The Painter and His Prayer

A long time ago in Constantinople, there lived a great and powerful emperor. He admired the Bible and could discourse on its books with the leading theologians of his realm. During one of these ecclesiastical councils, a perceptive philosopher commented on the Ten Commandments, particularly on the injunction against graven images. The emperor and his wisemen bent their heads over the text and deliberated on its meaning. A rift emerged between those who wanted to destroy the holy icons of the Haigia Sophia and those who believed the icon could focus the worshipper on the divinity. The emperor joined the iconoclasts while the iconophiles fled the capital, for the emperor decreed the destruction of all icons and the persecution of monks, artists, and any iconophiles who assisted icon painters.

Hard times beset the kingdom, and many icons of gold leaf and pearl inlay were smashed. The emperor's guard attacked mountain top monasteries and arrested artists whose delicate hands gave them away. The guilty answered to a judge well versed in Byzantine law and the holy scriptures before being dragged off to the dungeons where they were burned by hot coals or stabbed by knives. If they survived their tortures, they dared never to raise a paint brush, but most died with their delicate hands mangled and bleeding.

The emperor's highest ranking judge was a grave nobleman named Alexei of the house of Midonias. He was a strict iconoclast and condemned more artists to death than anyone else. Neither monk nor aristocratic iconophile, tried by Alexei had any prospect of escaping martyrdom in a prison cell. This same Alexei had a beautiful daughter named Chrysisaura whose alluring green eyes and dark hair reminded men of a Byzantine Aphrodite.

Chrysisaura was an educated young woman, fluent in both Greek and Latin. She studied Euclid's geometry and Zeno the stoic. She played the lyre and dabbled in botany and poetic composition. Most of all, she adored art. To her, there was no finer statue than Myron's Discobolus or anything more imposing than an Egyptian sphinx. She took delight in the illuminated pages of the family Bible as well as the ivory carvings on her jewelry box.

It was during this era of iconoclasm that Chrysisaura fell in love with a handsome artist named Apelles after the ancient painter. Under cover of darkness one evening, Apelles had run all the way from Caesaria to Byzantium, hoping to escape aboard a Venetian trade vessel. His father and brother, both artists, were already dead, and he feared for the safety of not only his life but also the rest of his family. The imperial guard found his trail, though he had renounced his paints and palette. And alas, the journey was too long on foot and, weak with fatigue, Apelles collapsed in the courtyard of a mansion, resigning himself to death. While walking in the garden the next morning, however, Chrysisaura came upon a ragged man, cold and famished. She knelt down to assist him and was transfixed by his obsidian eyes and golden hair. She gave him food and the clothes of a slave, so he could pass off as a domestic.

He became a groom and tended Chrysisaura's Arabian bay. He was very good with horses and, as Chrysisaura discovered, with the brush. She learned about his talent when he corrected her technique during an outing she made to paint the seascape outside her house. She was an iconophile in secret and provided Apelles with temperas and pine boards which his delicate hands knew how to work so well. For hours on end, she watched him paint the Crucifiction, the Deposition, or the Madonna and Child. Once he even dared paint the Virgin in her likeness and the angel Gabriel in his. Soon, they relived their own Annunciation in Chrysisaura's bed chamber, talking of love and art among silken pillows. But the iconophile and her lover were found out: A half-finished Lamentation and the paint-stained livery betrayed them.

No longer could Apelles' delicate hands stroke Chrysisaura's lustrous hair in affectionate attention. Instead, he and she were dragged to the judicial chambers to await their sentence. With shackled wrists, they faced the judge, the stern and austere visage of Alexei who questioned the pair on theology and the emperor's decree. He made them recite the commandments. He argued with them the definition of a graven image. He asked them if they knew why artists and iconophiles were persecuted. With level gaze, he told them the consequence of each crime. In short, his interrogation tested their very loyalty to Byzantium.

"If you ignore the law and produce or help the heretics who paint these pagan abominations, you betray not only your emperor but also your Orthodoxy. You are no longer Christians in the eyes of God. What have you to say to that?" Alexei said.

"What concern would God have if we paint his likeness? He came down to us in material form, so we can surely glorify that image. How does it matter so long as God is worshipped?" Apelles replied.

"Ah, but God does care how He is worshipped. The Commandments are His very words which He gave to Moses. And you now defy His holy ordinance," Alexei countered.

"There is no higher achievement of man than art. It is with the utmost reverence and veneration that an icon is painted. God is everything beautiful and splendid, and that is why the icons which depict Him are so ornate," Chrysisaura defended.

"They distract the worshipper from the contemplation of God's creation to that of man's," Alexei challenged.

"Oh no. If anything they focus the worshipper on how God's heavenly and creative genius entered the soul of Adam and his descendants," Apelles returned.

"God can just as easily take away this genius as he gave it to you," Alexei said.

"But if it were given in the first place, then it should be exercised," Chrysisaura reasoned.

"Silence! I have heard enough," Alexei commanded, slamming his gavel. "Your temporal punishment will be far less severe than your eternal one in the nether regions. Take them away!" he ordered the guards who escorted the artist and the iconophile into an antechamber. Alone in the interrogation room, Alexei stared vacantly at the spot where his daughter had stood before him with fiery eyes and a quick tongue. He cradled his head in his hands and sighed deeply. "Alas, no, no," he muttered as he reviewed the facts of the interrogation in his mind.

Soon, he recalled the offenders into his presence and pronounced his verdict. "You Apelles are hereby condemned. You are guilty of producing and propagating the practice of venerating icons. You have sinned against God and disobeyed your emperor. I sentence you to punishment by torture. Leave my presence, and never return. You reek of heresy and rebellion. Take him to the dungeons," Alexei declared.

"Only I am convicted?" Apelles asked, peering at Chrysisaura from the corner of his eye.

"Do you dare question my authority?" Alexei snarled. "Impudent man."

"Chrysisaura, my charming muse, is just as guilty as I," Apelles persisted. The guards approached the condemned artist.

"Your muse! Your beguiled nymph more likely. You have seduced my daughter, rob her of her virtue, and led her astray from the Orthodox church. She is blameless," Alexei retorted, unshackling Chrysisaura's chains.

Apelles looked at the enraged judge and his daughter whose eyes were wide with surprise. "Chrysisaura," he implored. "Chrysisaura, it isn't true. Tell him it isn't true."

"It's—“ she began.

"I forbid you to speak. I forbid it," Alexei interjected.

"I never seduced you. Tell him the story of how you found me in your garden that morning," Apelles said as the guards seized his arms.

"Liar," Alexei hissed. The guards twisted the artist's arms and pulled him back. A look of pain coursed over his face as Chrysisaura, still rubbing her wrists from the tightness of the shackles, stepped forward.

"No! Wait," she called out. The guards halted, obeying the demand of the Judge's daughter. "I can explain."

"Yes!" Apelles encouraged, trying to yank himself free.

"Heed them not," Alexei ordered. "Just see to what degree he has seduced her. See the man for what he really is, a vile heretic and a corrupt lecher."

"No! Please wait," Chrysisaura cried, stretching out her hands to Apelles. Alexei made a dismissive gesture, and the guards dragged Apelles away, his arms writhing and his eyes languid and sad. Alexei stood tall, his arms crossed at his chest. Chrysisaura started running after the prisoner when the judge laid a hand on her shoulder and commanded her to stay. She turned to look at her father and sobbed quietly, hanging her head in defeat. Alexei, his hand still on Chrysisaura's shoulder, watched the door close behind the artist and the imperial guards.

…

"I deserve his fate," Chrysisaura murmured as she gathered Apelles' paints and brushes. She then set the pile alight, tossing the icons into the flames. The fire flared up, consuming the Lamentation which Apelles never finished. "I wish I could join him. How he must suffer alone, and here I am in the garden where we first met." She stood back, watching the small pyre that burned for the death of art. From an upper-story study, Alexei looked down on his daughter amidst the orange fire light with sad, alert eyes.

In a cold, dark prison cell of a drafty dungeon, a cringing man sat in the corner. His eyes were closed as tears of pain coursed down his pallid cheeks. he took in a shuddering breath and lifted his bowed head. With blurred vision, he gazed at the iron bars of the door. He seethed as another spasm of pain came over him, and he reluctantly looked at his hands, his delicate hands which were delicate no more. They had tortured him in the worst way possible. They had twisted his wrists in vises, punctured his palms with iron files, and broke all the joints in his fingers, so he may never use a brush again.

To the best of his ability, he folded his mutilated hands in an attitude of prayer and raised his head to where he thought heaven was. "Why have they condemned an artist? And why does the iconophile walk free? If I am guilty, then so is she. If she be innocent, then so should I. But alas, no. Ah alas, no. Would that we lived in a world where art does not die with the artist and judges are truly impartial. Would that injustice be the heresy and preference be the crime. But this is no just world. This is nothing. But how, if such a place existed, how I would favor and esteem such a place." He muttered this dismal monologue in a soft voice, appealing to the god whom he had so grievously offended according to the theological caprice of an emperor.

Chrysisaura visited Apelles during one winter night, and when she saw his disfigured hands, she clasped the once elegant tools of creation through the bars and wept over them. They said nothing to each other because there was nothing to say. But that was the last time the eyes of the artist and the judge's daughter ever met, the final instant when emerald stared with anguished longing into obsidian. Apelles was left to die from starvation and the icy air of the dungeon. Like many an icon painter before him, he expired with ravaged hands that dripped gore and his once handsome face contorted in a final agony.