Iconoclasm and the Triumph of Orthodoxy

On the first Sunday of Great Lent, Orthodox parishes carry icons in procession around the church. The day is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy, and it remembers the restoration of icons in Constantinople in 843, after more than a century in which emperors and councils had at times forbidden the veneration of sacred images.¹

That struggle, usually called "iconoclasm" (image-breaking), produced the seventh and last of the councils the whole Orthodox Church receives as ecumenical, Nicaea II in 787. It was also argued over by historians long after the Church settled it. Recent scholarship has questioned much of the traditional story, including how it began and how violent it was. This article tells the history as the Church remembers it, sets beside it what the earliest sources can bear, and explains why the Orthodox Church treats the outcome as a matter of faith in the Incarnation.

In brief

By about 700 Christians in the Byzantine world venerated images of Christ, the Theotokos and the saints, and the Council in Trullo (692) ordered that Christ be painted in human form. In the 720s some bishops in Asia Minor removed icons, and Patriarch Germanos protested. Tradition says the emperor Leo III launched an official campaign against icons in 726 or 730, but historians such as Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon argue that the sources for this are late and hostile, and that imperial iconoclasm really began with his son Constantine V. Constantine's council at Hieria (754) condemned icons as heretical and anathematized St John of Damascus. Under the empress Irene, the Second Council of Nicaea (787) restored icons, distinguishing the veneration given to images from the worship due to God alone. Leo V revived the ban in 815; the empress Theodora ended it in 843. The Church holds that because the Son of God became visible in the flesh, he may be depicted, and that honor shown to an icon passes to the person it represents.

Thesis: Whatever the politics of the period, and however much later writers dramatized it, the Church's victory over iconoclasm was a confession that God truly became man and that matter can carry grace.

Before the controversy

Christian art is far older than the eighth century, and the site's article on icons and the early Church traces it from the catacombs and Dura-Europos onward. By the late seventh century, images were part of church life in the East. Canon 82 of the Council in Trullo (692) decreed that "the figure in human form of the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, Christ our God, be henceforth exhibited in images, instead of the ancient lamb," so that all might "recall to our memory his conversation in the flesh, his passion and salutary death."²

The West valued images too, though often for different reasons. About a century earlier, Pope St Gregory the Great rebuked Bishop Serenus of Marseilles for smashing images in his church. Pictures are used in churches, he wrote, "that such as are ignorant of letters may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books." Serenus should "have both preserved the images and prohibited the people from adoration of them."³ Gregory's view of images as teaching would shape Western responses for centuries.

How did it begin? Two accounts

The traditional account

In the account found in later Byzantine chronicles and in many Orthodox histories, the emperor Leo III, a successful general who had defended Constantinople against the Arabs in 717-718, turned against icons. The Orthodox Church in America's history says that "beginning in 726, he issued a number of edicts against the icons," that Patriarch St Germanos "was deposed and exiled when he refused to reject the icons," and that it is "probable that Islam, with its condemnation of pictorial religious art, played a role in influencing the views of the Iconoclasts."⁴ The best-known story has Leo's men removing an icon of Christ from the Chalke Gate of the palace, perhaps after a volcanic eruption at Thera, and the crowd killing an official in protest.

The revisionist account

Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, in the major English history of the period (2011), devote a chapter to "Leo III: iconoclast or opportunist?" with a section on "The dearth of evidence for early imperial iconoclasm."⁵ In a shorter book Brubaker sets out the case. The earliest evidence, she writes, is three letters of Patriarch Germanos from the 720s and early 730s, concerning two bishops, Constantine of Nakoleia and Thomas of Klaudioupolis, who had turned against images. Germanos protested that removing icons gave Jews and Muslims a chance to slander the Church, and he argued that honor given to an image passes to the person shown. She concludes: "There is no evidence that the image struggle began as an imperial initiative."⁶

The stories about Leo, Brubaker argues, come from the Life of St Stephen the Younger (807 or 809) and the Chronicle of Theophanes (810-814), both "almost viscerally anti-iconoclast documents" written about eighty years after the events. The Chalke Gate story is, in her words, "almost certainly fictitious," and the references to Leo's actions in the papal Liber Pontificalis are, she says, later insertions.⁶ On her reading, imperial iconoclasm began with Constantine V.

This revision is influential but it is a scholarly argument, not settled fact, and the traditional account is still taught in many histories, including Orthodox ones. Both sides agree on the main points: the dispute began in the 720s, it reached Constantinople within a decade, and Germanos defended the icons. {{debated: Leo III launched an imperial campaign against icons by edict in 726 or 730.}} The role of Islam is also debated. Germanos' worry about Muslim and Jewish criticism shows that the neighbors' objections were known, but whether they caused the movement cannot be shown.

Constantine V and the council of Hieria (754)

On the next stage there is broad agreement. Around 750 Constantine V wrote a set of theological "Questions" (Peuseis), known only from fragments quoted by his opponent Patriarch Nikephoros. According to Brubaker, he argued that Christ's two natures cannot be separated, but only the human Christ could be painted, so "portraits of Christ thus heretically divided his two natures," and that only the Eucharist was a true image of Christ.⁶

In 754 Constantine called a council at the palace of Hieria; 338 bishops attended.⁶ Its definition, which survives because the Second Council of Nicaea read it out in order to refute it, declared that "the unlawful art of painting living creatures blasphemed the fundamental doctrine of our salvation--namely, the Incarnation of Christ." A painter of Christ, it argued, either depicts "the Godhead which cannot be represented" and mingles it with the manhood, or separates the flesh from the Godhead like the Nestorians. "The only admissible figure of the humanity of Christ," it said, "is bread and wine in the holy Supper."⁷ The council anathematized the defenders of icons by name, including St John of Damascus under his family name: "Anathema to Mansur, who has an evil name and Saracen opinions!"⁷

How harsh the following years were is again disputed. The OCA's history speaks of a "decade of blood" between 762 and 775, when "hundreds of Christians, mostly monks, were imprisoned, tortured, and even killed."⁴ Brubaker finds little physical evidence of destruction, treats the Life of Stephen the Younger as "a propaganda piece," and links the purge of 765-772 to a treasonous plot in which "the patriarch Constantine and nineteen court officials were implicated."⁶ The Church venerates St Stephen the Younger as a martyr for the icons. Both things can be true: the sources were written to praise the confessors, and real people suffered.

St John of Damascus and the case for icons

The fullest defense of icons in these years was written outside the empire, by a monk living under the caliphate in Palestine. St John of Damascus built his argument on the Incarnation. "When the Invisible One becomes visible to flesh," he wrote, "you may then draw a likeness of His form." The Old Testament ban on images guarded against idols while God had no visible form, but in Christ God took "the form of a servant in substance and in stature, and a body of flesh."⁸ His most famous sentence answers the charge of worshipping matter: "I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter."⁸

John also drew on an older principle. In the fourth century, St Basil had written, about the Son as the image of the Father, that "the honour paid to the image passes on to the prototype."⁹ Applied to icons, this means that a believer who kisses an icon of Christ honors Christ, not wood and paint. The site's life of St John of Damascus discusses his treatises and their authorship in more detail.

The Second Council of Nicaea (787)

After Constantine V's son Leo IV died in 780, his widow Irene ruled for their young son Constantine VI and favored icons. A first attempt at a council in Constantinople, on 1 August 786, was broken up by soldiers loyal to the memory of Constantine V. The council reassembled at Nicaea on 24 September 787. Two legates of Pope Hadrian I signed first, but Patriarch Tarasios in practice presided.¹⁴ Counts of the bishops vary: Tanner's edition speaks of 263 fathers accepting the doctrine at the second session, while the older Catholic Encyclopedia finds at least 308 bishops or representatives in the acts.¹⁴¹⁰

The council's definition is short and exact. Images of Christ, the Theotokos, the angels and the saints are to be set up in churches, homes and public places, "for by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes." To them "should be given due salutation and honourable reverence," but "not indeed that true worship of faith (latreia) which pertains alone to the divine nature." It concludes: "For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented."¹¹ {{very-strong: Nicaea II (787) defined that icons receive veneration and honor, while worship (latreia) belongs to God alone.}}

The Greek word for the honor given to icons is proskynesis, bowing or veneration; latreia, adoration, belongs to God alone. Among the council's canons, canon 7 required relics in every consecrated church.¹¹

The empress who made the council possible later committed a grave crime. The OCA's history notes that in 797 Irene "had her son Constantine blinded so that she might continue to rule by herself."⁴ The Church received the council's teaching, not the empress's politics.

The council also met resistance in the West. Charlemagne's theologians, working from a poor Latin translation, answered it in the Opus Caroli Regis (the "Caroline Books"). Brubaker summarizes their view: images serve "to recall and to instruct," a view in which, she notes, they "followed earlier papal tradition, going back to pope Gregory I the Great," and the Synod of Frankfurt in 794 took the same line.⁶ Rome itself stood by the council: Pope Hadrian I defended it against Charlemagne in 794.¹⁴

The second iconoclasm and the triumph of 843

The ban returned in 815 under Leo V, after defeats by the Bulgars. According to Brubaker, a council that year called icons "false" images rather than idols, a softer charge than Hieria's.⁶ This time monks led the resistance. On Palm Sunday 815, St Theodore the Studite, abbot of the Stoudios monastery, led a public procession with icons and was exiled.¹² Brubaker points out that many churchmen complied with the new policy and that this was "the first time ever" that monks opposed an imperial iconoclast policy.⁶ The ban continued under Michael II and Theophilos.

When Theophilos died in January 842, his widow Theodora became regent for their two-year-old son, Michael III. In March 843 a synod at Constantinople confirmed the acts of Nicaea II, John the Grammarian was replaced as patriarch by Methodios, who had been imprisoned for defending icons, and the icons were restored.¹² Theodora made one condition: her husband was not to be named among the condemned iconoclasts.⁶ The OCA dates the procession that followed to the first Sunday of Great Lent, 11 March 843, "known as the Triumph of Orthodoxy."¹² {{strong: The veneration of icons was restored in Constantinople in March 843 under the regent Theodora, and the Church commemorates it on the first Sunday of Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy.}}

Brubaker reads the decision of 843 as "as pragmatic as it was theological," a move by the regency court to restore harmony and secure its own position.⁶ Orthodox Christians need not deny that politics played a part. The Church's own hymn for the day gives the theology behind it: "Thou who art uncircumscribed, O Master, in Thy divine nature, wast pleased in the last times to take flesh and be circumscribed ... Therefore we depict the likeness of Thine outward form, venerating it with an honor that is relative."¹²

What the Orthodox Church teaches

The definition of 787 is dogma for the Orthodox Church, and iconoclasm is a condemned heresy, not a permissible Christian opinion. Nicaea II is the seventh of the councils the Church receives as ecumenical, explained in the site's article on how the Church recognises ecumenical councils. Its core is Christological. The iconoclasts said an image of Christ must either depict the uncircumscribable divine nature or split the humanity from the divinity. The Orthodox answer is that an icon depicts a person, the incarnate Son, in the human form he truly took. Scripture calls Christ "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15, NKJV).¹³ To refuse to depict him, the defenders argued, comes close to doubting that he truly became visible flesh.

Several other teachings follow. Icons are venerated, never worshipped. Honor passes to the person shown. Matter is not the enemy of the spirit, because God made it good and took it to himself. The site's infographic "Are Icons Idols?" summarizes these points for quick reference.

The strongest objections

"Icons break the second commandment" (a Protestant objection)

The commandment says: "You shall not make for yourself a carved image ... you shall not bow down to them nor serve them" (Exodus 20:4-5, NKJV). Many Reformed Christians read this as forbidding religious images, and the iconoclasts used the same text. The Orthodox reply is that the same Law commanded "two cherubim of gold" over the mercy seat (Exodus 25:18) and a bronze serpent on a pole (Numbers 21:8), so the commandment forbids idols, not all images.¹³ The objection has real force at one point, though. Hezekiah later broke that same bronze serpent "for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it" (2 Kings 18:4). Images can be abused, and that is why Nicaea II drew its line between veneration and worship. The abuse of a good thing does not make the good thing forbidden, and the Church's verdict stands: to reject the veneration of holy icons is an error the seventh council condemned.

"The early Church did not venerate icons"

Some Protestant and secular historians argue that image veneration grew slowly and that some early Christian writers opposed images. There is truth here: the practice developed over centuries, and the site's article on icons and the early Church sets out that evidence honestly. Orthodoxy does not claim that eighth-century practice existed unchanged in the first century. It claims that the veneration defined in 787 is a faithful development rooted in the Incarnation, in Christian art from at least the third century, and in the honor Christians already gave to the cross and the Gospel book.

"It was really about politics"

Historians point to emperors seeking military success, a regency securing power, and rival factions at court. Much of this is plausible, and Orthodox readers should not pretend the period was a simple contest of saints and villains. But the arguments on both sides were theological, Constantine V wrote theology himself, and the outcome turned on the doctrine of Christ. Mixed motives do not cancel a true confession.

"The West never fully accepted Nicaea II"

The Frankish response shows that the West at first understood images mainly as teaching aids, following Gregory the Great. Rome, however, accepted the council, and Catholics today count it as the seventh ecumenical council. Roman Catholics and Orthodox share this dogma; the Protestant rejection of icon veneration, by contrast, revives a position the whole undivided Church judged and rejected in 787.

What we can say confidently

• A dispute over images began in Asia Minor in the 720s and drew a protest from Patriarch Germanos.
• Constantine V wrote against icons and called the council of Hieria (754), which condemned them and anathematized their defenders, including John of Damascus.
• Nicaea II (787) restored icons and distinguished veneration from the worship due to God alone.
• Leo V renewed the ban in 815; it was lifted in March 843 under Theodora, and the event is kept as the Sunday of Orthodoxy.

What remains disputed

• Whether Leo III issued edicts against icons in 726 or 730, and whether the Chalke Gate story is history or later legend.
• How much destruction and persecution took place, since most accounts come from writers on the winning side.
• What part Islamic or Jewish criticism of images played in starting the movement.
• How far the restorations of 787 and 843 were driven by politics as well as conviction.

Conclusion

Iconoclasm was a hard chapter, and its history was written mostly by the side that won. Honest readers should welcome the scholars who have tested that history, even where they unsettle familiar stories. What does not change is the question the controversy forced on the Church: has God truly been seen in the flesh? The fathers of 787 answered that he has, and so his face may be painted, his Mother and saints honored, and the material world received as a place where grace is at work.

When Orthodox Christians carry icons around their churches on the first Sunday of Lent, they are confessing the faith of every council before it: that the eternal Word "became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14, NKJV).¹³ The site's guide to the iconostasis shows how that confession shapes the space where Orthodox Christians pray.

Notes

1. Leslie Brubaker, Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2012), ch. 1 and ch. 7; Orthodox Church in America, "The End of Iconoclasm" (see note 12).
2. Council in Trullo (Quinisext, 692), canon 82, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm.
3. Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 9.105 and 11.13, to Serenus of Marseilles, trans. James Barmby, NPNF2 13, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360209105.htm and https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360211013.htm.
4. Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 3, Church History, "Eighth Century: Iconoclasm," https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/church-history/eighth-century/iconoclasm.
5. Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), table of contents, ch. 2, https://assets.cambridge.org/97805214/30937/frontmatter/9780521430937_frontmatter.pdf.
6. Brubaker, Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm, chs. 3-7 (Germanos' letters; the Chalke Gate story; Constantine V's Peuseis and the synod of 754; the plot of 765/6; the Frankish response; the council of 815; the synod of 843).
7. Definition of the Iconoclastic Council of 754 (as read at Nicaea II), trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, Internet Medieval Sourcebook, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/icono-cncl754.asp.
8. John of Damascus, Apologia against Those Who Decry Holy Images 1, in St. John Damascene on Holy Images, trans. Mary H. Allies (London: Thomas Baker, 1898), Internet Medieval Sourcebook, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/johndamascus-images.asp.
9. Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 18.45, trans. Blomfield Jackson, NPNF2 8, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3203.htm.
10. "Second Council of Nicaea," Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), reproduced at https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/second-council-of-nicaea-10756.
11. Second Council of Nicaea (787), Decree and canons, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm.
12. Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 3, Church History, "Ninth Century: The End of Iconoclasm" (with hymns from Vespers of the Sunday of Orthodoxy), https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/church-history/ninth-century/the-end-of-iconoclasm.
13. Colossians 1:15; Exodus 20:4-5; Exodus 25:18; Numbers 21:8; 2 Kings 18:4; John 1:14, New King James Version, https://www.biblegateway.com.
14. Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London and Washington, DC, 1990), introduction to the Second Council of Nicaea, reproduced at https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/history-and-text-1470.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Percival, Henry R., ed. and trans. The Seven Ecumenical Councils. NPNF2 14. New York, 1900 (Trullo canon 82; the definition of 754; the decree and canons of Nicaea II).
• Gregory the Great. Letters to Serenus of Marseilles. Trans. James Barmby. NPNF2 13. 1898.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• John of Damascus. St. John Damascene on Holy Images. Trans. Mary H. Allies. London: Thomas Baker, 1898.
• Basil of Caesarea. On the Holy Spirit. Trans. Blomfield Jackson. NPNF2 8. 1895.
• Orthodox Church in America. The Orthodox Faith, vol. 3, Church History: "Iconoclasm" and "The End of Iconoclasm." oca.org.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Brubaker, Leslie. Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2012.
• Brubaker, Leslie, and John Haldon. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. London and Washington, DC, 1990.
• "Second Council of Nicaea." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York, 1911.