Abstract
When King Josiah (62I BCE) Ordered The Cleansing of The Jerusalem temple in ancient Judea and the eradication of idolatry, he deposed idolatrous priests; burned and defiled all other cult sites; and destroyed altars, pillars, and statuary (2 Kings 23:4–20), initiating the first major iconoclastic movement. Similar destruction occurred again during the Byzantine iconoclastic crisis. Witnesses during the first Byzantine episode watched icons burned, pillaged, and destroyed in city and countryside alike. Punishments for those who resisted included mutilated bodies, cut off noses, eyes poked out, hands and ears cut off, and flagellations. Soldiers destroyed icons and burned monasteries.1
Tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the images of their gods, obliterating their name from that site.
—Deuteronomy 12:3
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Notes
Marie-France Auzepy, intro., ed., and trans. from Greek, La Vie d’Etienne le Jeune par Etienne le Diacre (Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1997), secs. 26 and 59.
For the generally accepted scholarly position on the Deuteronomic texts, see Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, trans. and intro. by Bernhard W. Anderson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972); Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).
Despite its position that icon-lovers were idolaters, for a path-breaking earlier discussion of this topic that argued that the sixth-century political crises in the Byzantine Empire produced a new view about the function of images, see Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm,” in The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West: Selected Studies, ed. W. Eugene Kleinbauer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 90–156, first published in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954), 83–150. Also central is Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988).
For essays on the reception of the Decalogue in Hebrew Scripture to the thirteenth century, see BenZion Segal, ed., The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition, English ed. Gershon Levi (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Magnes, 1985; English ed., 1990); Aston’s discussion of the role of the Decalogue in the first phase of England’s Reformation, in England’s Iconoclasts, 343–445, when the Decalogue assumed greater importance than it had in previous centuries. Also, Robert M. Grant, “The Decalogue in Early Christianity,” Harvard Theological Review 40, no. 1 (January 1947), 1–17, assesses the position of the Decalogue versus the double law.
For a recent overview of the arguments, see Knut Holter, Deuteronomy 4 and the Second Commandment (New York: Peter Lang, 2003).
See Joseph Gutmann, “Prolegomenon,” In No Graven Images: Studies in Art and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Joseph Gutmann (New York: KTAV, 1971), xv.
For a discussion of the biblical prohibition and its historic application in iconoclastic outbreaks, see Alain Besancon, “The Biblical Prohibition,” In The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm, trans. from French by Jane Marie Todd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 63–108.
This section of my discussion is entirely indebted to the work of Terry Griffith, Keep Yourselves from Idols: A New Look at I John, in Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 233 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), specifically his chap. 3, “The Meaning and Background of the Term Eidolon,” 28–57. Several other studies have been similarly useful, including Joel Marcus, “Idolatry in the New Testament,” Interpretation 60, no. 2 (2006), 152–64; Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); C. Kavin Rowe, “New Testament Iconography? Situating Paul in the Absence of Material Evidence,” in Picturing the New Testament: Studies in Ancient Vuual Images, ed. Annette Weissenrieder, Friederike Wendt, and Petra Von Gemunden (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 289–312.
See Plato, Republic, 2 vols., ed. T. E. Page, E. Capps and W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930 and 1935), vol. 1, bk. 4, pp. 412–13, vol. 1, bk. 5, pp. 532–33 (n.6), vol. 2, bk. 7, pp. 196–97.
See Terry Griffith, “Eidolon as ‘Idol’ in Non-Jewish and Non-Christian Greek,” JTS 53 (2002), 95–101.
Again, this is all derived from Griffith, Keep Yourselves from Idols, 32–35.
See Moshe Greenberg, “The Decalogue Tradition Critically Examined,” in The Ten Commandments in Recent Research, ed. by J. J. Stamm and trans. by M. E. Andrew, 83–119 (Naperville, IL: Alec R. Allenson, 1967), 101–102.
Joseph Gutmann, “Deuteronomy: Religious Reformation or Iconoclastic Revolution?” in The Image and the Word: Confrontations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1977), 5–25.
For the bibliography on Deuteronomy and its vexed commentary tradition and its dating, see Noth, History; Cross, Canaanite Myth; E. Rivkin, The Shaping of Jewish History: A Radical New Interpretation (New York: Scribner, 1971), 18–19; H. M. Orlinsky, Understanding the Bible through History and Archaeology (New York: KTAV, 1972), 192–96.
For this notion of the god of battles, see the first two chapters of Peter Partner, God ofBattles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), which lay out the biblical and ancient Near Eastern foundations for divine intervention into the temporal domain (1–30).
For a brilliant and persuasive discussion of how and why icons and the imperial cult became linked in the century preceding the crisis, see Averil Cameron, “Images of Authority: Elites and Icons in Late Sixth-Century Byzantium,” Past and Present 84 (August 1979), 3–35; also, see Averil Cameron, “The Language of Images: The Rise of Icons and Christian Representation,” in The Church and the Arts, ed. Diana Wood, published for the Ecclesiastical History Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 1–42.
For the English, see C. Mango and R. Scott, trans. and intro., The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 555 (hereafter cited in text as CTC); for the original, see Theophanes, Chronographia, 2 vols., ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883–85; repr., Hildersheim, 1963), 429.
See Averil Cameron, “The Theotokos in Sixth-Century Constantinople: A City Finds its Symbol,” Journal of Theological Studies 29 (1978), 79–108.
For the role of the emperor in Byzantine art, see Andre Grabar, L’empereur dans l’art byzantin (London: Variorum, 1971; orig. 1936), especially 123–243; see Robin Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and Its Icons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 96–98.
Stephen Gero, “Notes on Byzantine Iconoclasm in the Eighth Century,” Byzantion 44 (1974), 42.
For a recent annotated survey of the material evidence including architecture, art works, manuscripts, textiles, coins, metalwork, and written documents, see Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca. 680–850): The Sources (Aldershot Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2001); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine 2. The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 91–93; George Ostrogorsky, “The Early Byzantine State: Its Developments and Characteristics,” History of the Byzantine State, trans. Joan Hussey (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956), 324–610.
Judith Herrin, “The Context of Iconoclast Reform,” in Iconoclasm, ed. Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin (Birmingham, England: University of Birmingham Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1977), 15–20.
See, for example, Milton V. Anastos, “The Ethical Theory of Images Formulated by the Iconoclasts in 754 and 815,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954), 151–60; Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, 160ff.
For a thorough review of all the possible influences, see L. W. Barnard, The Graeco- Roman and Oriental Background of the Iconoclastic Controversy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974); Stephen Gero, “Notes on Byzantine Iconoclasm in the Eighth Century,” 23–42.
For a modern argument that supports this view, see Andre Grabar, L’Iconoclasme Byzantin: Le Dossier Archeologique (Paris: Flammarion, 1984), 116–20.
For the texts of the Second Council of Nicaea, see Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols., ed. Norman P. Tanner, S. J., with original text established by G. Alberigo, J. A. Dossetti, P. P. Joannou, C. Leonardi, and P. Prodi (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1:133–56; for attributing the crisis to a Jewish-Moslem conspiracy, see “Acts of Seventh Ecumenical Council (787),” in Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453, in Sources and Documents in the History of Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972), 150–51. For a contrary view, see Gero, “Notes on Byzantine Iconoclasm in the Eighth Century,” 36; Peter Brown, “A Dark-Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy,” English Historical Review 346 (January 1973), 1; Ambrosios Giakalis, Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 6.
See Brown, “A Dark-Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy,” 1; Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 39–81.
See Pelikan, The Christian Tradition 2, who labels this dispute a new version of the christological debates (91); Giakalis, Images of the Divine, 93–113.
For aspects of this story, see Mango, “Historical Introduction,” in Iconoclasm, 1–6; John A. McGuckin, “The Theology of Images and the Legitimation of Power in Eighth Century Byzantium,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 37 (1993), 39–58; Louth, St John Damascene, 193–95. For a recent challenge to the truth of the story, see Marie-France Auzepy, “La destruction de L’icone du Christ de la Chalce par Leon III: propagande ou realite?” Byzantion 60 (1990), 445–92.
Edwin Hanson Freshfield, trans., A Manual of Roman Law: The Ecloga (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 66 (hereafter cited in text as Manual of Roman Law).
Quoted from “Treatise 1,” in Three TreatisesOn theDivineImages, trans. and intro. by Andrew Louth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 20; for the original, see PG 94, col. 1232A–1420B; or Hennephof, TextusByzantinos, 85–86; for an earlier translation, see Saint John of Damascus, On theDivineImages:ThreeApologiesAgainstThose WhoAttack theDivineImages, trans. David Anderson (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980). For discussion, see McGuckin, “The Theology of Images,” 42–43; Gero, “Notes on Byzantine Iconoclasm in the Eighth Century,” 42; Louth, St John Damascene, 193–222.
Francesco Cognasso, Bisanzio: Storia di una Civilta (Varese: dall’ Oglio, 1976), 156–63.
See Niciphore, Discours centre les Iconoclastes, trans. and notes by Marie-Josi Mondzain-Baudinet (Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1989).
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© 2008 Brenda Deen Schildgen
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Schildgen, B.D. (2008). Destruction: Idolatry. In: Heritage or Heresy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613157_2
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