Category Archives: Icons

St. Roch in Lisbon–and New York!

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In this interior view of the Church of St. Roch in Lisbon, you can see the famously expensive Chapel of St. John the Baptist. One reason it was so expensive os the large amount of lapis lazuli used on the front of the altar and the walls of the chapel.

My recent post about St. Roch was much more popular–and sparked some very interesting comments and responses–than I had anticipated and prompted me to think a little bit more about the good saint.

The most famous church dedicated to St. Roch is in Lisbon, Portugal. (There are a half dozen churches dedicated to him in the metropolitan area of New York City.) The church in Lisbon was the earliest Jesuit church in the Portuguese world, and one of the first Jesuit churches anywhere. The Igreja de São Roque was one of the few buildings in Lisbon to survive the disastrous 1755 earthquake relatively unscathed.

When built in the 16th century it was the first Jesuit church designed in the “auditorium-church” style specifically for preaching. It contains a number of chapels; the most notable is the 18th-century Chapel of St. John the Baptist which was constructed in Rome of many precious stones and disassembled, shipped, and reconstructed at São Roque in Lisbon; at the time it was reportedly the most expensive chapel in Europe.

The history of the church is fascinating. In 1505 Lisbon was being ravaged by the plague, which had arrived by ship from Italy. The king and the court were even forced to flee Lisbon for a while. The site of São Roque, outside the city walls (now an area known as the Bairro Alto), became a cemetery for plague victims. At the same time the King of Portugal sent to Venice for a relic of St. Roch, the patron saint of plague victims, whose body had been brought to Venice in 1485. The relic was sent by the Venetian government, and it was carried in procession up the hill to the plague cemetery.

The inhabitants of Lisbon then decided to erect a shrine on the site to house the relic. This early shrine had a “Plague Courtyard” for the burial of plague victims next to the shrine. In 1540, after the founding of the Society of Jesus in the 1530s, the king of Portugal invited them to come to Lisbon and the first Jesuits soon arrived. They settled first in All Saints Hospital (which no longer exists). However they soon began looking for a larger, more permanent location for their main church, and selected the Shrine of St. Roch as their favored site. They used the old shrine for a while but built the current church in 1555-1565.

St. Roch himself is usually represented in the garb of a pilgrim, often lifting his tunic to demonstrate the plague sore, or bubo, in his thigh, and accompanied by a dog carrying a loaf in its mouth. The Third Order of Saint Francis claims him as a member and includes his feast on its own calendar of saints, observing it on August 17. There is a popular street festival in his honor in Little Italy at the end of August each summer; read about it here.

Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God & The Visitation

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A 17th-century Russian icon of the Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God.

July 2 has long been a feast day of the Mother of God in both the Eastern and Western Churches although the feasts each had a somewhat different emphasis.

According to legend, the Mother of God died and was buried by the apostles in a tomb in Jerusalem. Three days later, Thomas the Apostle, who had been delayed and unable to attend the funeral, arrived and asked to have one last look at the Virgin Mary. When he and the other apostles arrived at Mary’s Tomb, they found that her body was missing. According to some accounts, the Virgin Mary appeared at that time and gave her belt (also called sash or cincture) to the Apostle Thomas. Another version of the story recounts how the Mother of God gave her sash to one of the women tending her as she was dying and the sash was passed down in that woman’s family from generation to generation.

Traditionally, the sash was reportedly made by the Virgin Mary herself, out of camel hair. Whether it was given to St. Thomas or the woman tending the dying Virgin, the sash was kept at Jerusalem for many years. It was brought to Constantinople in the 5th century, together with the robe of the Virgin Mary. The robe and the sash were both deposited in the Church of St. Mary at Blachernae. The sash was embroidered with gold thread by the Empress Zoe, the wife of Emperor Leo VI, in gratitude for a miraculous cure. The anniversary of this deposition of the sash of the Mother of God at Blachernae is celebrated every year by the Orthodox Church on July 2.

Later, the Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos (1347–1355) donated the sash to the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, where it remains to this day. (I was given a relic of the sash on Mt. Athos by a good friend of mine; I highly prize it. I have also been given a small stone from Golgotha by a parishioner and a small stone from the tomb of the Mother of God in Jerusalem as an ordination gift.)

July 2 was the traditional date for the Western Church to celebrate the Visitation of the Mother of God and St. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:39-57). Feeling the presence of his Christ in the womb of Mary, John, in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, jumped with excitement. Elizabeth greeted her cousin Mary as “the Mother of my Lord,” realizing that the baby was not just kicking in her womb for no reason. (Many western Christians moved the Visitation feast to May 31 in 1969.) Keeping the Visitation on July 2, however, strikes me as a fitting way to promote unity between Eastern and Western Christians and to foster goodwill among the adherents of a common, “mere” Christianity.

Read more about the Visitation here and here. You can read more about the Deposition here. See Mere Christianity here.

A contemporary icon depicting the Mother of God giving her sash to St. Thomas the Apostle after her Dormition (Assumption).

Melchizedek, King of Salem

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This icon of Melchizedek is one of several that I painted many years ago. You can see the curls of the challah bread in his hand reflected in the curls of his beard. He wears the turban of a high priest and the crown of a king, as he was both priest of God Most High and king of (Jeru-)Salem.

Melchizedek is a mysterious but very important figure in the Bible. He is the king of Salem (later known as Jerusalem) and a priest of God Most High, and he blessed the patriarch Abraham. In the book of Genesis, we read how Abram returns from defeating king Chedorlaomer and meets with Bera the king of Sodom, at which point: “…Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine: and he was [is] the priest of the most high God. And he blessed Abram, and said, ‘Blessed be Abram to the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth, And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand’. And Abram gave him tithe from all.” (Genesis 14:18–20)

Melchizedek is also mentioned in Psalm 110 as an example of one man acting as both priest and king (a new development in Jewish practice, dating from the time of the Maccabees about 200 BC) and Christ is compared to Melchizedek in the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament. Melchizedek is the only non-Jewish priest in the Old Testament who is considered legitimate; his priesthood is also greater than the Jewish priesthood because he blesses Abram [Abraham], the father of all Jews and thus all of Abraham’s descendants–including the Jewish priests! Abraham also offers Melchizedek a tithe (10%) of all he has, indicating that he considers Melchizedek more important than himself. Melchizedek, king of Salem [i.e. “righteousness” and “peace”], sacrifices bread and wine to God; this is considered by Christian readers as a clear allusion to the Eucharist. Because he is king of righteousness and seems to be a priest for all eternity (as there is no record of his birth or death or his ancestors), he is considered by Christians to be an archetype of Christ Himself.

Some Jewish legends also notice his apparent eternity and say that he presided at the funeral of Abel and was hidden by God in Eden during the Flood to protect him. He was also important to Jews who rejected the legitimacy of the Temple, such as the Essenes and the Qumran community who compiled the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Melchizedek is commemorated by the Eastern churches on May 22.