Constantine V

Constantine V

1. 740s were traumatic. Constantine appeared to agree with the iconoclasts.

   • He wrote and delivered his Questions
     • Not much of the text survives but the outline is clear
       • Christ's two natures, human and divine, could not be separated. portraits of Christ are thus heretically divided his two natures.
       • The second Question maintained that only the Eucharist, not paintings, presented the real image of Christ

2. The Iconoclast Synod of 754

   • He called a church snyod to make this policy official
     • According to the Synod, Christ, the Virgin and the saints could not be represented in images for two distinct reasons
       • 1) portraits of Christ would separate his human from his divine nature
       • 2) Portraits of the Virgin and Saints insulted their memory, for they lived eternally besides God
       • Synod did not reject the honoring of the Virgin or the saints and their relics

3. Synod of 754 cont.

   • Emphasized the importance of the church as an institution
     • Remove people's personal relationship with the Saints, channeled through relics and icons
       • insist that people use clergy as their intermediaries

4. The destruction - and construction - of images

   • Little evidence for any actual destruction
     • the Horos forbade acts of vandalism against ecclesiastical furnishings
       • The only surviving evidence for deliberate iconoclast activity is all of dubious authenticity
   • Only reliable evidence of deliberate iconoclast destruction appears in the council hall
     • Hagia Sophia - crosses replaces busts of saints and their identifying inscriptions were picked
   • Only other preserved information was the replacement of a mosaic portrait of the Virgin and child with a cross
     • In a now destroyed monastic church of the Kiomesis
       • faint outlines were still available till the church burnt down in 1922 and are still visible in photos that remain
   • Later sources accuse the iconoclasts of destroying many other images
     • Life of Stephen the younger is a major source for Constantine V's purported destruction of religious imagery
       • Here the undeniable aim of the author to blacken the reputation of Constantine V leads its author to rhetorical excesses that simply aren't credible
   • Both pre-iconoclast imagery that survives today and textual references to icons indicates that much religious representation came through Constantine's reign unscathed

5. Western Response to the Council of 754

   • The Letters of Pope Paul I to king Pippin emphasise the efforts he had made to persuade Constantine V that he was wrong to ban religious imagery
     • Under Pope Paul I and Stephen III, however, two synods condemned Contantine V's image policy
       • Pope Stephen III intensified papal ties with the Franks and loosened those with the Empire

6. Persecution of the Monks and Monasteries (Stephen the Younger) - little evidence

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