Religious Events
Byzantine Iconoclasm
Controversy
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The two periods in which the Byzantine state moved against religious images, ordering their removal, and the theological argument that ran through and after them. The defenders of icons, John of Damascus among them, argued that because God had taken flesh he could be depicted, and that the honour given to an image passes to what it represents. The Second Council of Nicaea restored the icons in 787 and a second phase ended in 843, still commemorated in the Orthodox churches as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Almost all surviving sources come from the winning side, which is a real limit on what can be known about the iconoclasts' case.
Facts
Controversy
Point in DisputeWhether religious images may be venerated. The defenders argued that because God had taken flesh he could be depicted, and that honour given to an image passes to the one it represents. 4 Open Questions
Death Toll AssessmentNo scholarly aggregate death toll exists for the persecution of iconophile monks and clergy under the iconoclast emperors. The one specific figure surfacing in research, thirty eight monks arrested at the Pelekete monastery and executed at Ephesus, comes from the Life of St Stephen the Younger, a hagiography composed around 807, forty two years after the events, as explicit apologetic defense of icon veneration, in a period when the opposing side's own texts were suppressed. General reference works describe executions as "not uncommon" and describe thousands of monks fleeing into exile, but neither claim is attributed to any specific study. No independent chronicle corroborates a specific number, and no modern scholarly aggregate of deaths or exiles across the whole Iconoclast period has been found. 3 Brubaker and Haldon's standard modern history of the period, cited here, documents that the traditional narrative of Iconoclasm rests heavily on hagiography written by the winning side after the fact, in a period when the losing side's own texts were suppressed or destroyed, and cautions that specific casualty figures in those accounts carry rhetorical hyperbole rather than verified counts. No corroborated figure for deaths or for exiled monks and clergy has been found in the scholarship consulted. Consequences
What It SettledIcon veneration was restored, first at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 and definitively in 843, an event the Orthodox churches still commemorate as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. 1 Lasting ConsequenceEnded in 843 and commemorated annually in the Orthodox churches as the Triumph of Orthodoxy, on the first Sunday of Lent. 2 Scholarship
Where It Is RecordedAlmost every surviving source comes from the winning side, and iconoclast writings survive mainly as quotations inside refutations, which is a real limit on what can be reconstructed. 1 Two phases: image veneration was first suppressed from about 726 to 787, restored at the Second Council of Nicaea, then suppressed again from 815 until 843, when it was restored for good and the restoration became the Triumph of Orthodoxy still kept in the Orthodox churches. No death toll is offered: almost every surviving account comes from the winning, icon venerating side, and Brubaker and Haldon's revisionist history of the iconoclast era reads the traditional accounts of executed iconodules as considerably overstated by later hagiography, with no reliable count established under either phase. The Event
When It HappenedA first phase from about 726 to 787 and a second from 815 to 843. 1 Victim GroupChristians who venerated religious images, among them monks and laity across the Byzantine Empire, whose icons were removed or destroyed and who faced imprisonment, exile or execution for continuing the practice across two periods, about 726 to 787 and 815 to 843. 1 Perpetrator RegimeThe Byzantine state under a sequence of emperors, principally Leo III and Constantine V in the first period and Leo V in the second, who ordered the removal of religious images and enforced the ban by imperial decree. 1 Status
Official RecognitionNot formally recognized by any body 3 Recognition BasisNo modern international or judicial body makes recognition determinations for an eighth and ninth century intra-Christian dispute over images. Brubaker and Haldon's standard modern history of the period documents that the surviving casualty accounts come almost entirely from the winning, icon venerating side, written after the fact in a period when the losing side's own texts were suppressed or destroyed, so there has never been a settled record for any contemporary institution to act on. 3 Learn More
The Argument About Images
The dispute that ran through Byzantine religious life for more than a century was about whether images of Christ and the saints could rightly be venerated, and it was argued at a high level on both sides. The case against rested on the commandment forbidding graven images, on the danger of confusing the representation with the one represented, and on the argument that Christ's divinity cannot be circumscribed, so that any depiction either divides the natures or confines the infinite.
The case for was worked out most fully by John of Damascus, writing under Muslim rule and beyond the reach of the emperor, and later by Theodore the Studite and the patriarch Nikephoros. Its core is the Incarnation: what has taken flesh has become depictable, and refusing to depict it implies discomfort with the flesh God assumed. The honour paid to an image passes to its prototype and does not stop at the material, so veneration of an icon is not worship of wood.
The argument produced a theology of the image that Orthodox Christianity has held ever since, in which the icon is not decoration or instruction but a form of presence, painted according to canons rather than invention, and the iconostasis and the veneration of icons in worship are not customs that could be dropped without changing the theology behind them.
A History Written by the Winners
Reconstructing what iconoclasm actually was is unusually difficult, because the party that lost had its writings destroyed. The acts of the iconoclast council of Hieria survive only because they are quoted, in order to be refuted, in the acts of the council that condemned it. Iconoclast arguments reach us almost entirely inside the works of their opponents. The narrative sources are later and hostile.
Recent scholarship has used that fact to press hard on the received picture. Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon have argued that the scale, coherence and violence of iconoclasm as an imperial programme have been substantially overstated by the sources that survived, that some famous incidents are poorly attested, and that the evidence for widespread destruction of images in the first phase is thinner than the standard account assumes. Others have defended more of the traditional narrative. The debate is live.
What is not in doubt is that the question was fought over, that imperial policy moved against images for substantial periods, that the second phase ended in 843, and that the Orthodox churches still commemorate the ending each year on the first Sunday of Lent as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The atlas records the controversy and marks the source problem, because a reader who takes the standard narrative as settled will be surprised by the current literature.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The Byzantine Iconoclasm controversy over the veneration of religious images played out centrally in the imperial capital across the eighth and ninth centuries.
The Sunday of Orthodoxy commemorates the final restoration of the icons in 843, which ended the controversy.
Belongs to Tradition
Conducted By
Critiqued By
John of Damascus, Figures John of Damascus wrote the three treatises defending the veneration of images from Mar Saba, outside the reach of the iconoclast emperors, and was anathematised by name at the iconoclast council of Hieria in 754.
Persecuted Group
Related To
The council of 787 ended the first phase of iconoclasm and defined the distinction between veneration and worship.
The feast commemorates the 843 synod that ended this controversy.
Sources
1. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850: A History
Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Cambridge University Press, 2011
2. The Orthodox Church
3. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c.680-850: A History (Brubaker and Haldon)
Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Cambridge University Press, 2011Brubaker, Leslie, and John Haldon. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c.680-850: A History. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
4. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source Open Questions (1 open question)
What Was the Human Toll of Byzantine Iconoclasm?
The persecution of iconophile monks and clergy under the iconoclast emperors is well attested in general terms, exiles, imprisonments, forced marriages and some executions, but every specific figure traces back to iconophile hagiography written decades later by the winning side, after the opposing texts had been suppressed or destroyed. No scholarly aggregate of deaths or of exiled monks and clergy across the whole period has been found.
What would resolve this A modern historian's systematic count, cross checking the hagiographic accounts against archaeological, epigraphic or administrative evidence, of documented deaths and of monks and clergy exiled during the two iconoclast periods (726 to 787 and 815 to 843).
Byzantine history, hagiography and source criticism.Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c.680-850: A History (Brubaker and Haldon)
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