The Principle of Typological Parallelism of Testaments in Christian Iconography: on the Problem of Terminology

Abstract

The object of research in this article is the terminological apparatus that is being formed in the foreign and russian historiographical tradition, describing concepts related to the principle of typological parallelism of Covenants in Christian iconography. This principle is based on the doctrine of "Reconciliation of Testaments" (considering Old Testament events as prototypes of New Testament history) and underlies the organization of plots already in a number of monuments of early Christian art. In the era of the High Middle Ages, this principle became one of the fundamental in the iconography of monuments of painting, sculpture and decorative and applied art. The subject of the study was the process of adding up the generally accepted terminology in studies devoted to the iconographic technique in question. The article also raises the problem of correlation between terms used in foreign and domestic historiography. Based on the analysis of the addition of the terminological apparatus in research on Christian iconography, the article concludes that there is no unified system of terms in modern science, especially in the domestic one, to describe the extremely important and widespread phenomenon of Christian iconography – the reflection in the pictorial cycles of the principle of "Reconciliation of Covenants". Tracing the etymology of the concepts used, the author of the article clearly demonstrates the existing contradictions in the terms "type", "antithype" and "antithype", and also analyzes the difficulties that arise when translating these concepts into Russian. Based on this research, it becomes possible to offer the most correct and unambiguously interpreted terms. The relevance of the study is explained by the absence in the Russian research literature of a system of terms for the iconographic principle under consideration, as well as individual Old Testament subjects-prototypes and their New Testament analogies.