Among the main images of the Novgorod cathedral (from the time of Iaroslav the Wise), we find a unique female figure in royal clothing, seated on a throne. Two figured are arranged on both sides of it, facing it and leaning toward it: the Mother of God of the Byzantine type on the right; and John the Baptist on the left. Christ rises above the seated figure with arms outstretched, and above Him we can see the heavenly world, in the persons of several angels surrounding the Word of God, represented by a book of the Gospels.
Who does this main, central, and royal person depict, so clearly distinct from Christ, from the Mother of God, and from the angels? The image is called Sophia the Wisdom of God.
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Neither God, nor the eternal Word of God, nor an angel, nor a holy man, the Great, royal, and feminine Being accepts veneration from both the one who completed the Old Testament and from the foremother of the New Testament. Who could it be other than the truest, purest, and most complete humanity, the highest and all-encompassing form and living soul of nature and the universe, eternally united, and in the process of time uniting with the Divine, and uniting to Him all that is?
Vladimir Solovyov, “The Ideas of Humanity in Comte,” in Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov. Trans. Boris Jakim, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, and Laury Magnus (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 225-6.
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