The Embodied Icon: Vestments and Sacred Power in Byzantium (review)

The Embodied Icon is an erudite work that is accessible and engaging. This beautiful volume was collected to commemorate a 2004 exhibit of Byzantine icons, artifacts, and textiles at the Met featuring several of the items that Woodfin considers in this book. The Embodied Icon has a larger potential audience than one might first assume about a book on late medieval Byzantine embroidered vestments. Scholars could approach the book with an interest in history, politics, liturgy, textiles, or materiality and find it useful.

Chapter 1 treats the various vestments worn by deacons, priests, and bishops in the Byzantine rite. Woodfin deals with these vestments and the evolution of their use especially between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries and makes reference to the “post-Byzantine” use of the garments after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The author explains the each vestment clearly for any reader who may not be familiar with Byzantine Liturgy. Those who have extensive experience will appreciate Woodfin’s discussion of when each vestment began to be worn or used by the various orders of clergy. Liturgical historians will appreciate his section on “privileged vestments,” which considers when many of the imperial regalia came to be worn by the bishop. The main point of this work, however, is not vestments in general, but particularly those garments embroidered with icons. Woodfin introduces these toward the end of the chapter.

Chapters 2 and 3 explain the hermeneutic significance of these embroidered vestments. Chapter 2 considers the role of the embroidered vestments when worn in a Byzantine Church. Woodfin considers the stock themes and arrangements found on extant vestments. By wearing embroidered vestments with the same cycle of feasts found in the iconography of the church building, the deisis (supplication of Jesus) trope, or Eucharistic themes, the wearer of the vestment embodies these themes and becomes a liturgical “microcosm” (101). Woodfin provides a most convincing example of this microcosmic argument. Extant bishop’s epimanikia (cuffs) have the two figures of the Anunciation—Mary and the Archangel Gabriel—embroidered one on each cuff. In Byzantine churches, this same feast appears on the “Holy Doors” which would be open while the bishop stands before the altar. By having this feast embroidered on his cuffs, he, himself, completes the program of the iconography for the Church, thus becoming an integral part.

Chapter 3 builds on the material in chapter 2 by considering the role that embroidered vestments played in liturgical actions themselves. Drawing upon liturgical commentaries written between the eighth and fifteenth centuries, Woodfin proves that the clergy embody and enact the story of Christ depicted in the scenes on their vestments: “The images thus act in concert with the sacrament, not as a subtitute for participation in a distant liturgical action, but as a visual manifestation of the underlying meaning of the rite” (116). Thus, the bishop represents Christ. Just as Christ comes to be depicted iconographically in the Episcopal sakkos giving communion to the Apostles, so too, the bishop, wearing a sakkos embroidered with the Christological feasts, comes to represent Christ as he gives communion to his priests at the altar.

Chapter 4 begins the second part of the text, generally titled “Liturgical Vestments in Byzantine Society.” It would, perhaps, have been more accurate to entitle this latter section “Liturgical Vestments from the Byzantine Court” since Woodfin deals carefully with the usurpation of certain Byzantine court regalia by the Patriarchs, major archbishops, and later all bishops and, in some cases, other clergy as well. Woodfin considers how ecclesiastical authorities “adopted” the garments, styles, and even colors of the imperial court to emphasize the superiority, or at least parity, of their sacred power with the earthly. He surveys the various offices replete with their distinctive hats, tunics, shoes, and corresponding ink colors for signing documents. From extant ecclesiastical garments, he suggests that Patriarchs took on not only the styles of Byzantine court garments, but even some of the insignia and colors as well. For...