What is Byzantine iconoclasm?

What is Byzantine iconoclasm?

1. The word was not known until the 16th century, and was not associated with Byzantium until the mid 20th century

2. The Arab conquests had far reaching consequences not only in Byzantine military and political spheres, but also for Byzantine social and cultural practice = iconography

3. Terminology

   • Iconoclast - 'breaker of images'
     • Always a negative term in the primary sources - accusations of heresy e.g. Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nikaia 787
   • Iconophile, 'lover of images'
   • Iconoclasm is the word used to mean the great debate about the role of religious images that occupied the Byzantine world from the early 7th to mid 9th century
   • Iconomachy - Byzantine word for 'image struggle'

4. Chronology

   • The role of religious imagery became sufficiently important to warrant church legislation regulating its use in 691
     • Justinian II took to innovative step of moving his own portrait on the reverse side of coinage
       • By 720s the new power of images provoked a negative reactions strong enough to leave traces in the historical sources, the image struggle had begun
         • The early years of iconomachy have left little trace in the written or archaeological evidence
           • 750s Constantine V imperial initiative to ban the production of religious portraits
             • The ban continued with Leo IV but was rescinded by the seventh ecumenical council held at Nikaia in 787
               • Immediate results of the repeal are unknown. Leo V reintroduced the ban on icons in emulation of Constantine V
                 • Restored in 843, and soon thereafter this restoration began to be celebrated anually as the feast of the 'Triumph of Orthodoxy' on the first Sunday of lent

5. The sources

   • The primary sources for the period between c.680 and c.850 are written documentation, 'art' and architecture and archaeological finds
     • The written documentation for the years of iiconomachy is often problematic for three main reasons
       • It is often highly polemical and prone to rhetoric exaggeration
         • After the Triumph of Orthodoxy much iconoclast writing was destroyed
           • All documentation written by early elite males