The Iconostasis and Its Doors

What you'll notice

The wall at the front has more going on than you took in at first. At eye level there's a row of large icons, and the same two are always nearest the center: a man holding a book on the right, a woman holding a child on the left. Beyond them, more figures, and over the center doors a row of small scenes, and in a big Russian-style church row after row above that, until the faces reach the ceiling. In a small mission the whole thing may be two icons on easels with a gap between them.

The doors in the middle are small and ornate, with a painting of an angel speaking to a young woman split across the two leaves. The side doors each show one figure, often with wings. The center doors open and shut all morning, and sometimes a curtain behind them is drawn too, so that for a minute you can't see the altar at all. Then it opens again.

What it's called

The iconostasis, which just means "icon stand" (Greek eikonostasion, though Greeks usually say temblo, from the older word templon; Slavonic ikonostas; Arabic al-ayqunustas). The center doors are the Royal Doors or Holy Doors; in Greek usage the Beautiful Gate (Oraia Pyle).¹ The side doors are the deacons' doors, because deacons use them most. The curtain is the katapetasma (the veil), the same word the Greek Bible uses for the veil of the Temple.

What's actually happening

The icons are arranged, not scattered, and the arrangement is the same in nearly every Orthodox church on earth.² To the right of the Royal Doors, Christ. To the left, the Theotokos (the Mother of God) with the child. To the right of Christ, usually John the Baptist. To the left of the Theotokos, the saint or feast the church is named for. Hapgood's Russian arrangement swaps two of them: the patron's icon goes next to Christ, "next it (or next the south door, if that be next), the Image of the Temple, or of the Patron Saint."³ The Baptist-beside-Christ layout above is the standard one, in Greek and Slavic churches alike. On the doors themselves, the Annunciation, often with the four evangelists in the corners; on the deacons' doors, the archangels Michael and Gabriel, or the first deacons, Stephen and Lawrence. Above the doors, the Last Supper. Above that, where there's room, the twelve great feasts; above that, Christ enthroned with the apostles; above that, the prophets. The bottom strip, below the big icons, is often just decorative, an apron.⁴

So the screen reads like a page. Bottom row: the people you'd want to meet on the way in. Middle: the story of Christ's life. Top: the ones who saw him coming. The whole Bible, bottom to top, in a wall you can walk through.

The doors are the point. The Gospel comes out through the center at the Small Entrance; the bread and wine go in through it at the Great Entrance; Communion comes out through it to you. Clergy use the side doors for everything else. Nobody else goes through any of them.

Why it matters

Jesus said, "I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved" (John 10:9). The Church took him at his word and painted him beside one.

The Annunciation is on the Royal Doors because that is the moment heaven came through a door into the world, and Communion comes out the same way. Hebrews says we enter the Holiest "by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh" (Hebrews 10:19–20). The curtain closes at the moments the Church remembers the old veil and opens at the moments Christ tears it. Watch when it moves.

The figures on the screen aren't guards. They're family. Every one of them is a person who crossed over, and they're painted facing you. Saint Germanus describes the chancel barrier as marking off the place where the mysteries happen,⁵ but he never calls it a wall, and the Church's own history explains why.

Where it came from

The first Christian churches had a low barrier between the people and the altar, a marble parapet with columns and a beam across the top, the kind you can still see in some old churches in Italy and Greece. Germanus, in the eighth century, is describing that.⁶ It was a railing, not a screen; you saw over it.

Then two things happened. After the defeat of iconoclasm in 843 the beam sprouted icons. And from the twelfth century on, as fewer people received Communion and the altar came to seem more remote, the screen grew taller to match.⁷ By the fifteenth century in Russia it had become the five-tiered wall you see in pictures. Greek churches kept it lower, often one row of icons and a cornice, and in many you can see the Holy Table over the top.

Even the name "Holy Doors" moved. Schmemann notes it once meant the doors of the church building itself, the ones everybody came through; as the screen grew, the name migrated inward to the center doors, now used only by the ordained.⁸ A mission parish worshipping in a rented hall with two icons on easels is closer to the fourth century than the cathedral is.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: venerate the icons on the screen when you come forward for Communion or after the service, Christ and the Theotokos especially, with the same crosses and kiss as in the narthex. Never step onto the solea or approach the doors unless you've been called up. Cross yourself when the Royal Doors open at the start of the Liturgy and when they close after Communion, if that's your parish's habit.

If you're visiting: look. The screen was built to be looked at for an hour, and it rewards it. Find Christ, find his Mother, find the angel on the doors. Don't go up to it during the service; afterward, if the church has emptied, you're welcome to walk up and look closely, and someone will probably come explain it to you whether you asked or not.

Field Note: it isn't a wall to keep you out. Visitors sometimes feel shut out by the screen. Fair enough; it's a screen. But both Mavropoulos and Schmemann point out that the tall iconostasis is a late development that grew up because people stopped coming to the chalice, not in order to stop them.⁹ The Church's older instinct is the low railing and the open doors, and the doors still open for you at Communion. The wall has three holes in it on purpose.

Go deeper

• John 10:1–10 and Hebrews 10:19–25.
• Saint Germanus of Constantinople, On the Divine Liturgy §§9–10.
• Demetrios Mavropoulos, Passing Through the Church, chapter 13, "The Templon."
• Icons, for why the faces are there at all.

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