The Virgin at Nea Moni, Chios: Brilliant, Unconsumed, and Impenetrable
Abigail Schweizer - May 28, 2023
Figure 1: Inner narthex at Nea Moni monastery, Chios. Image Credit: Vittorio Dell’Aquila, https://www.flickr.com/photos/vittorio_dellaquila/36048196096/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
At first glance, the Virgin in the inner narthex at Nea Moni, Chios, is underwhelming (Fig. 1). The Byzantine Marian cult, which had been developing steadily since at least the fifth century, recognized her as a powerful intercessor able to secure spiritual and imperial victory, but the Nea Moni Virgin seems to offer little confirmation of the people’s devotion to the Mother of God. Most of her figure has deteriorated since its completion in the mid-eleventh century, leaving only the bottom half of her torso and her right hand visible. Faceless, her presence is drowned out by the eight holy figures who surround her—warrior saints Sergios, Theodoros Strateles, and Baccos, and martyrs Orestes, Mardarios, Eugenion, Auxentios, and Eustrathios—all of which seem to have miraculously survived whatever wiped away the Mother of God.1
Figure 2: Mosaic of the Virgin in the apse of Hagia Sophia, Kiev, 1043.
With so little of the Virgin surviving, she is identified by the letters “MHP” inscribed next to her left hand; these three little letters are the beginning of an incomplete “MHP - ΘV,” the abbreviation for “Mother of God,” in Greek. Though the bust of the Virgin at Nea Moni does not have a compositional equal before the twelfth century, the mosaic in the apse of Hagia Sophia, Kiev, circa 1043, suggests what she may have originally looked like (Fig. 2).2 Unlike so many Byzantine icons and images of the Virgin, Christ is absent from the Hagia Sophia mosaic, and instead of embracing her Child, her empty arms extend toward the heavens in a gesture of supplication and her open palms invite the viewer to join her in devotion. Through this intercessory orans gesture, she claims her theological role as mediator between the devotee and God.3 The Nea Moni Virgin once held a similar intercessory gesture, and her empty left shoulder—where Christ usually rests—shows no evidence of the Child’s presence. Like the Hagia Sophia Virgin, she stands alone, accompanied only by the animated glittering of her own gown. Because she has been reduced to her right shoulder, the glistening tesserae forming the gold striations on her robe provide the strongest indication that in its original glory, the Nea Moni mosaic depicted the Virgin as the brilliant, holy, and impenetrable Mother of God.
Byzantine chrysography—the golden highlighting in images of the saints—can be found on the holy figures in illuminated manuscripts as careful gold detailing, in enamel images as gold rivulets joining the colored segments, in panel icons as mordant gilding, and in mosaics as glass tesserae covered in gold leaf.4 Under the unstable natural light of the original church spaces and the flickering candles set out by congregants, the gold surfaces of these images would have trembled as if moved by the real presence of the saints. This movement parallels an important Byzantine belief: Byzantine icons and images are “mimetic,” meaning that they were thought to imprint the real presence of the saint onto their surface and into the church space, surpassing their own two dimensionality and encouraging the worshiper to take on a posture of devotion toward the holy figure.5
The Nea Moni Virgin presents a distinctive form of chrysography. The gold striations on her robe are often found on other holy figures’ robes in Byzantine images, and they do more than animate the presence of the figure: they reflect God’s blessing over the saint. By lining the folds of her robes precisely where highlights would have appeared from, say, the sun, they reveal a concealed lightsource emanating onto her figure from above the image frame. Orthodox devotees would have recognized the unseen light source as God. The Virgin and other holy figures decorated with gold chrysography radiate God’s light, showing their physical and spiritual nearness to the divine.6
The Virgin’s physical nearness to the divine, implied through the chrysography, is doubly confirmed by the rainbow motif surrounding her figure. This motif, constituted by five distinctly colored concentric circles, is rarely included in images of the Virgin. Rather, it is most often found in images of the Christ Pantokrator, where Christ is shown in his eschatological glory, post-ascension, as the universal judge.7 Slobodan Ćurčić notes that the rainbow motif has “been noted as the paradigmatic image of the heavenly glory.”8 The rainbow encircling the Virgin alludes to the divine light of heavenly glory, whose source is Christ, and suggests she is being presented in heaven, post-assumption.
Figure 3: Apse mosaic of the Virgin surrounded by angels at S. Maria in Domnica in Rome, S. 818-819,
Francesca dell'Acqua’s examination of images of the assumed Virgin in Iconophilia brings forth two points that support the idea that Nea Moni presents her post-assumption. First, she notes that “there is no standardized image of Mary Adsumpta,” but that illustrations of Mary’s assumption—whether it be the actual migration of her soul or her subsequent establishment as the heavenly Mother of God—use a variety of visual cues to separate her from her earthly state.9 This may look like surrounding the heavenly Virgin with an ensemble of angels, a tactic found in the apse mosaic of S. Maria in Domnica, or as is the case with Nea Moni, striating her robe with gold chrysography and encircling her with a cosmological rainbow (Fig. 3). Second, she stresses that Byzantine Christian visual and textual theology maintain Mary’s intercessory powers are only activated post-assumption. Nea Moni Virgin foregrounds her intercessory agency through the orans gesture, and thus, according to dell'Acqua, presents her in her assumed form. In a single, deteriorating image, we find depicted Mary’s assumption and intercessory agency, as well as her physical nearness to the Divine, whose light reflects from her robes in the form of shimmering, gold tesserae.
The Akathistos, an important Byzantine hymn dated between the late fifth and early sixth century, goes a step further and metaphorically connects her majesty and intercessory agency to poetic images of the Virgin as divine light.10 Among many epithets, she is called the “star causing the sun to shine,” and the “bright dawn of the mystical day.” The praise of the Virgin climaxes in stanza 21:
We see the holy Virgin as a torch full of light, shining upon those in darkness. For by kindling the immaterial light she guides all to divine knowledge, illuminating the mind with brilliance, honoured by this cry: “Hail, beam of the spiritual sun; Hail, lampstand of the light that never wanes; Hail, soul illuminating lightning; Hail you who like thunder strike down the enemies; Hail, since you kindle the many beamed lantern; Hail, since you make the manystreamed river gush forth, Hail, you who prefigure the baptismal font; Hail you who take away the filth of sin; Hail, basin that washes clean the conscience; Hail, bowl wherein is mixed the wine of mighty joy, Hail, scent of Christ’s fragrance, Hail, life of mystical feasting; Hail, bride unwedded.” 11
Like the Nea Moni mosaic, by referencing Virgin’s intercession, the Akathistos addresses itself to the assumed holy Mother in Heaven. Throughout, the hymn establishes the Virgin’s role in the Incarnation, Redemption, and humankind’s salvation, and gives thanks to her for interceding on behalf of the Church. The last stanza cries for her personal and present intercession, for her to continue to “deliver from evil and from the punishment to come / all those who cry to you: ‘Alleluia.’”12
The Akathistos is not alone in describing the Virgin as mystically lit; other ecclesiastical poetry similarly likens Virgin to light, such as Romanos the Melodist’s sixth century kontakia. In his “On the Mother of God,” he goes so far as to establish her as the second burning bush: “As once there was fire in the bush shining brightly and not burning the thorn, / so now the Lord is in the Virgin.”13 The lyrics compare the mysteries of Mary’s virginity to the Lord revealing himself to Moses in Exodus through a fiery bush which did not burn. Mary, whose virginity was preserved in childbirth, became like the bush unconsumed by fire.14 Romanos’ kontakion does more than illustrate biblical typology—he also establishes the Virgin’s all-consuming, yet unconsuming, radiance. We can map the same connection between the Virgin’s assumption, intercession, and brilliance found in the Akathistos and in Romanos’ kontakia onto the Nea Moni Virgin. The inclusion of two forms of divine light—the celestial rainbow and the gold striations on her cloak—directs our attention to the Virgin as lit by the Lord’s divine light, and her aerial position in the dome and her orans gesture recall her heavenly post as the mediator between humanity and the divine Christ.
Romanos’ and the Akathistos’ hymnal descriptions of the Virgin were sung throughout the Orthodox ecclesiastical calendar, often in front of icons and images like at Nea Moni.15 Bissera Pentcheva remarks in The Sensual Icon that in the darkness of the original church setting, the golden elements on her robe “would have become iridescent when the surrounding candles started to flicker, stirred by human breaths or drafts of air …. In its glittering performance, this … icon brought to life the concept of Mary as light and fire.”16 As worshippers stood under the glittering dome, images from the Akathistos and Romanos’ kontakia would have flooded to mind: Mary as “light and fire,” the Virgin as the unconsumed burning bush, and the holy Mother of God as the “bright dawn of the mystical day,” lit by the Lord’s divine light.17 The Virgin at Nea Moni would have been transformed into an utter glorification of the assumed, impenetrable, and interceding Mother of the Most High, worthy of the eternal adoration of the Lord’s people.
Notes
1 Bissera Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) 16, 92.
2 Doula Mouriki, The Mosaics of Nea Moni on Chios I, (Athens: Commercial Bank of Greece, 1985) 65, 139-140, 139.
3 Orthodox theology gives Mary the title “Mediatrix,” meaning that she plays a role in the salvation of humankind. She intercedes on behalf of a devotee to Christ, and Christ bestows grace to a devotee through her.
4 Jaroslav Folda, Byzantine Art and Italian Panel Painting: the Virgin and Child Hodegetria and the Art of Chrysography, (New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2015) xxi, 258-266. “Chrysography” was first used to describe writing in gold, but the term soon expanded to include the golden highlighting in images of the saints.
5 Bissera Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, (University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010) 631-632.
6 Folda, Byzantine Art and Italian Panel Painting, 2.
7 Mouriki, The Mosaics of Nea Moni on Chios I, 194.
8 Slobodan Ćurčić, “Divine Light: Constructing the Immaterial in Byzantine Art and Architecture” in Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, edited by Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012), 31.
9 Francesca dell’Acqua, Iconophilia: Politics, Religion, Preaching, and the Use of Images in Rome, C. 680-880, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2020) 242.
10 Pentcheva, Icons and Power, 16.
11 Leena Mari Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn, (Leiden: Brill, 2001) 5, 9, 17. Stanza 1, verse 14; stanza 9, verse 7; stanza 21, verses 1-18.
12 Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn, 19. Stanza 24, verses 4-6.
13 Romanos Melodos, On the Life of Christ, trans. Ephrem Lash (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 19. See “On The Mother of God,” strophe 5, verse 1.
14 Exodus 3:2-4.
15 Fr. Maximos Constas, "Poetry and Painting in the Middle Byzantine Period: A Bilateral Icon from Kastoria and the Stavrotheotokia of Joseph the Hymnographer" in Viewing Greece: Cultural and Political Agency in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean, ed. Sharon Gerstel (Turnhout: Brepols: 2016), 24.
16 Bissera Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon, 118. She refers directly to a gold and cloisonne enamel icon of the Theotokos, but her concept can be applied to the mosaic of the Virgin at Nea Moni.
17 Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn, 9. Stanza 9, verse 7.
Bibliography
Constas, Fr. Maximos. "Poetry and Painting in the Middle Byzantine Period: A Bilateral Icon from Kastoria and the Stavrotheotokia of Joseph the Hymnographer" in Viewing Greece: Cultural and Political Agency in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean. Ed. Sharon Gerstel. Turnhout: Brepols: 2016. 13-32.
Ćurčić, Slobodan. “Divine Light: Constructing the Immaterial in Byzantine Art and Architecture.” in Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium. Ed. by Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 307–337.
Dell’Acqua, Francesca. Iconophilia: Politics, Religion, Preaching, and the Use of Images in Rome, C. 680-880. New York, NY: Routledge, 2020.
Folda, Jaroslav. Byzantine Art and Italian Panel Painting: the Virgin and Child Hodegetria and the Art of Chrysography. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Melodos, Romanos On the Life of Christ. Trans. Ephrem Lash. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. Mouriki, Doula. The Mosaics of Nea Moni on Chios I. Athens: Commercial Bank of Greece, 1985.
Peltomaa, Leena Mari. The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos hymn. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Pentcheva, Bissera. Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.
Pentcheva, Bissera. The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.
Cover Image Credit: By FLIOUKAS - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73146173
