began with
the Sophia icon.²⁰ He addressed this problem in his influential paper On the
veneration of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom in Byzantium and in Russia published
in 1932, the main conclusions of which appeared in his major monograph The
Ways of Russian Theology (1937).²¹ Much like Pavel Florensky, Florovsky con-
ducted in-depth art-historical research into the iconography of Sophia, the cre-
ation of which he linked with the activities of Archbishop Gennadii. Florovsky
compared the ‘apotheosis of virginity’ in the Sophia commentary with German
mysticism and the Sophia iconography with the images of Wisdom in the printed
editions of the fourteenth-century German mystic Heinrich Suso’s Exemplar
(1482, 1512): on the Novgorod Sophia icon ‘the traditional image of the Angel of
the Great Council appeared in the new light’ of Western mysticism.²² Just as
Solovyov created an indirect link between the Sophia iconography and the
Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, so too did

¹⁸ A. I. Nikol’skii, ‘Sofiia, Premudrost’ Bozhiia: Novgorodskaia redaktsiia ikony i sluzhba sv. Sofii’,
Vestnik arkheologii i istorii, izd. Imp. arkheologicheskim institutom 17 (1906): 92–100; G. D. Filimonov,
‘Materialy’, Vestnik Obshchestva liubitelei drevnerusskogo iskusstva, no. 1–3 (1874): 1–4. See
Chapter 12.
¹⁹ P. L. Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014); A. Klimoff, ‘Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy’,
St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, no. 1–2 (2005): 67–100; P. Hunt, ‘The Novgorod Sophia Icon
and “The Problem of Old Russian Culture”: Between Orthodoxy and Sophiology’, Symposion:
A Journal of Russian Thought, no. 4–5 (2000): 4–8.
²⁰ Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 233–42; Hunt, ‘The Novgorod Sophia Icon’, 8–16.
²¹ G. V. Florovskii, ‘O pochitanii Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei v Vizantii i na Rusi’, in Trudy V s”ezda
Russkikh akademicheskikh organizatsii za granitsei v Sofii 14–21 sentiabria 1930 goda, vol. I (Sofia,
1932), 485–500; G. Florovskii, Puti russkago bogoslovia (Paris, 1937). English translation: G. Florovsky,
Ways of Russian Theology, trans. R. L. Nichols, vol. I, Collected Works, V (Belmont, Mass: Nordland,
1979).
²² Florovskii, ‘O pochitanii Sofii’. The formula ‘apotheosis of virginity’ comes from Filimonov,
‘Ocherki’, 1874, 9.
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Florovsky, but this link had a sharp polemical message in his narrative. For
Florovsky, the Novgorod Sophia icon, with its alleged Western elements and
‘decorative symbolism, or more precisely, allegorism’, constituted ‘the break
with hiearatic realism’ and signalled the decline of medieval Russian icon-
painting.²³
Florovsky discussed the Viskovatyi affair in the context of the Novgorod Sophia
icon. From this perspective, the dispute between Metropolitan Makarii and
Viskovatyi reflected the debate between the Sophiologists and their opponents.
Viskovatyi’s protest was a ‘return to the Fathers’. Based on quotations from
patristic texts written during the period of Byzantine Iconoclasm (726–843),
Viskovatyi argued that the new allegorical images of God in the Kremlin under-
mined the significance of Christ’s incarnation—and this was the opponents’ main
claim against Sophiology. Florovsky’s inference clearly indicates this: ‘Viskovatyi
did not defend the past, he defended ‘truth’ that is, iconographic realism. His
quarrel with Metropolitan Makarii was a clash of two religious and aesthetic
orientations: traditional hieratic realism as opposed to a symbolism nourished
by a heightened religious imagination.’²⁴
This critique of ‘the new trend’ of Russian icon-painting exercised a profound
impact on scholarship of medieval Russian art. In his seminal book, Theology of
the Icon in Orthodox Church, the icon-painter Leonid Ouspensky (1902–87), a
friend of Vladimir Lossky, described the history of Russian icon-painting follow-
ing the Florovskian scheme of pseudomorphosis of theology.²⁵ Unsurprisingly,
Florovsky’s aforementioned words from his Sophia study appear as verbal quota-
tions in Ouspensky’s discussion of the Viskovatyi Affair which is the focal point of
his book.²⁶ Nevertheless, whilst Florovsky’s ‘neopatristic synthesis’ stimulated
fruitful patristic studies and Ouspensky’s icon theology inspired contemporary
icon-painting, the stigmatization of allegorical trends of fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century Russian painting as quasi heretical virtually paralyzed scholarship in this
field. Furthermore, Ouspensky’s book was not published in Russian until 1989
(the French version of the Theology of the Icon appeared in 1980). Up to this point,
in the Soviet period research on these complex iconographies had taken a back-
seat: the Novgorod Sophia icon itself was rarely mentioned in art-historical
monographs.²⁷

²³ Translation by R. L. Nichols. Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, I:29.

²⁴ Translation by R. L. Nichols. Florovsky, I:30.
²⁵ L. A. Uspenskii, Bogoslovie ikony pravoslavnoi tserkvi (Paris: Izd-vo Zapadno-evropeiskogo
Ekzarkhata, Moskovskii patriarkhat, 1989). Its first French edition: L. Ouspensky, La théologie de
l’icône dans l’Eglise orthodoxe, 2 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1980). English translation: L. Ouspensky, Theology of
the Icon, 2 vols (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992). Cf. Gavrilyuk, Georges
Florovsky, 241.
²⁶ Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, 2:313–17.
²⁷ In the Soviet period, except for Iakovleva’s article (A. I. Iakovleva, ‘ “Obraz mira” v ikone “Sofiia
Premudrost’ Bozhiia” ’, in Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo: Problemy i atributsii, ed. O. I. Podobedova and
V. N. Lazarev (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 388–401.), only the anti-Sophiologist theological essay by
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The State of Research

Although today the problem of allegorical iconographies, including the Novgorod

Sophia, is a familiar scholarly subject, the consequences of the Sophia debate
have determined the historiography. Firstly, the sophiological paradigm hinders
scholars from addressing the problem of allegorical icon-painting from a histor-
ical perspective: what was the function of these novel icons in the historical
context of their appearance? Why did the earlier iconographies prove unsatisfac-
tory, hence the demand appeared to create new ones? To what extent were they
related to earlier iconographic and artistic traditions, both in Rus and outside of it,
and to what extent were they innovative? These questions have hardly ever been
raised in art-historical studies. Instead, the emphasis is on their deviation from
Orthodox tradition. It is indicative that, similarly to Florovsky and Ouspensky, a
recent publication on the post-1547 Kremlin icons charges Metropolitan Makarii
with ignorance by claiming that ‘he did not comprehend the theological content of
icons, as he thought that they could be interpreted in a rational way by a set of
signs or symbols which illustrate a certain text or a theological concept’.²⁸
Art-historical scholarship of the Novgorod Sophia icon has been determined by
the theological premises formulated during the Sophia debate. Accordingly, the
main emphasis is on the Christological meaning of the image. Shortly after
condemnation of Bulgakov’s Sophiology, Albert M. Ammann published two
articles in which he classified the winged Sophia of the Novgorod icon as one
type of Slavonic Angel-Christ representations. He identified the Novgorod Sophia
firstly with the winged Wisdom-Christ images of the Balkan ‘Wisdom has built
her house’ iconography, and secondly with the images of Christ, the Angel of
the Great Counsel which was disseminated widely in late Byzantine painting.²⁹
Paradoxically, he created this link by referencing to Metropolitan Makarii, who

Nikolai Gavriushin (under the name of Anthony, Metropolitan of Leningrad) discussed the Novgorod
Sophia iconography (Metropolitan Antonii (Mel’nikov), ‘Iz istorii novgorodskoi lkonografii’,
Bogoslovskie trudy 27 (1983): 61–80. Cf. N. K. Gavriushin, ‘ “I ellini premudrosti ishchut”: Zametki o
sofiologii’, in Po sledam rytsarei Sofii (Moscow: Star Inter, 1998), 69–114). Apart from them, the subject
is strikingly absent from the large Soviet monographs on Novgorod icon-painting, such as:
E. S. Smirnova, V. K. Laurina, and E. A. Gordienko, Zhivopis’ Velikogo Novgoroda. XV vek (Moscow:
Nauka, 1982); V. K. Laurina and V. A. Pushkarev, Novgorod Icons, 12th–17th Century (Leningrad:
Aurora Art Publishers, 1980); V. N. Lazarev, Novgorodian Icon-Painting = Novgorodskaia ikonopis’
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1969); V. N. Lazarev, ‘Zhivopis’ i Skul’ptura Novgoroda’, in IRI, vol. II, 1954,
72–283; D. S. Likhachev, Novgorod Velikii: ocherk istorii kul’tury Novgoroda XI–XVII vv. (Moscow:
Izdatel’stvo Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1959); V. N. Lazarev, Iskusstvo Novgoroda (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1947).
²⁸ Sarab’ianov, ‘Simvoliko-allegoricheskie ikony’, 201. Here Sarabianov repeats, without reference,
Florovsky’s hypothesis about the influence of Western mysticism and “rationalist” theology in Russia
from the end of the fifteenth century, as well as its correlation with artistic trends. The idea of Makarii’s
ignorance appeared in Nikolai Andreiev’s ground-breaking study on the Viskovatyi affair for the first
time (N. E. Andreev, ‘O “Dele d’iaka Viskovatogo” ’, Seminarium Kondakovianum 5 (1932): 191–241).
²⁹ A. M. Ammann, ‘Slawische “Christus-Engel” Darstellungen’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 6
(1940): 475–7; A. M. Ammann, ‘Darstellung und Deutung der Sofia im vorpetrinischer Rusland’,
Orientalia Christiana Periodica 4 (1938): 143, 146.
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never provided any explanation of the Sophia iconography, nor did he equate
it with any of the winged Christ images which were discussed in the Viskovatyi
Affair, as Ammann suggested.³⁰ Nevertheless, Ammann’s articles, with their
persuasive iconographic classifications, exercised a similar impact as Florovsky’s
Sophia study: the scholarly discussions of Christ’s angelic representations and the
Sophia iconography became intertwined.
Following the Sophia debate, there has been a consensus amongst theologians
and art historians which serves as point of departure for all current interpretations
of the Novgorod Sophia icon: the winged Sophia is Christ, the Angel of the Great
Counsel. That there are a series of factors, primarily the commentary, which do
not support this premise was attempted to be resolved mainly by two theories,
both developed by theologians. The first belongs to Florovsky, who, as we have
seen, suggested that the icon and its commentary were created under Western
heterodox influence. Although Ammann’s classification of Slavonic Angel-Christ
representations challenged the Western origins of the Sophia iconography, the
idea that the commentary, with its Marian allusions, was influenced by Western
theological concepts remains alive.³¹
The other explanation can be linked to another eminent theologian, John
Meyendorff, whose ground-breaking research on the fourteenth-century Hesychast
controversy over Divine energies was in many aspects inspired by Florovsky’s
‘neopatristic synthesis’.³² Meyendorff pointed out that the Hesychast Patriarch of
Constantinople, Philotheos Kokkinos (1353–4; 1364–76) wrote a treatise on the
sophiological verses of the Proverbs which names the Divine energies, belonging
to the Holy Trinity, as Sophia.³³ Significantly, Philotheos had close ecclesiastical-
cultural contacts with Rus and many of his works were translated into Slavonic.

³⁰ Ammann, ‘Slawische “Christus-Engel” Darstellungen’, 475; Ammann, ‘Darstellung und Deutung

der Sofia’, 143.
³¹ Ammann, ‘Darstellung und Deutung der Sofia’, 155. For the ‘Western’ theory: S. Zolotarev,
‘Vopros o posviashchenii novgorodskogo Sofiiskogo sobora v trudakh russkikh religioznykh myslitelei
XIX—pervoi poloviny XX veka’, Novgorod i novgorodskaia zemlia: iskusstvo i restavratsiia 4 (2011):
161; S. Zolotarev, ‘Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia: Problemy i perspektivy religiozno-filosofskogo i iskusst-
vovedcheskogo osmysleniia’, Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 44–45 (2008): 266–9;
Antonii (Mel’nikov), ‘Iz istorii novgorodskoi ikonografii’, 72–5.
³² S. Tanev has demonstrated that the rediscovery of the Hesychast controversy in the twentieth
century can also be linked with Florovsky and the Sophia debate: S. Tanev, ‘ENERGEIA vs. SOFIA’,
International Journal of Orthodox Theology 2, no. 1 (2011): 15–71. Meyendorff explicitly challenged
Sophiology in his studies on the iconography of Sophia (I. F. Meiendorf, ‘Tema “Premudrosti”
v vostochnoevropeiskoi srednevekovoi kul’ture i ee nasledii’, in Literatura i iskusstvo v sisteme kul’tury,
ed. V. B. Piotrovskii (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), 251; Meyendorff, ‘Wisdom-Sophia’, 401). For
Meyendorff ’s relationship to Florovsky and the ‘neopatristic synthesis’: Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky,
246. For an introduction to Byzantine Hesychast controversy by Meyendorff himself: J. Meyendorff,
St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998).
³³ Meiendorf, ‘Tema “Premudrosti” ’, 250; Meyendorff, ‘Wisdom-Sophia’, 392–3; J. Meyendorff,
‘L’iconographie de la Sagesse Divine dans la tradition byzantine’, Cahiers archéologiques 10 (1959): 262.
For Philotheos’s treatise with the edition of the text: Archimandrite Arsenii (Ivashchenko), Filofeia,
patriarkha konstantinopol’skogo XIV veka tri rechi k episkopu Ignatiiu, s ob”iasneniem izrecheniia
Pritchei: Premudrost’ sozda sebe dom i proch (Novgorod: Parovaia tip. I. I. Ignatovskogo, 1898).
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These translations, however, do not include his Hesychast writings.³⁴ Using

Philotheos’s Greek text and relying on Ammann’s iconographic studies,
Meyendorff has speculated that the red, fiery face of Sophia on the Novgorod
Sophia icon represents the Divine energy belonging to the Holy Trinity who is
visualized by the three different representations of Christ in the icon (Emmanuel,
Angel-Christ, and adult Christ). Thus, in Meyendorff ’s interpretation, the
Novgorod Sophia is a Hesychast Trinitarian image.
Meyendorff ’s hypothesis, which is widely accepted today, has further implica-
tions.³⁵ Notably, the icon, which on the basis of stylistic analysis is considered to
be the earliest extant example of Novgorod Sophia iconography, does not show any
distinguishing feature of Novgorod painting (Cat. 1; Fig. 0.4). It is believed to be
the work of a Moscow or Tver icon-painter, rather than that of a Novgorodian. To
resolve this contradiction, Lev Lifshits used Meyendorff ’s Hesychast interpret-
ation: he associated this icon, today kept in the Kremlin Annunciation Cathedral,
with Arsenii, bishop of Tver (1390–1409) who had direct connections with
Byzantine Hesychasts.³⁶ He was a member of the close circle of Kiprian, the
Metropolitan of Kyiv (1375–1406), who, in his turn, was appointed by Patriarch
Philotheos.³⁷ Lifshits argued that the icon in the Kremlin Annunciation Cathedral,
the earliest Novgorod Sophia icon, was painted in Tver, during the lifetime of
Arsenii, in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Another recent proposition
belongs to Tatiana Tsarevskaya who put forward that the Novgorod Sophia
iconography had been created in Byzantium and disseminated in central Rus
before its appearance in Novgorod: it was seen by Evfimii II, archbishop of
Novgorod (1428–56) when he was in Moscow in 1437 and then it was copied in
the fresco decoration of the Archiepiscopal Palace in 1441.³⁸

³⁴ G. M. Prokhorov, ‘Tak vossiiaiut pravedniki . . .’: Vizantiiskaia literatura XIV veka v Drevnei Rusi
(St. Petersburg: Izd-vo O. Abyshko, 2009), 120–265.
³⁵ Meyendorff ’s Hesychast theory was developed further by Lifshits: L. Lifšic, ‘Die Ikone “Sophia-
Weisheit Gottes” aus der Sammlung der Museen des Moskauer Kreml: Zur Frage nach der Herkunft
und der Zeit des ersten Auftauchens des sogenannten “Novgoroder” ikonographischen Typs’’, in Die
Weisheit baute ihr Haus: Untersuchungen zu hymnischen und didaktischen Ikonen, ed. E. Haustein-
Bartsch and K. Ch. Felmy (München: Deutscher Kunstvlg, 1999), 29–41; E. Ostašenko, ‘Sofia Sapienza
Divina’, in Sophia 1999, 72–5; E. Ia. Ostashenko, ‘Sofiia, Premudrost’ Bozhiia’, in Sofiia 2000, 40–3;
Hunt, ‘The Novgorod Sophia Icon’, 26–37.
³⁶ Lifšic, ‘Die Ikone “Sophia-Weisheit Gottes” ’, 40–1.
³⁷ For Metropolitan Kiprian: J. Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-
Russian Relations in the 14th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 197–260. For
Arsenii, Bishop of Tver: E. L. Koniavskaia, ‘Arsenii Tverskoi’, in PE, vol. III, 2001, 385–7.
³⁸ T. Iu. Tsarevskaia, ‘Programmnye osnovy pervonachal’noi freskovoi dekoratsii severo-zapadnogo
pomeshcheniia Vladychnoi palaty (kel’i Ioanna) v Novgorodskom kremle’, Aktual’nye problemy teorii i
istorii iskusstva 9 (2019): 476. Tsarevskaya attributed this bold hypothesis erroneously to me. In a
subsequent article (Tsarevskaia, ‘Rannii variant’, 167.) she modified her views. According to this new
hypothesis, the Kremlin icon was copied in Moscow (or Tver?) in the early 1440s, from a Novgorod
original seen in Novgorod. The person, who spread the new iconography, might have been Pachomius
the Serbian, the famous writer who moved from Novgorod to Moscow in this period.
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 13

Fig. 0.4. Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, icon, first half of the fifteenth century.
Annunciation Cathedral, Kremlin, Moscow.

Although the interpretative framework of the Novgorod Sophia icon has

been determined by the premise that Sophia is the Angel-Christ, as well as by
the Hesychast and Western theories, its explanations in recent scholarly publica-
tions cover nearly all fields of Christian theology and not just those which were
mentioned by Pavel Florensky: Triadology, Christology, Pneumatology, soteriology,
Mariology, ecclesiology, Eucharistic doctrine, theology of Creation, Eschatology,
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ethics, and mysticism. Moreover, the political interpretation of the Sophia icon is
also frequent, primarily in publications on the history of Novgorod and its coins.³⁹
As a result, the challenge today is to systematize all the available information
regarding the Sophia icon and reconcile its different interpretations, an endeavour
for which numerous attempts have been made in the last decades.⁴⁰
Amongst these, the Sophia—the Wisdom of God exhibition held in Rome in
1999 and thereafter in Moscow in 2000, is particularly significant.⁴¹ The concept
of this exhibition reflected the ideas of Sophiologists concerning the different
aspects of Sophia.⁴² Here the Novgorod Sophia icon was associated with iconog-
raphies that were attributed to sophiological meanings.⁴³ Whilst the exhibition
demonstrated the inextricable intertwining of the Novgorod Sophia iconography
with the extremely rich allegorical traditions of late medieval Russian icon-
painting, the art-historical presentations and interpretations of these sophiological
or supposedly sophiological iconographies were methodologically flawed by an
approach that neglected the historical aspects. As a result, they were unable to
place the different innovative Russian iconographies in their historical context. In
the exhibition catalogue, like most other publications on the Novgorod Sophia
icon, the question of why this enigmatic iconography was created remained
unanswered. Despite numerous studies, the basic meaning and origin of the

³⁹ Z. A. Brzozowska, Sofia—upersonifikowana Mądrość Boża. Dzieje wyobrażeń w kręgu kultury

bizantyńsko-słowiańskiej (Lodz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2015); A. Musin, ‘Russian
Medieval Culture as an “Area of Preservation” of the Byzantine Civilization’, in Towards Rewriting?:
New Approaches to Byzantine Archaeology and Art, ed. P. Ł. Grotowski and S. Skrzyniarz (Warsaw:
Polish Society of Oriental Art; Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University, 2010), 33–5; V. A. Burov, Ocherki
istorii i arkheologii srednevekovogo Novgoroda (Moscow: Institut arkheologii RAN, 1994), 185–6;
V. L. Ianin, Denezhno-vesovye sistemy russkogo srednevekov’ia: domongol’skii period., 2nd ed.
(Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2009), 288–96; A. V. Artsikhovskii, ‘Izobrazheniia na novgorodskikh
monetakh’, Izvestiia Akademii nauk SSSR. Seriia istori i filosofii 5, no. 1 (1948): 99–106; P. L. Gusev,
‘Simvoly vlasti v Velikom Novgorode, 1. Sviataia Sofiia’, Vestnik istorii i arkheologii 21 (1911): 105–13.
For further bibliography: M. A. L’vov, ‘Eshche raz k voprosu ob izobrazhenii na novgorodskikh
monetakh’, in Proshloe nashei rodiny v pamiatnikakh numizmatiki, ed. V. M. Potin (Leningrad: Gos.
Ermitazh, 1977), 12–36.
⁴⁰ Brzozowska, Sofia; Zolotarev, ‘Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia’; A. Deyneka, ‘The Ackland Sophia:
Contextualizing, Interpreting, and “Containing” Wisdom’ (MA, Chapel Hill, University of North
Carolina, 2007); V. G. Briusova, Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia v drevnerusskoi literature i iskusstve
(Moscow: Belyi gorod, 2006); L. I. Lifshits, ‘Premudrost’ v russkoi ikonopisi’, Vizantiiskii vremennik
61 (2002): 138–50; S. N. Gukova, ‘Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia’, Novgorodskii istoricheskii sbornik 9
(2003): 197–220; Hunt, ‘The Novgorod Sophia Icon’; P. Balcárek, ‘The Image of Sophia in Medieval
Russian Iconography and Its Sources’, Byzantinoslavica 60 (1999): 593–610; N. V. Kvilidze, ‘Ikona Sofii
Premudrosti Bozhiei i osobennosti novgorodskoi liturgicheskoi traditsii v kontse XV veka’, in
Sakral’naia topografiia srednevekovogo goroda, ed. L. A. Beliaev and A. L. Batalov (Moscow: Institut
khristianskoi kul’tury srednevekov’ia, 1998), 86–99; D. M. Fiene, ‘What Is the Appearance of Divine
Sophia?’, Slavic Review 48, no. 3 (1989): 449–76.
⁴¹ Sofiia 2000; Sophia 1999.
⁴² L. I. Lifshits, ‘Chto Tia narechem!: “Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia” v russkoi ikone’, Nashe Nasledie:
Illiustrirovannyi istoriko-kul’turnyi zhurnal 65 (2003): 30–43; Lifshits, ‘Premudrost’ v russkoi ikonopisi’.
⁴³ Discussions of the Novgorod Sophia iconography: Sofiia 2000, 40–3, 74–5, 152–3, 190–3, 274–7,
328–31; Sophia 1999, 72–5; 106–7; 184–5; 222–5; 306–9; 356–7; 360–1.
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Novgorod Sophia iconography, as well as its place in the history of Russian art has
not yet been clarified. This book addresses this lacuna.

Research Questions and Objectives

This research explores the meaning, function, and historical context of the
creation of the Novgorod Sophia iconography. In broader terms, however, by
investigating the Wisdom icon, the aim of this study is to examine the historical
roots and specific features of allegorical trends of Russian icon-painting, the
appearance of which in mid-sixteenth-century Moscow led to the Viskovatyi
affair. Accordingly, the focal point of this book is the earliest history of the
Novgorod Sophia iconography and its commentary. Their subsequent develop-
ment, together with the history of other sophiological images (most importantly,
the iconography of ‘Wisdom has built her house’) will be discussed only to the
extent relevant to the exploration of the Novgorod Sophia icon’s origins.
There are three main reasons why this monograph has been dedicated to the
study of the Novgorod Sophia. Firstly, it is arguably the earliest of the disputed
Russian iconographies mentioned in the Viskovatyi Affair. Secondly, its histori-
ography, as we have seen, fundamentally influenced the scholarship on all other
late medieval Russian allegorical iconographies. Thirdly, this icon has a commen-
tary which serves as the basis for its investigation. Moreover, this is the first extant
Russian commentary on icons which was to be followed by others: interestingly,
Makarii’s explanations of icons in the Viskovatyi Affair clearly reflect the struc-
tural characteristics of this and subsequent icon commentaries.⁴⁴ Thus, the inves-
tigation of the first commentary can provide valuable information about the new
allegorical trends in fifteenth-sixteenth-century Russian icon-painting.
In methodological terms, the chief aim of this study is to separate the investi-
gation of the Sophia icon from the so-called sophiological paradigm. This will be
achieved by abandoning the Florovskian idea of ‘returning to the Fathers’ and
replacing it by the concept of ‘returning to medieval sources’. Metropolitan
Makarii’s attempt to legitimize the iconographies, disputed by Viskovatyi, by
references to biblical, liturgical, and patristic texts clearly indicates that medieval
Russian allegorical iconographies are always connected with texts.⁴⁵ It is the art
historian’s task to link the iconographies with relevant texts.

⁴⁴ For another famous commentary, explaining the icon ‘You are a priest forever’, see Kriza, ‘The
Russian Gnadenstuhl’, 113–16.
⁴⁵ Although scholars often consider Makarii’s explanations arbitrary or irrelevant (cf. Sarab’ianov,
‘Simvoliko-allegoricheskie ikony’, 201.), this study, which seeks to highlight the characteristics of
medieval Russian icon commentaries, will challenge this claim. For this question see also Kriza, ‘The
Russian Gnadenstuhl’.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/3/2022, SPi

16       

Scholars of medieval Russian art and culture often propose that there is an
evident overlap between the texts of the Church Fathers accessible in modern
publications, translations, and the reception of this patristic tradition in Rus. This
assumption, however, is erroneous: only a small fraction of Byzantine theological
literature was available in Slavonic. Furthermore, a great proportion of those texts
which were indeed accessible and read in Rus have never been translated into
modern languages or even published. In iconographic studies, the citation of those
texts which could have never been read by the creators of the iconography, leads to
ahistorical explanations. For example, the writings of Byzantine Hesychasts on the
Divine energies, with the sole exemption of David Disypatos’s brief fragments,
were unknown in medieval Rus.⁴⁶ For that very reason a Hesychast interpretation
of the Sophia icon cannot be convincing: the idea that Greek texts, without
Slavonic translation, might have inspired the creation of such a significant
Russian iconography as the Novgorod Sophia icon can be ruled out.
In contrast, the commentary on the Sophia icon will be at the heart of this
study. The surprising neglect of this text in the historiography can be explained by
three main factors. First, its use in support of Florensky’s sophiological theory
made it an unreliable source, as according to Florovsky’s hypothesis, it was
influenced by Western theological writings. Second, without a profound study
of the textual history of the commentary, it has been often proposed that the
commentary is later than the image itself, therefore it cannot be used for the
analysis of the initial meaning of the iconography.⁴⁷ Finally, the previously
mentioned incomprehensibility of the text has prevented scholars from using it
as historical source.
Conversely, based on the textual analysis of the commentary (see the Critical
edition in the Appendix) and the historical survey of the development of the
Sophia iconography (see the Catalogue), the preposition of this study is that the
commentary and the image were created nearly simultaneously in the fifteenth
century, therefore they must be investigated together. Accordingly, a great chal-
lenge of this research is to develop a methodology by which the Sophia commen-
tary can be deciphered. This investigation will raise the problem of allegory in
medieval Russian art: the relationship between text and image—the obscure
commentary and the enigmatic icon. The expectation is that the results of this
methodological experiment will be applicable to other iconographies, especially to
those which, similarly to the Novgorod Sophia, have a commentary or an explan-
ation by Metropolitan Makarii.
The reconsideration of the Novgorod Sophia icon requires the application of the
methodologies of different disciplines. Apart from philology and art history,

⁴⁶ Prokhorov, Tak vossiiaiut pravedniki . . . , 15–53.

⁴⁷ Cf. Hunt, ‘The Novgorod Sophia Icon’, 14, 35.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/3/2022, SPi

 17

theological and historical approaches will also be utilized. The interdisciplinary

character of the research is reflected in the structure of the book which consists of
four main parts: WORD, IMAGE, IDENTITY, and HISTORY. Unlike art histor-
ical investigations, the starting point will be the WORD, the commentary, as,
undoubtedly, it is the neglect of this text that led earlier studies on Sophia
iconography astray. The analysis of the commentary will be followed by an
iconographical study of the Novgorod Wisdom image in the part IMAGE. The
exploration of the direct sources of its singular iconographic elements will lead to
the analysis of the wider visual and theological context of the icon in the part
IDENTITY. Finally, the part HISTORY will reveal the concrete historical circum-
stances of the creation of the Novgorod Sophia iconography.
Other documents randomly have
different content
 HERONS.

To-day our natural history picture shows three very funny long-
legged birds; they look at first sight very like storks, but these birds
are herons.

The heron, though much less common than in former days, still
holds its place among familiar British birds, being occasionally seen
on the banks of almost every river or lake. This bird is about three
feet in length, the bill being longer than the head, and the wings
when spread measure five feet across; with these large strong wings
it can fly to a great height. The heron lives on fish, which it swallows
whole, and in great numbers; it can neither swim nor dive, but it
wades into the water as far as its long legs will carry it with safety,
and stands there as still as if carved out of wood, with its long neck
drawn in, and its head resting between the shoulders. It will watch
with patience for hours till a fish or a frog comes within its reach,
when it stretches out its long neck suddenly, and snatches up its
prey with its sharp bill. It mostly prefers to stand under the shadow
of a tree, bush, or bank; and from its perfect stillness, and the sober
colour of its plumage, it seems often to escape the observation even
of the fish themselves.
In old times in England, the sport called hawking, which consisted in
the chase of herons by hawks or falcons trained for the purpose,
was a very favourite one among both gentlemen and ladies. Young
hawks procured from their nests in Iceland or Norway, and carefully
trained, were of great value. The sport was generally enjoyed on
horseback, and both ladies and gentlemen usually carried the hawks
perched upon their wrists, the birds’ heads being covered with a
hood till the moment came for letting them fly.

When the heron was discovered, he would soon become 120

aware of the approach of the hawking party; and spreading
his broad wings, and stretching out his long neck in front, and his
long legs behind, would rise majestically in the air. Then the hawk’s
hood was removed, and as soon as he caught sight of the heron, he
was let fly in pursuit.

Now a hawk cannot strike unless it is above its prey, and the heron
seems instinctively to be aware of this. It used to be thought a fine
sight to see these two birds striving to rise each above the other.
Round and round they went, wheeling in a succession of circles,
always higher and higher. At length the hawk rose high enough to
shoot down upon the heron. Sometimes he was received upon the
long sharp bill of the latter, and simply spitted himself; but generally
he would break the wing of the heron, or clutch him with beak and
claws, when the two came fluttering down together.

This sport has now fallen into disuse, and English herons lead a
peaceful life enough. There are some at the Zoological gardens, and
I think you will laugh to see them standing there at the edge of their
pond, with heads sunk between their shoulders, looking like long-
nosed old gentlemen in pointed tail-coats.
121
 AUNT TOTTY’S PETS:

COCO AND MARQUIS.

The next of her pets that Aunt Totty told us about were a mule and
a dog.

“Yes, my dears,” said Aunt Totty, “Marquis was certainly a splendid

animal; as large as a fine horse, as strong as a bull, and wonderfully
fleet. We used to drive him about in a light two-wheeled carriage, a
kind of cabriolet, which was the carriage most used in that part of
France in those days. I must tell you that what I am going to relate
happened when I was quite a little child, which of course is a 122
long time ago, and we were living at the time in a chateau,
or large country-house, in the south of France. There were large
forests in that part of the country, and the house was a long way off
from any town.
“Now, handsome and strong Marquis certainly was, but that was
about all you could say in his favour, for he had a detestable temper.
I hardly know why I call Marquis one of my pets, for we children
were never allowed to drive him, hardly even to stroke him, lest he
should kick or bite; and he was addicted to both these bad habits.
Whenever he thought he had hurt anyone, or done mischief of any
kind, you might see him shake all over, as if he was having a good
quiet laugh all to himself. Once he succeeded in breaking the traces
and getting free from the carriage: then he indulged in something
more than a quiet chuckle, and fell to neighing or braying—for I
hardly know which to call it—with all his might, till we were nearly
deafened by the horrid noise. I remember another occasion, 123
when he succeeded in upsetting the little carriage and
breaking the shafts. My mother and I and the coachman were all
thrown out. Luckily we were not much hurt; and while we were
picking ourselves up, Marquis stood looking at us with an air of
triumph, and amused himself by kicking up the dust with his hoofs
till we were almost smothered.
“Marquis had, however, one tender place in his heart, and that was
occupied by our dog Coco. Coco was a spaniel; no great beauty
perhaps; but he was as good and amiable as Marquis was the
reverse. How two creatures so unlike in disposition—one so good-
hearted, the other so vicious—could have struck up such a
friendship, I never could make out. If Coco went into the field where
Marquis was grazing, the mule would run up to him directly, and I
have even seen the two rub their noses together as if they were
kissing. Coco had a comfortable bed in the kitchen, but he preferred
at night going to sleep upon the straw in the little out-house which
served as a stable for Marquis.

“The winter we were at the chateau happened to be unusually

severe, and snow was on the ground for many days. It was always
known that there were wolves in the forest, though they were rarely
seen; but during the cold weather it was said that one or two had
approached the village. One evening we were all sitting round the
fire, Coco being in the midst of us, when he suddenly pricked up his
ears, as if he heard a sound outside, and immediately rushed out of
the room. Directly afterwards we heard a dreadful howling, and
papa and the boys ran out to see what it was. They found Coco and
a wolf waging a dreadful combat just outside the door of the shed
where Marquis was kept. This was not the regular stable for the
horses, and was rather separated from the other buildings of the
chateau. On the approach of human beings the wolf ran off, but he
had inflicted a mortal wound upon poor Coco, who was just expiring
when his rescuers arrived. He died to defend his friend Marquis.”

124
 COWSLIP GATHERING.

Merry time, when cowslips bloom;

Merry time, when thrushes sing;
Merry time, when wild rose sprays
Far abroad their branches fling.

Merry time for girls and boys, 125

When the cowslips first appear,
Gilding meadows with their cups,—
Happiest time of all the year!

When the bees, with busy hum,

Play amongst their golden bells,
And the butterflies are come—
All of joy and pleasure tells.

Happy children! roaming far,

Gather cowslips at your will;
Fill your baskets—fill them full—
Thousands will be left there still.

Oh! the joyous time of youth,

Like the spring-tide of the year;
Could it but, like cowslip-bells,
Come again each coming year!
126
 MAMMA’S SUNDAY TALK.
MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR:

THE MAN WITH THE WITHERED HAND

HEALED.

Our Saviour’s next miracle, after the miraculous draught of fishes

which I described in our last Sunday talk, took place also at
Capernaum, and consisted in healing the mother of the wife of
Simon Peter the fisherman. Peter had become a disciple of Jesus,
and indeed was soon afterwards created one of the twelve apostles.
The Master often visited the house of His disciple; and one day on
entering it, He was told that Peter’s wife’s mother lay 127
seriously ill. Christ immediately went into the room of the sick
woman; stood over her, and holding her hand, bade the fever leave
her. She arose at once from her bed, perfectly well; not merely
better; not weak, as people usually are on first recovering from a
fever, but quite well. St. Matthew says of her:—“And she arose and
ministered to them:” meaning that she was able to get up and
attend to her household duties as usual.

Our Saviour now went down to Nazareth, where, as you know, my

dear children, He was brought up, and where He had lived for many
years unknown and in poverty. He there performed many wonderful
miracles, healing the sick, and doing good to the poor or afflicted
who came to Him. But you must not expect me to describe to you all
His wonderful works of this kind; I shall tell you only of the most
important, that you may learn the loving kindness and mercy of Him
who “bore our sins and carried our sorrows.”

It often happened on the Sabbath, in the cool of the evening, that

the sick were brought out on their beds or couches to Jesus to be
healed. They were not brought till the sun was setting, for fear of
breaking the commandment which forbids all manner of work on the
Sabbath: but the Jewish Sabbath ending at the setting of the sun,
people did not scruple to bring their sick to be healed by Jesus after
that hour. And He healed all that were brought to Him.

But once on a Sabbath day, before the hour of sunset, a man came
to Him for help. The hand of this man was withered and helpless,
and he came to Christ hoping that He would heal it. We are told in
the Bible that the Scribes and Pharisees watched Jesus to see
whether He would heal on the Sabbath day, that they might find an
accusation against Him for breaking the commandment. But Jesus
knew their thoughts, and said to the man which had the withered
hand: “Rise up and stand forth in the midst.” And he arose 128
and stood forth. Then said Jesus unto them: “I will ask you
one thing: Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do evil;
to save life or to destroy it?” And looking round upon them all, He
said unto the man: “Stretch forth thy hand!” And he did so, and his
hand was restored whole as the other.

Now our Saviour did not mean by performing this miracle to teach
that the observance of the Sabbath should be lightly thought of. The
teaching of our Lord and His example do not tend to lessen our
reverence for this holy-day. But what He intended to show was that
works of mercy are quite consistent with the holiness of the
Sabbath, and that the Sabbath was intended for the advantage and
happiness of mankind.

You would think that the gentle reproof of our Lord would have
made these Scribes and Pharisees repent: but it was not so. They
felt that they were put to shame before the people, and their rage
and hatred against our Saviour increased. They felt that they could
not stand before His teaching, even had this teaching not been
sustained as it was by such signs and wonders. They were losing
influence, and if Christ was allowed to go on, their own power would
be gone.

Then the Pharisees and Scribes went and held council together
against Jesus, consulting how they should destroy Him.

129
 SOME OF MY LITTLE FRIENDS:

FRANK.

I think you would like to hear about a little friend of mine called
Frank. That is, he was a little friend of mine, for he is grown into a
man now; and though a friend still, he is by no means little, being
above six feet high. However, what I am going to tell you of him
occurred years ago.

Frank’s father died when he was quite young, and his mother, 130
marrying again, went out to India; so it happened that he
lived in London with his grandfather and grandmother. They, of
course, were quite old people, and he was always very glad to spend
a part of his holidays with some cousins at their house in the
country, which was very near to where I lived. I was not quite grown
up at that time, but I was so much older than Frank that he looked
upon me as a very wise person, and one quite fitted to give him
advice.

Now Frank had a great talent for drawing, and I think that was what
drew us together, for I had a turn that way also. He used to sketch
the beautiful scenery in the neighbourhood; and, although he only
sketched in pencil, he obtained good effects of distance, gave
correctly the foliage of the different trees, and, above all, he seemed
by natural genius always to choose just the subjects which formed a
nice composition as a picture.

He was at this time about twelve or thirteen years of age, and

whenever he talked to me about his own future, which he very often
did, I could not help encouraging him to become an artist. His
grandfather, I knew, had other views, and intended him to be a
merchant, there being some advantageous opening for him in that
way. Still I advised Frank at least to let his grandfather know how
much he wished to be an artist, and to show him some of his
sketches; “because,” as I said, “if he consents, it is time you should
be put in the way of studying art properly.”

Well, Frank followed my advice. After spending his holidays in the

country, he went to pass one day in town at his grandfather’s before
going to school. In the evening after dinner, when he was sitting
with his grandfather and grandmother, he suddenly broke out with:—

“Grandpapa dear, I want to be an artist.”

“An artist!” said grandpapa; “why, what fancy is this? I didn’t know
you had a taste that way. Here, let me see if you can draw this.”

He placed before his grandson a small ancient vase, which he 131

took from a glass case; for Frank’s grandfather, I must tell
you, was a great collector of ancient things—relics, and curiosities.

Frank took his place at the opposite side of the table, and set to
work. At last he brought the paper round to grandpapa. There was
the vase, very fairly and correctly copied:—But I think I had better
give you an account of what happened in grandpapa’s own words,
as he told it all to me some time afterwards.

“The vase was well drawn, no doubt,” said grandpapa, “but after all
it was nothing extraordinary; and I was giving the paper back to
Frank, when I noticed that there was some drawing on the other
side. Looking at it again, I saw two heads—mere sketches, but
better likenesses I never saw. One was his grandmamma; there she
was to the very life. The other—well, the other was a caricature,
rather than a portrait, of me. I was made to appear ugly and
ridiculous, instead of the good-looking old gentleman I am;” (He
said this laughing) “still, it was a likeness, I confess. I tried to be
angry, but laughed instead, and exclaimed: ‘Ah, Frank, Frank! you
shall be an artist if you like; you certainly have talent, but you must
turn it to better account than by making caricatures of your old
grandfather.’”

Frank is now grown up, and has already obtained some fame as an
artist. I saw two pictures of his at the Royal Academy exhibition the
other day, which were admired and praised by everybody.

132
SPRING SHOWERS.
 [play]

Moderato legato.

1.
While it patters, while it pours,
Little folks are kept indoors:
Little birds sing through the rain,
“Dreaming flowers, awake again! 133
From the damp mould lift your bloom;
Scent the earth with rich perfume.”

2.
See the flow’rets, one and all,
Answer to the cheery call;
Crocuses begin to thrill,
Violets thicken on the hill,
And the fields look sparkling bright,
With the clover, red and white.

3.
When it patters, when it pours,
Little folks are kept in-doors,
Looking through the window pane,
Covered o’er by drops of rain;
While its tinkling sound repeats,
“Blossoms crown the earth with sweets.”
134

135
 DEER.

Look at that fine stag in the picture, keeping guard while the does
and fawns are feeding! How watchful he looks, with his head erect;
and how grandly his antlers spread out, as we see them against the
soft twilight sky! Deer in their wild state are timid creatures; at least,
they are very much afraid of human beings; and it is difficult to
approach them. Shooting the wild deer in the Highlands of Scotland
is considered excellent sport: it is called Deer-stalking. Large herds
are to be found there among the mountains, but the greatest
caution and skill are needed to get near enough to have a shot at
them without being observed. Of course the deer we see in parks
are comparatively tame: they are generally fallow deer; while those
of the Highlands are a larger and stronger species, called red deer.

I daresay many of you little people who read this have been to
Richmond park, and seen the herds of graceful fallow deer there. If
you go up very gently to them perhaps they will come and eat bread
out of your hand. At least I remember when I was a little girl, and
passed a summer at Richmond, I succeeded once in making two
young fawns come and share my biscuit with me. Shall I tell you
how it happened?
One morning I had not learnt my lessons as well as usual; perhaps I
had been watching the butterflies from the window flitting about in
the sunshine instead of looking at my book; at any rate Miss
Dobson, my governess, thought it necessary to punish me. Now I
was too big to be put into the corner, being nine years old; and the
mode of punishment she always adopted was to avoid speaking to
me for an hour or so, and at the same time to put on an expression
of face at once severe and sorrowful.

After school hours we went out for our walk in the park as 136
usual, and, as I was an affectionate and very talkative child,
you may suppose that Miss Dobson’s gloomy face and freezing
silence made me very miserable. If I ventured upon a remark the
answer never extended beyond “yes” or “no”; sometimes not even
that. We had two great dogs, which generally went out with us on
our walk; but when I was under punishment, even their
companionship was not allowed.

At last Miss Dobson seated herself under a great oak, and began to
read a book she had brought out with her. Then I wandered a little
way off, picking the pretty wild flowers that grew amongst the fern.
The birds were singing in the sunshine, the bees were humming,
everything with life seemed to enjoy that life but me. Some deer
were lying under the shadow of the trees not far away, and I
observed that two pretty little fawns, standing nearer to me than the
rest, were watching me. I had some biscuit in my pocket, intended
for the dogs; and taking a piece in my hand, I walked up very softly
to the little creatures. They looked at me, as I approached, with a
frightened glance from their great dark eyes; but I fancy there must
have been a sad and subdued expression in my childish face which
took away from my appearance what might have terrified them, and
on consideration they decided to remain.

Holding out the biscuit, I dropped it near them; then up jumped Mrs.
Doe, and came forward to see what it was I offered to her children.
I threw her a piece also, which she took and munched gladly, and
the little ones followed her example. I cannot describe to you what a
comfort it was to me in my trouble to find that these pretty creatures
were not afraid of me, and did not shun me. I no longer felt solitary;
no longer without friends or companions. Presently they took the
biscuit from my fingers, and when I had no more to give them, they
still thrust their soft noses into my little hand, and let me stroke
them.

But my pleasure did not last long. A fine stag, the leader of 137
the herd, who was lying in the midst of them, and who, I
suppose, had been half asleep, seemed suddenly to become
conscious of my presence, and took alarm. Jumping up, he bounded
away, followed by the rest of the herd, and my two little friends went
after the others.

Looking at them as they fled away from me, I felt more forlorn and
solitary than ever, and tears came into my eyes. Presently Miss
Dobson came up to me; she had been watching me from a distance,
and now finding that I was crying, her manner changed, and she
was very kind. In fact, my punishment was over for the time, and I
think she began to find that it was a kind of punishment which I felt
more than she intended.

Two legs sat upon three legs,

With one leg in his lap;
In comes four legs,
And runs away with one leg;
Up jumps two legs,
Catches up three legs,
Throws it after four legs,
And makes him bring one leg back.
138
139
 DAME DUCK’S LECTURE.

Old Mother Duck has hatched a brood

Of ducklings small and callow;
Their little wings are short, their down
Is mottled grey and yellow.

One peeped out from beneath her wing,

One scrambled on her back:
“That’s very rude,” said old Dame Duck;
“Get off! quack, quack, quack, quack!”

“’Tis close,” said Dame Duck, shoving out

The egg-shells with her bill;
“Besides, it never suits young ducks
To keep them sitting still.”

So rising from her nest, she said,