ICONOCLASM. - Heresy of those who opposed the veneration of images of Jesus Christ and the saints, especially in the 8th-9th centuries.
I. HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS
The word iconoclast literally means breaker of icons or of sacred images, painted or sculpted, depicting Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin, the saints. History has applied this name to those fanatical enemies of the use and veneration of images who appeared in the Byzantine Empire during the 8th-9th centuries. The leaders of the iconoclasts were the Byzantine emperors themselves, who strove with violence to abolish not only the veneration but even the simple use of images. They are also called iconomachs or enemies of images, although there is a notable difference between the one term and the other. We know, in fact, that there were iconomachs who tolerated or even approved the use of sacred images and opposed only their religious veneration: one can therefore say that all iconoclasts are iconomachs, but it is not accurate to say the opposite, that is, that all iconomachs are iconoclasts.
Byzantine i. flourished in the 8th century, but even before that history must record many iconomachs and even some iconoclasts properly so called. Indeed, even after the Byzantine iconoclastic movement had ceased, there were terrible iconoclasts in the West (v. IMMAGINI, culto delle).
The history of i. unfolds in two periods, clearly distinct from one another; between them there intervenes a period of tranquility in which the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the second of Nicaea (787), took place, which defined the dogmatic question concerning the veneration due to sacred images.
It was the emperor Leo III the Isaurian who first declared war on images in 725, if not indeed with an explicit decree, at least with a body of declarations and provisions that made his mindset on the matter very clearly apparent. Historians have posed this question: for what reason did the Emperor unleash such a violent storm? Some attribute it to the influence of Judaism and Islam; others, instead, point out that Leo had spent his youth and mature years on the eastern frontiers of the Empire, among populations and soldiery already infected with Manichaean Paulicianism, an instinctive enemy of every material representation. This is the most probable explanation. To it must be added the fact of real abuses introduced into the veneration of images and the reforming mania that the "basileus" displayed in several fields.
Ch. Diehl and L. Bréhier have however demonstrated that the emperor Leo intended by i. to curb the influence of the monks.
Leo strove first of all to win over some bishop to his point of view. He succeeded in fact with Theodore of Ephesus, Thomas of Claudiopolis and Constantine of Nacolia, but failed completely with the patriarch of Constantinople, St. Germanus, who was forced to resign and leave his place to the syncellus Anastasius (17 Jan. 729). Two days later, in the quarter of Chalcia, the image of Christ was defaced. The sacrilege provoked a riot immediately suppressed in blood. The Byzantine episcopate, without offering great resistance, bowed its head to the will of the Emperor, and iconoclasm became the official doctrine. The Melkite patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, which did not depend on the "basileus", remained faithful to orthodoxy, which was defended with eloquence by John of Damascus and George of Cyprus in speeches that remained famous. Pope Gregory II (715-31), as soon as he learned of the new heresy, protested energetically to the Emperor. His successor, Gregory III (731-43), did likewise and at the Roman Synod of 1 Nov. 731 proclaimed the legitimacy of the cult of images. The Emperor's response was not long in coming. Not only did he confiscate the revenues of the Church of Rome in the imperial provinces, especially in Sicily, but he placed all the episcopal sees of the patriarchate of Rome located in Byzantine territory under the dependence of the patriarchate of Constantinople. He did the same with the episcopal sees of the Melkite patriarchate of Antioch.
On his death, which occurred in 740, his son Constantine V, called Copronymus, ascended the throne. Until 752 he showed himself relatively moderate in his iconoclast zeal. The revolt of the general Artavasdos, who, supported by the faithful who had remained in orthodoxy, had succeeded in a year and a half in occupying Constantinople (June 741-Nov. 742), had made Constantine prudent. In 752 he considered the opportune moment had now come to gather the whole Byzantine episcopate in council in order to have the iconoclast doctrine officially approved. The Council, carefully prepared by small assemblies held here and there, met on 10 Feb. 754 in the imperial palace of Hieria in the suburbs of Constantinople and closed its works on 28 Aug. in the church of St. Mary of Blachernae. There the dogmatic definition was read, or the 600; of this veritable conciliabulum which dared to adorn itself with the title of ecumenical, despite the absence of the other Eastern patriarchs and of the Pope. Subscribed by as many as 338 bishops, this definition condemned the use and the cult of images, while nevertheless preserving the cult of intercession directed to the Virgin and the saints.
Despite this definition, the people, and especially the monks, did not submit. Constantine V then carried out a violent persecution against them. Exile, prison, torture: everything was employed against the iconophiles. There were very many martyrs. At the same time, the images were broken to pieces, the frescoes covered with lime, the mosaics destroyed, the illustrations of manuscripts burned or torn, the churches of the monasteries deconsecrated. A decree issued toward the end of 764 imposed on all the subjects of the Empire the oath to renounce images. Forgetting the very decisions of the Council of Hieria, the "basileus" also attacked the cult of intercession rendered to the Virgin and the saints, having their relics thrown into the sea. Pushing his secularizing fanaticism to the extreme, he even hunted down the word "saint" (ἔγιος) and had it removed everywhere, even from geographical and topographical names. He did the same against the word "monk". He called the monks: "these wretches". In order to suppress this "accursed brood", he established the death penalty for all those superiors who received novices.
Under Constantine's successor, Leo IV, who reigned barely 5 years (775-80), the persecution was in part mitigated. Afterwards, Leo's widow, Irene, very solicitous for the cult of the saints, took the reins of government in place of her only-begotten son, Constantine VI, barely six years old. She worked skillfully to prepare the restoration of the cult of images and to put an end to the schism existing against Rome and the Melkite patriarchates. On 29 Aug. 785 she sent a delegation to propose to Pope Adrian I the convocation of an ecumenical council. The Pope fully approved the proposal. He sent legates on their way, and on 17 Aug. of the following year it was possible to open the Council at Constantinople in the church of the Holy Apostles. But then a revolt of the iconoclast soldiers suddenly broke out. Irene found herself compelled to postpone the Council. She was nevertheless able to disarm the rebellious troops, and therefore immediately to recall the legates and the bishops who had already set out on their journey. The place of the assembly, however, was no longer Constantinople but Nicaea. There the Seventh Ecumenical Council was celebrated, which anathematized iconoclasm, explained and defined the cult rendered to sacred images, defending its legitimacy against the objections of the adversaries. The definition of Nicaea was proclaimed at Constantinople, in an eighth and final session, before Irene and her son as well as before the people and the military garrison.
Although defeated at Nicaea, the iconoclast party was still strong and awaited the propitious occasion to take its revenge. Everything was quiet until 813, when the Armenian Leo Bardas, by means of a military revolt, was proclaimed "basileus" with the name Leo V. To please the soldiers, to whom he owed the imperial crown, Leo did not delay an instant in rekindling the struggle against images. The patriarch St. Nicephorus, a most zealous defender of orthodoxy, had to resign (13 March 815) and yield his place to a notorious iconomachus, Theodotus Melissenos Cassiteras, who had no other concern than to condemn the Council of 787 and revive the decisions of Hieria with a Synod of three sessions. A persecution against the iconophiles immediately broke out, far more violent than that carried out under Constantine V. The bishops were driven out and replaced with others, the monasteries closed and the monks dispersed, the faithful thrown into the sea, shut up in sacks, or subjected to harsh flogging until they died of it, or imprisoned, or exiled; this is what happened under the reign of Leo the Armenian, who died killed in 820. He was succeeded by Michael II the Stammerer (820-29), who showed himself less brutal. He had the exiles return and the prisoners released, but went no further than this. Images remained always forbidden. Under the emperor Theophilus (829-42) there was a new persecution. Numerous confessors were imprisoned and cruelly tortured: famous is the case of the two brothers Theodore and Theophanes, on whose foreheads an executioner carved as many as 12 iambic verses (836). Only at the death of this "basileus" (842) could one see what had been seen at the death of Leo IV: a reigning Empress, favorable to images, who restored their cult with prudence: Theodora, widow of Theophilus, who got rid of the iconoclast patriarch John VII and replaced him with St. Methodius, a man of firmness and prudence. On 11 March 843, the first Sunday of Lent, it was finally possible to celebrate with all pomp the definitive triumph of orthodoxy with a feast that has remained down to our own days, under the name of the "Feast of Orthodoxy". There the anathemas against all heretics are not spared, and a threefold eternal memory is rendered to the defenders of the true faith.
II. DOCTRINE OF THE ICONOCLASTS
Regarding the doctrine of the iconoclasts we have scant information, since their writings were destroyed. The most important source that has come down to us is the definition or the 60% of the conciliabulum of Jeria (754), reported and refuted in the acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Mansi, XII, 208-352). The enemies of images appeal now to Scripture, now to Tradition, now to theological reasoning. According to them, the cult of images is a veritable idolatry, contrary to the first precept of the Decalogue: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, etc." (Ex. 20, 4).
They then attempt to discover in the writings of the Fathers everything that can support their thesis. The citations are often mutilated, not interpreted in their context, sometimes deliberately interpolated or even fabricated. Above all against the image of Christ they advance the following reasoning which, according to them, leaves no escape for the iconophiles: "Since Jesus Christ is at the same time God and man, in depicting his humanity, either you separate it from the divinity: and then you are true Nestorians and you divide Christ; or else you are Monophysites, because you seek to circumscribe the divinity which cannot be circumscribed and you make it disappear in the humanity." They have furthermore thought that the only image, the only authorized representation of Christ, which is truly worthy of adoration, is that which is had in the Eucharist through the consecration of the bread and wine. In saying this, they refer to the old patristic expression that is still read in the Mass of St. Basil, and which calls the oblations: image of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Lastly they set forth, in support of their thesis, the abuses into which certain iconophiles fall. A list of such abuses can be read in the letter of Michael the Stammerer to Louis the Pious written in 824 (Hefele-Leclercq, IV, 42). But even granting that these abuses truly occurred, they are not then so serious. The greatest consisted in taking the icons as godparents in Baptism.
Constantine Copronymus, as has been seen, had attacked not only the cult of the images of the Virgin and the saints, but also the cult of their relics and had denied them the power of intercession. It does not appear that the iconoclast theologians shared Constantine's thought on this point. The Council of Jeria had clearly safeguarded the cult of intercession.
III. OUTCOME OF THE ICONOCLASTIC PERSECUTIONS
The iconoclast movement ended by giving rise to an effect entirely opposite to the one its promoters had dreamed of. Rather than making the cult of images disappear, it served to root it more deeply in the hearts of the Byzantines and to push it to the point of exaggeration.
As regards religious art, it must be said that the iconoclast movement destroyed priceless masterpieces, which it replaced with a profane art, entirely based on animal, floral and geometric ornamentation. This same attempt, however, had an ephemeral existence. Nevertheless, the fear of passing for idolaters - an accusation that the iconoclasts readily made against the iconophiles - made artists very timid in representing Jesus Christ, the Virgin and the saints. Not only did they abandon sculpture, but also in iconography their creative genius was almost extinguished by the concern to make not an image blossoming from the imagination but a simple portrait of the prototype. This explains certain stereotyped models imposed by tradition.
As regards general history, the persecutions stirred up by the iconoclasts produced the painful effect of deepening ever further the dividing trench between the East and the West in the religious field and of preparing the definitive schism. Through their duration and their violence, they accustomed the Byzantines to living separated from Rome. The popes, on the other hand, began to look with aversion upon these heretical and persecuting emperors, incapable moreover of defending them against the pressure of the barbarians, and therefore turned their eyes to the political power of the West, represented by Pepin the Short and by Charlemagne. What they keenly felt and what would constitute the object of their protests over the centuries was the spoliation and dismemberment, to the advantage of Constantinople, of the Roman patriarchate in the East, decreed by Leo the Isaurian in 732. - See plate XCV.