Being in the Garden of Saints: the Locus Amoenus as eschatological icon from Plato to Christianity

This chapter argues that the Christian phenomenology of the image was informed by Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrines, generating a metaphysical framework in which icons and images (εἰκόνες καὶ ἀγάλματα, Malalas, Chronographia 136), textual and material, signified states of consciousness and manuals to achieve them. Poetry and painting became fundamental in expressing Christian theology, especially the doctrine of death and the afterlife. In this process, Christian artists adapted the locus amoenus motif, employed by Plato in the Phaedrus and Phaedo, and subsequently renewed with Neoplatonic aesthetics of transcendence. While rejecting idolatry, Christian thinkers embrace Platonic allegory to portray Jesus, often featured as the Good Shepherd, and the bodies of martyrs as longed-for landscapes, urging onlookers to imitate them by ‘painting’ their souls after them. Equally, Christian tombs are perceived as blissful refuges that mirror our fellowship with God in the Heavenly City, as illustrated in late antique descriptions of the Holy Sepulchre. As cognitive and affective aids of instruction and worship, icons draw on Platonist aesthetics to advocate Christian eschatology, creating a space-time reality where dead and living celebrate a common future.