The Salus Populi Romani

The Salus Populi Romani is a Byzantine icon depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary holding her son, Jesus Christ. This image highlights the nature of Christ; he is perfectly God and perfectly man. His human nature is shown through his relationship with his mother, Mary, and his divinity is shown through the reference to Mary as “Mother of God,” which is written along the top of the image in Greek.

Mother of God, or “Theotokos” in Greek, is a title for Mary that was declared at the Council of Ephesus (431). Prior to this, it was questionable as to whether Mary should be referred to as Theotokos or Christotokos, because the dual nature of Jesus wasn’t explained at an ecumenical council; thus, there were various understandings of Jesus’ divinity, which impacted Mary’s status. Consequently, the Church had to define the Trinity. At the Council of Nicaea (325) the term homoousious was affirmed to explain the relationship between the Son and the Father. As a result of this Mary could be deemed Theotokos, Mother of God, because she gave birth to Jesus, who has the same divine ousia as the Father and the Holy Spirit; thus, Jesus is God and Mary is the Theotokos.
The halo was included in Christian art from the early 4th century, but originally only images of Jesus would include a halo as a way of signifying his divinity (Papandrea, 2012, p.80). So, for Mary to have a halo symbolises her exalted status, which is a result of her divine maternity. Furthermore, Mary’s birth to Jesus led to her attaining a union with God, not on a level of hypostatic union but a perfect union between God and created being (Bauerschmidt and Buckley, 2017, p.193), which is shown in the picture through the close companionship between the Son of God and his