Beholding the Sacred Mysteries

Sharon Gerstel evokes a wide range of written and painted sources in order to analyze the decoration of the Byzantine sanctuary from the perspective of its contemporary viewer, from monk to liturgical celebrant, from bishop to lay worshipper. In a new presentation of the sanctuary program, the author reveals to the modern reader what was and even today is manifest only to the clergy. In medieval Byzantium an artistic program developed behind the sanctuary screen for priests, whose actions and words were reflected in the painted decorations. Lay people were permitted to view certain parts of the painted program and the eucharistic celebration, but the sanctuary was increasingly obscured from them by curtains and icons. This book explores monuments from a single region (Macedonia) that range over a span of three hundred years (1028-1328). This period encompasses the beginnings of the new program, its establishment, and its expansion, and in the absence of surviving monuments from the Byzantine capital, Macedonia (now divided among Greece, Bulgaria, and the former Yugoslavian Republic that bears its name) contains an unbroken sequence of decorated churches. This detailed examination of a related group of monuments demonstrates the varying popularity of certain subjects and details of decoration, and how innovative approaches to Christian iconography were passed between painters and churches.