Thanks to the miraculous efforts of St Constantine, Christianity underwent a significant change in the fourth century. What came with this change was the triumphant spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in every way possible throughout the known world. Along with this — and by not only necessity but also following upon Divine institution and precedent — was the spread and triumph of a very specific form of Christian art and what we now know of as Iconography within the Orthodox and Catholic churches.
Ouspensky comments on the enormity of this sudden change in Christianity, noting:
“The influx of new converts requires larger places of worship and a new kind of teaching, one that is more direct and more explicit. The symbols used in the first centuries, intended for a small number of initiates, were incomprehensible to the new converts. This is the obvious reason why large historical cycles of monumental paintings portraying the events of the Old and New Testaments appeared in churches in the fourth and fifth centuries. St Constantine built churches in Palestine on the very sites where the biblical events had occurred. It is also in this period that the dates of most of the major feasts were set, along with the iconographic schemes for them, which are still followed in the Orthodox Church today.”
Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, Volume 1, p. 81
Interestingly enough, there are many ancient phials that have been discovered which depict all of the Feasts of the Church by the 6th and 7th centuries, and all of them showing depictions identical to the Icons of our present day for each Feast, confirming of course their antiquity.
As Christianity was given free reign to spread throughout the Empire, the Theology of the Church became more precise, well thought out and greatly expounded than ever — and, along with this, the canonization and spread of Christian artwork along with the Liturgy and prayers and feasts of the Church — all of these things went hand-in-hand, since they are all part of the same Faith and the same Sacred Tradition. Indeed, the fourth century and onward was the “golden age” of the Church theologically speaking, and especially in the East (all seven Ecumenical Synods were held in the East, e.g.). As the Theology of the ascetics and desert fathers began to spread throughout Christendom, the increase in sacred art came with it. Ouspensky notes:
“The experience of the ascetic Fathers and their writings spreads throughout the Christian world. From this time on, the theory and practice (praxis) of theology, that is, the teaching of the Church and the living experience of the ascetics, become the sources that feed sacred art, guide and inspire it. This art finds it necessary, on the one hand, to transmit truths that are formulated dogmatically, and on the other hand to communicate the living experience of these truths — the spiritual experience of the saints, the living Christianity in which dogma and life are one.” (Ibid, p. 83)
It is no wonder that one of the key components of a radical revolution is Iconoclasm, since all Icons — whether religious or cultural — are reminders of and even part of our connection with the past. Alongside this, as a result, comes the re-writing of history to suit our particular opinions, tastes, or ideas about what should have happened, maybe — but emphatically didn’t.
Ouspensky notes in his work that for Orthodox Christians, the Catholic Church’s liturgy is intimately connected with the presence of sacred images, or Icons. One cannot exist or have any real meaning without the other, basically. He writes:
