The Importance of Church Iconography

Abstract

The holy icons and church painting represented on the inner walls of the holy places of worship never had a decorating role but a purely religious and teaching-educational purpose. Through these sacred images, the Church opened a way of communion with God and His saints and produced a way of initiation and guiding the believers into knowing the teaching of faith and the rules of moral life. Each icon and each holy painted scene expresses, intuitively, a historic or dogmatic truth, a moral-Christian principle, a deep meaning, and a rich content of religious ideas, revealing and guiding for the spiritual building and growing of the believers. The instructive-educational importance of the holy icons and of the church painting has always been acknowledged by the Holy Church and, that is why, they are so much used in the Christian cult and in the religious life of Orthodox Christians.