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The icon altar in St. Jodokus Church, Bielefeld
by Heinrich Sunder
Previous history
An icon altar in a Roman Catholic Church is certainly something quite unusual. Here is a brief account of how it came to be, which was more or less by chance and in any event quite
unintentional, that the Church of St. Jodokus in Bielefeld came to have an icon altar:
An exhibition of icons by the Russian iconographer Alexei Alexandrovitch, who had immigrated to Munich, so impressed a
benefactor of the St. Jodokus congregation that he put into action a plan he had been fostering for some time, namely to donate a new cross-way for our church. He asked our iconographer whether he would
like to take on such an assignment; but the artist declined on grounds that icon tradition would not permit him to accept any pre-set conditions for the creation of icons.
The cross-way and its fourteen stations familiar to ecclesiastical tradition in the Christian Church of the West are unknown in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The assignment was
therefore, quite unceremoniously, converted into “the life of Jesus Christ on sixteen picture panels”, whereby neither the employer nor the "artist" had any preconceived idea regarding the
ultimate purpose of the pictures. In fact, once the iconographer had begun creating the picture panels and on completion offered them to our church as a gift, I thought I would have to decline the offer,
as I could not envision any use in our church for the sixteen icons.
However, when I saw all sixteen pictures together after their completion, one beside the other, I didn’t hesitate
one moment to accept the gift with great gratitude. AN idea took shape in my mind that by assembling the pictures in a group, I would be able to give our altar a dignified retabulum (altar top). In
our otherwise attractive and sympathetically restored, late-Gothic church, the neo-Gothic retabulum of the high altar had long been considered inferior to the rest of the church interior. The church was
consecrated in 1511. Nothing is known of its first altar. Because construction of the St. Jodokus Church and Monastery on this site necessitated a move from the heights of the Jostberg (Mount Jost)
to the flat land between the Old and New Town, it is possible that the church did possess an old altar that was taken from the Jostberg and installed at the present site. In any case, the original altar
had been replaced with a baroque altar given to the Church in Rheda in 1807 as a gift. Over the course of time, there followed two neo-gothic retabulae, both of which were, however, nothing more than
mechanical clichés –copies – lacking any Gothic spirit or religious statement.
Essay by
Prof. Dr. Fuchs
(Professor Dr. Fuchs gave a lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for Christian Art in the Archdiocese
of Paderborn held on 26th June 1962 in Bielefeld on the subject of the new icon altar. An article of his on the subject was published in the 1962 Annuals of that society, by Bonifacius Printers, Paderborn). Click the button to read the article.
THE POPULARITY OF ICONS
IN OUR TIME
The panel paintings of the Christian East for centuries remained unnoticed by the West.
It was a fact that every Roman
Catholic church had a Mother of God icon - the “Madonna of Eternal Compassion” – but most people had no idea that this was actually an icon. It wasn’t until the two world wars and
after many peoples and their cultures met that created a change during our century. Our generation re-discovered the icons and perceived with amazement that the language of the icons is not just a language
of the East, but that it is a language which can be understood universally. The icons’ message is beyond temporalities and nationalities, is cosmic and catholic. The other-world expression of
the faces, the measured, aristocratic animation of the figures, the solemn blessing gesture of the hands raised in blessing, the harmonious construction of every scene, the well-balanced play of their colours,
the brilliant shimmer on golden background – all this gives the icons a unique universality, a beauty to which all are drawn and a timeless validity. This new understanding of the icons in our time
is due also in part to the many efforts amongst Christians still divided to get to know each other better.
Icons have a long, eventful history To possess a picture of a beloved or revered person
being a profound human need and because there were no pictures to be found of Christ or his mother Mary, legends developed that pretended to have knowledge of the true image of Christ, claiming that Luke the
Evangelist had actually painted Mary, Mother of Christ, during her lifetime. As a result of these legends, there then appeared pictures of Jesus and Mary that were considered to be true likenesses and were
highly revered by the people. The cult surrounding themgave rise to exaggerations, which leaders of the Eastern Orthodox Church condemned. They were unable, however, to prevent the picture cult from
degenerating into superstition, in the form that they were awarded divine rights and also used as talismans which were to protect their owners from misfortune and bring them good luck.
There arose
the turmoil of the iconoclastic controversy which lasted until the middle of the ninth century. The victors were those who were in favour of images, albeit in the form of a purified understanding thereof:
the esteem accorded the picture was preserved for the archetype, the veneration for the one represented. This was taken one step further in that the personage represented in the “divine icon”
was, and is, deemed to be somehow present. The Eastern Orthodox Church reveres the icons “with fear and trembling, with incense and prayers”. Time and again it invokes the “mystic
origins” of the icons which are given “after the end of all time through the placing of the cloth upon his divine countenance”. Thus, Orthodox Christians see in the icons images in which
the persons represented or the events of salvation had come to life.
In icon painting artistic design has to consider two things: the conformity of the representation and the individual style
assigned the artist. The old icon-painting manuals introduce the painter not only to the technique used for creating the colours, but also obligate him to respect traditional guidelines for colouring and
structure. Yet the artist should, nonetheless, invest his own soul and perception of the time his creations. Even if icon painting is largely bound to tradition and leaves little room for individual
creativity, nevertheless, it is astonishing that there are hardly any real clichés. After all, art left the artist so much subjective individuality that retrogression into sweetly-sentimental as well as
regeneration into classic grandeur were possible. However, the artist withdraws consciously behind his creation and accepts that he is bound to the tradition that reaches back to the painter apostle, St.
Luke.
Unfortunately, the best Byzantine icons were destroyed in large number during the iconoclastic controversy; unfortunately again, whole collections of Russian icons were destroyed during the
Tatar raids of the thirteenth century. In the course of development the Russians had become the most docile pupils of the Byzantine masters. Russia went down in art history as the classic land of
icon painting. However, since the Europeanization of Russia by Peter the Great, Russian artists more and more refrained from painting icons; instead they turned to worldly subjects or used European styles
in their religious art. The once blossoming virtuosity was replaced with a workmanship that produced either blindly copied or sentimental European kitsch. In France, however, icon-producing factories
sprung up which exported their produce to Russia. Yet the decline of those times was followed by a renaissance of icon art in East and West during our time
THE INDIVIDUAL PICTURES
The icons depict the life of Christ and are in chronological sequence – with the one exception that the cross forms the centre of the retabulum and therefore dominates the
altar.
The picture wall serves to remind us of the fact that in the Eucharist celebration at the altar we are commemorating the life of Christ as depicted in the seventeen icons. That
which we see in the pictures, from Annunciation right up to Pentecost, comes to pass mysteriously at the altar. The three pictures in the top row in particular are able to illustrate this: the
sacrifice (of the wise men), Sacrifice of the Cross, and Communion. The individual pictures purposely avoid any form of perspective. Because only the event itself is important, bizarre rocks or tall
buildings, connected with curtain now and then, serve as the background. A peculiarity of icon painting is that it places all depicted events in the open air, never inside.
The circular segment visible at the top edge of several pictures, from which emit rays (or even, as in the picture of the spirit announcing, a bundle of rays) are intended to
represent the sky from which compassion pours forth onto us. In the nimbus of man are written the words “ho on”, meaning Yahweh - He who is – and are an expression of his divinity.
What is important is not that the representations are historically correct individual statements but what is important from a religious aspect. In the pictures of the Eastern
Orthodox Church one will find neither the charming babe in a cradle of German art nor the sweet bambino, Jesus, of Italian paintings. Rather, the child itself already implies God’s majesty.
This is especially clear with the depiction of the arrival of the wise men and that of the twelve-year old Jesus in the temple. It is without doubt characteristic of our artist that he limits himself to
the essential of the respective occurrence. This is shown in the scene of the Nativity, where he has left out all the usual details (Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men or kings) as with the depiction of
Jesus in the temple, where the artist - albeit quite within the canon of tradition – has left out Mary and Joseph (“Child, why have you done this to us?” etc.) so as not to deduct from the
imposing group, which allows the Son of God to stand out so prominently.
The painter shows a fairly large amount of individualism in his depiction of the worship of the child by the three wise men. This scene is usually ever only depicted at the edge
of a painting (kings approaching on horseback). Here the artist has the Mother of God sitting on majestically on a canopied throne, with a bolster under her feet as a mark of her great dignity. She
in turn provides the throne for her divine son, whose right hand is raised in a blessing of the world and whose left holds the scriptures. The wise men approach the divine child with great reverence.
What is special about this picture is probably the fact that this icon – its subject happens to be one of the donor’s favourite - was ordered later, as a 17th panel, in addition to the sixteen already on hand.
The icons are not meant to be historical at all costs, but symbolic. That is why it matters not a bit that in all depictions of the apostles, even in the Communion hall, St.
Paul is there: where Peter is, there too is Paul. At the centre of the picture wall is the cross over an open grave in which lies a skull. According to Eastern Orthodox belief, Christ’s cross
stood above Adam’s grave. The second Adam – Christ – through his death atoned for the sin of the first Adam that is upon us all. The last picture at the top right deserves our
special attention: descendit ad inferos - descended into hell. The paschal triumph of Christ begins with his descent into hell. At first the victor of Golgotha proclaims salvation to our forefathers. In the centre of the picture, on a dark background, we see the transfigured Lord in snow-white robes, around him an aureole, his right hand pulling Adam up towards him, while Eve at his left arises from the grave. The Lord’s is standing on the broken wings of the doors of hell. From the jagged craggy mountain peaks in the left half of the picture are the kings David and Saul (lacking the name John the Baptist accorded them traditionally), while on the right is an anonymous representative of the holy Forefathers. The icon painters derived these details of Christ’s descent into hell, on the authority of their divine delivery, from the apocryphal gospel of Nikodemus. While in the west and especially since the renaissance religious art has strongly neglected this subject, it has nonetheless become the official Easter picture of the Eastern Orthodox Church per se. In the Easter liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church too the descent into hell finds strongest mention – to symbolize the redemption of the cosmos. The Easter hallelujah is struck up in hell.
Our artist stubbornly denies the apostles a halo – with the exception of John, possibly so that they shall not be glorified on earth already. Regarding Christ’s
ascension it should be pointed out that Christ is not depicted rising up to the heavens in the way we are familiar with, but as Kyrios already in the midst of the glory. Furthermore as opposed to biblical
reports Mary is shown in the circle of the apostles, and is meant to represent the Church at Christ’s exaltation.
The last picture in the bottom row shows the descent of the Holy Spirit. Mary is absent, while a symbolic figure approaches us through an archway. Why Mary is missing the
painter was unable to say. He explained the symbolic figure as that of Christ, still abiding amongst us in the form of the Church. This interpretation does not do tradition justice. According
to ancient custom, the word “Cosmos”, i.e. “world”, should be written above the figure. This figure on a dark background represents the world, which is in need of redemption, which
is still living in darkness and just as mankind since Adam’s sin has become old, so too the world has become old. The figure’s garment is reddened with the blood of victims, its crown stands
for the rule of sin in this world, the white cloth with the twelve scrolls indicates the coming Church, which through the twelve apostles will bring the teachings of the gospel to our cosmos.
Once more
we gaze in contemplation at the seventeen picture panels: in the top row from left to right we see the Annunciation, the Nativity, Jesus in the temple, the adoration of the wise men. In the bottom row the
life of Jesus is continued with the twelve-year old Jesus in the temple, Lazarus being raised from the dead, and the triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Above the tabernacle in the middle of the top row there
is the cross, then the Communion, the kiss of Judas, the burial, and the descent into hell. In the bottom row we see Women at the Grave, Doubting Thomas, the Ascension, and Descent of the Holy Spirit.
In conclusion I would like to quote Professor Dr. Fuchs: “the overall impression of the new retabulum of St. Jodokus church is quite indisputably on a par with that of a
mediaeval altar. The splendour of the colours together with the gold background form a harmonious union and a give highly sacred effect. The altar is the dominating center of the whole church.
If it becomes necessary to look around for an old altar, it would be justifiable to procure a new retabulum altar of moderate dimensions if it, as here at St. Jodokus, ranks next to the old retablum
altars. But that can only be the exception, and the fact that we have an exception right here in the form of an icon altar might probably remain unique. "
This text appeared as a book in the publishing house RICHARD BENTRUP BIELEFELD. In the book all seventeen icons are also shown as illustrations.
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