"Hellenic sages" in Christian temples: a guide to philosophical iconography in the Middle Age

The article is devoted to the study of the visual-plastic iconography of ancient philosophers in medieval Christian churches in Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Greece and Russia. For the first time in Russian and European scientific literature, the author gives such a complete and detailed overview of all Christian churches (including little-known ones) and temples that have visual-pictorial and sculptural-plastic images of “Hellenic sages”, which in the Middle Ages included not only ancient philosophers, but also poets, writers, historians and sibyls. Based on his many years of research, travel, study of many domestic and foreign sources on this topic, the author presents a large-scale and multicolored picture of the amazing Christian (primarily Orthodox) tradition of understanding the ancient sages as prophets of Christ and his teachings, drawing attention to many of its interesting features. This tradition finds expression both in texts and in the narthex, galleries, refectory, outer walls and even in the iconostasis of churches, visual images of the “Hellenic sages”, most often part of the iconography of the “Tree of Jesse”. Along the way, the problems of visual identification of such images, the features of their appearance, clothing, accompanying sayings, etc. are touched upon. Revealing in this way the potential of the visual dialogue between antiquity and Christianity in the Middle Ages, the author strives to present in a new light the reception of ancient Greek philosophers, which is valuable for modern thought both in the aesthetic and historical-philosophical context.