Online Icon Course
Preparing to Resume September 2010 in New Format
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Details available in July 2010 for September commencement
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The Online Icon Course is a groundbreaking distance learning course which developed from the need to develop in-depth study for a scattered group of people. The units are intended for your own private study or to augment practical icon studies, and particular arrangements are being discussed with an academic body.

They focus on church art and architecture, as it developed through the early Church in parallel with theology and liturgy. Based on this tradition, the units give tools to understand how to use images in churches. It is intended that the final units will discuss the tradition in terms of the modern church building.

These units are suitable for:-

  • Working iconographers, and for those pursuing icon writing as a way of devotion
  • Church architects and craftsmen, and anyone else concerned with the re-ordering of churches and designing the liturgical environment
  • Priests and seminarians studying the visual environ of the liturgy
  • Teachers and catechists
  • They will be of general interest to anyone who wishes to augment their knowledge of the Christian icon for their own devotion, or seeking a more profound understanding of the eastern and western Churches



Part A: Roots of Iconography

A1: Roots of Iconography: Egyptian (pre-Christian)

A2: Roots of Iconography: Greek (pre Christian)

A3: Roots of iconography: Hellenic Judaism, Dura & Antioch

A4: Rome - from Empire to Gospel: the Iconographic tradition

A5: Alexandria & Sinai: the First Icons

A6: Relics, Pilgrimages and Icons

AXtra: Writing the Icon of the Sinai Christ




Part B: Studying Scripture through Icons

B1: Old Testament Sources of Iconography

B2: Icons of the Incarnation and Childhood of the Lord

B3: Icons of the Ministry of Christ & Transfiguration

B4: Iconography of the Passion & Resurrection

B5: Iconography & Exegesis in the Gospel of John

B6: Iconography & Exegesis in St. Paul

BXtra: Writing the Icon of the Mother of God of the Passion


Part C: Iconography of the Councils

C1: The Church Fathers as Verbal Iconographers

C2: Nicea I & the Icon of the Trinity

C3: Ephesus and the icons of the Mother of God

C4: Chalcedon- Two natures in dialogue in the technique of the Icon

C5: The 5th. Ecumenical, Islam & the Iconographic Diaspora

C6: The 6th. Ecumenical -Challenges in East & West, with their Icons

CXtra: Principles & Practise of Icon design






Part D: The 7th. Ecumenical & The Iconographic Canons

D1: The Council in Trullo & the Canons of Iconography

D2: The World of Nicea II

D3: Nicea II: Groundwork of the Theology of the Icon

D4: The Western Aftermath: Charlemagne & the Council of Frankfurt

D5: The Eastern Aftermath: the Triumph of Orthodoxy

D6: East and West - Iconography at the end of the First Millennium (includes Baptism of Rus)

DXtra: in preparation


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