The image of Isaac the Syrian in Byzantine art of the 14th century.

For a list of illustrations for this article, see the original. In 1389, in the Lavra of St. Athanasius on Athos, a handwritten book “Words of the Fast” was created by St. Isaac the Syrian 1 in the Church Slavonic language of the Bulgarian edition 2. Its scribe is the monk Gabriel, as reported in his entry at the end of the text 3, and judging by the language, he is a Bulgarian. At the beginning of the book there is a single miniature depicting the author of the works, St. Isaac the Syrian 4 (ill. 1). The image of this holy elder is extremely rare in all the art of the Byzantine circle 5. We know of no other portraits of him, neither on the walls of churches, nor in icons, nor in miniatures 6 . In the works of Rev. Isaac the Syrian 7 common rules of monastic asceticism are combined with personal mystical experience. When reading, they are impressed by the vividness of the revelations and the penchant for psychological observations. His writings are dominated by discussions about the severe asceticism necessary for a monk to succeed on the paths of spiritual life 8 . Rare precision and prominence of words distinguish the individual syllable prp. Isaac, which gives his works both clarity and expression. In the iconography of Byzantine art, the image of St. Isaac the Syrian did not enter. We will not analyze the reasons for this failure here. Let us only note its fact. His first portrait was created in the 14th century. on Athos. We can, of course, assume that some images existed and have not survived, while others exist and remain unknown. The emergence of a pictorial image of St. Isaac in the monastic circles of Athos in the second half of the 14th century. not by chance. Already at the beginning of the 14th century. On Athos, a complete translation from Greek into Slavic of the “Words of the Fasting” of St. Isaac the Syrian. The author of the translation is a Bulgarian, a monk of Zacchaeus 9. Until then, only isolated small parts of his works existed in the Slavic language. In the second quarter of the 14th century. here, on Athos, a new Slavic translation of the “Words...” of St. Isaac, made again by the Bulgarian, Elder John. One of these Athonite copies of the translation of Elder John is the manuscript of the “Words of the Fast” by St. Isaac the Syrian 1389 10. The Bulgarian Gabriel, who rewrote this book, wanted to preface the text with a portrait of the author. Before us is a rare example of Athonite monastic art itself. Among the illustrated Athonite codices from different times, it is by no means always possible to distinguish those that were created on the spot and those that were brought here as gifts and contributions. Iconographically St. Isaac in the miniature is similar to the images of prophets and saints accepted in the paintings of Byzantine churches: a tall figure in height, a long beard, a spare outline, a laconic silhouette, the right hand blesses, the left holds a scroll with the text 11. However, the saints were most often depicted with raised arms, with open palms - a sign of acceptance of God's grace. St. Isaac the Syrian is presented more like a prophet. Its eastern origin is emphasized by the headdress: a white bandage with black stripes, wrapped around the head like a turban 12. Something similar happens with St. John of Damascus. The typology of the image and physiognomic features are piercing and sharply memorable. The figure is elongated, dry, with narrow shoulders, a small head, tiny feet, volumeless, seemingly ethereal, having lost material heaviness. Such a figure can float, lifting off the ground. The practice of hesychia included this 13. All the colors are simple, devoid of showiness, and unified. The predominant color is a meager, dry, like desert sand, yellow-brown tone. The blue background and the green color of the earth are united in their dimness. And only the red frame has color intensity. But it is only a frame and fulfills its role: to highlight the portrait with its dull coloring and general restrained intonation. The face is narrow, elongated, extended by a long beard (ill. 2). The eyes are also narrow, small, with a sharp, piercing gaze. They appear deep-set due to the overhanging, slightly furrowed eyebrows and the shadows surrounding them. Planted inside, as if in a cave. And the look, and the slightly wrinkled forehead, and slightly knitted eyebrows betray tension. The nose is thin and fragile. Compared to how they usually drew and wrote the nose in Byzantine faces in all previous times, here in St. Isaac the Syrian, he seems unnoticeable. The mouth, very small, is hidden in dense thickets of mustache and beard. All facial features do not have the sculptural quality that the Byzantines loved to emphasize. On the contrary, they seem unremarkable, insignificant. Physical beauty, so traditional in Byzantine images, no longer attracts. On the contrary, everything corporeal and material is reduced to a minimum. But sharpness is emphasized in all features. The hair, mustache and beard framing the face are not painted in a continuous thick mass, but thinly and transparently. Dyed golden brown, with light white threads, they merge with the monotonous brown complexion, which enhances the dullness of the overall color scheme. The contours of the head are outlined with a white, seemingly luminous thread. This overall golden-white silhouette also includes a headdress, so that the head and beard are illuminated with a subtle luminous aura. The painting itself is completely invisible. In fact, it is very skillful, multi-layered, which can be seen when looking closely through a magnifying glass, and includes greenish sankir and ocher of several shades, from very light to quite dark. That is, the face is written in a complex and very skillful manner. However, this is already a professionally interested consideration; a general look at a portrait cannot and should not discern such details. The impression from it is the evenness, monotony of the paint, the stinginess of color, some kind of fundamental lack of color and colorlessness. It’s as if the multicolored nature and life have been discarded. The dominant intonation is strict and ascetic. Let us emphasize one more feature of this portrait - the nobility of the face, its complexity and the intelligence that marks it. So, asceticism, tension, spiritual rigor, intellectual concentration, spiritual poignancy. All these features of the Athonite portrait are similar to what we know about St. Isaac the Syrian, or, perhaps, it would be better to say, on those individual traits that are impossible not to notice in his writings. It seems that the artist - the creator of this miniature - created a portrait of the monk, based on both the legend about him and, of course, from his “Words...”, but did not reflect all the meanings contained in them. The severity of the appearance in the portrait is impressive. Where is that light, that inexpressible bliss that St. Petersburg experienced and described? Isaac the Syrian? There is clearly no such shade in his portrait. In the texts of St. For Isaac it is impossible not to notice this meaning, the ultimate goal of all his thoughts. In the spiritual process, according to St. Isaac the Syrian, three stages are distinguishable: repentance, purification, which presupposes knowledge of the world, possible in silence, and the third, highest stage - perfection. And at the second stage you can achieve a lot: have spiritual knowledge, penetrate into the disembodied world, recognize Divine Providence in every nature. However, the tension has not been relieved. The main thing is feat, that is, constant effort (silence is also a feat). As if this is exactly what was captured by the Athonite artist who created the portrait of St. Isaac the Syrian. Everything in his image corresponds to the words of the monk himself about the first and second stages of spiritual life: dispassion, insensibility (in artistic language this is the low visibility of artistic means), silence, knowledge of the world. In the portrait of St. Isaac is recognized by both the hermit and the mystic. However, everything that is connected with the third stage of the spiritual process and that is so vividly described by St. Isaac, in this miniature there is no: bliss, amazement, being in the light, delight, tenderness, that is, a complete transformation of the soul. In the captured image there seems to be more understanding of achievement than of gift and grace. Perhaps God’s gift and grace cannot be embodied in artistic images at all? Is this accessible to a master, even an excellent one, the best? It seems that the history of art knows such creations, but they are extremely rare 14 . However, the image of St. Isaac the Syrian in Athonite miniature is primarily a work of the 14th century, no matter how well it corresponds to the personality of the person depicted, the hermit of the 7th century. The content of this image is completely adequate for its time, the spiritual atmosphere of the hesychast-palamite Athos. Nevertheless, his type is quite rare in Byzantine painting of the Palaiologan era. And this is precisely the type, and not the individual luck of the Athonite artist. This figurative and physiognomic type appears at the beginning of the 14th century. The first similar images known to us are in the mosaics of Fethiye Jami (beginning of the 14th century, before 1310) 15 (ill. 3). This is St. elders, monks, located on steep arches and in narrow deep niches. Among the images of this ensemble, glorified by classical beauty and delicate craftsmanship, they stand out for the unexpected severity of long-bearded faces, piercing expression, and depth of gaze. It’s as if all of them bear the stamp of detachment and asceticism. An equally ascetic, but even more sharply and sharply expressed spiritual type is embodied in a number of frescoes of the early 14th century. in the Church of Hodegetria (Afendiko) in Mystras: in the domes, conchs and vaults in the galleries (forefathers, prophets), in the vaults of the southern nave, in the arches between the domed center and the southern nave and on the southern wall (holy warrior-martyrs, and especially the saints in the south-eastern arches and vaults) 16 (ill. 4). A similar spiritual and physiognomic type is embodied with the same completeness in the frescoes of Paraklesion Kahrie Jami (1316–1321). Images of the stylite David of Thessalonica (Thessalonian), hymnographers of St. Feofan and etc. John of Damascus, the widow from the "Resurrection of the Widow's Son", Adam from the "Descent into Hell" and the Church Fathers in apse 17 contrast sharply with the calm harmony and elegance of the ensemble, all its mosaics and most of the frescoes and impress with the intense emphasis of the content. Especially Rev. David of Thessalonica, by the way, is most similar to St. Isaac the Syrian in miniature 1389 (ill. 5:6). After all, this, in essence, is the true image of the hesychast, successfully artistically embodied, and, moreover, contemporary with the rise of hesychasm in the spiritual life of Byzantium in the early 14th century. As you know, this is the time of the life and teaching of St. Gregory the Sinaite, who served as a spiritual example for many. I would like to emphasize that the era of the early 14th century, most often associated in the history of Byzantine art with the Palaeologian Renaissance and classicism, was the heyday of hesychasm. It is not surprising that some artists of the early 14th century. created images adequate to the modern search for spiritual life. Such images, as we have seen, are scattered in the classical ensembles of the first third of the 14th century. In addition to those already mentioned, they are in the Church of the Apostles in Thessaloniki, in Gracanica, in Banja Pribojska. In general, there are a lot of them. There are many gradations among them. The deepest of them, who most fully embodied the idea of ​​spiritual achievement, silence and contemplation, is the stylite David of Thessaloniki in the Parekklesion Kakhrie Jami. In its content, it is close to the images of ascetics and hermits of early Byzantine times, including St. Isaac the Syrian. Images captured not in art, but in the words of these real people. This image lived in art throughout the 14th century, although it was not often depicted in it. The next example known to us is a miniature depicting St. John the Theologian before the “Apocalypse” in the Greek New Testament with the Psalter (GIM. Sin. gr. No. 407) of the 30s. XIV century, created in Constantinople or Thessalonica 18 (ill. 7, 8). St. John the Theologian on it is the appearance and image already well known to us, similar to St. David in the fresco of Parekklesion Kahrie Jami. Old, withered face; a tall, wise forehead, furrowed with wrinkles; narrow, like slits, sunken eyes, as if hidden under thick thickets of eyebrows; sharp, even piercing gaze; bloodless sand-colored face. No physical beauty or special physical expressiveness. On the contrary, the inconspicuousness of the face and its features will take on, as it were, the “hiddenness” of the individual image-portrait. Silence, peering into images invisible to the world and voices inaudible to the world. A contemplator, a hermit, a hermit who has overcome the world and all its emotions, who has escaped its bustle and its outwardly attractive beauty. This is an artistic embodiment of the image of an Orthodox mystic, spiritual seer, just as rare in luck as the image of St. David of Thessalonica in Kakhrie Jami. The difference in the time of their creation is very small, only 15–20 years (Kahrie Jami - 1316–1321; manuscript of the State Historical Museum. Sin. gr. No. 407 - 30s of the 14th century). The similarity is very great, not only typological and even literal physiognomic, but most importantly – the similarity of internal content. In both portraits the main thing is the ascetic and mystical emphasis of the image, focus only on the spiritual, and at the same time tension, almost an intensification of the spiritual state. As in the Athonite portrait of St. Isaac the Syrian 1389, no light or enlightened coloring. It’s as if that divine grace, deserved by ascetic deeds and yet bestowed as a miracle, is not here, which, according to mystic-spiritualists, including St. Isaac, gives untold joy and happiness. It’s as if here, in these images, the artists stopped at some level of spiritual knowledge, very high, but penultimate, not reaching the highest. But despite all the similarities, the differences between these two images are noticeable and even significant. St. David is deep, tense and at the same time internally restrained. St. John the Theologian is deep, intense and at the same time internally exalted. His shock is great and gives the image great anxiety. His illumination is so strong that he is in a state of ecstasy. This clear difference between the two images seems to be explained by the peculiarities of the atmosphere of life in the periods in which they were created. St. David from Kahrie Jami is an early 14th century image, as are the images from Fethiye Jami, as are the Church Fathers and hymnographers in the Parekklesion of the Chora Monastery. All of them are contemporaries of St. Gregory the Sinaite, a strict hermit, for whom even the liturgy seemed “too external a means.” Isn't the intense concentration, the tense isolation of these images an artistic echo of such a state of mind? St. John the Theologian in the Greek manuscript (GIM. Sin. gr. No. 407) is a contemporary of the church disputes of the 30s. XIV century, a time in the history of the Byzantine Church of alarming, conflict, a time that can be called troubled. Not to mention the fact that it was a period of all sorts of government disorders. Isn't the excitement, impetuosity, even affectation of this image an artistic response to the numerous disturbances in church and civil life? St. Isaac the Syrian in the Athonite miniature of 1389 is another version of exactly the same image and type, spiritual, psychological and physiognomic. However, the nuances are different, and they are due to a different era (although only 50 years have passed!). In the second half of the 14th century. Hesychasm began to dominate not only in the monastic environment, but also in the entire church life of Byzantium. Hence, in the image of St. Isaac's calmness, assertiveness, even solemn presence. It is somehow absurd to say about a portrait of a hermit and mystic that it is representative. And yet there is clearly some shade of this. In any case, the image looks triumphant. Just as the ideas of monastic asceticism, and indeed monastic life itself, became triumphant at this time. Hence the teaching, preaching tone in the image of St. Isaac. It is no coincidence, apparently, that they wanted to depict him as a prophet, with a scroll in his left hand, with a gesture of blessing and at the same time acceptance of grace in his right. Not the humble hermit that he was, but a prophet. The accent is completely different; some distortion of historical memory, but a triumph of Byzantine spirituality, and its most mystical branch, growing from the early Christian tree of hermit deserts. And all this was almost at the very end of the existence of Byzantium, shortly before its collapse. It’s like an epiphany in old age, a revelation at the end of life. One should not think that the images of the hermits themselves necessarily suggested such an ascetic artistic portrait. Not at all. Everything depended on the atmosphere of the time, on the era and partly on the environment where such an image was created. Let us recall, for example, the beautiful, handsome elders in the frescoes of Mileshev (before 1228) 19, with large, showy faces, silken hair and beards, delicate complexions, pink and red blush. The cheerfulness, strength, energy, and courage they radiate are completely natural in the atmosphere of the Balkan culture of the 13th century, but they are very far from the harsh, mystically inspired desert dwelling of the early Christian centuries, which came to life in the 14th century. The next most recent images of such content are the creations of Theophan the Greek, frescoes in the Church of the Transfiguration in Novgorod (1378) 20 (ill. 9, 10). The same strict, detached type. The same severe asceticism. The same state of visionary contemplation. The same extreme edge of Byzantine spirituality as in all the previous described cases. I will not list all the special (in relation to the tradition of Byzantine painting) artistic techniques with the help of which Feofan creates such an artistic result. They are well known. Here are just three of them, the most striking. A dark brown palette, far from the multicolored world and reminiscent of the sands and rocks of the hermit deserts of Syria and Egypt. Similar to it - in the Athonite miniature with St. Isaac the Syrian 1389 Divine energies, spiritualizing flesh and form with sudden flashes of light, like a gift from God. White color in the eye sockets, giving the gaze a supermundane quality, a mystical fullness of vision. Of all the artistic examples examined here, the images of Theophanes the Greek are closest to St. David of Thessalonica in Kakhrie Jami. The special emphasis of the images is similar, internally deep, intense, but without exaltation. Mystical contemplation, but not mystical ecstasy, to which the image of St. John the Evangelist in miniature from the New Testament (GIM. Sin. gr. No. 407). There is no solemn grandeur, as in the miniature with St. Isaac. The images of Theophanes the Greek are marked by such a high spiritual concentration that borders on a psychologically extreme state. It seems to be complete detachment and isolation. Complete loneliness. Full individuality of standing before the Lord. Outside the kenobia. In a remote desert monastery. Just like the pillar of David in Kahriye Jami. It seems that this is close to what the saint taught. Gregory Sinait. A mystical vision in solitude, absolutely outside the world, even outside the church community. A very personal mystical experience; the most individualistic consciousness in Orthodox asceticism and mysticism of the 14th century. In the writings of spiritual writers of the second half of the 14th century. we don't know him. We know in the Byzantine art of this time, from Theophanes the Greek. This, of course, does not mean that such an experience did not exist in reality. Perhaps, and even most likely, there was. But he turned out to be speechless. The ascetic type described in this work in the art of the 14th century, as we see, was rare. We have listed all the examples known to us. True, only those that represent a complete and pure version of such imagery. Its individual features are widely scattered in Byzantine painting throughout the 14th century, and it is they who often animate and make more meaningful the various images and styles of this entire period, which are always fundamentally drawn to something classical. Sometimes these (or similar) features even dominate the images. For example, in artistic creations of the late 20s–40s. XIV century These are the miniatures in the Gospel from the Vienna Library (gr. 300) 21, in the Menology of 1322–1340. from the Bodleian Library (Bodl. gr. th. f. 1 22), in the New Testament with the Psalter of the 30s of the 14th century. from the Historical Museum (GIM. Sin. gr. No. 407 23), etc. Sometimes in Byzantine art of the entire XIV century. There are images that are perhaps not as complete as St. David of Thessalonica or St. Isaac the Syrian, less concentrated, but having shades of the same self-absorbed mystical spirituality. Such images can be found in the frescoes of the Kraljevo Church in Studenica, the Mother of God of Levishka, Žiča, Gračanica, Nikita near Skopje - all this in the first half of the 14th century. Such images appear in many fresco ensembles, as well as in icons of the second half of the 14th century. However, everywhere they are interspersed as separate tense points in an artistic system, balanced, classical, familiar, easily recognizable by human experience. The ascetic type of image created in this era in Byzantine art was little known in Rus' as a whole. However, it was here, in Novgorod, that Theophanes the Greek embodied it. The only place in Rus' where the image of such a warehouse was valued was Pskov. This phenomenon cannot be ignored, although it is difficult to explain. It is connected not with the peculiarities of the style of the local school, but with some reasons of a spiritual order characteristic of Pskov. We cannot answer which ones. We think that this phenomenon occurred due to the specifics of the Pskov monasteries, or maybe even just one monastery, and the special atmosphere of spiritual life that existed there. It is possible that this is where solitude and perhaps mystical knowledge were practiced. It was in Pskov at the beginning of the 14th century. In the Snetogorsk monastery (c. 1313), paintings were created that are striking in their asceticism, spiritual intensity, even internal exaltation. Their expression, which attracts the attention of all researchers and all people who see them, is not an artistic factor, not a turn of style, but a new facet of spiritual life, achieved at the cost of monastic feats on the paths of asceticism. As you can see, the ascetic and mystical spiritual type in the 14th century. was rare in the art of the entire Byzantine circle. And of course, he did not determine the situation in artistic life. The singularity, even uniqueness, of such images is explained by the difficulty of the spiritual path to which they correspond. This path could not be suitable for many. It is all the more amazing that art corresponding to this path, completely strict in its objectives, has created such vivid artistic images. Stored in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library (Collection of Optina Pustyn. F. 214. No. 62). Written on paper, 475 sheets, 20*12 cm. Four sheets of the manuscript (should be between sheets 305 and 306) are stored separately (collection of Bishop Porfiry (Uspensky) - RNL. Q. I 903). Since 1389, the manuscript was in the Lavra of St. Athanasius on Athos; from the end of the 15th – beginning of the 16th centuries. in the Lavra of Saint Sava in Jerusalem; around the middle of the 19th century. the manuscript was given by the archimandrite of the Lavra of Savva the Sanctified Joasaph as a gift to Hieromonk Leonid (Kavelin) and was kept at the Russian mission in Jerusalem; in 1858 it was given by Hieromonk Leonid (Kavelin) as a gift to Hieromonk Macarius (Ivanov) of the Optina Hermitage; from 1858 to 1920s was in the library of the Kozelskaya Vvedenskaya Optina Hermitage monastery. For descriptions of the manuscript, see: Leonid (Kavelin), Archimandrite. Review of manuscripts and early printed books in the book depositories of monasteries, city and rural churches of the Kaluga diocese // CHOIDR. 1865. Book. 4, section 5. pp. 67–69; N. B. Tikhomirov’s description of the manuscript “Words of the Fast” by St. Isaac the Syrian 1389, see Art of Byzantium in the collections of the USSR: Exhibition Catalog. M., 1977. T. 3. No. 992. The manuscript is written in the Bulgarian semi-character. On separate sheets and parts of sheets, the lost text was replenished at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries, and in these replenished places there is a Serbian version (see about this: description of N.B. Tikhomirov - note 1). Scribe's note on l. 474 vol.: “This book, like the one of the saints of our father Isaac, was written in the holy Mount Athos, in the holy and great Lavra of our reverend and God-bearing father Athanasius, by the desire and labor and exodus of the sinful Gabriel in the year 6897 of the 12th indictment.” Miniature on l. 2 rev., 16.5*9. On miniatures, see G. I. Vzdornov. The role of the Slavic monastic writing workshops of Constantinople and Athos in the development of book writing and artistic design of Russian manuscripts at the turn of the 14th–15th centuries. // TODRL. L., 1968. T. 23. P. 183–184; Art of Byzantium. 1977, pp. 146–147. Archim. Leonid (Kavelin) mentions a fresco depicting St. Isaac the Syrian in Protata in Kareia on Athos, which, in his opinion, was imitated by the author of the miniature of 1389. The fresco is located, according to the description of Archimandrite. Leonidas, on the south side near the right choir, St. Isaac is depicted full-length, in monastic clothes - see: Leonid (Kavelin), Archimandrite. Review of manuscripts... P. 67. According to the information I received from A. A. Turilov, a miniature depicting St. Isaac the Syrian is in the Russian manuscript “Words of the Fast of Isaac the Syrian” of the first quarter of the 16th century. (fol. 36 vol.), stored in the State. archive of the Yaroslavl region (collection of manuscripts, No. 3) and coming from the collection of the Pershin brothers in Kovrov (see Lukyanov V.V. Description of the collection of manuscripts of the State Archives of the Yaroslavl Region. Yaroslavl, 1957. P. 9). However, this Russian list was created when Byzantium no longer existed, and ideas about the uniqueness of the portrait of St. Isaac the Syrian 1389 does not change in Byzantine art. About St. Isaac the Syrian, see: Justin, ep. Moral teaching of St. our father Isaac the Syrian. St. Petersburg, 1874; 2nd ed. 1902; Chabot J. V. De S. Isaaci Ninevitae vita, scriptis et doctrina. P., 1892; Florovsky G.V. Eastern fathers of the V–VIII centuries. Paris, 1933, pp. 185–194. The last, very complete and in-depth study about St. Isaac the Syrian: Hilarion (Alfeev), Hierom. The world of Isaac the Syrian. M., 1998 (bibliography). All works of St. Isaac the Syrian written in Syriac. There are Arabic, Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, Church Slavonic, Russian, Italian, French and English translations. Edition of the Syriac text: Mar Isaacus Niniυita. De perfectione religiosa / Ed. P. Badjan. P., 1909. English translation made from the published Syriac text: Wensinck A. J. Isaac of Ninevieh. Mystic treatises // Abhandelingen der koninkl. Akademie van Wettenschappen. Afdeling Letterkunde. Amsterdam, 1923. T. 23. 1. Greek (incomplete) translation from Syriac made in the Lavra of Saint Sava in Jerusalem in the 9th century. The Greek translation was first published by Nikephoros Theotokis (later Bishop of Astrakhan) in 1770 in Leipzig, the following edition of the Greek text: PG. T. 86. Col. 799–888. Church Slavonic translation made on Mount Athos in the 14th century. and existing in a number of handwritten copies, corrected according to the Greek edition and published by the elder of the Moldavian Nyametsky monastery Paisius Velichkovsky in 1812 under the title “The Book of Isaac the Syrian” (ed. Nyametsky Monastery). Russian translation: Works like the saints of our father Abba Isaac the Syrian, ascetic and hermit, who was the bishop of the Christ-loving city of Nineveh. Ascetic words. Ed. Moscow Theological Academy; Per. edited by and with comments. A. V. Gorsky. M., 1854. 2nd edition: Sergiev Posad, 1893. 3rd edition, revised: Ed. and with comments. S.I. Sobolevsky. Sergiev Posad, 1911. All of the above applies to the 1st volume of the works of Isaac the Syrian. The 2nd volume of his works was not translated from Syriac until recently (until 1995). The Russian translation of a large part of this volume was carried out by Fr. Hilarion (Alfeev): Isaac the Syrian, St. On Divine Mysteries and Spiritual Life: Newly Discovered Texts / Trans. with sire., approx. and after. Hieromonk Hilarion (Alfeev). M., 1998. The possibility cannot be excluded that this translation of Zacchaeus was created not on Athos, but in Constantinople (see S.I. Maslov. New list of the Words of the Fast of Isaac the Syrian... the most ancient Slavic edition. Kyiv, 1912. pp. XVIII-XIX). The last assumption is very interesting in the context of ideas about the Palaeologian era of the early (first quarter) of the 14th century, when, along with the dominant classical culture of the Palaeologian Renaissance, there was an atmosphere of ascetic spiritual life (see Meyendorff J. Spiritual Trends in Byzantium in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries // The Kariye Djami. Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami. Princeton, 1975. T. 4. P. 96–106) and ascetically oriented art (see Popova O. S. New Testament with the Psalter: Greek Codex of the 1st half of the 14th century from the Synodal Library (column 407) // Byzantine Time Book. 1993. T. 54. pp. 127–139). About the Slavic translations of the works of Isaac the Syrian, made by the monk Zacchaeus and the elder John, see Maslov S.I. New list of words of the Fasting...; Granstrem E. E., Tikhomirov N. B. Works of Isaac the Syrian in Slavic-Russian writing. M., 1987 (manuscript). The text on the scroll is the beginning of the Word of 1 St. Isaac the Syrian, with whom the text of this manuscript begins. This type of headband is worn by Arab Orthodox priests in Syria (see Leonid (Kavelin), Archimandrite. Review of Manuscripts... P. 69). Nikita Stifat, student of St. Simeon the New Theologian and the author of his Life, tells about him from the words of Nicephorus, also a student of Simeon, who was near his teacher during his last illness, how, waking up one night, he saw Simeon, whom the students “barely, with the help of some machine moving here and there, turned over on his bed, weakened by illness... hanging in the air of his cell, four cubits from the ground or even more, and praying to his God in indescribable light" (Vasily (Krivoshein), Archbishop. Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. Paris, 1980. P. 56). In the world of Byzantine art of the late stage, such extraordinary achievements include the icons of Christ Pantocrator of 1963, the Mother of God of the Don, some images from the Deesis of the Annunciation Cathedral (Christ, especially the Mother of God, St. John the Baptist), the Zvenigorod rank of St. Andrey Rublev. Such exceptional, literally luminous artistic creations could, of course, appear in very different periods. The clearest example is the mosaics of the monastery of Daphne (c. 1100). Especially the images of St. Savva, John Climacus, Arsenia, Euphemia - (see Belting N., Mango S., Mouriki D. The Mosaics and Frescoes of St. Mary Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii at Istanbul). Washington, 1978. PI. 86, 87, 89, 91). Most of these frescoes have not been published. Images of the righteous Zechariah and one of the saints. monks, see Chatzidakis M. Mistra: Die mittelalterliche Stadt und die Burg. Athen, 1981. Taf. 36, 37. See Underwood P. A. The Kariye Djami. N. Y., 1966. V. 3. P. 507, 434, 435, 362, 348, 484, 485. About this miniature, see Popova O. S. New Testament with Psalms... P. 134–135. Rice. 15. For literature on miniatures, see Ibid. P. 127. See PadojHuh St. Milesheva. Beograd, 1963. Tab. XXXIX–XLI. Latest large publications: Vzdornov G.I. Feofan the Greek: Creative Heritage. M., 1983; Livshits L. I. Monumental painting of Novgorod of the XIV–XV centuries. M., 1987. pp. 22–24, 110–178. See Lazarev V.N. History of Byzantine painting. M., 1948. T. 2. Table. 312 a–c, 313 (Luke); It's him. History of Byzantine painting. M., 1986. T. 2. P. 166, 252 (with references). Table 523. See Hutter I. Oxford Bodleian Library. II Stuttgart, 1978. Bd 2. N 1. (Corpus der byzantinischen Miniaturenhandschriften). See Popova O. S. New Testament with the Psalter...