La prima icona? Corpo e Dormizione fra Oriente e Occidente

The chapter deals with the theology of the icon within the Second Iconoclasm – with a special focus on the doctrines developed by Theodore the Studite – and hypothesises that the incorrupt body of the Virgin Mary was conceived in this context as fulfilling the function of the “first icon”. The chapter starts with a short premise outlining the lexical duplicity of the German language with regard to the term ‘body’. On the one hand, there is the word ʻKörperdingʼ, meaning the objectified body, i.e. the body that an individual possesses. On the other hand, there is the word ʻLeibʼ, indicating the experienced body, i.e. the body that an individual is. One wonders whether, by virtue of this duplicity, which in fact reflects an unresolved ambiguity, the human body cannot be considered as an icon, at least as this concept was elaborated in Byzantium at the end of the iconoclastic controversy. After this premise, the argument begins with the analysis of a passage taken from a letter sent by Theodore the Studite to Pope Paschal I, where the Byzantine theologian denounces the resumption of Iconoclasm in the East. In fact, as is well-known, in 815 Emperor Leo V resumed an iconoclastic policy and tried to convince the Roman Church to align with it. Theodore expressly states in his letter that in Byzantium “Christ is persecuted, together with his mother and his ministers, if indeed the invective against the icon coincides with an attack on his prototype”. Pope Paschal did not send a written reply to Theodore the Studite, but he addressed a letter to Leo V, in which he refuted the emperor’s iconoclastic theology. The text of this epistle has been transmitted to us by two manuscripts, although in neither of them can we read the opening and ending parts. The chapter then briefly dwells on Theodore the Studite’s theology of the icon. Whereas the Eastern Church Fathers had defined hypostasis as an essence circumscribed in individual characteristics, Theodore proposed to apply the circumscription not to the essence – which cannot be represented – but to the hypostasis. This way, he continues to regard hypostasis as an essence that has taken on individual characteristics, but he assumes that it is circumscribed in a further metaphysical step. The circumscription basically consists in recognising hypostasis as possessing a body. The basic physical fact of having a body guarantees the hypostasis to be representable. Theodore the Studite also wrote a homily dealing with the Dormition of the Theotokos. In this text, harking back to an older tradition, he describes the Virgin’s body as sleeping, incorrupt, after the ascent of her soul to heaven. Taking up all the elements discussed so far, the following reflection is proposed: if everything that has a body, as a circumscribed hypostasis, is representable, and if a body, in particular that of the Theotokos, is saved, then all its representations signify salvation (and assume holiness), ergo they are sacred icons. This reasoning implies a strong political message. The salvation of the flesh body of a normal human being, as the Virgin was considered by the theologians of the time, could in fact mean the potential redemption of the bodies of all believers. This greatly strengthened the Virgin’s role as an intermediary, while at the same time downplaying the emperors’ claimed affinity (homoiosis) with God. It is no coincidence, then, that Pope Paschal had himself portrayed kneeling before the Virgin assumed into heaven in the apse of the basilica of Santa Maria in Domnica in Rome. The chapter ends with some conclusions. In particular, the hypothesis is put forward that the Virgin’s body (sleeping or assumed into heaven, in any case as concrete as it was wrested from corruption) would have been conceived within the theological reflection of the Second Iconoclasm as the “first icon” – an icon of salvation, of the creature’s redemption, by virtue of the Creator’s incarnation – as the first circumscribed hypostasis of a human essence to have escaped material decay by assuming in itself a replicable salvific power.

L’articolo considera alcuni elementi della teologia iconodula riconducibili a Teodoro Studita e li associa all’episodio mariano della Dormizione. Avanza l’ipotesi, nelle conclusioni, che il corpo della Vergine – dormiente o assunto in cielo, comunque incorrotto – possa essere stato concepito in seno alla seconda stagione iconoclasta, dal côté iconodulo, come la “prima icona” – un’icona di salvezza, di rendenzione della creatura, in virtù dell’incarnazione del Creatore –, in quanto prima ipostasi circoscritta di un’essenza umana a essersi sottratta alla corruzione materiale e ad avere assunto in sé un potere salvifico replicabile.