Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

Showing in the icons a „disappearing” body does not prove hatred towards body, angelism or spiritualism, but presents an idea of the body transformed, „spiritual carnality” (Fr. Sergiusz Bulgakow). Asceticism is not a „holy anorexia” as its core is not fighting with the body, but to make it a temple of the Holy Spirit. Icons do not expose the sensual or erotical sphere. It is not an evidence of denial of this sphere, but a sign of respect for its holiness and intimacy. Eros has not been annihilated but it has been directed towards God. When the icon of St. Mary of Egypt presents her as a person of vague gender it does not mean that the hermit rejected her sexual identity and she masculinised her body or she led it to the stage of „angelic indeterminacy” . This androgyny is a confirmation of being free of debauchery and of reducing own body to the area of lust and corporeality. The lack of private parts while showing Jesus (perineum without penis) in some icons of the Theophany is not a form of a symbolic castration. An Icon writer does not focus on the sexual characteristics of human body but on the truthfulness of its existence.