Byzantine Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious images and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, Greek for 'breakers of icons' (εἰκονοκλάσται), a term that has come to be applied figuratively to any person who breaks or disdains established dogmata or conventions. Conversely, people who revere or venerate religious images are derisively called "iconolaters" (εἰκονολάτρες). They are normally known as "iconodules" (εἰκονόδουλοι), or "iconophiles" (εἰκονόφιλοι). These terms were, however, not a part of the Byzantine debate over images. They have been brought into common usage by modern historians (from the seventeenth century) and their application to Byzantium increased considerably in the late twentieth century. The Byzantine term for the debate over religious imagery, iconomachy, means "struggle over images" or "image struggle". Some sources also say that the Iconoclasts were against intercession to the saints and denied the usage of relics; however, it is disputed.^[2]


Iconoclasm has generally been motivated theologically by an Old Covenant interpretation of the Ten Commandments, which forbade the making, veneration and worshipping of "graven images, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:" (Exodus 20:4-5, Deuteronomy 5:8-9, see also biblical law in Christianity). The two periods of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire during the 8th and 9th centuries made use of this theological theme in discussions over the propriety of images of holy figures, including Christ, the Virgin Mary (or Theotokos) and saints. It was a debate triggered by changes in Orthodox worship, which were themselves generated by the major social and political upheavals of the seventh century for the Byzantine Empire.


Traditional explanations for Byzantine iconoclasm have sometimes focused on the importance of Islamic prohibitions against images influencing Byzantine thought. According to Arnold J. Toynbee,^[5] for example, it was the prestige of Islamic military successes in the 7th and 8th centuries that motivated Byzantine Christians to adopt the Islamic position of rejecting and destroying devotional and liturgical images. The role of women and monks in supporting the veneration of images has also been asserted. Social and class-based arguments have been put forward, such as that iconoclasm created political and economic divisions in Byzantine society; that it was generally supported by the Eastern, poorer, non-Greek peoples of the Empire^[6] who had to constantly deal with Arab raids. On the other hand, the wealthier Greeks of Constantinople and also the peoples of the Balkan and Italian provinces strongly opposed Iconoclasm.^[6] Re-evaluation of the written and material evidence relating to the period of Byzantine Iconoclasm has challenged many of the basic assumptions and factual assertions of the traditional account. Byzantine iconoclasm influenced the later Protestant reformation.^[7][8]

Geographical distribution[edit]

Newer studies have discredited the former theory that Iconoclasm was primarily concentrated in the eastern regions of the Empire; the prevalence of Iconoclasm had nothing to do with distance from the eastern (Arab) border, suggesting that the spread of iconoclasm was independent of direct Islamic influence.^[22] For instance, western regions such as the Cyclades contain evidence of iconoclastic loyalties from church decoration, while eastern areas such as Cyprus (then jointly-ruled by the Byzantines and the Arabs) maintained a continuous tradition of icons. Instead, iconodules escaped Iconoclasm by fleeing to peripheral regions away from the iconoclastic imperial authority in both west (Italy and Dalmatia) and east, such as Cyprus, the southern coast of Anatolia, and eastern Pontus.^[22] It is also possible that the concentration of Iconoclasm in the eastern Anatolian areas of Isauria, Chaldia and Cappadocia was the result of the military victories of the Isaurian emperors in this border area against the Arabs, as well as the strong imperial authority established in this area.^[22]

Sources[edit]

A thorough understanding of the Iconoclast period in Byzantium is complicated by the fact that most of the surviving sources were written by the ultimate victors in the controversy, the iconodules. It is thus difficult to obtain a complete, objective, balanced, and reliably accurate account of events and various aspects of the controversy.^[23] The period was marked by intensely polarized debate amongst at least the clergy, and both sides came to regard the position of the other as heresy, and accordingly made efforts to destroy the writings of the other side when they had the chance. Leo III is said to have ordered the destruction of iconodule texts at the start of the controversy, and the records of the final Second Council of Nicaea record that books with missing pages were reported and produced to the council.^[24] Many texts, including works of hagiography and historical writing as well as sermons and theological writings, were undoubtedly "improved", fabricated or backdated by partisans, and the difficult and highly technical scholarly process of attempting to assess the real authors and dates of many surviving texts remains ongoing. Most iconoclastic texts are simply missing, including a proper record of the council of 754, and the detail of iconoclastic arguments have mostly to be reconstructed with difficulty from their vehement rebuttals by iconodules.


Major historical sources for the period include the chronicles of Theophanes the Confessor^[25] and the Patriarch Nikephoros,^[26] both of whom were ardent iconodules. Many historians have also drawn on hagiography, most notably the Life of St. Stephen the Younger,^[27] which includes a detailed, but highly biased, account of persecutions during the reign of Constantine V. No account of the period in question written by an iconoclast has been preserved, although certain saints' lives do seem to preserve elements of the iconoclast worldview.^[28]


Major theological sources include the writings of John of Damascus,^[29] Theodore the Studite,^[30] and the Patriarch Nikephoros, all of them iconodules. The theological arguments of the iconoclasts survive only in the form of selective quotations embedded in iconodule documents, most notably the Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea and the Antirrhetics of Nikephoros.^[31]

Reaction in the West[edit]

The period of Iconoclasm decisively ended the so-called Byzantine Papacy under which, since the reign of Justinian I two centuries before, the popes in Rome had been initially nominated by, and later merely confirmed by, the emperor in Constantinople, and many of them had been Greek-speaking. By the end of the controversy the pope had approved the creation of a new emperor in the West, and the old deference of the Western church to Constantinople had gone. Opposition to icons seems to have had little support in the West and Rome took a consistently iconodule position.


When the struggles flared up, Pope Gregory II had been pope since 715, not long after accompanying his Syrian predecessor Pope Constantine to Constantinople, where they successfully resolved with Justinian II the issues arising from the decisions of the Quinisext Council of 692, which no Western prelates had attended. Of the delegation of 13 Gregory was one of only two non-Eastern; it was to be the last visit of a pope to the city until 1969. There had already been conflicts with Leo III over his very heavy taxation of areas under Papal jurisdiction.^[34]


The Iconoclast Controversy caused Papal-Imperial relations to plummet. Pope Gregory III declared an excommunication for all iconoclasts, and the Emperor sent an expedition to Rome which failed. In 754 the Emperor then seized the Papal properties in Sicily, Calabria and Illyria, and in the same year Pope Stephen II formed an alliance with the Frankish Kingdom, signalling the beginning of the end for Papal support of the Byzantine empire.^[59]