Byzantine Iconoclasm: The Battle Over Holy Images, 726-843

Byzantine Iconoclasm was a long dispute within the Byzantine Empire over the making and veneration of holy images, or icons. It came in two periods, roughly 726–787 and 814–843, during which emperors and church councils condemned images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints, while monks and many lay people defended them. The controversy ended in 843 with the restoration of icons, celebrated ever since in the Orthodox Church as the Triumph of Orthodoxy, and it shaped Christian art, theology and politics in both East and West.

What were icons?

Icons are images of holy persons, painted on wood panels, set in mosaic or carved, which Christians used in worship and private devotion. By the sixth and seventh centuries icons had become increasingly important in Byzantine religious life. People kissed them, lit candles before them and prayed to the saints they portrayed. Some icons were believed to work miracles or to protect cities.

Critics, from early Christian writers onward, worried that such devotion came close to idolatry. The Old Testament commandment against making graven images (Exodus 20:4) offered a clear text for opponents of images.

Causes and debates

Why the dispute erupted in the eighth century is still debated. Older explanations stressed the influence of Islam and Judaism, which rejected images in worship. The Umayyad caliph Yazid II issued an edict around 721 ordering the removal of images from Christian churches in his realm, and some Byzantine bishops in Anatolia, notably Constantine of Nakoleia, were already hostile to icons.

Many historians now emphasise internal causes. The empire had suffered catastrophic losses to the Arabs in the seventh century, and some Byzantines may have concluded that God was punishing them for idolatry, just as he had punished ancient Israel. Theological arguments also mattered: iconoclasts argued that a painting of Christ could show only his human nature, separating it from his divine nature, which would be heresy.

Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon have argued that much of the traditional story comes from iconophile writers composing after 843, who exaggerated events to glorify the victors. As a result, the early stages in particular are poorly documented.

The first Iconoclasm, 726–787

According to tradition, Emperor Leo III, who had defended Constantinople against the Arabs in 717–718 (see Arab Siege of Constantinople), began to speak against images around 726. That year a violent volcanic eruption occurred at Thera (Santorini), which some saw as a sign of divine anger. A famous story says Leo had an image of Christ removed from the Chalke Gate of the imperial palace, provoking a riot; modern scholars doubt that this happened as described.

In January 730 Patriarch Germanos, who refused to support a policy against images, resigned and was replaced. How far Leo actually enforced iconoclasm is unclear, and there is little reliable evidence of systematic destruction under him.

His son Constantine V (reigned 741–775) was a far more committed iconoclast and an able theologian. In 754 he summoned the Council of Hieria, attended by 338 bishops, which declared that the only true image of Christ was the Eucharist and condemned the making and veneration of icons. Constantine wrote treatises on the subject and clashed with monasteries, many of which defended images. The monk Stephen the Younger, an outspoken iconophile, was killed in 765, and monks were publicly humiliated in Constantinople. Constantine was also a successful general, and his tomb was venerated by soldiers long after his death.

In the West, Pope Gregory III held synods in Rome in 731 that condemned the destruction of images. The dispute contributed to the drift of the papacy away from Byzantium and towards the Frankish kings.

The Second Council of Nicaea, 787

After the death of Leo IV in 780, his widow, Empress Irene, ruled as regent for their young son Constantine VI. Irene supported images. A first attempt to hold a council in Constantinople in 786 was broken up by iconoclast soldiers, so it met instead in Nicaea in 787, the same city as the First Council of Nicaea in 325.

The Second Council of Nicaea, recognised by both Catholic and Orthodox churches as the Seventh Ecumenical Council, restored icons. Its key decision was a distinction: images could receive honour and veneration (proskynesis), while true worship (latreia) belonged to God alone. Honour given to an image, the council taught, passed to the person it represented.

The most important theological defence of images had been written decades earlier by John of Damascus, a monk living under Umayyad rule who died around 749. He argued that because God had become visible in Christ, it was right to depict Christ, and that rejecting images denied the reality of the Incarnation.

The second Iconoclasm and the Triumph of Orthodoxy, 814–843

Peace did not last. In the early ninth century Byzantium again suffered severe defeats, including the destruction of an army under Emperor Nikephoros I by the Bulgarian khan Krum in 811 (see Battle of Pliska). Many soldiers remembered the iconoclast emperors as successful generals.

Emperor Leo V the Armenian (reigned 813–820) revived iconoclasm, and a synod in Hagia Sophia in 815 reinstated the decrees of 754, in a somewhat milder form. Leading iconophiles, including Patriarch Nikephoros and the abbot Theodore the Studite, were exiled. Michael II (820–829) took a more moderate line, but his son Theophilos (829–842) enforced iconoclasm more strictly, with the scholar John the Grammarian as his patriarch.

When Theophilos died in January 842, his widow Theodora became regent for their two-year-old son, Michael III. Theodora favoured images. In March 843 a synod in Constantinople deposed John the Grammarian, appointed Methodios as patriarch and restored the veneration of icons.

The restoration was celebrated on the first Sunday of Lent, 11 March 843. This feast, the Sunday of Orthodoxy or Triumph of Orthodoxy, is still observed every year in the Orthodox Church with processions of icons.

East and West

The controversy also affected relations between Byzantium and Western Europe. The popes consistently supported images, and the conflict with iconoclast emperors in the eighth century encouraged them to seek protection from the Franks instead of Constantinople. Around the same time, the emperors transferred church provinces in southern Italy and Illyricum from papal to Constantinopolitan authority, a move that deepened the rift.

When the acts of the Second Council of Nicaea reached the Frankish court in a faulty Latin translation, Charlemagne’s theologians believed the council had demanded the worship of images. They responded with a lengthy treatise, the Opus Caroli regis (also called the Libri Carolini), and the Frankish Council of Frankfurt in 794 rejected what it understood Nicaea to have taught. The episode showed how far the Latin and Greek churches had already drifted apart, decades before the papal coronation of Charlemagne as emperor in 800 offended Byzantium further.

Effects on art

Iconoclasm did not end Byzantine art, but it changed it. Iconoclasts favoured the cross and non-figurative decoration of plants, animals and geometric patterns. The large mosaic cross in the apse of Hagia Irene in Istanbul, made after an earthquake in 740, is a rare surviving example.

Some figurative images were destroyed or covered, though the scale is debated. Very few icons from before the eighth century survive, most of them at Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai, beyond the reach of Byzantine emperors. After 843, a new flowering of figurative art began; in 867 a mosaic of the Virgin and Child was unveiled in the apse of Hagia Sophia.

Iconoclasm also shaped how Byzantine churches were decorated afterwards. The iconophile victory produced a standard scheme, with Christ Pantokrator in the dome, the Virgin in the apse and saints and feast scenes on the walls, that spread across the Orthodox world from Greece to Russia.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Iconoclasts opposed all art. Fact: They objected to images of holy persons in worship, not to art in general, and they supported the cross and secular decoration.
• Myth: Thousands of martyrs were killed for icons. Fact: Persecution did occur, especially of monks under Constantine V, but iconophile sources written after 843 are now thought to have exaggerated its scale.
• Myth: Iconoclasm was simply copied from Islam. Fact: Islamic attitudes may have formed part of the background, but the debate was rooted in Christian theology and Byzantine politics.

Timeline

• c. 721: Caliph Yazid II orders images removed from churches in his realm.
• 726: Eruption at Thera; Leo III traditionally begins to oppose images.
• 730, January: Patriarch Germanos resigns.
• 754: The Council of Hieria condemns icons under Constantine V.
• 787: The Second Council of Nicaea restores icons.
• 815: Leo V’s synod in Hagia Sophia revives iconoclasm.
• 842, January: Death of Theophilos; Theodora becomes regent.
• 843, 11 March: Restoration of icons, celebrated as the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

Why it matters

Byzantine Iconoclasm forced Christians to define why and how images could be used in worship, a question that resurfaced in the Protestant Reformation. Its resolution gave Orthodox Christianity its lasting reverence for icons, deepened the rift between Byzantium and the papacy, and left a lasting mark on the art of the Christian world.