Seen any icons recently?
We live at a time when the media seems to describe almost everything as iconic – from an old red telephone box to the footballer David Beckham. But, as I explained in my previous posting I have just been to an exhibition on Byzantium and here there were many real icons.
The word icon comes from the Greek word eikon which simply means ‘a likeness, image or picture’. In various religions at different times, the creation and display of icons has been in or out of favour. The practice of displaying icons is called iconography and an iconostatis is a screen bearing icons. Someone who favours icons is called an iconophile, while somebody who opposes icons is described as an iconoclast and the destruction of icons is called inconoclasm..
I thought that you’d like to know …