Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Iconoclastic epoch (717-867)

Religious controversies and the first period of Iconoclasm 

Page 5

In western Europe the bishop of Massilia (Marseilles) at the end of the sixth century ordered that all icons be removed from the churches and destroyed. Pope Gregory I the Great wrote to him praising him for his zeal in advocating that nothing created by human hands should serve as an object of adoration (nequid manufactum adorari posset), but at the same time reprimanding him for the destruction of the images since thereby he had taken away all chance for historical education from people who are ignorant of letters but could at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books. In another letter to the same bishop the pope wrote: In that thou forbadest them to be adored, we altogether praise thee; but we blame thee for having broken them To adore a picture is one thing (picturam adorare), but to learn through the story of the picture what is to be adored, is another. In the opinion of Gregory the Great and many others, then, images served as a means of popular education.

The iconoclastic tendencies of the eastern provinces were somewhat influenced by the Jews, whose faith forbade image-worship, and who at times attacked any form of such worship with great violence. A similar influence began to be exerted from the second half of the seventh century by the Muslims, who, guided by the words of the Koran, Images are an abomination of the work of Satan (V. 92), viewed icon-worship as a form of idolatry. It is frequently stated by historians that the Arabian caliph Yazid II issued a decree in his state three years before Leo's edict by which he prescribed the destruction of images in the churches of his Christian subjects; the authenticity of this story, without much basis for the doubt, is sometimes questioned. In any event, Muhammedan influence upon the eastern provinces should be taken into consideration in any study of the anti-image movement. One chronicler refers to Emperor Leo as the Saracen-minded (σαρακηνόφρων), although in reality there is very little basis for claiming that he was directly influenced by Islam. Finally, one of the widely known Eastern medieval sects, the Paulicians, who lived in the east-central part of Asia Minor, was also strongly opposed to image-worship. Briefly, in the eastern Byzantine provinces of Asia Minor there had grown up by the time of Leo III a strong iconoclastic movement. One of the Russian church historians, A. P. Lebedev, wrote: It may be positively asserted that the number of iconoclasts before the iconoclastic period (in the eighth century) was large, and that they were a force of which the church itself had ample reason to be afraid. One of the main centers of the iconoclastic movement was Phrygia, one of the central provinces in Asia Minor.

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