Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Iconoclastic epoch (717-867)

Religious controversies and the first period of Iconoclasm 

Page 4

In the first place, all the iconoclastic emperors were of eastern origin: Leo III and his dynasty were Isaurians, or perhaps Syrians; the restorers of iconoclasm in the ninth century were Leo V, an Armenian, and Michael II and his son Theophilus, born in the Phrygian province of central Asia Minor. The restorers of image-worship were both women, Irene and Theodora, Irene of Greek descent and Theodora from Paphlagonia in Asia Minor, a province on the coast of the Black Sea bordering Bithynia and at no great distance from the capital. Neither of them, that is, came from the central parts of the peninsula. The place of origin of the iconoclastic rulers cannot be viewed as accidental. The fact of their eastern birth may aid in reaching a clearer understanding of both their part in the movement and the meaning of the movement itself.

The opposition to image-worship in the eighth and ninth centuries was not an entirely new and unexpected movement. It had already gone through a long period of evolution. Christian art in representing the human figure in mosaics, fresco, sculpture, or carving had for a long time unsettled the minds of many deeply religious people by its resemblance to the practices of forsaken paganism. At the very beginning of the fourth century the Council of Elvira (in Spain) had ruled that there must be no pictures (picturas) in the church, that the walls should have no images of that which is revered and worshipped (ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur).

In the fourth century, when Christianity received legal sanction and later became the state religion, the churches were beginning to be embellished with images. In the fourth and fifth centuries image-worship rose and developed in the Christian church. Confusion with regard to this practice persisted. The church historian of the fourth century, Eusebius of Caesarea, referred to the worship of images of Jesus Christ and the apostles Peter and Paul as a habit of the Gentiles. Also in the fourth century Epiphanius of Cyprus related in a letter that he had torn in pieces a church curtain (velum) with the image of Jesus Christ or one of the saints, because it defiled the church. In the fifth century a Syrian bishop, before he was ordained to his high post, denounced icons. In the sixth century a serious upheaval in Antioch was directed against the worship of pictures, and in Edessa the rioting soldiers flung stones at the miraculous image of Christ. There were instances of attacks upon images and of the destruction of some icons in the seventh century.

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