Category Archives: Icons

Circumcision of Christ (Holy Name)

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The central panel depicts the circumcision of Christ. The two side panels depict the Gospel writers Luke and Matthew who relate how Jesus was circumcised or given his name on the 8th day after his birth.

The Feast of the Circumcision of Christ is a Christian celebration of the circumcision of Jesus in accordance with Jewish tradition, eight days after his birth, the occasion on which the child was formally given his name. Eight days after Christmas (December 25), Circumcision (nowadays the feast is often called “Holy Name”) is thus celebrated on January 1.

The circumcision of Jesus has traditionally been seen, as explained in the popular 14th-century work the Golden Legend, as the first time the blood of Christ was shed and thus the beginning of the process of the redemption of man, a demonstration that Christ was fully human and of his obedience to Biblical law.

Circumcision was first practiced by Ethiopians and Egyptians, according to Herodotus, and they practiced it mainly for reasons of health (Hist. 2:2, 104). In the Old Testament, God established circumcision as a sign of his covenant with Abraham that would mark his descendants as different from the other peoples of the world. “This covenant, which you shall keep, is between me and you and between your seed after you for their generations. Every male among you shall be circumcised. Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the mark of the covenant between you and me. And a child, when he is eight days old, shall be circumcised.” (Genesis 17:12)

The Greeks and Romans thought circumcision was a horrible disfigurement of the male body. Many Romans admired Jewish religious practice and thought but refused to actually convert because of the social stigma associated with circumcision. Several of these “God-fearers” appear in the New Testament.

Patristic literature associates the timing of the Circumcision on the eighth day with Resurrection. Seven is the number of completion and fullness as the world was created in seven days and is due to pass through seven ages. But if seven is perfect, then seven-plus-one is super-perfect. Eight, therefore, stands for renewal, regeneration — whence the architectural tradition of eight-sided baptistries. And Christ rose from the dead on the day superseding the Sabbath, on the Eighth Day just as the world’s seven ages will be followed in the eighth age by the General Resurrection. This imagery is attached almost from the beginning to all theological meditation on Christ’s Circumcision. It is the sense of the mystery that the Circumcision on the eighth day prefigures Christ’s Resurrection, and thereby, implicitly, the resurrection of all.

Prophet Daniel and Christmas

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Prophet Daniel in Lion’s Den (10th century mosaic) shows the lions tame at Daniel’s feet, as sheep devoted to their shepherd.

The Prophet Daniel is best known for his imprisonment in the lions’ den. A young Jewish man living in exile, he is raised to high office by his royal master Darius the Mede. Daniel’s jealous rivals trick Darius into issuing a decree that for thirty days no prayers should be addressed to any god or man but Darius himself; any who break this are to be thrown to the lions. Daniel continues to pray to the God of Israel, and the king, although deeply distressed, must condemn Daniel to death, for the edicts of the Medes and Persians cannot be altered. Hoping for Daniel’s deliverance but unable to disobey his own law, Darius has Daniel cast into the pit. At daybreak the king hurries to the place and cries out anxiously, asking if God had saved his friend. Daniel replies that his God had sent an angel to close the jaws of the lions; Christian liturgical hymnography describes the prophet as having become a shepherd to the lions who behaved like sheep. The king commands that those who had conspired against Daniel should be thrown to the lions in his place, along with their wives and children, and writes to all the people of the whole world commanding that all should tremble and fear before the God of Daniel.

In the oldest version of the book of the prophet Daniel, there is the additional detail that the prophet Habbakuk–many miles away, carrying food in a basket–was picked up by his hair by an angel and brought to the lions’ den to share his food with Daniel. (Habbakuk is often identified as having bright orange or red hair.)

Daniel is also associated with Christmas because of his prophecy regarding the stone which smashed the idol (Daniel 2:34–35) which is taken as a metaphor for the Incarnation: the “stone cut out” being symbolic of the Logos (Christ), and the fact that it was cut “without hands” being symbolic of the virgin birth. Byzantine Christian hymns and poetry refer to the Mother of God (the Virgin Mary) as the “uncut mountain.”

A contemporary icon showing the prophet Daniel in the lions’ den; Habbakuk is shown above, bringing a meal to share with Daniel.

St. Antony

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Coptic icon of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the 3 angels at Mamre; dated AD 1497. An inscription along the bottom asks the Lord to remember an archpriest’s son named Antony.

My partner Elliot was recently in Egypt and brought me home a beautiful book of Coptic icons as a gift. (I took these photos from the icons in the book. So gorgeous! Thank you, Elliot!)

Although many saints from Egypt have played fundamental roles in establishing basic Christian understandings of God and Christ (such as SS. Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria in the 4th and 5th centuries), another saint from Egypt has been nearly just as important: St. Antony, the first monk to found a monastic community. His life story, written down by St. Athanasius, has been said to have been nearly as popular as the New Testament and to have had nearly as big an impact on Western civilization.

Antony was not the first monk that we know of–that was St. Paul the hermit, who also lived in the Egyptian desert. But St. Antony was the first to establish a community of monks living in the desert. (There were also communities of nuns living in cities already when he went out into the desert for the first time.) There were soon thereafter huge “cities” of monks living in the deserts of Egypt and then across the Middle East and then across Western and Eastern Europe. The monastic centers that sprang up helped preserve ancient books and civilization and philosophy as well as spread Christian theology, literature, and liturgical practice.

St. Antony is the patron saint of butchers and pig farmers. His feast day, January 17, is an important date in Come Hell or High Water, Part 1: Wellspring.

In this chapter, a young man attempts to steal donations from a church in medieval Prague but it is the parish church of the butchers’ guild. The butchers find the young man and cut off his arm and hung it near the front door of the church as a warning to anyone who would attempt to steal from the church in the future. The arm is still hanging there in St. Jakub’s church, near the Old Town Square.

Coptic icon of Apostle Peter in the Coptic Museum (Egypt).