Resurrection, Descent into the Abyss

The presented icon is a kind of liturgical year calendar. It depicts the most important Christian feast: the Resurrection of the Lord, shown in the centre, in the scene of the Resurrection of Christ and the Harrowing of Hell. Surrounding it, there are the portrayals of all the main feasts of the year celebrated in Eastern Christianity. Such icons are called 'menologions', from the Greek word meaning 'month'. Initially, the term 'menologion' or 'menologium' referred to the books used during services or monastic and private reading, which contained collections of short descriptions of the lives of saints, homilies, and texts arranged in order of the liturgical calendar for each day of the year. The term also began to be applied to calendar icons illustrating specific days in specific months of the liturgical year through depictions of the figures of saints and portrayals of feasts. To correctly read the order of celebration on the monthly icons, one needs to use the technique of reading scriptures and books already adopted in ancient Greece: from the top, in horizontal rows from left to right, finishing in the bottom right corner. A calendar icon can also depict the most important feasts of the entire liturgical year in an arrangement consistent with the chronology of New Testament events. In Eastern Christianity, like in the Old Testament tradition, the liturgical year begins in September. The first Great Feast of the year is the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, celebrated on the 21st of September (September 8 in the Julian calendar), depicted in the top left corner of the presented icon. To make them more easily identifiable, the illustrations of individual feasts have been captioned in Cyrillic. Further discussion of the layout of annual calendar icons can be found under S.12823MŁ, S.12948MŁ, S.12949MŁ. Teresa Bagińska-Żurawska https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9243-3967