Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Iconoclastic epoch (717-867)

Religious controversies and the first period of Iconoclasm 

Page 6

Meanwhile image-worship had spread very widely and grown very strong. Images of Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin, and various saints, as well as pictures of scenes from the Old and New Testaments, were used in profusion for decorating Christian temples. The images placed in various churches of this period were either mosaics, frescoes, or carvings in ivory, wood, or bronze in other words, they were both painted images and statue images, while many small pictures were reproduced in illuminated manuscripts (miniatures). Particularly great was the reverence for the so-called icons not made by human hands, which, in the belief of the faithful, were supposed to possess miraculous powers. Images found their way into family life, for icons were sometimes chosen as godfathers for children, and embroidered images of saints decorated the parade dress of the Byzantine aristocracy. The toga of one of the senators bore embroidered pictures representing the history of the entire life of Jesus Christ.

The image-worshipers sometimes took the adoration of pictures too literally, adoring not the person or the idea represented by the image, but the image itself or the material of which it was made. This fact was a great temptation for many of the faithful, to whom this adoration of inanimate objects appealed because of its kinship with pagan practices. In the capital, according to N. P. Kondakov, there was at the same time a characteristic increase in the number of monasteries, monastic communes, and convents of all kinds which multiplied very rapidly and reached incredible proportions by the end of the eighth century (perhaps, more correctly, toward the eighth century). In the opinion of I. D. Andreev, the number of Byzantine monks in the iconoclastic period may be estimated without any exaggeration at 100,000. Remembering, said this scholar, that in Russia of today (this is written in 1907) with its 120,000,000 population spread over a vast territory, there are only about 40,000 monks and nuns, it is easy to imagine how dense must have been the net of monasteries covering the comparatively small territory of the Byzantine Empire.

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