Iconoclasm
"image-destroyer"

Since Late Antiquity, there had been opposition against the artistic depiction of images. In the early eighth century, several bishops in Asia Minor condemned the veneration of images; they based their condemnation on the biblical prohibitions against idolatry. These views entered the political arena when Emperor Leo III began to publicly support their position. In 726, Leo ordered the removal of an icon of Christ from the Chalke Gate of the Imperial Palace in Constantinople and issued an edict banning the figural image from religious art. Iconoclasm intensified under Leo's son Constantine V (741-775). Under Constantine, an explicitly christological dimension was introduced. He argued that a material depiction of Christ, who as God was not circumscribable, threatened either to confuse or separate his two natures. In 754, Constantine convened a council in Hieria, which condemned the use of icons and insisted that the Eucharist was the only appropriate, nonanthropomorphic image of Christ. During the 760s, Constantine vigorously persecuted Iconophiles in Constantinople, especially monks; this anti-monastic policy was enforced in varying degrees in the provinces. Constantine's son Leo IV (775-780) was more tolerant, and his widow Eirene revoked his iconoclast policies in 787. Iconoclasm was reinstated in 814 under the usurper Leo V, who was subsequently murdered in 820. His successors Michael II (820-829) and Theophilos (829-842) continued the policies of Iconoclasm in name only. Theophilos's widow, Theodora, restored icons once again, and a procession to Hagia Sophia before Easter of 843 officially marked the return to orthodoxy. Modern scholarship has been preoccupied with the causes of Iconoclasm, and several theories have been suggested. Many scholars argue that Iconoclasm was a revival of ancient polemics against religious art, which was akin to paganism. Economic motives have also been stressed-emperors used Iconoclasm to confiscate monastic and ecclesiastical property. More recently scholars have suggested that Iconoclasm was an attempt by emperors to reclaim their authority in ecclesiastical matters. It has also been suggested that Iconoclasm was orchestrated by the secular clergy in an attempt to regain their centralized ecclesiastical authority, which was threatened by the popularity of holy men, icons, relics, and monasteries. BLR

COMPARANDA
Apse of Hagia Eirene (Istanbul)
Mosaic cross in room over ramp in Hagia Sophia (Istanbul)
Iconoclasts whitewashing Christ, Khludov Psalter (Moscow)
Virgin and Child, Hagia Sophia (Istanbul)
Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy

BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Iconoclasm" Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Ed. Alexander Kazhdan. 3 vols. New York: Oxford University Press. 975-977.

Rodley, Lyn. Byzantine art and architecture: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 115-116.