Byzantine Iconoclasm: The Eighth- and Ninth-Century Dispute over Religious Images

Byzantine Iconoclasm was a prolonged dispute over the place of religious images in Christian life and worship. It unfolded within the Byzantine Empire during two main periods, approximately from 726 to 787 and from 814 to 843. The controversy concerned images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, angels and saints, especially painted panels, mosaics and other representations used in churches and private devotion.

Emperors restricted image veneration during the two periods, while councils and regencies restored it in 787 and 843. Opponents invoked prohibitions on idolatry; defenders distinguished honour paid to an image from worship owed to God. Most surviving narratives were written by defenders of images.

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Why images had become a religious question

By the sixth and seventh centuries, Christian devotion commonly included appeals to Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints for intercession. Relics provided contact with holy persons or events, while images offered visible points of reference in churches, homes and public spaces. Mosaics and paintings could be approached in prayer, honoured with gestures and understood as mediating access to the person represented. Some images were believed to have been made miraculously, without human intervention. These acheiropoieta, or images said to be “not made by human hands,” were treated as especially powerful signs of divine approval.

Images of Christ, Mary (the Theotokos, or “God-bearer”) and saints accompanied prayers and received gestures of honour. Theologians debated whether that honour reached the holy person represented or treated a material object as divine.

The debate was also shaped by the Christian understanding of Christ’s incarnation. Christians believed that the divine Word had become human in Jesus. Supporters of images argued that this visible human existence made it possible to depict Christ. Opponents answered that an image could not represent Christ’s divine and human natures correctly: it either separated them or confused them.

The opposing understandings of religious images

Arguments against images

Those who opposed religious images appealed above all to the biblical prohibition of carved images and to warnings against idolatry. They argued that Christians had been led to honour created matter instead of the Creator. In their view, paintings and other lifeless representations could not contain the divine presence and should not be used to depict Christ or the saints for religious purposes. The iconoclast definition associated with the council held at Hieria in 754 condemned images made from material and colour and urged Christians to represent holiness through virtuous lives rather than through painted forms.

The most difficult case for this position was Christ. An image made from wood and pigment could show only visible human features, not the divine nature that could neither be seen nor enclosed. Yet an image that claimed to show both natures risked confusing them. Iconoclast writers therefore treated the problem of Christ’s representation as proof that images were theologically inadequate. They also presented the rejection of images as a return to what they regarded as the strict practice of the early church, citing scriptural commands and earlier Christian objections to religious pictures.

Iconoclast arguments concerned representations of holy persons used in veneration. Imperial portraits, crosses and some secular scenes continued to be made under governments that opposed sacred images.

Arguments for veneration

Supporters of images distinguished between latreia, the worship due to God alone, and honour or veneration offered to sacred images. The image itself was not a deity, they argued, and the material object was not worshipped as if it were divine. Honour shown to an image passed to the person represented. This distinction was central to the decision of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which permitted the veneration of images while reserving true worship for God.

Iconophile theologians also argued that the biblical prohibition against images could not be applied without qualification after the incarnation. Since Christ had appeared in visible human form, an image could represent the person who had lived as a human being. They pointed to biblical commands for the making of cherubim and other figures in the furnishings of the Tabernacle as evidence that not every religious image was forbidden. They further distinguished an image of a real holy person from an idol representing a false god.

John of Damascus, a monk and writer living outside Byzantine imperial territory, expressed the material argument particularly clearly. He maintained that he did not worship matter itself, but honoured the Creator who had used material things in the work of salvation. In this view, ink, painted colour, wood, the cross and the body of Christ could all be discussed within a Christian understanding of material creation and divine action. Theodore the Studite and Patriarch Nikephoros later developed related defences of images.

Defenders appealed to Christian tradition and miracles attributed to images. They also argued that doctrine should be decided in church councils. These claims challenged intervention by the imperial government and the church.

The first period of iconoclasm

Letters of Patriarch Germanos record early concerns about images among bishops, including Constantine of Nakoleia and Thomas of Klaudioupolis. Later accounts connect Leo III’s policy with military reversals and an Aegean eruption in 726; the timing and causes of his first measures remain uncertain.

Traditional accounts describe the removal of an image of Christ from the Chalke Gate of the Great Palace in Constantinople between about 726 and 730. The episode is recorded in sources written later and hostile to the emperors associated with iconoclasm, so its details require caution. Leo is also associated with an edict of 730 against the veneration of religious images. Patriarch Germanos either resigned or was deposed after opposing the policy. In the western provinces, Pope Gregory III held Roman synods that condemned the imperial position. Leo responded by taking papal estates in Calabria, Sicily and Illyricum from papal administration and placing them under the authority of Constantinople.

Constantine V, emperor from 741 to 775, summoned the council of Hieria in 754. It condemned the religious use of images and claimed ecumenical authority. The major patriarchates were not represented, and later councils rejected its decisions. Its acts survive mainly through quotations by opponents.

Under Constantine V, iconoclast policy could involve the removal or alteration of images and action against some monasteries and monks. Iconophile accounts describe confiscations, the destruction of relics and images, secularisation of monasteries, forced public humiliation and persecution. Some monks resisted imperial restrictions and left areas under effective government control. Others followed the policy. Cyprus maintained traditions of images, while evidence of iconoclast allegiance also survives from western areas such as the Cyclades.

After Constantine V, Leo IV was less rigorous in enforcement. When he died in 780, his wife Irene became regent for their son Constantine VI. Irene called a council intended to restore image veneration. A first meeting in Constantinople in 786 was disrupted by soldiers loyal to the iconoclast position, so the council reconvened at Nicaea in 787.

The Second Council of Nicaea and the first restoration

The Second Council of Nicaea rejected the decisions of Hieria and is recognised by Orthodox and Catholic traditions as the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Papal representatives attended, and the council’s decree permitted images of Christ, the Theotokos, angels and saints in churches. It specified that these images should receive honour or veneration, comparable in this respect to the honour given to the cross, the Gospels and other sacred objects, while worship in the strict sense belonged to the divine nature alone.

Image veneration continued under Irene’s successor Nikephoros I and the following short reigns. Leo V’s government subsequently reversed the council’s settlement.

The second period of iconoclasm

The second period began under Leo V the Armenian. The Byzantine Empire had suffered severe defeats by the Bulgarians, including the death of Emperor Nikephoros I in battle and the abdication of Michael I Rangabe. These reverses encouraged the belief that military failure reflected divine displeasure. In 813, shortly before Leo’s accession, soldiers reportedly opened the tomb of Constantine V at the Church of the Holy Apostles and appealed to the dead emperor to save the empire.

Leo consulted clergy, monks and senators and commissioned an examination of earlier writings. His government revived the iconoclast position, and in 815 a synod held at Hagia Sophia made the restoration of iconoclasm official. Patriarch Nikephoros opposed the policy and was removed. The new government also replaced the image at the Chalke Gate with a cross.

Leo V was assassinated in 820, but the policy continued under Michael II. In a letter to the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious, Michael criticised the growth of image veneration and practices that treated icons as religious sponsors or godparents at baptism. Under his son Theophilos, opposition to images remained official.

Theophilos died while his son was still a minor, and his wife Theodora became regent. In 843 she restored the veneration of images at a council held in Constantinople. Theodora did not allow her deceased husband to be condemned, an arrangement that helped make the restoration politically possible. The decision ended the second period of official iconoclasm. The first Sunday of Great Lent was subsequently associated in the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic traditions with the “Triumph of Orthodoxy,” commemorating the restoration of image veneration.

Surviving accounts of the controversy

Theophanes the Confessor and Patriarch Nikephoros wrote from the iconophile position. The Life of Stephen the Younger presents persecution under Constantine V through a martyr’s biography. These works preserve accounts of policy and resistance from the side that eventually prevailed.

John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite and Nikephoros preserve defences of images. Iconoclast arguments survive chiefly as quotations in rebuttals, including material from Hieria cited at Nicaea in 787. The council of 754 has no complete independent surviving record.

Changes in churches and relations with the West

Iconoclasm reduced the number of surviving Byzantine religious images from before the controversy, although the scale and distribution of losses cannot be measured precisely. Some churches received crosses or other non-figurative decoration in place of images of holy persons. The plain cross in the apse of Hagia Irene in Constantinople is an important surviving example associated with this change. At Nicaea, photographs made before the destruction of the Church of the Dormition in 1922 recorded successive changes involving an image of the Theotokos, a cross and a later image of the Theotokos.

The dispute also widened the separation between Constantinople and Rome. The papacy consistently supported the veneration of images, while Byzantine emperors attempted to regulate the church’s doctrine and administration. Imperial measures transferred papal territories in southern Italy and Illyricum to the jurisdiction of Constantinople and contributed to the breakdown of older political relationships. In the West, Pope Stephen II’s alliance with the Frankish kingdom marked a further shift away from dependence on Byzantine imperial authority.

The settlement of 843 authorised veneration of religious images within Byzantine worship. It restored commissions for icons and church decoration, including mosaic and material objects.