The Saint Euphrosynos Cafe

Could someone please explain this icon:

Did the halo go through series of changes? even in the early church, they were all circles.

Have you read this article?

http://albertis-window.com/2013/09/hist ... lo-in-art/

The square halo was sometimes used to indicate that a person is still living when the work of art is created. From what I can tell, the earliest example of a square halo dates from about the early 8th century. The square, as an imperfect shape that represents the Earth, is used to draw a contrast with the perfect circle used for divine figures. (For an example, see mosaic of Pope John VII at the beginning of this post. Other examples of square halos are found at Santa Prassede in Rome, found in a mosaic of Pope Paschal I (c. 820) and a mosaic which includes a woman specified as “Theodora, Bishop”).

It seems to be a western thing. I had never seen any such representation until your,post!

Doesn't it look awful ?
I never heard of such a thing, either. Good research, Justice ?

This is a mosaic of Pope St. John VII. this must have been more commonplace back then though this is the only example I've seen so far. I would like to go slightly off topic here, The article posted suggests that the halo has pagan roots, do you believe this? the author says that the only mention of a halo in the bible could be when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai where he's described as being surrounded by rays of light.

Justice wrote:

This is a mosaic of Pope St. John VII. this must have been more commonplace back then though this is the only example I've seen so far. I would like to go slightly off topic here, The article posted suggests that the halo has pagan roots, do you believe this? the author says that the only mention of a halo in the bible could be when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai where he's described as being surrounded by rays of light.

I think the current obsession with labeling everything as pagan in origin is a deformation of the faith and betrays a weak incarnational theology. Altars have pagan roots. Should we remove those from our churches? The halo has a clear meaning in our iconography. Past Pagan usage (if in fact it is true and not Hislopian fantasy) doesn’t change that.

HieromonkIrineos wrote:

Justice wrote:

This is a mosaic of Pope St. John VII. this must have been more commonplace back then though this is the only example I've seen so far. I would like to go slightly off topic here, The article posted suggests that the halo has pagan roots, do you believe this? the author says that the only mention of a halo in the bible could be when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai where he's described as being surrounded by rays of light.

I think the current obsession with labeling everything as pagan in origin is a deformation of the faith and betrays a weak incarnational theology. Altars have pagan roots. Should we remove those from our churches? The halo has a clear meaning in our iconography. Past Pagan usage (if in fact it is true and not Hislopian fantasy) doesn’t change that.

Thank you for your reply Father. To delve into some Orthodox history of the halo, is the halo supposed to represent when Moses came down from Mt Sinai?

Justice wrote:

HieromonkIrineos wrote:

Justice wrote:

This is a mosaic of Pope St. John VII. this must have been more commonplace back then though this is the only example I've seen so far. I would like to go slightly off topic here, The article posted suggests that the halo has pagan roots, do you believe this? the author says that the only mention of a halo in the bible could be when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai where he's described as being surrounded by rays of light.

I think the current obsession with labeling everything as pagan in origin is a deformation of the faith and betrays a weak incarnational theology. Altars have pagan roots. Should we remove those from our churches? The halo has a clear meaning in our iconography. Past Pagan usage (if in fact it is true and not Hislopian fantasy) doesn’t change that.

Thank you for your reply Father. To delve into some Orthodox history of the halo, is the halo supposed to represent when Moses came down from Mt Sinai?

Orthodox Iconography has developed rules over the years.

When encountering the spiritual realm, how can an Orthodox iconographer write an icon of a saint who radiates the divine light of Christ and who has been glorified by the Church? They do so by means of halos and spheres of light surrounding a saint or as seen by Christ in His Transfiguration.

Notice that Christ is surrounded by light framed by the Greek Cross of St. Andrew (X).

At the foot of the God-trodden Mountain of Sinai, Emperor Justinian built the great basilica of St. Catherine's Monastery to the Transfiguration of Christ—the “Feast of monastic feasts.”

“Let us be transfigured by that glorious transfiguration,” exhorted St. Anastasios of Sinai in his sermon on the Feast, for “Jesus goes before us to show us the way, both up the mountain and into heaven … making us sharers in His divinity and raising us to heights as yet undreamed of.”

Archbishop Damianos of Sinai has pointed out that the manifestation of the Holy Trinity at the Transfiguration was foreshadowed by the earlier theophany on Mount Sinai, where the voice of God, the light of the Sun of Righteousness, and the cloud of the Holy Spirit were all similarly present.

There is a difference though: While the eyes of the apostles were enabled to see “a dim ray” of the divine radiance of Christ at His Transfiguration, the Uncreated Light appears to Moses on Sinai as “luminous darkness.” It is invisible—except to eyes that have been transformed by the Holy Spirit.

http://orthochristian.com/105693.html

Iconographers also lighten the faces of saints who reflect this heavenly light. As a result, one rarely sees a dark icon. Some dark icons, as was seen in Russia, have miraculously brightened by themselves.

When I was first purchasing icons, I noticed that the icons from HOCNA, which has fallen into Name-Worshiping and the Awake Sleeper heresy, were generally dark. At that time, I wondered why that was so. Their minds were darkened by heresy.