ICONOSTASIS 153 



Greek Church put its ornamentation of the holy place in front 

 of the altar instead of behind it as in the Latin churches. In 

 its present form in the churches of the Byzantine (and also the 

 Coptic) Rite the iconostasis is comparatively modern, not 

 older than the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. It was 

 never used in the Roman churches or any of the Latin churches 

 of the West, and was unknown to the early Church. The 

 modern chancel rail of the Latin Rite correctly represents the 

 primitive barrier separating the altar from the people. In the 

 great Gothic cathedrals the choir screen or rood screen may be 

 said in a manner to be the analogue of the iconostasis, but that 

 is the nearest approach to it in the Western Church. None 

 of the historians or liturgical writers of the early or middle 

 Greek Church ever mention the iconostasis. Indeed the name 

 to-day is chiefly in Russian usage, for the meaning of the 

 Greek word is not restricted merely to the altar screen, but is 

 applied to any object supporting a picture. The word is first 

 mentioned in Russian annals in 1528, when one was built by 

 Macarius, Metropolitan of Novgorod. 



In the early Greek churches there was a slight barrier about 

 waist high, or even lower, dividing the altar from the people. 

 This was variously known as KiyxXts, grating, Spv^aKxa, fence, 

 Siao-TvXa, a barrier made of columns, according to the manner in 

 which it was constructed. Very often pictures of the saints 

 were affixed to the tops of the columns. When Justinian con- 

 structed the "great" church, St. Sophia, in Constantinople, he 

 adorned it with twelve high columns (in memory of the twelve 

 Apostles) in order to make the barrier or chancel, and over 

 the tops of these columns he placed an architrave which ran 

 the entire width of the sanctuary. On this architrave or cross- 

 beam large disks or shields were placed containing the pictures 

 of the saints, and this arrangement was called tcjuttXcv (tem- 

 plum), either from its fancied resemblance to the front of the 

 old temples or as expressing the Christian idea of the shrine 

 where God was worshipped. Every church of the Byzantine 

 Rite eventually imitated the "great" church and so this open 

 tc^ttXov form of iconostasis began to be adopted among the 

 churches of the East, and the name itself was used to desig- 

 nate what is now the iconostasis. 



Many centuries elapsed before there was any approach 

 towards making the solid partition which we find in the Greek 



