The Oxford History of Byzantium

by Cyril Mango

  6

  Iconoclasm

  PATRICIA KARLIN-HAYTER

  Iconoclasm, literally the smashing of images, is the term designating the movement that forbade the making or veneration of images, whether of God or of saints. The opposite position we usually call Iconoduly, although that word is not attested in Greek. Byzantine Iconoclasm was initiated in 726 or 730 by Leo III, reversed in 787 by the empress-regent Irene, restored in 815 by Leo V, and suppressed for good in 843 by another empress-regent, Theodora. Making allowance for the iconodule interlude, it is customary to speak of the First and the Second Iconoclasm.

  No other topic of Byzantine history has received as much attention on the part of western scholars, chiefly because the Iconoclasm of the eighth and ninth centuries has been seen as the ancestor of similar initiatives stemming from the Reformation, starting with Calvin and going on to the Puritans and even the French revolutionaries of 1789. The iconoclasts, enemies of ‘superstition’, have generally enjoyed a sympathetic press.

  It is difficult to give a balanced appraisal of Byzantine Iconoclasm. Few historians still hold it to have been the greatest issue of the period, with every Byzantine deeply involved except for a servile episcopate. One thing emerges clearly: the vast majority of the upper ranks took the change in either direction in their stride. Theoktistos had been Theophilos’ trusted collaborator in enforcing Iconoclasm, but when the latter’s widow decided to reverse the official line, he was no less hers in restoring veneration of images; nor was he an exception. The Church, whether bishops and priests or monks and holy men, did not react uniformly. Indeed, one may doubt whether militant support of Iconoduly, even by ‘saints’, necessarily stemmed from real commitment. Even St Theodore the Studite, the most redoubtable of iconodule apologists, could say of the iconoclast bishops reintegrated after the Council of 787 that ‘their transgression had not been over essentials’. As for the masses, when Leo III first decreed Iconoclasm, it is likely they were convinced that this emperor, who had brought Constantinople through a terrifying Arab siege, enjoyed God’s especial favour.

  The two historians of the First Iconoclasm, namely Theophanes the ‘Confessor’ (d. 818) and the patriarch Nikephoros (in office 806–15), both suffered for the cause of images, yet their narrative is dominated by the Arab advance, plagues, famines, earthquakes, transfers of population, conflict with Bulgaria, and civil wars. Their iconophile slant is chiefly recognizable through the opprobrious epithets they bestow on the iconoclast emperors. Nikephoros’ Brief History ends with the year 769. Theophanes carries on until 813. For the Second Iconoclasm all the available historical sources are iconophile and most of them were composed a full century after the relevant events, some of which, like the ‘restoration of Orthodoxy’ in 843, are presented in mutually contradictory versions. Outside the historians, our material consists almost exclusively in polemical literature of the winning side, Lives of ‘martyrs’ and ‘confessors’ (many of them of considerably later date and frequently commissioned by monasteries seeking to restore their reputation), Acts of iconodule councils, and, in particular, the correspondence of Theodore the Studite (d. 826), of whose 550 preserved letters at least 368 are concerned with the struggle against Iconoclasm. Obviously, the tale is going to be slanted.

  Condemnation of holy images had been dominant in the early Church, due, in the first instance, to its Jewish roots, but theologians familiar with Greek philosophy, such as Origen or Clement of Alexandria, revoiced it in terms of that discipline, sometimes surprisingly parallel to those of pagan Neoplatonism. At no time had this condemnation disappeared. When Christian iconography was introduced, its use was at first justified by its didactic value (‘the Bible of the illiterate’), but as we reach the second half of the sixth century, we find that images are attracting direct veneration and some of them are credited with the performance of miracles. They are increasingly seen as doubles of their sacred ‘models’, capable of speaking, exuding oil, and bleeding when stabbed. Canon law remained silent on the subject, except for the Quinisext Council (692), whose famous 82nd Canon recommended the representation of Christ in human form in preference to the symbolic figure of the Lamb, so as to give expression to the reality of the Incarnation. On the eastern borders of the empire, however, following the first wave of Arab conquests, Christians came under increasing accusations of idolatry, especially, it seems, on the part of Jews, and tried to justify themselves in a series of anti-Jewish dialogues. The debate attracted some attention within the empire. Before 726 the bishop of Claudiopolis (modern Bolu in Turkey) was a professed iconoclast.

  In several church pavements situated in Arab-held lands, especially in modern Jordan, human and animal figures have been excised and the spaces they had occupied patched up following an iconoclastic ordinance of caliph Yazid II (c. AD 721). Here the pavement at Umm el-Rasas, which was itself laid in 718.

  Neither the exact date nor the manner of initiating imperial Iconoclasm is certain. Was the edict forbidding veneration of images issued in 726 or in 730 and was it preceded by public consultation? According to the Life of St Stephen the Younger, ‘The wild beast [Leo III] summoned all his subjects to a rally and roared like a lion in their midst as he belched forth from his angry heart fire and sulphur (like Mount Etna), pronouncing these grievous words, “The making of icons is a craft of idolatry: they may not be worshipped”.’ Or did he begin not with words but with action, sending his dignitary Iouvinos to destroy the image of Christ above the gate of the imperial palace—an action which, unfortunately for the officer concerned, so irritated a group of pious females that they lynched him?

  What moved Leo III to forbid ‘veneration’? The two historians nearest to the events, the patriarch Nikephoros and Theophanes, say that he took this measure in response to the eruption of the volcanic island of Thera in 726. To the medieval mind there was a direct correlation between unusual events and obedience or disobedience to God: catastrophes were His response to sin. After nearly a century of Muslim success and other disasters, He was now sending a final warning through this spectacular eruption. The emperor, a military man, Arab-speaking, born at Germanicea (now Maras in eastern Turkey), certainly aware of the realities of the eastern frontier, knew he had to take appropriate action. He had earlier decreed compulsory baptism of Jews and Montanist heretics. This had not proved a success: ‘The Jews washed off their baptism, ate before receiving the eucharist and defiled the faith. The Montanists set themselves a date, gathered in the house of their error and burnt themselves.’ Leo endeavoured to face up to the eruption of Thera by forbidding the making and veneration of images.

  The patriarch Germanos (in office 715–30) was deposed for his opposition to Iconoclasm and consequently was made a saint. A eunuch, he is depicted beardless in this eleventh-century painting in the monastery of St Nicholas ‘of the Roof’ at Kakopetria, Cyprus.

  Repeating Christ’s suffering at the Crucifixion, the iconoclasts deface an icon of Christ by smearing it with whitewash. The sponge one of them is holding at the end of a stick repeats the sponge filled with vinegar that had been given to Christ. Miniature of the Khludov Psalter (ninth century).

  The kind of veneration that was routinely addressed to icons—prostration, prayers, incense, the lighting of tapers (we even hear of an icon being made the godparent of a child)—may indeed have appeared excessive and going beyond the iconodule argument that it was directed not to the image, but to the person represented. Brushing aside the question of practice, iconodules annexed the whole issue to the domain of theology. Can God be represented? The answer had already been given by the Quinisext Council: in the ‘new dispensation’ (Christianity as distinct from Judaism) God incarnate can and ought to be depicted. Iconodule theologians reserved latria (worship) to God, allowing icons only proskynesis, here to be translated ‘adoration’.

  Theology in answer to Leo III’s initiative begins with St John Damascene (c. 675-c. 749), safely ensconced in Palestine beyond the emperor’s reach, wh
o takes the step from affirmation of the legitimacy of icons to that of benefit derived from them: ‘they reveal what is invisible or distant or to come’, and also manifest the divine presence: ‘Where Christ’s symbol is, there He is also.’ This approach, centred on the relationship between the image and its ‘prototype’, was to become the basis of the future theology of the conflict.

  The emperor Leo had not made any theoretical contribution to the debate. Indeed, he does not appear to have regarded it in a theological light. What he saw was that the cult of icons practised by many of his subjects looked dangerously like ‘falling down and worshipping images’, which was forbidden by God (Deuteronomy 5: 9) as no one tried to deny. Nor does the evidence suggest that opposition to Iconoclasm was initially theological. The letters in defence of images of Germanos, patriarch of Constantinople, especially that addressed to Thomas, bishop of Claudiopolis (before 730), are practically unconcerned with either theology or idolatry. What worries Germanos is that the banning of images would only prove that the Church had been in error for a long time and so play into the hands of Jews and Muslims.

  It was Constantine V at the Council of Hieria (754) who took the next decisive step: whereas Christ was composed of two natures, divine and human in perfect union, only his human ingredient could be delimited or circumscribed as was necessary for the act of painting him. By portraying Christ, therefore, one either divided the two natures or else circumscribed the divine as well. Both options were heretical. The uncircumscribability of the divine nature, more than any of the preceding arguments, turned mere error into heresy. Icons ceased to be a personal option: the very nature of the divine Economy was now in question.

  Iconoclastic cross replacing an image of a saint. The saint’s name, written under the medallion, has been removed and the space filled in with gold tesserae. Mosaic in an annexe of the patriarchal palace, off the gallery of St Sophia, Constantinople.

  Iconoclasm tends to be summed up as theology plus persecution, especially of monks. A critical review of the evidence hardly supports such a view. Persecution, when it occurred, appears to have been due more to political than to religious reasons. The best attested victim, St Stephen the Younger, had been implicated in a serious conspiracy against the emperor, in which a group of prominent military commanders and civil dignitaries had taken part. It was only then that Constantine V ‘held up to public scorn and dishonour the monastic habit by ordering that each monk hold a woman by the hand and so process through the Hippodrome, while being spat upon and insulted by all the people’. There can be little doubt that prior to this monasteries had not been under attack—indeed, their rights are expressly respected in the law code known as the Ecloga, promulgated in the names of Leo III and Constantine, while the short list of monasteries said to have been desecrated by Constantine turns out on inspection to be highly dubious.

  Facing: Icon of the fifteenth century representing the Feast of Orthodoxy, that is the final liquidation of Iconoclasm in 843, featuring the empress Theodora, her young son Michael III, the patriarch Methodios (843–7), and a group of other ‘champions of Orthodoxy’, including the ‘tattooed’ brothers Theophanes and Theodore and the fictitious Theodosia.

  Below: A number of rather rustic churches in Asia Minor and the Greek islands have aniconic decorations consisting of crosses and various ornamental motifs. These have often been attributed to the iconoclastic period, including the chapel of St Basil at Sinassos (Cappadocia) seen here, although it does include the figures of two bishops on either side of the apse.

  Under the Second Iconoclasm, communion with the patriarch was the test, and the operation was made as easy as possible: ‘All we ask of you is to commune once with Theodotos [patriarch 815–21]. Then you will be free to go, each to his own monastery, keeping your own belief and opinions.’ It is quite clear from the evidence of his own Vita that the austere Ignatios, the future patriarch, had been abbot of a monastery in communion with the official iconoclast Church. The correspondence of Theodore the Studite shows up a campaign of subversion. One of his letters, addressed to Pope Paschal, begs him to let the whole earth hear that ‘those who have dared this have been synodically anathematized by you’. Pursuing papal excommunication of the emperor is an initiative whose implications may not be immediately obvious to a modern reader, but success would have been an encouraging signal to any potential usurper. Iconodule zeal manifested itself through lawbreaking up to and including treason. The patriarch Nikephoros actually deplores law-abiding under an iconoclast regime. Too many of the clergy, he says, ‘go by political laws and recognize civil authorities. This is not Jacob’s heritage, nor are such the ways of those whose dogma and thinking are ordered by piety’.

  The popularity of the iconoclast emperors with the army and the masses cannot be doubted, nor can their deliberate pursuit of that popularity. Constantine V raised living standards at Constantinople for long after his death. The patriarch Nikephoros gives the reader the impression that his reign was remembered as one of plenty and cheap food: ‘All their boasting about his time is nonsense’—in reality, he snorts, it was a time of ‘plagues, earthquakes, shooting stars, famines and civil wars’, yet ‘these utterly mindless lower animals brag and boast loudly about those happy days—of abundance, say they’. For Nikephoros the ultimate proof of Constantine’s baseness lay in the lowly status of his supporters: ‘I think this, too, worth mentioning, the kind of people they are, where they come from, how they live. Most of them don’t even know the names of the letters of the alphabet and despise and abuse those who set store by education. The roughest and rudest of them are short even of the necessaries of life; they couldn’t so much as feed themselves for a day, coming as they do from crossroads and alleys.’

  The Life of St Stephen the Younger also gives the populace a prominent role. It is deliberately constructed, says its most recent editor, M.-F. Auzépy, ‘to show that in his confrontation with Stephen, the emperor can do nothing without the backing of the masses, that he carries weight only in the territory of the common people in the street and the hippodrome’. Stephen was lynched to shouts of ‘Punish him! Kill him!’ for being the emperor’s enemy.

  Why did Iconoduly win in the end? Could it be because of the two female regents, Irene in 780, Theodora in 842? Not because, as women, they were particularly given to ‘superstitious’ veneration of icons, but because they both loved power? Backed by power-groups condemned to stay in the background—carefully chosen civil servants, eunuchs ideally, or churchmen—they could hope to enjoy it. The alternative—entrusting their interests to a military commander—meant surrendering it completely. Neither empress has a dossier that suggests deep personal commitment to icons.

  Left: Detail of the Pala d’Oro on the high altar of St Mark’s in Venice. On the left the Doge Ordelaffo Falier, who had the enamels of the Pala commissioned at Constantinople in 1105 (his head has been changed). On the right the empress Irene Doukaina, wife of Alexios I Komnenos.

  Right: Mosaic (now destroyed) in the apse of the church of the Dormition at Nicaea (Iznik). The figure of the Virgin and Child, made in the ninth century, replaces an iconoclastic cross whose outline is clearly visible on the gold background. The cross, in turn, had been substituted for an earlier Virgin and Child dating probably from the late seventh century.

  Irene ensured for herself the support of safe elements. The patriarch Paul, who had sworn an oath to maintain Iconoclasm, conveniently resigned or was made to resign (784) and was succeeded by Tarasios, who was head of the imperial chancery, hence a layman. It was decided to convoke an ‘ecumenical’ council, but it proved impossible to secure the presence of duly empowered legates of the eastern patriarchs (of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem), while the pope of Rome was represented by two relatively lowly priests. The council met at Constantinople in the church of the Holy Apostles (786) and was immediately dispersed by army units faithful to the heritage of Constantine V. After the necessary measures had been taken to neutralize oppos
ition, the council reconvened a year later at Nicaea, evoking the memories of Constantine the Great and his condemnation of Arius; besides, Nicaea was easier to police. The resemblance of iconoclasts to Arians was made a theme of official propaganda.

  Nicaea II obtained papal recognition and is regarded by the Orthodox Church as the Seventh and last Ecumenical Council, completing the dogmatic edifice erected by the six previous ones. It was attended by about 350 bishops and upwards of a hundred monks who, strictly speaking, had no business being there. Practically all the bishops in question had been ordained and had served under Iconoclasm. Ten of them, known to have been active iconoclasts, were forced to recant publicly. In the end everyone was reinstated in his post, and ‘orthodoxy’ prevailed until 815.

  For Theodora, almost the only fact to emerge clearly from the confusion of the sources concerning the ‘restoration of orthodoxy’—as the aftermath of Theophilos’ death is termed—is the presence of potential male contenders who might have kept her on as nominal empress during what promised to be the long minority of her son, not yet three years old at the time. She therefore looked for support from men who could not mount the throne. If Irene’s case is mainly one of deduction, Theodora’s hagiographic Life states that as long as her husband lived, she ‘dared not’ let her Iconoduly be discernible. Naturally, when it became the official policy of the throne, the appropriate image of her was diffused. Some of this propaganda has come down to us and has coloured modern interpretations of the event.