III
THE ICONOCLAST STRUGGLE

 

FIRST WAVE

The Emperor Leo III, the Isaurian (717-740), and his son Constantine V (740-775) have gone down in the pages of history as the first of the 'iconoclast' Emperors, men who made war against the pictures of Christ and his saints. They were capable men and they were fortunate.

When in 717 the Saracens with a great fleet and army bore down upon Constantinople, the Saracen vessels were burnt by 'Greek fire', and the hardy children of the desert were frightened by the sight of snow. They were dispersed with heavy losses after besieging the city for a year, and their defeat was both a signal disaster for Islam and a splendid opening to the reign of Leo III. During his reign and that of his son, the Bulgars, like the Arabs, were severely checked, and the internal administration of the Empire was put upon a strong and permanent basis. Both, and especially Constantine V, disliked the monks on account of the wealth of the monasteries and their immunity from taxation. Both highly disapproved of the respect paid by the majority of the Greeks to the sacred icons or pictures, a respect which sometimes degenerated into grave superstitions, and Constantine V added to this disapproval his condemnation of the orthodox practice of invoking the prayers of the saints. Their suspicion of Byzantine forms of piety can largely be explained by the fact that Leo III was an Anatolian, and that iconoclastic tendencies were vigorous in the Asiatic provinces of the Empire. The half-Unitarian, half-Puritan sect of the Paulicians flourished among the Syrians and the Armenians, large numbers of whom were planted by Constantine V in Constantinople and also in Thrace. In the latter region remnants of the Paulicians remained as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. And in Asia the criticism of Jews and Muslims would be likely to make Christians peculiarly sensitive to the accusation of idolatry. In 732 the Muslim khalif, Yezid II, had actually issued an edict against the use of pictures in the Christian churches of his dominions.

The eruption of a volcano in 726 was considered by Leo III to be a token of a divine displeasure which he might avert by enacting that icons should be no longer venerated. They were to be removed or destroyed, and a picture of our Lord was taken from its place over the palace gate. The excitable populace broke out into a riot and the rioters were severely punished.

Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, refused to obey the Emperor’s orders and was deprived of his office, and replaced in 730 by an iconoclast named Anastasius. Greece and Italy were in a ferment, and Leo would have lost Italy if it had not been for the wisdom of Pope Gregory II.

Constantine V completed the work of Leo III by summoning a council of 338 bishops, held at the palace of Hieria on the Bosporus, in 753. They condemned the veneration of icons, and the Emperor followed up this condemnation by persecuting the recusants, who included in their number the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. Monasteries were secularized and even turned into barracks, monks were tortured or forced to marry nuns. The Abbot St. Stephen the Younger was done to death in the streets of Constantinople. And the new Patriarch, Constantine, who had shown sympathy with the martyr, was first exiled and then brought back to Constantinople, where he was scourged, shaven, rebaptized, carried backwards on an ass, and drawn through the Circus. He was finally beheaded and his body thrown into a sewer. Two years later (769) a Synod of the Lateran anathematized the opponents of the icons. Not only was the religious schism between Rome and the East for a time complete, but the Byzantines lost all their possessions in Italy except Venice and a few places in the south of the peninsula.

When Leo IV, son of Constantine V, died in 780, his widow, Irene, seized the opportunities afforded to her by the tender age of her son, Constantine VI. For years she skillfully intrigued against him, provoked his opposition, and finally ordered his eyes to be put out in 797. An Athenian by birth, she was able, ambitious, and unscrupulous. She was a fervent enemy of iconoclasm. Rome was on her side. A great Ecumenical Council (the Seventh) was convened at Constantinople. It was broken up by the imperial guards and Irene herself escaped with difficulty. The Council assembled again at Nicaea in Bithynia in 787 in the presence of the papal legates. The Council declared that the sacred pictures were to receive a 'relative veneration' and salutation of honor, and denied that they should be given divine worship (latreia). The honor to be paid to them was to consist in the acts of respect shown to the book of the Gospels, i.e. kissing with the bowed head, and surrounding with lights and incense.

Order was restored or imposed, but Irene was banished on the accession of Nicephorus I in 802. She retired with dignity and supported herself by spinning, but died in the August of 803

SECOND WAVE

The second iconoclastic controversy broke out after the accession of Leo V, the Armenian, in 813. He was convinced that the misfortunes of the Empire were caused by the idolatry of his subjects. For a time he cloaked his real convictions. But in 815 he began his religious campaign. A fresh Council was convoked which denounced Irene and called the icons 'idols', and the opposing party was harshly persecuted. This persecution was relaxed under the Emperor Michael II, 'the Stammerer', who was at heart an iconoclast, but it became more violent than ever under his son Theophilus (829-842). Monasteries were closed, prisons were filled, and champions of the icons were branded with red-hot irons. But neither his able administration of the Empire, nor the dazzling pomp which he affected at home, reconciled the people to this impolitic persecution. At his death the Empress Theodora became regent. Methodius, a monk who had been persecuted by Michael II, became Patriarch of Constantinople, the pictures were restored to honor, and on February the 19th, 843, a triumphal procession, headed by the Empress, marched through the streets of the capital to St. Sophia’s. In memory of the event the so-called 'Festival of Orthodoxy' was instituted throughout the Eastern Church. The dramatic struggle which had lasted more than one hundred years was brought to its close by Theodora, who completed the work of Irene.

Two reflections can be fitly made with regard to the inward nature of the struggle. The first is that it was by no means a mere question of the use of the ornamental decoration of churches. The veneration of the pictures of the saints was subsidiary to that of the pictures of Jesus Christ. And His pictures were venerated because they were regarded as a guarantee of the truth that He who is eternally divine became really, visibly, tangibly human. The use of icons was therefore orthodox, excluding on the one hand the Paulicianism which denied Christ’s personal Deity and the Monophysitism which minimized His manhood. The second reflection is that opposition to iconoclasm drew much of its strength from a determination to resist State interference with the doctrine and discipline of the Church. In this way the champions of the icons resembled the ecclesiastics who, at a rather later time in the West, resisted the practice of the monarchs who claimed the right of investing bishops with the insignia of the Episcopal office.

The above facts explain why St. John of Damascus, the last of the great Greek theologians, and St. Theodore of the Studium, the courageous monk of Constantinople, so firmly resisted the iconoclasts. The latter openly opposed Constantine VI for dismissing his wife Mary, and when Leo V tried to impose silence on religious questions, declared that he would rather have his tongue cut out than fail to bear testimony to the faith. He was banished in 815 and died in Bithynia in 826. From the point of view of dogma St. John of Damascus and St. Theodore of the Studium won the victory. But the patronage of orthodoxy by Theodora and her successors permanently increased the dependence of the Church upon the imperial throne, and in this respect crowned the work of the iconoclastic Emperors with success.

The relations between Rome and Constantinople were soon to be seriously imperiled once more. Questions concerning Christian morality and good discipline in high places proved to be as disruptive as those which concerned the manhood of Christ and the veneration of His pictures. And behind the new dis­putes which arose we can trace two distinct and even opposed attitudes towards the Papacy on the part of members of the Greek Church. The higher clergy and the governing officials were cold or lukewarm in their respect for pontiffs who were the mainstay of the Emperors of the West. And on the other hand the monks, who had been the enthusiastic defenders of the icons, and championed the complete liberty of the Church from State interference, believed that an effective guarantee of this liberty could be found in a close union of the Greek Church with the Roman. The ebb and flow of these opposing tendencies can be illustrated from the career of the celebrated Photius.