Iconoclasm
1. The beginnings of the history between Christianity and images
We live among images. As if it were obvious.
Photography marks a turning point in the modes of representation, their accessibility and their ease of reproduction: everything is an image (logos, advertisements, entertainment, etc.); even the radio is filmed.
Christianity is seen as a religion of images. “Images are the Bible of the illiterate,” Gregory the Great (540-604) is said to have said.
This false quote highlights the importance of the presence of images in Christian religious works.
At the beginning of Christianity, images were not popular: taking up the Jewish idea of non-representation to prevent idolatry, the first Christians used symbols such as the cross or the fish.
Early Christian graffiti from the Catacombs of Rome
From 313 and the Edict of Milan promulgated by Constantine which “decriminalized” the Christian religion, the cult developed throughout the empire.
It was therefore the Romans, with their specific culture and their relationship to images, who were going to convert and spread Christianity.
The Good Shepherd - Early Christian Sarcophagus
Greco-Roman civilization is fond of images and particularly of idealized representations of the gods and their episodes. Naturally, Christianity fits into this tradition.
The division of the Roman Empire into two, that of the East and the West, in 395 marked a political rupture which would lead, a few centuries later, to a religious rupture with the great Schism of the Eastern and Western churches in the year 1054.
Map of the Eastern Schism
Here two conceptions of religion, worship and images develop.
The eastern church is marked by icons, true portraits of the Virgin and Christ, made according to the Legend by Luke and... the angels ;-)
A divine image, it was the object of love and rejection; until its almost total destruction in the 8th century.
2. Jewish survival of the beginnings of Christianity.
For several centuries, a certain Jesus of Nazareth has been at the origin of a new religion: Christianity.
At first persecuted, the first Christians did not represent their religion with figurative images, following the prohibitions of the Old Testament. On Mount Sinai, Moses received the command:
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
The sentence is clear: any representation of the living is forbidden. God himself does not present himself in any form but through speech, the verb.
The first Christians followed this commandment: they developed a series of symbolic iconographic elements that coexisted with the Greco-Roman myths: on the one hand, because these elements were part of the cultural references of the time and on the other hand, to go “unnoticed” and try to avoid persecution.
Let us take the example of the good shepherd: also called Hermes Kriophoros, “ram-bearer”, “[…] nickname given, it is said, because he diverted a contagious disease from the city, by carrying a ram around the walls; this is why Calamis made the statue of Mercury carrying a ram on his shoulders.” (Pausanias). The why and how of this propriatory act have been lost but the iconography has remained:
Kouros Moscophorus of the Acropolis, 470 BC AD
The Good Shepherd, mosaic, Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome, late 3rd century.
The good shepherd is also one of the names by which Jesus is called by his disciples.
Image 3: Christian sarcophagus, mid-3rd century AD, Rome.
Already Yahweh is called “shepherd of Israel” [Psalms 80:1]. Logically, since Christianity is a continuation of Judaism - let us not forget that most of its disciples are Jewish - this image is taken up by the new religion.
The catacombs were the privileged places of the first Christians: hidden, they allowed the first faithful to practice their worship in secret. They developed a set of signs, recognizable and discreet: the fish, the olive tree, the bread, the branches, the vine, the dove and the boat. Each of them refers to particular episodes in the life of Christ.
Graffiti from the catacombs of Rome.
After the very harsh persecutions led by the Emperor Diocletian against the Christians, the Emperor Constantine, son of the Christian Helen, promoted in 313 the Edict of Milan which “decriminalized” Christianity thus allowing its development.
This is where the images of Christianity develop...
3. The Greco-Roman influence in the construction of the Christian image.
Christian art takes ancient Greco-Roman art as its tutor and allows new forms to grow.
The beginning of Christian or early Christian art is dated between the 1st and 6th centuries.
It first flourished in the funerary field: the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus dated 359 and currently in the Vatican Museum is one of the richest examples. Made of marble, it contains on its main face ten scenes from the Old and New Testaments, decorated with three other sketches on the sides.
The upper ones represent, from left to right, the Binding of Isaac, the arrest of Peter, Christ in glory, Christ led to Pontius Pilate and Pilate washing his hands. The lower ones represent, from left to right, Job in destitution and mourned by his relatives, original sin, Christ's entry into Jerusalem, Daniel in the lions' den and the arrest of Paul.
As the Christian faith expanded and separated from Judaism, Christian iconography flourished and developed along the lines of public monuments such as basilicas, which were originally the public places of Roman life (court, stock exchange, promenade).
The first images or “eikon” of Christ and his entourage appear. They take as models the famous funerary portraits of Fayoum: these portraits made in Egypt between the 1st and 3rd centuries, are exceptional due to their technique and the realism of the faces and details.
The icons, which developed in the continuity of Roman art, also took up imperial iconography with the figure of Christ Pantocrator (“master of all”).
Frescoes on the top of the southern dome of the esonarthex of the ancient Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, Istanbul, 5th century.
Christian art is closely linked to the context of its development: Greco-Roman art, a master in the representation of images and techniques (mosaic, sculpture, painting), sets the tone for religious representation.
As religion becomes more organized, the meaning of images and the conventions that support them are defined in sometimes rigid conventions, linked to the Legend of Saint Luke.
4. Eastern Christian art: legendary origins
If Western Christian art gives the image a primarily educational function, Eastern Christian art makes the icon a sacred image: through its beauty and its light, it allows the faithful to perceive an absolute, a vision of the invisible.
It allows the encounter between the faithful and the divine and thus becomes the expression of a living word, in the same way as the Holy Scriptures.
Although there are several legends that tell of their origins, their common point is that they are defined by the word “acheiropoiete”, which comes from Greek and means “not made by human hands”.
The first icon of Christ was sent by Christ himself to King Abgar V Ukhama in Edessa. The king was suffering so much that he asked Christ to heal him. Since the latter could not move, a servant of the king was to make his portrait but he did not succeed. Jesus himself then took a cloth, placed it on his face, imprinting his features on it. This cloth was called mandylion or image of Edessa. When the king looked at the precious icon, he was healed. Of the same type, we know the Shroud of Turin.
The Mandylion received by King Abgar.
Shroud of Turin.
Another story of an acheiropoietic image has been transmitted by oral tradition: Luke, attempting to paint the portrait of the Virgin and the child Jesus, finds himself unable to capture their divine essence. To help him, angels descend from heaven to finish the portrait. The “eikon” (“image”) is therefore a true portrait, which was able to capture the essence of the divine.
Luke would be the author of the Virgin Hodegetria, “who shows the way”. Mary, standing, holds the child Jesus in her left arm and with her right hand presents him as the path to follow. Jesus blesses with his right hand and holds a scroll in his left hand: he is the bearer of a new word, of a new teaching. The gesture of blessing takes up the Roman iconography of the gesture of speaking, from imperial representations.
Virgin Hodegetria
The different speaking gestures of Roman orators.
Icons of the Orantes type (praying with outstretched arms) are already widespread in the Roman Catacombs: alone or with Christ, they represent the power of the Church, of prayer, and of Mary as intercessor between the faithful and God.
Orante in the apse of St. Sophia Cathedral in kyiv
Orante of Yaroslavl around 1218
Finally, another type of icon is called “Eleousia”, which can be translated as “sweet love” or “sweet kiss”. It still represents the Virgin and Christ, but in a less hieratic posture, marked by the tenderness between mother and child. 
Vladimir Icon, Tretyakov Museum, Moscow, 12th century
The hieratic and static style of this iconographic type is explained by the mystical dimension of the work, considered by Christians as a true portrait of the Virgin and Christ. The conventions of this art are necessarily strict: they do not aim to be realistic but rather to bear witness to theological virtues, revealing the mystery of the incarnation…
5. The Nature of Christ, Nature of the Icon: Between Divine and Human
The figurative representation in Christianity is only possible thanks to the incarnation of God through Jesus Christ. This is called the hypostasis: in fact, Jesus is consubstantial with the Father, that is, they are both of the same substance (hypostasis) and of the same essence (ousia).
From the Council of Nicaea (380), theological debates on the nature of Christ resulted in the idea that Jesus, like God the Father, is uncreated - but engendered by the latter - and exists from all eternity.
The real question arises in the sensible world: the son is consubstantial with the father, so it is permissible to represent him. The incarnation authorizes and requires the figuration of Christ, made from the Father without image. What is represented is not the human being that is adored but rather the hypostasis, “as regulated by the symbol.”
In theory.
In practice, the acculturation of Christians among the gentiles from which they themselves come, and their traditions of worship, results in a big breakdown.
6. The beginnings of iconoclasm
From the 7th century onwards, part of the Byzantine population completely lost it: icons were scraped to pour a few crumbs into the mass wine; some works even became godfathers and godmothers of children...
In short, nothing is going well in the cult.
The icon is closely linked to the cult of relics: this very ancient belief, contact with holy figures transmits this sacred character to the mobile paleochristian objects. Reliquaries are decorated with pious images and by sliding, these images become sacred. In addition, the traditional cult of the emperor through portable images favors the veneration of icons.
Augustus Crowned, Marble Head, Former Campana Collection, Louvre Museum
That said, very strong opposition to images has existed since the beginning of Christianity, based on Old Testament prohibitions.
The influence of Islam (Hegira, 622), which also developed in opposition to animist cults where the image is very present, prohibits any representation of the living in places of worship, except for plant and geometric forms.
The first iconoclastic crisis, between 726 and 780, begins with an episode, surely legendary, of the emperor Leo III who is said to have replaced the image of the Christ of the Chalke (bronze door of the emperor's palace) with a cross.
Hagia Irene Church in Istanbul
Whether this event is true or not, it marks a change in the way of approaching God, thanks to the paradigm shift of the symbol.
It was this same Leo III who promulgated the first “iconoclastic edict”, which condemned the veneration of icons. The text has unfortunately been lost. The interference of the emperor in the cult, against the advice of the Patriarch of the time, is a demonstration of force of royal power.
6. Iconoclasm: a religious and imperial policy
Leo III fought against the veneration of images. But it was his son Constantine V who brought a new turn to the ban on images: he made iconoclasm the religious law of the Church and the Empire. From then on, images of Christ, the Virgin and the saints as well as their worship were forbidden.
Miniature from the Chludov Psalter showing John the Grammarian destroying an image of Christ, 9th century, Moscow
It was with great violence that Constantine V opposed the images and their defenders, who were very numerous among the clergy: the emperor organized ceremonies of public humiliation at the hippodrome, persecuted the monks and even had the patriarch of Constantinople executed in 767.
The images were destroyed, between the fight against idolatry and the political influence on religion. No Christian work prior to this period has been preserved. The oldest images date from the 6th century thanks to the position of the monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai, relatively spared by the clashes of the period.
Icon of Christ Pantocrator, 6th century
Unfortunately, no iconoclastic text has survived: the victors write history.
Theology is all well and good, but what lies behind this crisis is mostly the usual swindle: the emperor wants to seize the wealth of the Church.
But the old aristocracy of Constantinople did not appreciate the iconoclastic emperors and resisted by founding monasteries on their lands.
7. Irene of Athens: A Great Empress
The return of the iconodules (or iconophiles) was due to the presence of Irene the Athenian who ensured the regency between 780 and 803. She joined forces with the iconodules so that they would support her power. Irene installed a new patriarch at the head of the Church and a council was organized: Nicaea II (787) reaffirmed the tradition of the cult of saints and icons.
Icon depicting the Second Council of Nicaea (Novodevichy Convent), 976–1025
From a Christological perspective, that is to say that the incarnation allows representation, Nicea II allows the development of a new piety supported by images; on the contrary, iconoclasm wishes to return to ancient times, when there was only writing. In this sense, iconodoulia looks towards the future.
Iconoclasm was not, however, relegated to oblivion: from 813 to 843, a second crisis of images swept through the empire...
To be continued...