By Vladimir Ivanovici | University of Vienna & Università della Svizzera italiana

Overview

Light has occupied a central place in Christian theology and practice since the early centuries. Both in the Ancient Near East and in the Graeco-Roman tradition, manifestations of the divine were associated with light, which was held to envelop (or “clothe” cf. Ps. 104[105].2) divine beings. Several ways of offering a vision of the divine that involved light were developed and refined over the centuries in these cultural contexts. Both keeping with this tradition and going beyond it, John the Apostle identified God with light (1 John 1:5), a statement seemingly confirmed by the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:1-8, Luke 9:28-36, Mark 9:2-8). Thus, from a protective layer that allowed humans to glimpse the divine without being consumed by the vision, light became the visual manifestation of a God who offered Himself to the senses. While in the case of the Eucharist one needed the “eyes of faith” in order to recognize the bread and wine as the flesh and blood of Christ, perceivable light was held to be similar (if distinct in intensity and source) with its divine counterpart. As a result, Christian communities used light to stage visions of the divine as early as the 3rd century.

As the religion gained resources and attracted persons willing to repurpose antiquity’s knowledge in order to promote the Christian faith, increasingly complex ways of using light were developed. Inside the spaces designed for the sacraments, natural (i.e., sunlight), artificial (i.e., lamps, candles), reflected (i.e., through the use of polished surfaces), and depicted light were used to make the spaces usable; to establish the holiness of specific areas, objects, and persons; to materialize the presence of the divine; and to represent the divine. Shaping the design, orientation, decoration, and iconography of the spaces, and constituting a mystical moment of encounter with the divine during the liturgical service, light was central to both the mise-en-scène and experience of Christianity in the Middle Ages.

As the former provinces of the Roman Empire grew apart, distinct ways of using light emerged around the Mediterranean. These regional formulations were influenced by elements such as local building and decorative traditions, theological schools, or climate. Both the Romanesque and Gothic building styles in the Latin West, and the church types developed in the Byzantine East were shown to have used light in specific ways in order to confer a revelatory quality to church interiors. Medieval societies in the area between the Latin West and the Byzantine East, from the Balkan Peninsula to the Baltic Sea, developed their cultic architecture at the crossroads of these cultural poles. Thus far, only a few studies have addressed the use of light in churches in the area. Nevertheless, these have shown that rather than imitating the strategies used in Byzantium or the West, the know-how to manipulate light was adapted to complement local agendas. This attests to the local architectural and decorative styles being the result of careful design, and opens the discussion on knowledge transfer patterns in the area.

In addition, studies of light in the post-Byzantine churches in Arbanassi (current Bulgaria) and Pătrăuți (current Romania) have demonstrated that the revelatory quality of interiors had political implications. The former context was a Christian enclave in the Ottoman state where light was used to reinforce the Christian faith by conferring a wondrous, awe-inspiring character to its rituals. The latter context saw the ruler of a political entity on the fringes of the former Byzantine state (the principality of Moldavia) use light in conjunction with architecture and iconography to consecrate the rule of his family and to strengthen belief in Christ, as the Ottoman presence in the area was growing.

The small church at Pătrăuți also preserves a type of light effect thus far unattested in other contexts. The use of moving sunlight to unite specific areas inside the church or points in the mural decoration, and thus make political and/or theological statements, attests to either the innovative potential of these liminal cultural contexts or, if similar effects will be attested elsewhere, to their capacity to open new research foci.

The study of light in churches north of Byzantium thus provides a fil rouge that draws attention to the local communities’ debts to Byzantine and Latin cultures, to their capacity to innovate, and to their search for distinct identities. Embedded in the architecture of local churches, these phenomena come to the fore when we reconstruct how light interacts with the space, decoration, and congregation, while considering the symbolic implications of the singular effects.

Key Issues and Debates

During the past decade, there has been a growing interest in recovering the synesthetic qualities of religious rituals. Given its functional role in enclosed spaces and its rich symbolism, light has emerged as a privileged focus of research within this wider current. Light’s particular capacity to offer an insight into the experience afforded by the space and ritual lies in it being simultaneously a category of architecture, decoration, iconography, and vision, as well as a topic of philosophy and theology.

In addition, light has the capacity to interact in meaningful ways with other aspects pertaining to the sensorial sphere, such as incense smoke and sound. Thus, light brings together the fixed and transient elements that make up the setting of ritual performances. Nevertheless, most studies have focused on single aspects. Such analyses have added to our knowledge and have refined the methodologies needed for the study of individual aspects of the phenomenon, but ultimately failed to put to use the full range of meaning afforded by the study of light inside churches.

Future studies have the responsibility to combine these foci and approaches in order to produce comprehensive analyses of the use and effects of light in specific churches. For the area north of Byzantium, in addition to applying existing approaches to local churches, such studies will require further analyses of sources in order to reconstruct key aspects such as the liturgical schedule, the location and shape of liturgical furnishings, or the artificial illumination sources and their locations. In this regard, the examples of Arbanassi and Pătrăuți have shown the potential of light studies in the area and invite further explorations along similar lines of inquiry.

Further Reading

James, Liz. Light and Colour in Byzantine Art, Clarendon Studies in the History of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

This monograph discusses the perception of colors in Byzantium. It shows that hues were classified as more or less luminous and, thus, that the polychrome decoration of churches could be understood in terms of luminosity.

Motsianos, Ioannis K. “Φως ιλαρόν: ο τεχνητός φωτισμός στο Βυζάντιο.” PhD dissertation, Volos University, 2011.

This dissertation collects numerous textual, archaeological, and visual information on lighting devices, allowing one to understand this aspect of church spaces.

Nesbitt, Claire. “Shaping the Sacred: Light and the Experience of Worship in Middle Byzantine Churches.” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 36, no. 2 (2012): 139–160.

This article briefly introduces the symbolism of light in the Christian tradition before discussing the main sources for the study of natural and artificial illumination in Byzantine churches and, finally, considering the liturgical implications of lighting.

Potamianos, Iakovos. “Light into Architecture: Evocative Aspects of Natural Light as Related to Liturgy in Byzantine Churches.” PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1996. Published as Το φως στη βυζαντινή εκκλησία. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2000.

A pioneering work, this study explores the meaning and use of sunlight in Byzantine architecture. The author summarizes the knowledge needed to orient churches and calculate the direction of sunlight, discusses the symbolism of light in the Christian tradition, and identifies the main ways in which light was used inside late Byzantine churches.

Sullivan, Alice Isabella, Gabriel-Dinu Herea, and Vladimir Ivanovici. “Space, image, light: Toward an understanding of Moldavian architecture in the fifteenth century.” Gesta 60, no. 1 (2021): 81–100.

This recent article provides an up-to-date bibliography and analyses the use of sunlight in a 15th-century church from Moldavia (modern Romania). The analysis attests to the combination of Western and Byzantine elements in the design and decoration of the church, as well as to the innovative ways in which sunlight was used in the church to unite aspects of its architecture, decoration, and ritual experiences.

This contribution was sponsored by the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross.