Standing in God's Holy Fire: The Byzantine Tradition by John Anthony McGuckin presents an engaging overview of the ancient riches of Byzantine spirituality. Here is a passage on the importance of beauty in this Christian tradition.
"Let us begin where we wish to end: with beauty. . . . no concept so summates the ethos or guiding cultural spirit of eastern Christianity as much as that perennial search for beauty which inspired and organised the Byzantine mystical quest. . . . The synonymity of beauty and holiness is something that resonates throughout all Byzantine religious philosophy, emerging time and time again, even into the present Orthodox world. Prince Myshkin's exclamation in Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot catches the idea exactly: 'Beauty will save the World!' In its theory of beauty Christian Byzantium tried to marry the highest and best insights of Greek philosophy with the biblical conception of the merciful Creator who redeems and transfigures the creation at every turn."
