Iconoclasm

Put plainly: emperors who took themselves for reformers

To understand iconoclasm, one must first forget the cartoon of the barbarian who smashes for the pleasure of smashing. The iconoclast emperors presented themselves as reformers of worship: they wanted to purify the Church of a supposed idolatry and bring Christians back to the invisible, transcendent God. Their zeal had something sincere about it — and that was their strength: you do not mobilize an empire for a century on a mere administrative whim^[2].

Their thesis holds in three propositions. First, God forbade images: the Decalogue forbids making oneself "any graven image", and Christians who honour icons violate this commandment. Second, Christ cannot be depicted without heresy: to paint Christ is either to paint only His humanity, separating it from His divinity, or to claim to circumscribe the uncircumscribable. Third, the only legitimate image of Christ is the Eucharist: the consecrated bread and wine are the true memorial instituted by the Lord, and nothing else is needed^[3].

First thesis: the Decalogue would forbid every image

"You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath. You shall not bow down to them." — Book of Exodus, 20, 4-5^[4]

Such is the text the iconoclasts brandished like a standard. The argument looks unanswerable: God Himself has spoken, the prohibition is written in black and white, and churches full of images seem to violate it openly. The emperors could drape themselves in fidelity to Scripture against bishops and monks accused of betraying it^[5].

The Catholic answer distinguishes what the argument confuses: the prohibition of Exodus targets idols — that is, images worshipped as gods — not all depiction. The same God who forbids idols commands the carving of cherubim upon the Ark of the Covenant — scriptural proof that the image as such is not condemned^[6]. The whole debate therefore turns on what follows: are the icons of the churches idols, or something else entirely? That is the question of the next two theses.

Second thesis: Christ would be undepictable

This is the theological heart of the affair, and the most redoubtable. The iconoclasts reasoned thus: Christ is both God and man. If the painter claims to represent the whole Christ, he lies, for divinity is uncircumscribable — it cannot be enclosed in lines and colours. If he represents only the humanity, he separates what God united: he does exactly what Nestorius did in words. And if he blends the two in a single figure, he confuses them: he does what the Monophysites did in doctrine. Every image of Christ would therefore, by logical necessity, be either Nestorian or Monophysite^[7].

The false council of Hieria engraved this dilemma in its definition: there is no possible orthodox image of the Lord. One can measure the trap: iconoclasm presents itself as the guardian of the great Christological councils — Ephesus against division, Chalcedon against confusion — and accuses the defenders of images of betraying both^[8].

Third thesis: the only image of Christ would be the Eucharist

So as not to seem to strip the churches while leaving nothing, the iconoclasts offered a substitute: the Holy Eucharist would be the only true image of Christ, instituted by Himself when He said "do this in memory of me". No more need for painted panels: the Body and Blood suffice, and all the rest is superstition^[9].

The answer holds in one sentence: the Eucharist is not an image of Christ, it is Christ Himself, truly present under the species of bread and wine. To confuse the sacrament with an image is to debase the mystery instead of exalting it — and to deprive the faithful both of the sacrament understood as such and of images understood as such^[10].

A very ancient mistrust of images

Iconoclasm did not fall from the sky in 726. For centuries, some Christians had mistrusted holy images: fear of falling back into a pagan idolatry barely left behind, scruple before depicting the divine, an austerity that preferred the bare cross to any figure. This mistrust had never carried the Church, but it smouldered — and it supplied the emperors with ready-made soil^[11].

It must be said plainly: the defenders of images never claimed this mistrust was absurd in every respect. Idolatry is a real danger, and the Church has always fought it. Their thesis is more precise: this danger does not condemn the image as such, but only the worship of the image. The whole crisis of the 8th and 9th centuries turns on this distinction — and it is this distinction that Nicaea II engraved into dogma^[12].

The Paulicians and the bishops of the East: the forerunners

Among the doctrinal forerunners, the Catholic Encyclopedia names first the Paulicians: this sect, intermittently influential at Constantinople since the 7th century, held all matter — and singularly the human body — to be evil, rejected the outward forms of worship, the sacraments, rites, images and relics, and even refused to honour the cross on the grounds that Christ had not really been crucified. Catholics themselves shared this aversion for images and relics: at the beginning of the 8th century, several bishops of Asia Minor — Constantine of Nacolia in Phrygia, Thomas of Claudiopolis, Theodosius of Ephesus — held positions hostile to holy images, and a Nestorian bishop, Xenaias of Hierapolis, is reputed a notorious forerunner of the iconoclasts^[13].

It was when this party reached the emperor's ear that private mistrust became state persecution. The heresy needed a secular arm — and it found one in Leo III^[14].

Islam as backdrop, not as principal cause

Iconoclasm has often been explained by the influence of Islam: for Muslims, every representation of the human figure is an abominable idol, and the Byzantine emperors, neighbours and rivals of the caliphate, are said to have imported this rigour. It is true that the caliph of Damascus applauded the imperial campaign, and true also that the iconoclasts were encouraged by their Muslim rivals^[15].

But the Catholic Encyclopedia judges this explanation insufficient as a principal cause: it is unlikely that the emperor's zeal was driven by the example of his mortal enemy, the head of the rival religion. The internal Christian roots — ancient mistrust, Paulicians, bishops of the East — suffice to explain the movement. Islam supplies at best a backdrop and an outward encouragement, not the engine^[16].

Leo III and the Christ of the Chalke

Leo III — the Isaurian, emperor from 717 to 741, saviour of Constantinople before the Arabs in 717-718 — published about 726 an edict declaring images idols forbidden by Exodus and ordering their destruction in every church. The symbolic gesture followed: the image of Christ above the bronze gate of the imperial palace, the Chalke, was torn down — and the officers charged with the operation were massacred by the rioting crowd. The crisis begins in blood^[17].

The Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Germanus I (patriarch from 715 to 730), protested against the edict and appealed to Rome. An imperial letter then ordered him to accept the edict and have the images destroyed: Germanus refused, and Leo deposed him in 730, replacing him with a compliant man, Anastasius. The first hero of the Catholic resistance paid for his fidelity with exile^[18].

At Rome, the popes held firm. Gregory II (715-731) resisted the imperial injunctions, and his successor Gregory III (731-741) gathered a synod at Rome in 731 which excommunicated the destroyers of images. Byzantine Italy rose up against the heretical emperor: the beginning of a political rupture between Rome and Constantinople whose effects would last well beyond the quarrel of the images^[19].

Leo III died in June 741, in the midst of the turmoil, without having changed policy. His son and successor would be worse than he^[20].

John Damascene answers from Jerusalem

While the emperor silenced the bishops of his empire, one voice escaped him — because it spoke from the empire across the way. Saint John Damascene, monk of Saint Sabas near Jerusalem, in caliphate territory, was beyond the reach of the imperial arm. About 726-730, he wrote his three Treatises against those who reject holy images, the first systematic treatise of icon theology^[21].

His master argument holds in one sentence: God, once invisible, made Himself visible by taking flesh — and what has been seen can be depicted.

"Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen in the flesh, and lives among men, I make an image of the God whom I see." — Saint John Damascene, First Treatise on the Images, 16 (Ignispedia translation)^[22]

The Damascene also fixed the distinction that would settle the whole debate: to images is owed veneration — in Greek proskynesis, the homage paid to what they represent — while true worship — latreia — belongs to God alone. One does not adore wood and colours: one honours the prototype through the image^[23].

The iconoclasts would never forgive the monk: the false council of Hieria would anathematize him by name under his Arabic name, Mansur. Nicaea II would rehabilitate him with honour^[24].

Constantine V and the false council of Hieria

After the brief interlude of Artabasdos — Leo III's son-in-law, who usurped the throne from 741 to 743 and restored the images — Constantine V (741-775) resumed the persecution with a systematic violence that earned him, from his adversaries, the infamous nickname of Copronymus. Under him, the destruction of images became methodical state policy^[25].

In 754, Constantine gathered at the palace of Hieria, on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, a council of 338 bishops — with not a single patriarch in office among them, the great sees being vacant or in the power's hands. The assembly proclaimed itself ecumenical and defined that every image of Christ is necessarily heretical: Nestorian if it separates, Monophysite if it confuses. Only the Eucharist would be the legitimate image. The council anathematized by name Patriarch Germanus, John Damascene and George of Cyprus, defenders of the images^[26].

This council was never received by the Church: neither the pope nor the Eastern patriarchs recognized it, and Nicaea II would solemnly annul it. That is why Catholic history calls it the false council or conciliabule of Hieria — an assembly of bishops at the power's orders, whose decrees are ecumenical in name only^[27].

The persecution of the monks: Stephen the Younger

After 754, the persecution struck above all the monks, guardians of the images throughout the East. The strategos Michael Lachanodrakon terrorized Asia Minor; at Constantinople, monasteries were broken up and their goods confiscated. The most famous figure of this resistance is Saint Stephen the Younger, hegumen of the monastery of Mount Saint Auxentius: dragged to Constantinople, tried, exiled, then lynched by the mob on 28 November 764 — some chronologies give 765 — he died a martyr for the holy images and remains the heavenly patron of the iconodule cause^[28].

Irene and the Second Council of Nicaea

Leo IV (775-780) left the iconoclast laws in force without enforcing them rigorously. At his death, his widow Irene, regent for their still-infant son Constantine VI, prepared the restoration: she had Tarasius elected patriarch (784-806) — a high official passed rapidly through all the orders, a precipitate elevation Rome would not fail to note — and opened negotiations with Pope Hadrian I (772-795)^[29].

The council met at Nicaea from 24 September to 13 October 787, with about three hundred bishops, under the presidency of Tarasius and in the presence of two legates of Hadrian I — the archpriest Peter and Peter, abbot of Saint Sabas. An eighth and final session was held on 23 October in the Magnaura palace, at Constantinople, in the presence of Irene and her son. The council defined the faith on images, annulled Hieria, and restored Germanus, John Damascene and George of Cyprus to their honour^[30].

The Horos: exposing images for veneration

The council's dogmatic decree — the Horos, the "definition" — holds in one luminous principle: the holy images of Christ, of the Virgin, of the angels and saints must be exposed in churches, on sacred vessels and vestments, in houses and along roads, so that the faithful may venerate them. Not with a true worship, which befits the divine nature alone, but with an honour of veneration comparable to that paid to the cross, to the Gospel and to holy relics^[31].

"We define that the venerable and holy images are to be set up in the holy churches of God, for veneration — not for the true worship which befits the divine nature alone, but as one honours the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, the holy Gospels and the other sacred objects." — Horos of the Second Council of Nicaea, session 7 (Ignispedia translation)^[32]

The council anathematizes those who call images idols, those who destroy or profane them, and those who apply to the images of Christ the passages of Scripture directed against idols. In return, it joins to its definition an explicit profession of faith: Christ is true God and true man, and it is because He is truly man — visible, touchable, depictable — that His image is legitimate^[33].

Veneration and worship: two words for two cults

Put differently: when a Christian bows before an icon, he performs a gesture wholly different from the pagan's before his idol. The idol is the god for the one who worships it; the icon refers to someone else. The council takes up here the formula of Saint Basil: the honour paid to the image passes to the prototype — to the person depicted, not to the wooden panel^[34].

"The honour paid to the image passes to the prototype." — Saint Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit, 18, 45^[35]

This distinction is no sacristy subtlety: it still structures Catholic teaching today. The Catechism takes it up, affirming that the sacred image principally represents Christ, that it is legitimate since the Incarnation, and that the cult paid to images — respectful veneration, never worship — is in reality addressed to the persons depicted (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1159-1162)^[36].

Hieria and Nicaea II face to face

The following table summarizes the confrontation of the two assemblies, so the reader may measure at a glance why one remained a conciliabule and the other became an ecumenical council.

Why the crisis resumed: an army still iconoclast

The peace of 787 had not converted hearts. In the army above all, a strong iconoclast party kept its nostalgia for Constantine V — the great victorious general over Arabs and Bulgars — even venerating him as a saint and pilgrimaging to his tomb. When Emperor Michael I (811-813), faithful to Nicaea II, suffered humiliating defeats at Bulgar hands, the soldiers concluded that God was punishing the empire for restoring the images. General Leo V took power in 813 on this wave — and the persecution resumed, with troubling exactness: twenty-eight years elapsed, and each actor of the first crisis found his double^[37].

Leo V and the synod of Hagia Sophia

Leo V (813-820) began by demanding of Patriarch Nicephorus (806-815) that he renounce Nicaea II; faced with his refusal, he deposed and exiled him — Nicephorus would die in exile in 828. Then the emperor gathered in 815, in the church of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople, a synod which annulled Nicaea II and restored the decrees of Hieria, under the authority of a new patriarch at the regime's orders, Theodotus Cassiteras. Images were torn down again, defenders exiled or imprisoned^[38].

Nicephorus and Theodore the Studite: the two pillars

Facing the new assault, two men held the place Germanus and Damascene had held a century earlier. The deposed Patriarch Saint Nicephorus (758-828) refuted the heresy with the pen, notably in his great work of controversy against the iconoclasts, and paid for his constancy with thirteen years of exile^[39].

At his side, Saint Theodore the Studite (759-826), hegumen of the great monastery of the Studion at Constantinople, organized the monastic resistance: clandestine letters, processions of icons through the streets, public refusals to commune with the persecutors. Exiled from monastery to monastery under Leo V, he never stopped writing — his refutations of the iconoclasts and his correspondence form one of the greatest dossiers of the controversy. His thesis is Christological to the end: to contest the image of Christ is to contest that the Word became visible flesh — and to fall back, by another road, into the old errors on Christ^[40]. He died in exile on 11 November 826, seventeen years before the final victory.

Theophilus the persecutor and his victims

Michael II (820-829), successor of the murdered Leo V, maintained the iconoclast laws without aggravating them. His son Theophilus (829-842), a man of letters and theologian in his hours, resumed the persecution with unprecedented ferocity: the painter-monk Lazarus was flogged almost to death; the monk Methodius — the future patriarch — was thrown into prison among common criminals for seven years; Michael, syncellus of Jerusalem, and Joseph the Hymnographer were tortured; the two brothers Theodore and Theophanes received two hundred lashes then were branded with red-hot iron on the face as idolaters — tradition surnames them the "Branded", and the Roman Martyrology feasts them on 27 December. By the end of the reign, images had vanished from churches and squares, prisons overflowed with their defenders, and faithful Catholics were but a hunted sect in the empire^[41].

The patriarch of these black years is John VII the Grammarian (837-843), an esteemed scholar but a docile instrument of power. When Theophilus died on 20 January 842, all seemed lost — and everything would turn within a year^[42].

Theodora and the Triumph of Orthodoxy

Theophilus left a two-year-old son, Michael III: the regency fell to his widow, Theodora, a secret Catholic who venerated images even within the palace. At first cautious — she hesitated to revoke the iconoclast laws at a stroke — she soon decided: Patriarch John VII must choose between restoring the images and withdrawing; he withdrew. In his place rose to the patriarchal throne Methodius, the confessor of the seven years of prison (843-847)^[43].

That same year 843, a synod gathered at Constantinople deposed John VII, renewed the decrees of Nicaea II and excommunicated the iconoclasts. Then came the gesture sealing a century of quarrel: on the first Sunday of Great Lent in 843 — 11 March by the most received chronology — the icons were brought back in solemn procession into the churches of Constantinople. That day became a perpetual feast: the feast of Orthodoxy, which the Byzantine Church still celebrates every year at the opening of Lent^[44].

On that day was read the Synodikon, solemnly anathematizing all heretics — and the iconoclasts figured in it only as one fraction of a long list. The last of the old heresies had become, in Eastern eyes, the very type of the vanquished heresy.

"This is the faith of the Apostles, this is the faith of the Fathers, this is the faith of the Orthodox!" — Acclamation of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, read on the day of the Triumph (Ignispedia translation)^[45]

After 843, an iconoclast party still subsisted in the East — but no emperor lent it an ear again, and it gradually died out of itself^[46].

The Incarnation argument: God has a face

Put differently: the whole debate comes down to a single question — did the Word truly become flesh? If so, then that flesh had a face, a stature, features: it was seen, touched, described. And what has been seen can be depicted. To refuse every image of Christ is therefore to affirm, in deeds, that Christ did not truly assume a visible humanity — it is to fall back into Docetism, for which the Saviour's flesh was mere appearance^[47].

Scripture itself calls Christ the image of the invisible God.

"He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation." — Saint Paul, Epistle to the Colossians, 1, 15^[48]

And Saint John: "And the Word became flesh" (Jn 1, 14)^[49]. The invisible God gave Himself an image: Himself, in His incarnate Son. The icon of Christ only prolongs this gesture — it shows what God showed^[50].

What the Church permits, what she forbids

Catholic doctrine holds together three affirmations that must never be separated. First, the image is legitimate: since the Incarnation, depicting Christ, the Virgin, the angels and saints is good and useful — images instruct the illiterate, sustain prayer, honour the prototypes. Second, the image is never worshipped: latreia, true worship, belongs to God alone; before an icon, the faithful does not stop at the panel, he passes through to the person. Third, abuse remains condemned: every superstition attributing divine power to the object itself, every worship of matter, falls back under the ban of Exodus — and it is precisely against this abuse that the iconoclasts were right to be indignant, while mistaking the remedy^[51].

One then understands the paradox of the crisis: the iconoclasts saw the danger rightly — idolatry always lurks — but they amputated the remedy by suppressing the image instead of purifying worship. The Church keeps the image and discernment^[52].

The Exodus objection, refuted step by step

Let us take up the emperors' scriptural objection and answer it point by point. The ban — "you shall not make for yourself any graven image" — targets the idols of false gods, as the immediate sequel shows: "you shall not bow down to them". But the icon is no god: no one takes it for one, and the cult paid to it passes through to the prototype. Next, the same God commands images in His own sanctuary — the cherubim of the ark — proof that depiction is not evil in itself. Finally, the Old Testament forbade the image because God had not yet shown a face; since the Incarnation, this argument lapses: God has a face, that of Jesus of Nazareth^[53].

While the East tore itself apart, the Frankish West mistook — in good faith — what Nicaea II had decided. The Latin translation of the acts, dispatched to Charlemagne, rendered the Greek formula crookedly: instead of "I receive the holy images with the veneration due", one read that the council required for images the same worship as for the Trinity. Before such enormity, the Frankish reaction was outraged — and understandable: a people barely out of paganism, ignorant of the Byzantine refinements of proskynesis — prostrations, kisses, incense, marks of respect common at Byzantium even before imperial statues — could not hear of worshipping images without crying idolatry^[54].

From this mistake were born the Libri Carolini — composed about 790-793 in Charlemagne's circle — then the synod of Frankfurt (794), gathered in the presence of two papal legates who did not dispel the misunderstanding: its second canon condemns the Council of Nicaea, believing it condemned the worship of images on a par with the Trinity. Pope Hadrian I answered by letter, defending the true sense of Nicaea II: neither destruction after the manner of Hieria, nor worship — but veneration. The Frankish position — neither break nor adore — rejoined the council's doctrine at bottom, once the mistranslation was lifted; the misunderstanding dissolved in the following decades, and the West never knew iconoclast persecution^[55].

The feast of Orthodoxy, every year

On the first Sunday of Great Lent, the Byzantine Churches — Eastern Catholics as well as Orthodox — still celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy: procession of icons, reading of the Synodikon, anathemas against all heresies. The feast founded to commemorate the defeat of iconoclasm has become the feast of the Church's victory over all heresies: so deeply did this crisis, the last of the great ancient errors, mark the Eastern conscience^[56].

Rome and Byzantium: a rupture preparing the schism

The quarrel of the images also deepened the political gulf between Rome and Constantinople: uprisings of Italy against Leo III, fall of the exarchate of Ravenna to the Lombards in 751 without Byzantine relief, the popes' appeal to the Franks — Pepin, then Charlemagne —, birth of the Papal States, and soon the imperial coronation of the year 800. The Catholic Encyclopedia sees in iconoclasm the last of the ruptures which, step by step, prepared the way for the schism of Photius in the following century^[57].

Boundary: this article does not treat the later iconoclasms

To avoid all confusion: this article sticks to the ancient heresy (726-843). The destructions of images of the 16th century — Calvinists, Anglicans, Wars of Religion — and those of the French Revolution belong to other dossiers, with other causes and other answers. They are mentioned here only for the record: the reader looking for them will not confuse the Reformed breakages of images with the Byzantine quarrel settled at Nicaea II^[58].

• Read the three Treatises of Saint John Damascene against those who reject holy images: the first treatise of icon theology, at the source of Nicaea II.
• Re-read the Horos of Nicaea II (Denzinger 600-603): the dogmatic charter of images in a few paragraphs.
• Discover Saint Theodore the Studite: his letters of resistance under Leo V show how monks stood up to an empire.
• Compare with the neighbouring dossiers: Monophysitism and Eutychianism for the confusion of natures, Nestorianism for their division, Monothelitism for the last compromise before the crisis of the images.