page_title: Byzantine Iconoclasm
section_title: Iconoclast arguments
hierarchical_section_title: Byzantine Iconoclasm / Arguments in the struggle over icons / Iconoclast arguments
caption_attribution_description: Ελληνικά: Μινιατούρα από ψαλτήρι του Χλουντώφ (9ος αιώνας) με σκηνή εικονομαχίας English: Miniature from the 9th-century Chludov Psalter with scene of iconoclasm. Iconoclasts John Grammaticus and Anthony I of Constantinople. Русский: Хлудовская псалтырь. Византия. Иконоборцы Иоанн Грамматик и Игнатий Силейский. Исторический музей. Москва. Илл. Псалма 68, стиха 2: "И дали мне в пищу желчь, и в жажде моей напоили меня уксусом". Художник комментирует действия иконоборцев, сопоставляя их с евангельскими событиями. Распятие на горе Голгофе; иконоборцы, замазывающие известью икону Христа. Воин справа подносит Христу губку, напитанную уксусом, другой воин пронзает Христа копьем. У подножия горы иконоборцы Иоанн Грамматик и епископ Антоний Силейский.
context_page_description: Byzantine Iconoclasm refers to two periods in the history of the Byzantine Empire when the use of religious images or icons was opposed by religious and imperial authorities within the Orthodox Church and the temporal imperial hierarchy. The First Iconoclasm, as it is sometimes called, existed between about 726 and 787. The Second Iconoclasm was between 814 and 842. According to the traditional view, Byzantine Iconoclasm was started by a ban on religious images by Emperor Leo III and continued under his successors. It was accompanied by widespread destruction of images and persecution of supporters of the veneration of images. The pope remained firmly in support of the use of images throughout the period, and the whole episode widened the growing divergence between the Byzantine and Carolingian traditions in what was still a unified church, as well as facilitating the reduction or removal of Byzantine political control over parts of Italy.
  Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives.
context_section_description: What accounts of iconoclast arguments remain are largely found in quotations or summaries in iconodule writings. It is thus difficult to reconstruct a balanced view of the popularity or prevalence of iconoclast writings. The major theological arguments, however, remain in evidence because of the need in iconophile writings to record the positions being refuted. Debate seems to have centred on the validity of the depiction of Jesus, and the validity of images of other figures followed on from this for both sides. The main points of the iconoclast argument were:
  Iconoclasm condemned the making of any lifeless image (e.g. painting or statue) that was intended to represent Jesus or one of the saints. The Epitome of the Definition of the Iconoclastic Conciliabulum held in 754 declared: 
  "Supported by the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, we declare unanimously, in the name of the Holy Trinity, that there shall be rejected and removed and cursed one of the Christian Church every likeness which is made out of any material and colour whatever by the evil art of painters.... If anyone ventures to represent the divine image (χαρακτήρ, kharaktír - character) of the Word after the Incarnation with material colours, he is an adversary of God. .... If anyone shall endeavour to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colours which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, he is an adversary of God"
  For iconoclasts, the only real religious image must be an exact likeness of the prototype -of the same substance- which they considered impossible, seeing wood and paint as empty of spirit and life.  Thus for iconoclasts the only true (and permitted) "icon" of Jesus was the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, according to Orthodox and Catholic doctrine.
  Any true image of Jesus must be able to represent both his divine nature (which is impossible because it cannot be seen nor encompassed) and his human nature (which is possible).  But by making an icon of Jesus, one is separating his human and divine natures, since only the human can be depicted (separating the natures was considered nestorianism), or else confusing the human and divine natures, considering them one (union of the human and divine natures was considered monophysitism).
  Icon use for religious purposes was viewed as an inappropriate innovation in the Church, and a return to pagan practice.  
  "Satan misled men, so that they worshipped the creature instead of the Creator. The Law of Moses and the Prophets cooperated to remove this ruin...But the previously mentioned demiurge of evil...gradually brought back idolatry under the appearance of Christianity."
    It was also seen as a departure from ancient church tradition, of which there was a written record opposing religious images.  The Spanish Synod of Elvira (c. 305) had declared that  "Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration", and some decades later Eusebius of Caesaria may have written a letter to Constantia (Emperor Constantine's sister) saying "To depict purely the human form of Christ before its transformation, on the other hand, is to break the commandment of God and to fall into pagan error"; Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis wrote his letter 51 to John, Bishop of Jerusalem (c. 394) in which he recounted how he tore down an image in a church and admonished the other bishop that such images are "opposed … to our religion", although the authenticity of this letter has also long been disputed, and remains uncertain. However, as Christianity increasingly spread among gentiles with traditions of religious images, and especially after the conversion of Constantine (c. 312), the legalization of Christianity, and, later that century, the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, many new people came into the new large public churches, which began to be decorated with images that certainly drew in part on imperia
caption: This page of the Iconodule Chludov Psalter, illustrates the line "They gave me gall to eat; and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink" with a picture of a soldier offering Christ vinegar on a sponge attached to a pole. Below is a picture of the last Iconoclast Patriarch of Constantinople, John VII rubbing out a painting of Christ with a similar sponge attached to a pole. John is caricatured, here as on other pages, with untidy straight hair sticking out in all directions, which was meant to portray him as wild and barbaric.
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