|
The name "Stoglav"means
"Hundred chapters;" it was given to the council because its decisions
were divided into one hundred chapters. The council had to answer questions
that Ivan put to it in writing. His questions and his speech at the council
have some literary value. Both were written in Ivan's peculiar style that would
later be better shown in his correspondence with his adversary Prince Kurbskii.
The major aims of the council were to unify the service and Church ritual,
revise and correct books, establish schools, fight superstition and heresies,
put an end to abuses of power by the clergy, drunkenness, corruption and
debauchery. The later sanctions were aimed primarily at the monasteries, where
many monks and abbots were formerly princes and boyars and were used to an
entirely different life. Ivan spoke also of breakdowns in customs and
traditions and asked for strengthening of "True Orthodoxy" in
accordance with divine scriptures. Obviously, western influences greatly
disturbed the tsar and the council. Stoglav noted that holy rules forbid
orthodox believers to follow alien customs and that "Each country has its
own laws and habits, which should not move from one people to the other, but
each should preserve its own tradition; we the orthodox received the true law
from God, which we profaned by turning to various countries, and accepted their
vicious customs." How little the attitude of the Soviets in foreign has
changed since! To remedy the abuses, Stoglav considered the main duty of the
state to give proper religious education to its citizens. As a result a number
of measures were undertaken, among which were the revision and correction of
books and a return to orthodoxy in art. Icon painters were told to be humble
and live piously, not quarrel or drink and , above all, to follow strictly the
icon-painting manual. The Church, not the artist, was to decide how an icon
should be painted and what a saint should look like. The high clergy was told
to insist that ancient icons should serve as models and not let painters get
involved in their own inventions, disregarding the letter of the manual. Rublev
was pointed to as a good example to follow. However, the new generation of
iconographers was unable to each the artistic level of Rublev and Dionisii,
despite the more favorable conditions that prevailed during most of the 16th
century. Many of Stoglav's decisions remained on paper, or were only partially
put into effect, and it could not have been otherwise. There would be no school
of iconography if the painters had had strictly copied Greek originals and
neither would Russia have Rublev, Dionissi or others. Contrary to council
directives, a good part of Russian painting underwent several changes and
became very productive. Instead of the wide-ranging artistic creativeness,
rhythmic lines and soft coloring that prevailed in Rublev's style, we see in
the 16th century the tendency to go into more detail, use darker shades and
produce a sort of a jewelry work. Indeed the use of silver and gold
considerably increased. A great many rather miniature designs overburdened the
icon and left little room for powerful and free expression by the artist. The
composition of the icon became more complicated but, also , more versatile and
more Russian. There were clear indications of national folklore becoming more
influential on iconography. For centuries it had lived side by side with
official Church art or, rather, outside of it. Icon painters now more often
depicted contemporary scenes, dressed their personages in contemporary garments
and put in the background the Russian church with its onion-shaped cupolas.
Then came increased use of gold, which originally served to paint the nimbus
around the saint's head, or intermixed with other colors, usually in the form
of thin lines, for painting garments, beard or hair. But its application indeed
became exaggerated when gold or gold-plated or silver sheets were used for
making trappings that were simply nailed on the icon. It all started with a
tiny engraved metal frame around the icon which rapidly grew into a setting
that entirely covered the icon, leaving only the head or one or two hands
uncovered. The icon became an ornament mad of metal that was engraved and
embossed, reproducing the painted image underneath it which was no longer
visible. The new taste for shiny metal considerably hurt the further
development of iconography as a par of artistic painting. The door was open to
a partial distancing from true art form into a handicraft.
On the insistence of Ivan the Terrible the "Stoglav" council
reluctantly legalized the until then tacitly accepted practice that icons could
include no saintly persons. Thus the tsar himself became the first to initiate
changes. Maxim the Greek was among the first to raise his voice against the
stenciled pattern in icon painting and fervently defended the introduction of
new more liberal subjects. The entire matter was discussed, sometimes very
heatedly at the Stoglav Council. This continued at the Church council of 1554,
convened to hear complaints against new trends in iconography.
|
|