This large volume contains twelve chapters: a long Introduction written by the editor (pp. 1–106); two chapters on images before Iconoclasm (Robin Jensen's “Figural Images in Christian Thought and Practice before ca 500” and Benjamin Anderson's “Images in Byzantine Thought and Practice, ca 500–700”); three chapters on the sources (“Chronicles, Histories and Letters” by Jesse Torgerson and Mike Humphreys; “Acta, Treatises and Hagiography” by Richard Price; and “Material Culture” by Sabine Feist); two chapters on Byzantine iconoclasm in action (the editor's “First Iconoclasm” and Marie-France Auzépy's “The Iconophile Intermission and Second Iconoclasm”); three chapters on the theology of Byzantine iconoclasm (Andrew Louth covers the eighth century, Ken Perry the ninth, and Dirk Krausmüller considers “The Problem of the Holy: Iconoclasm, Saints, Relics and Monks”); and a final two chapters on Iconoclasm outside of Byzantium (Christian Sahner on Islam, 600–850, and Thomas Noble on the West).
The volume is, in some ways, a response and supplement to an even larger volume published by Cambridge University Press in 2011 by John Halden and me (Byzantium in the Era of Iconoclasm: A History), which was itself the sequel to Byzantium in the Era of Iconoclasm: the Sources (Ashgate, 2001). Inevitably, perhaps, there is a great deal of overlap, and there is also—perhaps also inevitably, given that this is a companion—a fair amount of narrative history without analysis, but there are also some notable additions. I would in particular single out Anderson's chapter, which deals largely with epigrams attached to images, a topic we barely considered in the earlier volumes and which demonstrate that, while there was a notable increase in images as conveyors of the real presence of the holy figure portrayed toward the end of the seventh century, the Byzantines continued the earlier Roman practice of imbuing sacred portraits with agency, just as they continued to do with imperial portraits, to a greater extent than I, at least, previously believed. Auzépy's chapter on Second Iconoclasm is also a tour de force and synthesises a huge amount of material that she has presented over the past forty years in a compelling, and fresh, way. Similarly, Noble winnows down his own huge book (Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians [Philadelphia, 2009]) to a balanced and very readable thirty-two pages, and Louth does the same for the writings of John of Damascus, on which he has written extensively (for example, St John Damascene, Tradition and originality in Byzantine Theology [Oxford, 2002]).
The range of expertise collected together in this volume, much of it delivered by scholars who have been working on iconoclasm for decades, is impressive. There are, however, some surprising omissions. Most generally, for a volume dedicated to a controversy about religious imagery, there is surprisingly little about material culture. Feist is excellent on architecture (her area of expertise), but all other media are treated summarily at best. There are also gaps in the authors’ knowledge of the secondary literature: the discussion of the Parastaseis would benefit from a reading of Liz James, “‘Pray Not to Fall into Temptation and Be on Your Guard’: Pagan Statues in Christian Constantinople” (Gesta 35 [1996]: 12–20; the evaluation of the epistolary evidence certainly needed to reference A. Kazhdan and A.-M. Talbot, “Women and Iconoclasm” (Byzantinische Zeitschrift 84/85 [1991/1992]: 391–408; repr. in Talbot, Women and Religious Life in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2001), study 3, which considers the letters of Theodore of Stoudion at length. There is new dendrochronological evidence (considered in Robert Ousterhout's Eastern Medieval Architecture, which is in the bibliography) that redates the rebuilding of Hagia Eirini in Constantinople to after the death of Constantine V. Since the volume appeared, four additional important publications will also require modification of the arguments presented. Philipp Niewöhner's “The Significance of the Cross before, during, and after Iconoclasm: Early Christian Aniconism in Constantinople and Asia Minor,” in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 74 (2021), demonstrates that images of the cross were in fact the preferred option of ecclesiastical decoration in Constantinople long before iconoclasm made them theologically preferred; Francesca dell'Acqua's Iconofilia (Routledge, 2020) adds to our knowledge of the links between Italy and Constantinople during the controversy; Robert Jordan and Rosemary Morris, eds. and trans., The Life and Death of Theodore of Stoudios, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 70 (Cambridge MA, 2021), noted as forthcoming by Parry (427) has now appeared and sheds considerable new light on the inventiveness of the Stoudite monks as they rewrote the history of iconoclasm; and Óscar Prieto Domínguez, Literary Circles in Byzantine Iconoclasm. Patrons, Politics and Saints (Cambridge, 2020) is of obvious relevance to many of the chapters.
