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What was the Iconoclastic Controversy About?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry
Affiliation:
Associate professor of religion in Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
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Extract

“Altogether, the Iconoclast controversy is in the grip of a crisis of over-explanation.” Since in his recent article Peter Brown is himself offering an explanation, we need to ask whether he has relaxed one grip only to fasten on another. Brown's analysis is characteristically brilliant. With a few deft strokes he outlines where scholarship is and what culs-de-sac it has got itself into, and he focuses attention on aspects of the evidence that have been insufficiently appreciated. Brown is peculiarly sersitive to the nature of religion, and as a result his article is an excellent account of the complex dynamics of religion in early Byzantium.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 16 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1976

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References

This paper was originally presented to the New York Patristic Society in December 1973. It is dedicated to the memory of one who was present on that occasion, Robert F. Evans, professor of religious thought in the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the American Society of Church History. His sudden death from a heart attack in May 1974, at the age of forty-four, has deprived patristic studies of a meticulous, imaginative, generous-spirited, and productive scholar.

1. Brown, Peter, “A Dark-Age crisis: aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy,” The English Historical Review 346 (01 1973): 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 6.

3. Ibid., pp. 1–2.

4. Ibid., p. 3.

5. Ibid., pp. 4–5.

6. Ibid., p. 5.

7. Ibid., pp. 8–9.

8. Ibid., p. 10.

9. Ibid., pp. 11–12.

10. “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80–101.Google Scholar

11. Brown, , “A Dark-Age crisis,” pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., pp. 14–15.

13. Ibid., pp. 17–21.

14. Ibid., pp. 22–23.

15. Ibid., pp. 23–24.

16. Ibid., p. 24. The anthropologist is Kluckhohn, Clyde, Navaho Witchcraft (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 107,Google Scholar where the subject of the sentence is “Witchcraft belief.” and where the sentence does not include the phrase “about it.”

17. Brown, , “A Dark-Age crisis,” p. 25.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 28.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., pp. 31–32.

21. Ibid., pp. 33–34.

22. Two recent general studies of Eastern Christian theology do much to clarify the full religious dimension of the Iconoclastic controversy, with recognition of the importance of Theodore's role: Meyendorff, John, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974), chap. 3Google Scholar; and Pelitkan, Jaroslav, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (1600–1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), chap. 3.Google Scholar

23. Theodore of Studios, Antirrhctious 1, Patrologia Graeca (hereafter cited as P.G.) 99.332B.

24. L'Iconoclasme byzantin: dossier archéologique (Paris, 1957), p. 5.Google Scholar

25. The term oikonomia is one of the richest in the Greek theological vocabulary (see Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed G.W.H. Lampe, s.v.), and Theodore of course uses it in many other senses in different contexts.

26. See Antirrh. 2, P.G. 99.353D.

27. Antirrh. 3, P.G. 99.396.ab.

28. Theod. Stud., Epist. 2.156,Google ScholarP.G. 99.1488B; and 2.8, 1132D: amblōthridion ti.

29. Epist. 2.36, P.G. 99.1212c–1213B.

30. Antirrh. 1, P.G. 99.336D.

31. Ibid., 336CD.

32. Epist. 2.64, P.G. 99.1285B.

33. See Antirrh. 1, P.G. 99.333D.

34. In which the Virgin Mary was born; cf. Pair. Gk. Lex., s.v. probatikos.

35. John, of Damascus, , Oratio 3 adversus cos qui sacras imagines adjicivnt 34.Google ScholarP.G. 94.1353AB; partially reprinted as no. 287 in Hennephof, Herman, Textus byzantini ad iconomachiam pertinentes (Liden: E. J. Brill, 1969), p. 86.Google Scholar

36. Ibid.

37. Antirrh. 1, P.G. 99.344BC.

38. Ibid., 344D.

39. Ibid., 344D-345A.

40. See Plato, , Cratytus, 428D–440E,Google Scholar where the relationship of images and names to the things portrayed and named is subjected to rigorous analysis; Socrates admits (435CD) that there is an element of convention in names, but insists to the end that names properly reflect the nature of the things named.

41. See Antirrh. 1, P.G. 99.340A-341A.

42. See the illuminating discussion of this by Florovsky, George, “Origen, Eusebius and the Iconoclastic Controversy,” Church History 19 (1950): 77–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. I have dealt with this development in detail in my article. “A Mirror for Justinian: the Ekthesis of Agapetus Diaconus,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 8, 4 (Winter 1967): 281–308.Google Scholar

44. See Theod. Stud., Epist. 1.43, P.G. 99.1064c-1068D.

45. Theophanis Chronographia, 1, ed. de Boor, Carolus (Leipzig, 1883), p. 409;Google Scholar reprinted as no. 4 in Hennephof, , Textus, p. 5.Google Scholar

46. L'Iconoclasme byzantin, pp. 13–14 and 21.

47. See Vita Theodori Studitae, 33–34, P.G. 99.280c-284c.

48. Epist. 1.39, P.G. 99.1049CD.

49. Terminology applied to the incarnation itself by the seventeenth-century poet, Richard Crashaw, in his poem, “In the holy nativity of our Lord God.”

50. “Ein Kampf der griechisehen Kirche um ihre Eigenart und um ihre Freiheit” (Gotha, 1890).Google Scholar

51. “A Dark Age crisis,” p. 2, n. 5.