tinople destroyed by frequent and violent earthquakes. That this task was completed in his time is evidenced by the fact that many inscriptions on the towers of the inner walls of Constantinople bear the names of Leo and his son and co-emperor, Constantine."*

Iconoclasm. The origin of the movement and its first period. The Seventh Ecumenical Council.-The history of the iconoclastic movement falls into two periods. The first lasted from 726 to 780 and ended officially with the seventh Ecumenical Council; the second lasted from 813 to 843 and ended in the so-called "restoration of orthodoxy."

The study of the iconoclastic epoch affords great difficulties because of the present condition of sources. All the works of the iconoclasts, the imperial decrees, the acts of the iconoclastic councils of the year 753-54 and 815, the theological treatises of the iconbreakers, etc., were destroyed by the triumphant image-worshipers./ Some survivals of iconoclastic literature are known to us only by fragments introduced into the works of the image-worshipers for the purpose of refuting them. Thus, the decree of the iconoclastic council of 753-54 has been preserved in the acts of the seventh Ecumenical Council, though perhaps not in its complete original form. The decree of the council of 815 has been discovered in one of the treatises of Patriarch Nicephorus, while numerous fragments of iconoclastic literature are found in the polemic and theological treatises of the antagonists of the movement. Particularly interesting in this respect are the three famous Treatises Against Those Who Depreciate the Holy Images, of the renowned theologian and hymn-writer, John Damascene (of Damascus), a contemporary of the first two iconoclastic emperors. In order to disseminate their ideas, the iconoclasts sometimes resorted to the writing of spurious works. Thus, one of their letters which they ascribed to Epiphanius of Cyprus of the fourth century related how Epiphanius tore a church curtain (velum) with the image of Jesus Christ or one of the saints, because "the human image hung in the church against the authority of the

See A. van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople (London, 1899), pp. 98-99, and the illustration between these pages.

55 Iconoclast, the Greek word for "icon-breaker"; iconodule, "icon-worshiper."

Scriptures." We must keep in mind, then, that the surviving sources on iconoclasm are biased by hostility to the movement; hence in later times scholars have differed greatly in their estimate of the iconoclastic period.

Scholars have turned their attention first of all to the question of the causes for the movement against images, somewhat difficult of comprehension in the eighth and ninth centuries, which lasted with some intervals for over one hundred years with very serious consequences to the Empire. Some students of this period have seen in the policy of the iconoclastic emperors religious causes, while others have believed that the causes were chiefly of a political nature. It was thought that Leo III determined to destroy images because he hoped that this measure would remove one of the chief obstacles to a closer relationship of the Christians with the Jews and Muhammedans, who disapproved of icons. He is credited with believing that a closer religious kinship with these two denominations would facilitate their subjugation to the Empire. A very thorough study of the iconoclastic period has been made by the wellknown Greek historian, Paparrigopoulo, whose biased views with regard to the Ecloga have been pointed out elsewhere in this work. According to him it is incorrect to apply the term "iconoclastic" to this epoch because it does not fully define the period. His belief is that parallel with the religious reform which condemned images, prohibited relics, reduced the number of monasteries, and yet left the basic dogmas of the Christian faith intact, there was also a social and political reform. It was the intention of the iconoclastic emperors to take public education out of the hands of the clergy. These rulers acted, not from personal or dynastic whims, but on the basis of mature and extended deliberations, with a clear understanding of the needs of society and the demands of public opinion. They were supported by the most enlightened element of society, by the majority of the high clergy, and by the army. The final failure of the iconoclastic reforms should be attributed to the fact that there were still many people devotedly attached to the old faith, and hence extremely antagonistic to the new reforms. This group in

56 See D. Serruys, in the Comptes Rendus de L'Académie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres (1904), I, 361-63. The text of the letter, Migne, Patr. Graeca, 43, col. 390.

cluded chiefly the common people, women, and the enormous number of monks. Leo III was apparently unable to educate the people in the new spirit.57 Such, in brief, are the views of Paparrigopoulo with regard to this epoch; but there is no doubt that this Greek historian is not justified in regarding the reformatory activities of the emperors of the eighth century as a remarkable attempt at a social, political, and religious revolution. Still, he was the first of scholars to point out the complexity and importance of the iconoclastic period, thus inducing others to pay closer attention to this epoch. Others (Schwarzlose) believe that the iconoclastic policy of the emperors was prompted by both religious and political considerations, with a decided predominance of the latter; they maintain that Leo III, desirous of being the sole autocratic ruler in all aspects of life, hoped, by prohibiting the worship of images, to liberate the people from the strong influence of the church, which used image-worship as one of its strongest tools in securing the allegiance of the laity. Leo's final ideal was to attain unlimited power over a religiously united people. The religious life of the Empire was to be regulated by the iconoclastic policy of the emperors, which was intended to aid these rulers in the realization of their political ideals "surrounded by the halo of reformatory zeal." "58 In more recent times some scholars (the Frenchman Lombard, for instance) have begun to view iconoclasm as a purely religious reform which aimed to arrest "the progress of the revival of paganism" in the form of excessive image-worship, and restore Christianity to its original purity." Lombard believes that this religious reform developed parallel with the political changes, but had a history of its own.59 The French Byzantine scholar, Bréhier, called particular attention to the fact that iconoclasm involves two distinctly different questions: (1) the habitually discussed question of image-worship itself, and (2) the problem of the legality of religious art, i.e., the question as to whether or not it was permissible to resort to art as a means of de

57 Paparrigopoulo, Histoire de la civilisation hellénique, pp. 188-91. The same views were developed by the author earlier in the third volume of his History of the Greek People, written in Greek.

4

5 K. Schwarzlose, Der Bilderstreit (Gotha, 1890), pp. 42, 46, 48, 50.

50 A. Lombard, Études d'histoire byzantine: Constantin V, empereur des Romains (Paris, 1902), pp. 105, 124, 127, 128.

picting the supernatural world, and whether the artist had any right to represent the Saints, the Holy Virgin, and Jesus Christ in art. In other words, this French scholar brought to the fore the question of the influence of iconoclasm upon Byzantine art.60 Finally, in more recent years C. N. Uspensky, in his study of this period, transferred the center of gravity from iconoclasm to the policy of the government against the rise and growth of monasterial landownership. He writes:

Leo's administrative measures were basically and essentially directed from the very beginning against the monasteries, which toward the eighth century came to occupy a very unnatural position in the empire. In its fundamental aims the policy of Leo III was not based upon any religious considerations, but the persecuted monastic groups, the defenders of monastic feudalism, found it to their advantage to transfer the dispute to theological grounds in order to be able to claim that the activity of the emperors was atheistic and heretical, thus discrediting the movement and undermining the confidence of the masses in their emperor. The true nature of the movement was thus skilfully disguised and can be rediscovered only with very great effort.

61

In view of all that has been said, it is quite evident that the iconoclastic movement was an extremely complex phenomenon, which it is not yet possible to rescue from obscurity, because of the state of the sources pertaining to it.62

In the first place, it is interesting to note that all the iconoclastic emperors were of eastern origin: Leo III and his dynasty were Isaurians, or perhaps Syrians; the restorers of iconoclasm in the ninth century were Leo V, an Armenian, and Michael II and his son Theophilus, born in the Phrygian province of central Asia Minor. If we turn now to the restorers of image-worship, we notice the following: (1) both times icon-worship was reinstated by women— Irene and Theodora; (2) Irene was of Greek descent, while Theodora came from Paphlagonia in Asia Minor, a province on the coast of the Black Sea bordering Bithynia and at no great distance from the capital; in other words, she likewise did not come from the cen60 L. Bréhier, La querelle des images (Paris, 1904), pp. 3-4.

61 C. N. Uspensky, Outlines in the History of Byzantium, p. 213 (in Russian); see also p. 237.

62 The most recent surveys of the iconoclastic movement have been made by H. Leclercq, in the Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne, VII (1926), under the word "Images" (cols. 180-302), and by Th. I. Uspensky, in the second volume of his History of the Byzantine Empire (Leningrad, 1927), pp. 22-53, 89-109, 157-74 (in Russian).

tral parts of the peninsula. The place of the origin of the iconoclastic rulers cannot be viewed as accidental. The eastern birth of these emperors may aid in reaching a clearer understanding of both their part in the movement and the meaning of the movement itself.

The opposition to image-worship in the eighth and ninth centuries was not an entirely new and unexpected movement. It had already gone through a long period of evolution. Christian art in representing the human figure in mosaics, fresco, sculpture, or carving had for a long time unsettled the minds of many deeply religious people by its resemblance with the practices of forsaken paganism. At the very beginning of the fourth century one of the Spanish councils had ruled "that there must be no pictures (picturas) in the church, that the walls should have no images of that which is revered and worshipped" (ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur).83

In the fourth century, when Christianity received legal sanction and later became the state religion, the churches were beginning to be embellished with images. It was in the fourth and fifth centuries that image-worship rose and developed in the Christian church. The confusion with regard to this practice persisted. The church historian of the fourth century, Eusebius of Caesarea, refers to the worship of images of Jesus Christ and the apostles Peter and Paul as "a habit of the Gentiles." In the fifth century one of the Syrian bishops had advocated the denunciation of icons before he was ordained to his high post. In the sixth century there was a serious upheaval in Antioch directed against the worship of pictures, and in Edessa the rioting soldiers flung stones at the miraculous image of Christ. We also know of instances of attacks upon images and of the destruction of some icons in the seventh century. In connection with the instances of the assault on images in Western Europe it is interesting to note the letter of Pope Gregory I the Great, at the end of the sixth century, to the bishop of Massilia (Marseilles), who ordered that all icons be removed from the churches and destroyed. The Pope, while praising the bishop for his zeal in

63 Mansi, Conc. Coll., II, 11 (Concilium Liberitanum, par. XXXVI). On a different interpretation of this text, see Leclercq, in the Dict. d'archéologie chrétienne, VII (1), col. 215. But the text is clear.

64 Eusebii, Historia Ecclesiastica, VII, 18, 4.