The Language of Images: the Rise of Icons and Christian Representation

Abstract

One has to be brave to return to the subject of Byzantine Iconoclasm, a subject which, we may feel, has been done to death. But the division in Byzantine society which lasted off and on for over a century, from 726 to the ‘restoration of orthodoxy’ in 843, was so profound that any Byzantine historian must at some time try to grapple with it. This is especially so if one is trying to understand the immediately preceding period, from the Persian invasions of the early seventh century to the great sieges of Constantinople by the Arabs in 674-8 and 717. It is well recognized by historians that this was a time of fundamental social, economic, and administrative change, which coincided with, but was by no means wholly caused by, the loss of so much Byzantine territory to the Arabs. However, the connection, if any, of this process of change with the social and religious upheaval known as Iconoclasm still leaves much to be said; indeed, no simple connection is likely in itself to provide an adequate explanation. In this paper I want to explore further some of the background to the crisis, without attempting here to provide a general explanation for Iconoclasm itself. I shall not venture beyond the first phase of Iconoclasm, which ended with the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, and after which the argument is somewhat different. Indeed, I shall be focusing here not even on the period known as ‘first Iconoclasm’, but mainly on the preceding period, when the issues inherent in the controversy were already, and increasingly, making themselves felt. Though we shall inevitably be concerned with some of the arguments brought against icons by their opponents, it is the place of images themselves in the context of the pre-Iconoclastic period which will be the main issue. Finally, while I want to offer a different way of reading the rise of icons, I do not pretend that it is the only one, or even possibly the most important. I do suggest, though, that it can help us to make sense of some of the issues that were involved.