The dispute over the religious veneration of figural images of Christ, the Virgin, the saints and the angels was the principal internal controversy of the eastern Empire from the early eighth to the mid-ninth century, and one of the substantial doctrinal-political confrontations of the medieval Christian world. The dispute is misunderstood when read as a purely theological question: it was substantially also a question of imperial-ecclesiastical relations, of monastic-secular power, of cultural-confessional self-identification against the Islamic and the Jewish neighbours, of the imperial revenue (the monasteries that defended the icons owned a substantial proportion of imperial land), and of the doctrinal-philosophical heritage of late antiquity. The two iconoclast periods — 726–787 under Leo III and Constantine V (the Isaurian dynasty) and 815–843 under Leo V, Michael II and Theophilus (the Amorian dynasty) — produced a hundred and seventeen years of substantial religious-political conflict before the final restoration of the icons under the Empress Theodora in 843.
The theology of the image
The doctrinal question was whether the visual representation of holy persons constituted a legitimate object of religious veneration or an idolatrous violation of the Old-Testament prohibition of graven images. The iconophile position — substantially developed by John of Damascus (c. 675–749) and the Second Council of Nicaea (787) — was that the Incarnation of Christ as God-made-man had substantially sanctified the representation of holy persons in physical form, that the veneration directed at the image ascended to the prototype, and that the visual icon was the substantial visual equivalent of the verbal Scripture. The iconoclast position — substantially developed by Constantine V in his Peuseis ("Questions") of around 750 and codified by the Council of Hieria of 754 — was that any attempt to circumscribe the divine nature of Christ in a physical image either denied his divinity (if it depicted only the human nature) or improperly conflated the two natures (if it claimed to depict both), and that the proper Christian visual culture was substantially abstract and non-figural.
The political dimension
The substantial political dimension was the imperial-ecclesiastical balance of power. The iconoclast emperors of the Isaurian dynasty — Leo III (717–741), Constantine V (741–775) and Leo IV (775–780) — were substantially successful military emperors who had stabilised the Anatolian frontier against the Arabs, conducted substantial administrative reform, and exercised substantial caesaropapist control over the imperial church. The iconoclast policy was, at one level of analysis, the substantial assertion of imperial authority against the substantial autonomy of the monastic establishments and the patriarchal administration. The iconophile resistance — particularly the substantial monastic resistance led by Theodore the Studite (759–826) and the Studium monastery at Constantinople — was correspondingly the substantial defence of ecclesiastical autonomy against imperial encroachment.
The first iconoclast period (726–787)
The substantial occasion of the policy was Leo III's edict of around 726 ordering the removal of the icon of Christ over the Chalke gate of the imperial palace, followed by a sequence of progressively more substantial measures: the imperial edict of 730 mandating the destruction of religious images in churches, the substantial conflict with Pope Gregory II at Rome (which substantially contributed to the eventual breach between the imperial church and the Roman papacy), the Council of Hieria of 754 (under Constantine V) which formally condemned image-veneration, the substantial persecution of iconophile monks during the 760s and 770s, and the substantial expropriation of monastic property.
The first iconoclast period was substantially terminated by the regency of the Empress Irene for her young son Constantine VI in the 780s. The Second Council of Nicaea, convened in 787 under Irene's direction, formally rehabilitated image-veneration and condemned the Council of Hieria. The substantial restoration was, however, fragile: Irene's substantial political missteps, her substantial conflicts with the army (which was substantially iconoclast in sympathy), her substantial blinding and deposition of her own son Constantine VI in 797 (the only substantial case of mother-on-son violence in the imperial succession), and her own deposition in 802 by the finance minister Nicephorus, set the substantial conditions for an iconoclast revival under the Amorian dynasty.
The second iconoclast period (815–843)
The substantial occasion of the revival was the substantial military defeat of Michael I by the Bulgar khan Krum at Versinikia in June 813, which produced the substantial political assessment among the army leadership that the iconophile policy had brought substantial divine disfavour on the imperial military. Leo V the Armenian, who deposed Michael I a month later, restored the iconoclast position by the Council of 815. The substantial second iconoclast period under Leo V (813–820), Michael II the Amorian (820–829) and Theophilus (829–842) was less violent in its persecutions than the first — substantially because the iconophile monasteries had learned to operate substantially clandestinely, and substantially because the political-religious passions had substantially diminished. The substantial doctrinal controversies of the period were prosecuted by a substantially smaller cast of substantial figures — Theodore the Studite and the Patriarch Nicephorus on the iconophile side, John VII the Grammarian on the iconoclast side — and produced substantial pamphlet literature but limited substantial popular violence.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy
The substantial second restoration of the icons was effected by the Empress Theodora, the widow of Theophilus and the regent for her young son Michael III, in March 843. The substantial liturgical commemoration of the restoration — the "Triumph of Orthodoxy", celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox calendar — has been observed every year since 843 and continues to be observed by the Eastern Orthodox churches. The substantial doctrinal-confessional content of the Triumph of Orthodoxy synaxarion — which lists the heretics and heresies that the substantial Orthodox tradition has condemned — has substantially defined the boundaries of the Orthodox confessional identity from 843 to the present.
The legacy
The substantial cultural-religious consequence of the iconoclast controversies was the substantial standardisation of the Orthodox visual tradition that emerged from the second restoration: the highly stylised, two-dimensional, theologically-disciplined icon tradition that the surviving sixth-century Sinai monastery images and the substantial post-843 Byzantine production substantially exemplify. The substantial ecclesiastical-political consequence was the substantial consolidation of the patriarchal-monastic establishment as a substantially autonomous force in the imperial state, capable of resisting imperial policy on doctrinal matters — a substantial precedent that would matter throughout the subsequent eight hundred years of the Empire's history.
The substantial political consequence for the relationship between the eastern Empire and the Roman papacy was the substantial estrangement that the controversies had produced, and which the Carolingian alliance of Pope Leo III with Charlemagne (December 800) had substantially formalised. The substantial coronation of Charlemagne as a substantively rival Roman emperor in the West was the substantial Roman papal response to the perceived heresy of the iconoclast eastern empire. The substantial subsequent division between the Latin and Greek churches — which would crystallise in the 1054 schism — has its substantial origins in the iconoclast controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries.
End of Chapter IV