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Iconoclasm

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16th-century iconoclasm in the Protestant Reformation. Relief statues in St. Stevenskerk in Nijmegen, Netherlands, were attacked and defaced by Calvinists in the Beeldenstorm. 1 2

Iconoclasm (from Ancient Greek εἰκών (eikṓn) 'figure, icon' and κλάω (kláō) 'to break')[1] is the belief in the importance of the destruction of icons and other images or monuments, often for religious or political reasons. Those who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, a term that has come to be applied figuratively and more broadly to anyone who challenges "cherished beliefs or venerated institutions on the grounds that they are erroneous or pernicious".[2]

Conversely, one who reveres or venerates religious images is called (by iconoclasts) an iconolater; in a Byzantine context, such a person is called an iconodule or iconophile.[3] Iconoclasm does not generally encompass the destruction of the images of a specific ruler after their death or overthrow, a practice better known as damnatio memoriae.

While iconoclasm may be carried out by adherents of a different religion, it is more commonly the result of sectarian disputes between factions of the same religion. The term originates from the Byzantine Iconoclasm, the struggles between proponents and opponents of religious icons in the Byzantine Empire from 726 to 842 AD. While the enthusiasm for iconoclasm varies among faiths, the practice is more common in religions which oppose idolatry, such as the Abrahamic religions.[4] Outside of the religious context, iconoclasm can refer to movements for widespread destruction in symbols of an ideology or cause, such as the destruction of monarchist symbols during the French Revolution.

Early religious iconoclasm

Ancient era

In the Bronze Age, the most significant episode of iconoclasm occurred in Egypt during the Amarna Period, when Akhenaten, based in his new capital of Akhetaten, instituted a significant shift in Egyptian artistic styles alongside a campaign of intolerance towards the traditional gods and a new emphasis on a state monolatristic tradition focused on the god Aten, the Sun disk—many temples and monuments were destroyed as a result:[5][6]

In rebellion against the old religion and the powerful priests of Amun, Akhenaten ordered the eradication of all of Egypt's traditional gods. He sent royal officials to chisel out and destroy every reference to Amun and the names of other deities on tombs, temple walls, and cartouches to instill in the people that the Aten was the one true god.

Public references to Akhenaten were destroyed soon after his death. Comparing the ancient Egyptians with the Israelites, Jan Assmann writes:[7]

For Egypt, the greatest horror was the destruction or abduction of the cult images. In the eyes of the Israelites, the erection of images meant the destruction of divine presence; in the eyes of the Egyptians, this same effect was attained by the destruction of images. In Egypt, iconoclasm was the most terrible religious crime; in Israel, the most terrible religious crime was idolatry. In this respect Osarseph alias Akhenaten, the iconoclast, and the Golden Calf, the paragon of idolatry, correspond to each other inversely, and it is strange that Aaron could so easily avoid the role of the religious criminal. It is more than probable that these traditions evolved under mutual influence. In this respect, Moses and Akhenaten became, after all, closely related.

Judaism

According to the Hebrew Bible, God instructed the Israelites to "destroy all [the] engraved stones, destroy all [the] molded images, and demolish all [the] high places" of the Canaanites as soon as they entered the Promised Land.[8]

King Hezekiah purged Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and all figures were also destroyed in the Land of Israel, including the Nehushtan, as recorded in the Second Book of Kings. His reforms were reversed in the reign of his son Manasseh.[9]

Iconoclasm in Christian history

Periods of aniconism have characterized various points of Christian history; early Christianity was largely aniconic, with Church Fathers Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria regarding the Ten Commandments to be binding on Christians.[10] Early Christian apologists argued that God was beyond representation "and insisted that material things, unlike divine beings, were subject to disintegration, rust and decay." Marcus Minucius Felix stated that Christians lacked images "because Christians believe in and worship an invisible God."[10] Aniconism was notable during the controversy of the Byzantine iconoclasm of the eighth century, and in the 16th century, when Calvinism rejected all images in churches, and this practice continues today in conservative Reformed (Calvinist) churches, as well as in Anabaptist Christianity. The Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church defend the use of sacred images in churches, shrines, and homes.[11]

Scattered expressions of opposition to the use of images have been reported: the Synod of Elvira appeared to endorse iconoclasm; Canon 36 states: "Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration."[12][13] A possible translation is also: "There shall be no pictures in the church, lest what is worshipped and adored should be depicted on the walls."[14] The date of this canon is disputed.[15] Proscription ceased after the destruction of pagan temples. However, widespread use of Christian iconography only began as Christianity increasingly spread among Gentiles after the legalization of Christianity by Roman Emperor Constantine (c. 312 AD). During the process of Christianisation under Constantine, Christian groups destroyed the images and sculptures of the Roman Empire's polytheist state religion.

Among early church theologians, iconoclastic tendencies were supported by theologians such as Tertullian,[16] Clement of Alexandria,[17] Origen,[18][19] Lactantius,[20] Justin Martyr,[19] Eusebius and Epiphanius.[17][21]

Byzantine era

The period after the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527–565) evidently saw a huge increase in the use of images, both in volume and quality, and a gathering aniconic reaction.

One notable change within the Byzantine Empire came in 695, when Justinian II's government added a full-face image of Christ on the obverse of imperial gold coins. The change caused the Caliph Abd al-Malik to stop his earlier adoption of Byzantine coin types. He started a purely Islamic coinage with lettering only.[22] A letter by the Patriarch Germanus, written before 726 to two iconoclast bishops, says that "now whole towns and multitudes of people are in considerable agitation over this matter", but there is little written evidence of the debate.[23]

Government-led iconoclasm began with Byzantine Emperor Leo III, who issued a series of edicts between 726 and 730 against the veneration of images.[24] The religious conflict created political and economic divisions in Byzantine society; iconoclasm was generally supported by the Eastern, poorer, non-Greek peoples of the Empire who had to frequently deal with raids from the new Muslim Empire.[25] On the other hand, the wealthier Greeks of Constantinople and the peoples of the Balkan and Italian provinces strongly opposed iconoclasm.[25]

Pre-Reformation

Peter of Bruys opposed the usage of religious images,[26] the Strigolniki were also possibly iconoclastic.[27] Claudius of Turin was the bishop of Turin from 817 until his death.[28] He is most noted for teaching iconoclasm.[28]

Reformation era

The first iconoclastic wave happened in Wittenberg in the early 1520s under reformers Thomas Müntzer and Andreas Karlstadt. In 1522 Karlstadt published his tract, "Von abtuhung der Bylder". ("On the removal of images"), which added to the growing unrest in Wittenberg.[29] Martin Luther, then concealed under the pen-name of 'Junker Jörg', intervened to calm things down. Luther argued that the mental picturing of Christ when reading the Scriptures was similar in character to artistic renderings of Christ.[30]

In contrast to the Lutherans who favoured certain types of sacred art in their churches and homes,[31][32] the Reformed (Calvinist) leaders, in particular Karlstadt, Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin, encouraged the removal of religious images by invoking the Decalogue's prohibition of idolatry and the manufacture of graven (sculpted) images of God.[32] As a result, individuals attacked statues and images, most famously in the beeldenstorm across the Low Countries in 1566.

The belief of iconoclasm caused havoc throughout Europe. In 1523, specifically due to the Swiss reformer Zwingli, a vast number of his followers viewed themselves as being involved in a spiritual community that in matters of faith should obey neither the visible Church nor lay authorities. According to Peter George Wallace, "Zwingli's attack on images, at the first debate, triggered iconoclastic incidents in Zürich and the villages under civic jurisdiction that the reformer was unwilling to condone." Due to this action of protest against authority, "Zwingli responded with a carefully reasoned treatise that men could not live in society without laws and constraint".[33]

Significant iconoclastic riots took place in Basel (in 1529), Zürich (1523), Copenhagen (1530), Münster (1534), Geneva (1535), Augsburg (1537), Scotland (1559), Rouen (1560), and Saintes and La Rochelle (1562).[34][35] Calvinist iconoclasm in Europe "provoked reactive riots by Lutheran mobs" in Germany and "antagonized the neighbouring Eastern Orthodox" in the Baltic region.[36]

The Seventeen Provinces (now the Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Northern France) were disrupted by widespread Calvinist iconoclasm in the summer of 1566.[37]

During the Reformation in England, which started during the reign of Henry VIII, and was urged on by reformers such as Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer, limited official action was taken against religious images in churches in the late 1530s. Henry's young son, Edward VI, came to the throne in 1547 and, under Cranmer's guidance, issued injunctions for religious reforms in the same year and in 1549 the Putting away of Books and Images Act.[38]

During the English Civil War, the Parliamentarians reorganised the administration of East Anglia into the Eastern Association of counties. This covered some of the wealthiest counties in England, which in turn financed a substantial and significant military force. After Earl of Manchester was appointed the commanding officer of these forces, in turn he appointed Smasher Dowsing as Provost Marshal, with a warrant to demolish religious images which were considered to be superstitious or linked with popism.[39] Bishop Joseph Hall of Norwich described the events of 1643 when troops and citizens, encouraged by a Parliamentary ordinance against superstition and idolatry, behaved thus:

Lord what work was here! What clattering of glasses! What beating down of walls! What tearing up of monuments! What pulling down of seats! What wresting out of irons and brass from the windows! What defacing of arms! What demolishing of curious stonework! What tooting and piping upon organ pipes! And what a hideous triumph in the market-place before all the country, when all the mangled organ pipes, vestments, both copes and surplices, together with the leaden cross which had newly been sawn down from the Green-yard pulpit and the service-books and singing books that could be carried to the fire in the public market-place were heaped together.

Protestant Christianity was not uniformly hostile to the use of religious images. Martin Luther taught the "importance of images as tools for instruction and aids to devotion",[40] stating: "If it is not a sin but good to have the image of Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it in my eyes?"[41] Lutheran churches retained ornate church interiors with a prominent crucifix, reflecting their high view of the real presence of Christ in Eucharist.[42][31] As such, "Lutheran worship became a complex ritual choreography set in a richly furnished church interior."[42] For Lutherans, "the Reformation renewed rather than removed the religious image".[43]

Lutheran scholar Jeremiah Ohl writes:[44]: 88–89

Zwingli and others for the sake of saving the Word rejected all plastic art; Luther, with an equal concern for the Word, but far more conservative, would have all the arts to be the servants of the Gospel. "I am not of the opinion" said [Luther], "that through the Gospel all the arts should be banished and driven away, as some zealots want to make us believe; but I wish to see them all, especially music, in the service of Him Who gave and created them." Again he says: "I have myself heard those who oppose pictures, read from my German Bible.... But this contains many pictures of God, of the angels, of men, and of animals, especially in the Revelation of St. John, in the books of Moses, and in the book of Joshua. We therefore kindly beg these fanatics to permit us also to paint these pictures on the wall that they may be remembered and better understood, inasmuch as they can harm as little on the walls as in books. Would to God that I could persuade those who can afford it to paint the whole Bible on their houses, inside and outside, so that all might see; this would indeed be a Christian work. For I am convinced that it is God's will that we should hear and learn what He has done, especially what Christ suffered. But when I hear these things and meditate upon them, I find it impossible not to picture them in my heart. Whether I want to or not, when I hear, of Christ, a human form hanging upon a cross rises up in my heart: just as I see my natural face reflected when I look into water. Now if it is not sinful for me to have Christ's picture in my heart, why should it be sinful to have it before my eyes?

The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who had pragmatic reasons to support the Dutch Revolt (the rebels, like himself, were fighting against Spain) also completely approved of their act of "destroying idols", which accorded well with Muslim teachings.[45][46]

16th century Protestant iconoclasm had various effects on visual arts: it encouraged the development of art with violent images such as martyrdoms, of pieces whose subject was the dangers of idolatry, or art stripped of objects with overt Catholic symbolism: the still life, landscape and genre paintings.[47]: 44, 25, 40

Other instances

In Japan during the early modern age, the spread of Catholicism also involved the repulsion of non-Christian religious structures, including Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines and figures. At times of conflict with rivals or some time after the conversion of several daimyos, Christian converts would often destroy Buddhist and Shinto religious structures.[48]

Many of the moai of Easter Island were toppled during the 18th century in the iconoclasm of civil wars before any European encounter.[49] Other instances of iconoclasm may have occurred throughout Eastern Polynesia during its conversion to Christianity in the 19th century.[50]

After the Second Vatican Council in the late 20th century, some Roman Catholic parish churches discarded much of their traditional imagery and art which critics call iconoclasm.[51]

Muslim iconoclasm

Islam has a strong tradition of forbidding the depiction of figures, especially religious figures,[4] with some Sunnis forbidding it entirely. In the history of Islam, the act of removing idols from the Ka'ba in Mecca has great symbolic and historic importance for all believers.

In general, Muslim societies have avoided the depiction of living beings (both animals and humans) within such sacred spaces as mosques and madrasahs. This ban on figural representation is not based on the Qur'an, instead, it is based on traditions which are described within the Hadith. The prohibition of figuration has not always been extended to the secular sphere, and a robust tradition of figural representation exists within Muslim art.[52] However, Western authors have tended to perceive "a long, culturally determined, and unchanging tradition of violent iconoclastic acts" within Islamic society.[52]

Early Islam in Arabia

The first act of Muslim iconoclasm dates to the beginning of Islam, in 630, when the various statues of Arabian deities housed in the Kaaba in Mecca were destroyed. There is a tradition that Muhammad spared a fresco of Mary and Jesus.[53] This act was intended to bring an end to the idolatry which, in the Muslim view, characterized Jahiliyyah.

The destruction of the idols of Mecca did not, however, determine the treatment of other religious communities living under Muslim rule after the expansion of the caliphate. Most Christians under Muslim rule, for example, continued to produce icons and to decorate their churches as they wished. A major exception to this pattern of tolerance in early Islamic history was the "Edict of Yazīd", issued by the Umayyad caliph Yazīd II in 722–723.[54] This edict ordered the destruction of crosses and Christian images within the territory of the caliphate. Researchers have discovered evidence that the order was followed, particularly in present-day Jordan, where archaeological evidence shows the removal of images from the mosaic floors of some, although not all, of the churches that stood at this time. But Yazīd's iconoclastic policies were not continued by his successors, and Christian communities of the Levant continued to make icons without significant interruption from the sixth century to the ninth.[55]

Egypt

Al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century, attributes the missing nose on the Great Sphinx of Giza to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim in the mid-1300s. He was reportedly outraged by local Muslims making offerings to the Great Sphinx in the hope of controlling the flood cycle, and he was later executed for vandalism. However, whether this was actually the cause of the missing nose has been debated by historians.[56] Mark Lehner, having performed an archaeological study, concluded that it was broken with instruments at an earlier unknown time between the 3rd and 10th centuries.[57]

Ottoman conquests

Certain conquering Muslim armies have used local temples or houses of worship as mosques. An example is Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), which was converted into a mosque in 1453. Most icons were desecrated and the rest were covered with plaster. In 1934 the government of Turkey decided to convert the Hagia Sophia into a museum and the restoration of the mosaics was undertaken by the American Byzantine Institute beginning in 1932.

Contemporary events

Certain Muslim denominations continue to pursue iconoclastic agendas. There has been much controversy within Islam over the recent and apparently on-going destruction of historic sites by Saudi Arabian authorities, prompted by the fear they could become the subject of "idolatry".[58][59]

A recent act of iconoclasm was the 2001 destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamyan by the then-Taliban government of Afghanistan.[60] The act generated worldwide protests and was not supported by other Muslim governments and organizations. It was widely perceived in the Western media as a result of the Muslim prohibition against figural decoration. Such an account overlooks "the coexistence between the Buddhas and the Muslim population that marveled at them for over a millennium" before their destruction.[52] According to art historian F. B. Flood, analysis of the Taliban's statements regarding the Buddhas suggest that their destruction was motivated more by political than by theological concerns.[52] Taliban spokesmen have given many different explanations of the motives for the destruction.

During the Tuareg rebellion of 2012, the radical Islamist militia Ansar Dine destroyed various Sufi shrines from the 15th and 16th centuries in the city of Timbuktu, Mali.[61] In 2016, the International Criminal Court (ICC) sentenced Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a former member of Ansar Dine, to nine years in prison for this destruction of cultural world heritage. This was the first time that the ICC convicted a person for such a crime.[62]

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant carried out iconoclastic attacks such as the destruction of Shia mosques and shrines. Notable incidents include blowing up the Mosque of the Prophet Yunus (Jonah)[63] and destroying the Shrine to Seth in Mosul.[64]

Iconoclasm against Indian-origin religions

India is birthplace of four major Indian religions, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism which have been target of invasion, colonisation, ethnocide, religious-cultural genocide by Islam and Christian invaders and colonisers.

During Hindu–Buddhist era

Christian writer Eaton Richard claims that in early Medieval India, there were numerous recorded instances of temple desecration by Indian kings against rival Indian kingdoms, which involved conflicts between devotees of different Hindu deities, as well as conflicts between Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains.[65][66]

The destructions were not limited to a region or era.[67] Historian Richard M. Eaton identified 80 instances of temple destruction whose historicity claims true figures are unknowable since many desecrations went unrecorded or their records did not survive.[68][69] Some have criticised his historiography arguing that he understates the religious dimensions of these events.[70]

By Muslims

Records from the campaign recorded in the Chach Nama record the destruction of temples during the early 8th century when the Umayyad governor of Damascus, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf,[71] mobilized an expedition of 6000 cavalry under Muhammad bin Qasim in 712.

Historian Upendra Thakur records the persecution of Hindus and Buddhists:

Muhammad triumphantly marched into the country, conquering Debal, Sehwan, Nerun, Brahmanadabad, Alor and Multan one after the other in quick succession, and in less than a year and a half, the far-flung Hindu kingdom was crushed... There was a fearful outbreak of religious bigotry in several places and temples were wantonly desecrated. At Debal, the Nairun and Aror temples were demolished and converted into mosques.[72]

The Somnath temple and Mahmud of Ghazni

In 1296 AD, the temple was once again destroyed by Sultan Allauddin Khilji's army.[73][74] According to Taj-ul-Ma'sir of Hasan Nizami, Raja Karan of Gujarat was defeated and forced to flee, "fifty thousand infidels were dispatched to hell by the sword" and "more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors".[73] The temple was rebuilt by Mahipala Deva, the Chudasama king of Saurashtra in 1308 AD and the lingam was installed by his son Khengar sometime between 1326 and 1351 AD. In 1375 AD, the temple was once again destroyed by Muzaffar Shah I, the Sultan of Gujarat.[73]

In 1451 AD, the temple was once again destroyed by Mahmud Begda, the Sultan of Gujarat.[73][74] In 1701 AD, the temple was once again destroyed by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.[73] Aurangzeb built a mosque on the site of the Somnath Temple, using some columns from the temple, whose Hindu sculptural motifs remained visible.

Mahmud of Ghazni was an Afghan Sultan who invaded the Indian subcontinent during the early 11th century. His campaigns across the gangetic plains are often cited for their iconoclastic plundering and destruction of temples such as those at Mathura and he looked upon their destruction as an act of "jihad".[75] He sacked the second Somnath Temple in 1026, and looted it of gems and precious stones and the famous Shiva lingam of the temple was destroyed.[76]

Historical records compiled by Muslim historian Maulana Hakim Saiyid Abdul Hai attest to the iconoclasm of Qutb-ud-din Aybak. The first mosque built in Delhi, the "Quwwat al-Islam" was built after the demolition of the Hindu temple built previously by Prithvi Raj and certain parts of the temple were left outside the mosque proper.[77] This pattern of iconoclasm was common during his reign, although an argument goes that such iconoclasm was motivated more by politics than by religion.[78]

Another ruler of the sultanate, Shams-ud-din Iltutmish, conquered and subjugated the Hindu pilgrimage site Varanasi in the 11th century and he continued the destruction of Hindu temples and idols that had begun during the first attack in 1194.[79]

No aspect of Aurangzeb's reign is more cited—or more controversial—than the numerous desecrations and even the destruction of Hindu temples.[80] During his reign, tens of thousands of temples were desecrated: their facades and interiors were defaced and their murtis (divine images) looted.[80] In many cases, temples were destroyed entirely; in numerous instances mosques were built on their foundations, sometimes using the same stones. Among the temples Aurangzeb destroyed were two that are most sacred to Hindus, in Varanasi and Mathura.[81] In both cases, he had large mosques built on the sites.[80]

The Kesava Deo temple in Mathura, marked the place that Hindus believe was the birthplace of Shri Krishna.[81] In 1661 Aurangzeb ordered the demolition of the temple, and constructed the Katra Masjid mosque. Traces of the ancient Hindu temple can be seen from the back of the mosque. Aurangzeb also destroyed what was the most famous temple in Varanasi – the Kashi Vishwanath Temple.[81]

The temple had changed its location over the years, and in 1585 Akbar had authorized its location at Gyan Vapi. Aurangzeb ordered its demolition in 1669 and constructed a mosque on the site, whose minarets stand 71 metres above the Ganges. Traces of the old temple can be seen behind the mosque. Centuries later, emotional debate about these wanton acts of cultural desecration continues. Aurangzeb also destroyed the Somnath temple in 1706.[81]

Hindus claim that Mughals destroyed the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, located at the birthplace of Rama, and built the Babri Masjid on the holy site, which has since been a source of tension between the Hindu and Muslim communities.

Writer Fernand Braudel wrote in A History of Civilizations (Penguin 1988/1963, pp. 232–236), Islamic rule in India as a "colonial experiment" was "extremely violent", and "the Muslims could not rule the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm – burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves."

C. K. Kareem also notes that Tipu Sultan issued an edict for the destruction of Hindu temples in Kerala.[82]

From the Mamluk dynasty onward

Historical records which were compiled by the Muslim historian Maulana Hakim Saiyid Abdul Hai attest to the religious violence which occurred during the Mamluk dynasty under Qutb-ud-din Aybak. The first mosque built in Delhi, the "Quwwat al-Islam" was built with demolished parts of 20 Hindu and Jain temples.[83][84] This pattern of iconoclasm was common during his reign.[85]

During the Delhi Sultanate, a Muslim army led by Malik Kafur, a general of Alauddin Khalji, pursued four violent campaigns into south India, between 1309 and 1311, against the Hindu kingdoms of Devgiri (Maharashtra), Warangal (Telangana), Dwarasamudra (Karnataka) and Madurai (Tamil Nadu). Many Temples were plundered; Hoysaleswara Temple and others were ruthlessly destroyed.[86][87]

In Kashmir, Sikandar Shah Miri (1389–1413) began expanding, and unleashed religious violence that earned him the name but-shikan, or 'idol-breaker'.[88] He earned this sobriquet because of the sheer scale of desecration and destruction of Hindu and Buddhist temples, shrines, ashrams, hermitages, and other holy places in what is now known as Kashmir and its neighboring territories. Firishta states: "After the emigration of the Brahmins, Sikundur ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down."[89] He destroyed vast majority of Hindu and Buddhist temples in his reach in Kashmir region (north and northwest India).[90]

A regional tradition, along with the Hindu text Madala Panji, states that Kalapahar attacked and damaged the Konark Sun Temple in 1568, as well as many others in Orissa.[91][92]

Some of the most dramatic cases of iconoclasm by Muslims are found in parts of India where Hindu and Buddhist temples were razed and mosques erected in their place. Aurangzeb, the 6th Mughal Emperor, destroyed the famous Hindu temples at Varanasi and Mathura, turning back on his ancestor Akbar's policy of religious freedom and establishing Sharia across his empire.[93]

Contemporary

On December 6, 1992, a large crowd of Hindu karsevaks (volunteers) entirely destroyed the 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India, in an attempt to reclaim the land known as Ram Janmabhoomi. The demolition occurred after a religious ceremony turned violent and resulted in several months of intercommunal rioting between India's Hindu and Muslim communities, causing the death of at least 2,000 people most of which were Muslims after Muslims first burnt the train load of unarmed Hindus.[94]

In June 2010, during rioting in Sangli, people threw stones inside a Ganesha mandal.[95]

The 2010 Deganga riots began on 6 September when mobs resorted to arson and violence over a disputed structure at Deganga, Kartikpur and Beliaghata under the Deganga police station area. The violence began late in the evening and continued throughout the night into the next morning.[96] The violence finally calmed down on 9 September after hundreds of business establishments and residences were looted, destroyed and burnt, dozens of people were severely injured and several places of worship desecrated and vandalized.

In June 2011 at Asansol Market area, a Hindu temple, under construction led by Bastim Bazaar Sarbojanin Durga Puja Committee was and approved by ADM on 12 April 2011, was attacked by an Islamic mob.[97]

In April 2021, a Hindu extremist under the influence of the Hindu priest Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati destroyed an idol of Sai Baba at a temple in Delhi incorrectly labeling Sai Baba as a jihadist.[98] The act was condemned by the Hindu and the Muslim community.

By Christians

During Goa inquisitions

Diago de Boarda, a priest, and his advisor Vicar General, Miguel Vaz, had made a 41-point plan for torturing Hindus. Under this plan Viceroy Antano de Noronha issued in 1566, an order applicable to the entire area under Portuguese rule:[99]

I hereby order that in any area owned by my master, the king, nobody should construct a Hindu temple and such temples already constructed should not be repaired without my permission. If this order is transgressed, such temples shall be, destroyed and the goods in them shall be used to meet expenses of holy deeds, as punishment of such transgression.

In 1567 the campaign of destroying temples in Bardez met with success. At the end of it 300 Hindu temples were destroyed. In 1583 Hindu temples at Assolna and Cuncolim were destroyed through army action.[99]

The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers,

wrote Filippo Sassetti, who was in India from 1578 to 1588.[99]

An order was issued in June 1684 eliminating the Konkani language and making it compulsory to speak Portuguese language. Following that law all the symbols of non-Christian sects were destroyed and the books written in local languages were burnt.[99]

Exact data on the nature and number of Hindu temples destroyed by the Christian missionaries and Portuguese government are unavailable. Some 160 temples were allegedly razed to the ground in Tiswadi (Ilhas de Goa) by 1566. Between 1566 and 1567, a campaign by Franciscan missionaries destroyed another 300 Hindu temples in Bardez (North Goa). In Salcete (South Goa), approximately another 300 Hindu temples were destroyed by the Christian officials of the Inquisition. Numerous Hindu temples were destroyed elsewhere at Assolna and Cuncolim by Portuguese authorities.[100] A 1569 royal letter in Portuguese archives records that all Hindu temples in its colonies in India had been burnt and razed to the ground.[101] The English traveller Sir Thomas Herbert, 1st Baronet who visited Goa in the 1600s writes:

... as also the ruins of 200 Idol Temples which the Vice-Roy Antonio Norogna totally demolisht, that no memory might remain, or monuments continue, of such gross Idolatry. For not only there, but at Salsette also were two Temples or places of prophane Worship; one of them (by incredible toil cut out of the hard Rock) was divided into three Iles or Galleries, in which were figured many of their deformed Pagotha's, and of which an Indian (if to be credited) reports that there were in that Temple 300 of those narrow Galleries, and the Idols so exceeding ugly as would affright an European Spectator; nevertheless this was a celebrated place, and so abundantly frequented by Idolaters, as induced the Portuguise in zeal with a considerable force to master the Town and to demolish the Temples, breaking in pieces all that monstrous brood of mishapen Pagods. In Goa nothing is more observable now than the fortifications, the Vice-Roy and Arch-bishops Palaces, and the Churches....[102]

Other

B. R. Ambedkar and his supporters on 25 December 1927 in the Mahad Satyagraha strongly criticised, condemned and then burned copies of Manusmriti on a pyre in a specially dug pit. Manusmriti, one of the sacred Hindu texts, is the religious basis of casteist laws and values of Hinduism and hence was/is the reason of social and economic plight of millions of untouchables and lower caste Hindus. Ambedkarites continue to observe 25 December as "Manusmriti Dahan Divas" (Manusmriti Burning Day) and burn copies of Manusmriti on this day.[103][104]

Contemporary iconoclasm against Hindus in other nations

In Bangladesh

In Bangladesh atrocities[105] including targeted attacks[106] against temples and open theft of Hindu property have increased sharply in recent years after the Jamat-e-Islami joined the coalition government led by the Bangladesh National Party.[107][108] Hindu temples in Bangladesh have also been vandalised.[109]

In Pakistan

Several Hindu temples have been destroyed in Pakistan. A notable incident was the destruction of the Ramna Kali Mandir in former East Pakistan. The temple was bulldozed by the Pakistani Army on March 27, 1971. The Dhakeshwari Temple was severely damaged during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, and over half of the temple's buildings were destroyed. In a major disrespect of the religion, the main worship hall was taken over by the Pakistan Army and used as an ammunitions storage area. Several of the temple custodians were tortured and killed by the Army though most, including the head priest, fled first to their ancestral villages and then to India and therefore escaped death.

In 2006 the last Hindu temple in Lahore was destroyed to pave the way for construction of a multi-story commercial building. The temple was demolished after officials of the Evacuee Property Trust Board concealed facts from the board chairman about the nature of the building. When reporters from Pakistan-based newspaper Dawn tried to cover the incident, they were accosted by the henchmen of the property developer, who denied that a Hindu temple existed at the site.[110]

Several political parties in Pakistan have objected to this move, such as the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistani Muslim League-N.[111][112] The move has also evoked strong condemnation in India from minority bodies and political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress Party, as well as Muslim advocacy political parties such as the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat.[113] A firm of lawyers representing the Hindu minority has approached the Lahore High Court seeking a directive to the builders to stop the construction of the commercial plaza and reconstruct the temple at the site. The petitioners maintain that the demolition violates section 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code prohibiting the demolition of places of worship.[114]

On June 29, 2005, following the arrest of an illiterate Christian janitor on allegations of allegedly burning Qur'an pages, a mob of between 300 and 500 Muslims destroyed a Hindu temple and houses belonging to Christian and Hindu families in Nowshera. Under the terms of a deal negotiated between Islamic religious leaders and the Hindu/Christian communities, Pakistani police later released all previously arrested perpetrators without charge.[115]

In Malaysia

Between April to May 2006, several Hindu temples were demolished by city hall authorities in the country, accompanied by violence against Hindus.[116] On April 21, 2006, the Malaimel Sri Selva Kaliamman Temple in Kuala Lumpur was reduced to rubble after the city hall sent in bulldozers.[117] Many Hindu advocacy groups have protested what they allege is a systematic plan of temple cleansing in Malaysia. The official reason given by the Malaysian government has been that the temples were built "illegally". However, several of the temples are centuries old.[118] On May 11, 2006, armed city hall officers from Kuala Lumpur forcefully demolished part of a 60-year-old suburban temple that serves more than 1,000 Hindus.[118]

In Saudi Arabia

On March 24, 2005, Saudi authorities destroyed religious items found in a raid on a makeshift Hindu shrine found in an apartment in Riyadh.[119]

In Fiji

In Fiji according to official reports, attacks on Hindu institutions increased by 14% compared to 2004. This intolerance of Hindus has found expression in anti-Hindu speeches and destruction of temples, the two most common forms of immediate and direct violence against Hindus. Between 2001 and April 2005, one hundred cases of temple attacks have been registered with the police. The alarming increase of temple destruction has spread fear and intimidation among the Hindu minorities and has hastened immigration to neighboring Australia and New Zealand. Organized religious institutions, such as the Methodist Church of Fiji, have repeatedly called for the creation of a theocratic Christian State and have propagated anti-Hindu sentiment.[120] State favoritism of Christianity, and systematic attacks on temples, are some of the greatest threats faced by Fijian Hindus. Despite the creation of a human rights commission, the plight of Hindus in Fiji continues to be precarious.[120] Perhaps the most notorious episode of iconoclasm in India was Mahmud of Ghazni's attack on the Somnath Temple from across the Thar Desert.[121] In 1026 during the reign of Bhima I, the prominent Turkic-Muslim ruler Mahmud of Ghazni raided Gujarat, plundering the Somnath Temple and breaking its jyotirlinga despite pleas by Brahmins not to break it. He took away a booty of 20 million dinars.[122][123]: 39 The attack may have been inspired by the belief that an idol of the goddess Manat had been secretly transferred to the temple.[124]

According to the Ghaznavid court-poet Farrukhi Sistani, who claimed to have accompanied Mahmud on his raid, Somnat (as rendered in Persian) was a garbled version of su-manat referring to the goddess Manat. According to him, as well as a later Ghaznavid historian Abu Sa'id Gardezi, the images of the other goddesses were destroyed in Arabia but the one of Manat was secretly sent away to Kathiawar (in modern Gujarat) for safekeeping. Since the idol of Manat was an aniconic image of black stone, it could have been easily confused with a lingam at Somnath. Mahmud is said to have broken the idol and taken away parts of it as loot and placed so that people would walk on it. In his letters to the Caliphate, Mahmud exaggerated the size, wealth and religious significance of the Somnath temple, receiving grandiose titles from the Caliph in return.[122]: 45–51

The wooden structure was replaced by Kumarapala (r. 1143–72), who rebuilt the temple out of stone.[125]

Iconoclasm in East Asia

China

There have been a number of anti-Buddhist campaigns in Chinese history that led to the destruction of Buddhist temples and images. One of the most notable of these campaigns was the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution of the Tang dynasty.

During and after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, there was widespread destruction of religious and secular images in China.

During the Northern Expedition in Guangxi in 1926, Kuomintang General Bai Chongxi led his troops in destroying Buddhist temples and smashing Buddhist images, turning the temples into schools and Kuomintang party headquarters.[126] It was reported that almost all of the viharas in Guangxi were destroyed and the monks were removed.[127] Bai also led a wave of anti-foreignism in Guangxi, attacking Americans, Europeans, and other foreigners, and generally making the province unsafe for foreigners and missionaries. Westerners fled from the province and some Chinese Christians were also attacked as imperialist agents.[128] The three goals of the movement were anti-foreignism, anti-imperialism and anti-religion. Bai led the anti-religious movement against superstition. Huang Shaohong, also a Kuomintang member of the New Guangxi clique, supported Bai's campaign. The anti-religious campaign was agreed upon by all Guangxi Kuomintang members.[128]

There was extensive destruction of religious and secular imagery in Tibet after it was invaded and occupied by China.[129]

Many religious and secular images were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976, ostensibly because they were a holdover from China's traditional past (which the Communist regime led by Mao Zedong reviled). The Cultural Revolution included widespread destruction of historic artworks in public places and private collections, whether religious or secular. Objects in state museums were mostly left intact.

South Korea

According to an article in Buddhist-Christian Studies:[130]

Over the course of the last decade [1990s] a fairly large number of Buddhist temples in South Korea have been destroyed or damaged by fire by Christian fundamentalists. More recently, Buddhist statues have been identified as idols, and attacked and decapitated in the name of Jesus. Arrests are hard to effect, as the arsonists and vandals work by stealth of night.

Angkor

Beginning c. 1243 AD with the death of Indravarman II, the Khmer Empire went through a period of iconoclasm. At the beginning of the reign of the next king, Jayavarman VIII, the kingdom went back to Hinduism and the worship of Shiva. Many of the Buddhist images were destroyed by Jayavarman VIII, who reestablished previously Hindu shrines that had been converted to Buddhism by his predecessor. Carvings of the Buddha at temples such as Preah Khan were destroyed, and during this period the Bayon Temple was made a temple to Shiva, with the central 3.6-meter-tall (12 ft) statue of the Buddha cast to the bottom of a nearby well.[131]

Political iconoclasm

Damnatio memoriae

Revolutions and changes of regime, whether through uprising of the local population, foreign invasion, or a combination of both, are often accompanied by the public destruction of statues and monuments identified with the previous regime. This may also be known as damnatio memoriae, the ancient Roman practice of official obliteration of the memory of a specific individual. Stricter definitions of "iconoclasm" exclude both types of action, reserving the term for religious or more widely cultural destruction.[132] In many cases, such as Revolutionary Russia or Ancient Egypt, this distinction can be hard to make.

Among Roman emperors and other political figures subject to decrees of damnatio memoriae were Sejanus, Publius Septimius Geta, and Domitian. Several Emperors, such as Domitian and Commodus had during their reigns erected numerous statues of themselves, which were pulled down and destroyed when they were overthrown.

The perception of damnatio memoriae in the Classical world as an act of erasing memory has been challenged by scholars who have argued that it "did not negate historical traces, but created gestures which served to dishonor the record of the person and so, in an oblique way, to confirm memory",[133] and was in effect a spectacular display of "pantomime forgetfulness".[134] Examining cases of political monument destruction in modern Irish history, Guy Beiner has demonstrated that iconoclastic vandalism often entails subtle expressions of ambiguous remembrance and that, rather than effacing memory, such acts of de-commemorating effectively preserve memory in obscure forms.[135]

During the French Revolution

Throughout the radical phase of the French Revolution, iconoclasm was supported by members of the government as well as the citizenry. Numerous monuments, religious works, and other historically significant pieces were destroyed in an attempt to eradicate any memory of the Old Regime. A statue of King Louis XV in the Paris square which until then bore his name, was pulled down and destroyed. This was a prelude to the guillotining of his successor Louis XVI in the same site, renamed "Place de la Révolution" (at present Place de la Concorde).[136] Later that year, the bodies of many French kings were exhumed from the Basilica of Saint-Denis and dumped in a mass grave.[137]

Some episodes of iconoclasm were carried out spontaneously by crowds of citizens, including the destruction of statues of kings during the insurrection of 10 August 1792 in Paris.[138] Some were directly sanctioned by the Republican government, including the Saint-Denis exhumations.[137] Nonetheless, the Republican government also took steps to preserve historic artworks,[139] notably by founding the Louvre museum to house and display the former royal art collection. This allowed the physical objects and national heritage to be preserved while stripping them of their association with the monarchy.[140] Alexandre Lenoir saved many royal monuments by diverting them to preservation in a museum.[141]

The statue of Napoleon on the column at Place Vendôme, Paris was also the target of iconoclasm several times: destroyed after the Bourbon Restoration, restored by Louis-Philippe, destroyed during the Paris Commune and restored by Adolphe Thiers.

After Napoleon conquered the Italian city of Pavia, local Pavia Jacobins destroyed the Regisole, a bronze classical equestrian monument dating back to Classical times. The Jacobins considered it a symbol of Royal authority, but it had been a prominent Pavia landmark for nearly a thousand years and its destruction aroused much indignation and precipitated a revolt by inhabitants of Pavia against the French, which was quelled by Napoleon after a furious urban fight.

Other examples

Other examples of political destruction of images include:

In the Soviet Union

During and after the October Revolution, widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery in Russia took place, as well as the destruction of imagery related to the Imperial family. The Revolution was accompanied by destruction of monuments of tsars, as well as the destruction of imperial eagles at various locations throughout Russia. According to Christopher Wharton:[160]

In front of a Moscow Cathedral, crowds cheered as the enormous statue of Tsar Alexander III was bound with ropes and gradually beaten to the ground. After a considerable amount of time, the statue was decapitated and its remaining parts were broken into rubble.

The Soviet Union actively destroyed religious sites, including Russian Orthodox churches and Jewish cemeteries, in order to discourage religious practice and curb the activities of religious groups.

During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and during the Revolutions of 1989, protesters often attacked and took down sculptures and images of Joseph Stalin, such as the Stalin Monument in Budapest.[161]

The fall of Communism in 1989–1991 was also followed by the destruction or removal of statues of Vladimir Lenin and other Communist leaders in the former Soviet Union and in other Eastern Bloc countries. Particularly well-known was the destruction of "Iron Felix", the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky outside the KGB's headquarters. Another statue of Dzerzhinsky was destroyed in a Warsaw square that was named after him during communist rule, but which is now called Bank Square.

In the United States

During the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty pulled down and destroyed the gilded lead statue of George III of the United Kingdom on Bowling Green (New York City), melting it down to be recast as ammunition.[162] Sometimes relatively intact monuments are moved to a collected display in a less prominent place, as in India and also post-Communist countries.

In August 2017, a statue of a Confederate soldier dedicated to "the boys who wore the gray" was pulled down from its pedestal in front of Durham County Courthouse in North Carolina by protesters. This followed the events at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in response to growing calls to remove Confederate monuments and memorials across the U.S.[163]

2020 demonstrations

During the George Floyd protests of 2020, demonstrators pulled down dozens of statues which they considered symbols of the Confederacy, slavery, segregation, or racism, including the statue of Williams Carter Wickham in Richmond, Virginia.[164][165]

Further demonstrations in the wake of the George Floyd protests have resulted in the removal of:[166]

Multiple statues of early European explorers and founders were also vandalized, including those of Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.[169][170]

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Iconoclasm (Eikonoklasmos, "Image-breaking") is the name of the heresy that in the eighth and ninth centuries disturbed the peace of the Eastern Church, caused the last of the many breaches with Rome that prepared the way for the schism of Photius, and was echoed on a smaller scale in the Frankish kingdom in the West. The story in the East is divided into two separate persecutions of the Catholics, at the end of each of which stands the figure of an image-worshipping Empress (Irene and Theodora).

I. The First Iconoclast Persecution

The origin of the movement against the worship (for the use of this word see IMAGES, VENERATION OF) of images has been much discussed. It has been represented as an effect of Moslem influence. To Moslems, any kind of picture, statue, or representation of the human form is an abominable idol. It is true that, in a sense, the Khalifa at Damascus began the whole disturbance, and that the Iconoclast emperors were warmly applauded and encouraged in their campaign by their rivals at Damascus. On the other hand it is not likely that the chief cause of the emperor's zeal against pictures was the example of his bitter enemy, the head of the rival religion. A more probable origin will be found in the opposition to pictures that had existed for some time among Christians. There seems to have been a dislike of holy pictures, a suspicion that their use was, or might become, idolatrous among certain Christians for many centuries before the Iconoclast persecution began (see IMAGES, VENERATION OF). The Paulicians, as part of their heresy held that all matter (especially the human body) is bad, that all external religious forms, sacraments, rites, especially material pictures and relics, should be abolished. To honour the Cross was especially reprehensible, since Christ had not really been crucified. Since the seventh century these heretics had been allowed to have occasional great influence at Constantinople intermittently with suffering very cruel persecution (see PAULICIANS). But some Catholics, too shared their dislike of pictures and relics. In the beginning of the eighth century several bishops, Constantine of Nacolia in Phrygia, Theodosius of Ephesus, Thomas of Claudiopolis, and others are mentioned as having these views. A Nestorian bishop, Xenaeas of Hierapolis, was a conspicuous forerunner of the Iconoclasts (Hardouin, IV, 306). It was when this party got the ear of the Emperor Leo III (the Isaurian, 716-41) that the persecution began.

The first act in the story is a similar persecution in the domain of the Khalifa at Damascus. Yezid I (680-683) and his successors, especially Yezid II (720-24), thinking, like good Moslems, that all pictures are idols, tried to prevent their use among even their Christian subjects. But this Moslem persecution, in itself only one of many such intermittent annoyances to the Christians of Syria, is unimportant except as the forerunner of the troubles in the empire. Leo the Isaurian was a valiant soldier with an autocratic temper. Any movement that excited his sympathy was sure to be enforced sternly and cruelly. He had already cruelly persecuted the Jews and Paulicians. He was also suspected of leanings towards Islam. The Khalifa Omar II (717-20) tried to convert him, without success except as far as persuading him that pictures are idols. The Christian enemies of images, notably Constantine of Nacolia, then easily gained his ear. The emperor came to the conclusion that images were the chief hindrance to the conversion of Jews and Moslems, the cause of superstition, weakness, and division in his empire, and opposed to the First Commandment. The campaign against images as part of a general reformation of the Church and State. Leo III's idea was to purify the Church, centralize it as much as possible under the Patriarch of Constantinople, and thereby strengthen and centralize the State of the empire. There was also a strong rationalistic tendency among there Iconoclast emperors, a reaction against the forms of Byzantine piety that became more pronounced each century. This rationalism helps to explain their hatred of monks. Once persuaded, Leo began to enforce his idea ruthlessly. Constantine of Nacolia came to the capital in the early part of his reign; at the same time John of Synnada wrote to the patriarch Germanus I (715-30), warning him that Constantine had made a disturbance among the other bishops of the province by preaching against the use of holy pictures. Germanus, the first of the heroes of the image-worshippers (his letters in Hardouin, IV 239-62), then wrote a defence of the practice of the Church addressed to another Iconoclast, Thomas of Claudiopolis (l. c. 245-62). But Constantine and Thomas had the emperor on their side. In 726 Leo III published an edict declaring images to be idols, forbidden by Exodus, xx, 4, 5, and commanding all such images in churches to be destroyed. At once the soldiers began to carry out his orders, whereby disturbances were provoked throughout the empire. There was a famous picture of Christ, called Christos antiphonetes, over the gate of the palace at Constantinople. The destruction of this picture provoked a serious riot among the people. Germanus, the patriarch, protested against the edict and appealed to the pope (729). But the emperor deposed him as a traitor (730) and had Anastasius (730-54), formerly syncellus of the patriarchal Court, and a willing instrument of the Government, appointed in his place. The most steadfast opponents of the Iconoclasts throughout this story were the monks. It is true that there were some who took the side of the emperor but as a body Eastern monasticism was steadfastly loyal to the old custom of the Church. Leo therefore joined with his Iconoclasm a fierce persecution of monasteries and eventually tried to suppress monasticism altogether.

The pope at that time was Gregory II (713-31). Even before he had received the appeal of Germanus a letter came from the emperor commanding him to accept the edict, destroy images at Rome, and summon a general council to forbid their use. Gregory answered, in 727, by a long defence of the pictures. He explains the difference between them and idols, with some surprise that Leo does not already understand it. He describes the lawful use of, and reverence paid to, pictures by Christians. He blames the emperor's interference in ecclesiastical matters and his persecution of image-worshippers. A council is not wanted; all Leo has to do is to stop disturbing the peace of the Church. As for Leo's threat that he will come to Rome, break the statue of St. Peter (apparently the famous bronze statue in St. Peter's), and take the pope prisoner, Gregory answers it by pointing out that he can easily escape into the Campagna, and reminding the emperor how futile and now abhorrent to all Christians was Constans's persecution of Martin I. He also says that all people in the West detest the emperor's action and will never consent to destroy their images at his command (Greg. II, "Ep. I ad Leonem"). The emperor answered, continuing his argument by saying that no general council had yet said a word in favour of images that he himself is emperor and priest (basileus kai lereus) in one and therefore has the right to make decrees about such matters. Gregory writes back regretting that Leo does not yet see the error of his ways. As for the former general Councils, they did not pretend to discuss every point of the faith; it was unnecessary in those days to defend what no one attacked. The title Emperor and Priest had been conceded as a compliment to some sovereigns because of their zeal in defending the very faith that Leo now attacked. The pope declares himself determined to withstand the emperor's tyranny at any cost, though he has no defence but to pray that Christ will send a demon to torture the emperor's body that his soul be saved, according to 1 Corinthians 5:5.

Meanwhile the persecution raged in the East. Monasteries were destroyed, monks put to death, tortured, or banished. The Iconoclasts began to apply their principle to relics also, to break open shrines and burn the bodies of saints buried in churches. Some of them rejected all intercession of saints. These and other points (destruction of relics and rejection of prayers to saints), though not necessarily involved in the original programme are from this time generally (not quite always) added to Iconoclasm. Meanwhile, St. John Damascene (d. 754). safe from the emperor's anger under the rule of the Khalifa was writing at the monastery of St Saba his famous apologies "against those who destroy the holy icons". In the West, at Rome, Ravenna, and Naples, the people rose against the emperor's law. This anti-imperial movement is one of the factors of the breach between Italy and the old empire, the independence of the papacy, and the beginning of the Papal States. Gregory II already refused to send taxes to Constantinople and himself appointed the imperial dux in the Ducatos Romanus. From this time the pope becomes practically sovereign of the Ducatus. The emperor's anger against image-worshippers was strengthened by a revolt that broke out about this time in Hellas, ostensibly in favour of the icons. A certain Cosmas was set up as emperor by the rebels. The insurrection was soon crushed (727), and Cosmas was beheaded. After this a new and severer edict against images was published (730), and the fury of the persecution was redoubled.

Pope Gregory II died in 731. He was succeeded at once by Gregory III, who carried on the defence of holy images in exactly the spirit of his predecessor. The new pope sent a priest, George, with letters against Iconoclasm to Constantinople. But George when he arrived, was afraid to present them, and came back without having accomplished his mission. He was sent a second time on the same errand, but was arrested and imprisoned in Sicily by the imperial governor. The emperor now proceeded with his policy of enlarging and strengthening his own patriarchate at Constantinople. He conceived the idea of making it as great as all the empire over which he still actually ruled. Isauria, Leo's birthplace, was taken from Antioch by an imperial edict and added to the Byzantine patriarchate, increasing it by the Metropolis, Seleucia, and about twenty other sees. Leo further pretended to withdraw Illyricum from the Roman patriarchate and to add it to that of Constantinople, and confiscated all the property of the Roman See on which he could lay his hands, in Sicily and Southern Italy. This naturally increased the enmity between Eastern and Western Christendom. In 731 Gregory III held a synod of ninety-three bishops at St. Peter's in which all persons who broke, defiled, or took images of Christ, of His Mother, the Apostles or other saints were declared excommunicate. Another legate, Constantine, was sent with a copy of the decree and of its application to the emperor, but was again arrested and imprisoned in Sicily. Leo then sent a fleet to Italy to punish the pope; but it was wrecked and dispersed by a storm. Meanwhile every kind of calamity afflicted the empire; earthquakes, pestilence, and famine devastated the provinces while the Moslems continued their victorious career and conquered further territory.

Leo III died in June, 741, in the midst of these troubles, without having changed policy. His work was carried on by his son Constantine V (Copronymus, 741-775), who became an even greater persecutor of image-worshippers than had been his father. As soon as Leo III was dead, Artabasdus (who had married Leo's daughter) seized the opportunity and took advantage of the unpopularity of the Iconoclast Government to raise a rebellion. Declaring himself the protector of the holy icons he took possession of the capital, had himself crowned emperor by the pliant patriarch Anastasius and immediately restored the images. Anastasius, who had been intruded in the place of Germanus as the Iconoclast candidate, now veered round in the usual Byzantine way, helped the restoration of the images and excommunicated Constantine V as a heretic and denier of Christ. But Constantine marched on the city, took it, blinded Artabasdus and began a furious revenge on all rebels and image-worshippers (743). His treatment of Anastasius is a typical example of the way these later emperors behaved towards the patriarchs through whom they tried to govern the Church. Anastasius was flogged in public, blinded, driven shamefully through the streets, made to return to his Iconoclasm and finally reinstated as patriarch. The wretched man lived on till 754. The pictures restored by Artabasdus were again removed. In 754 Constantine, taking up his father's original idea summoned a great synod at Constantinople that was to count as the Seventh General Council. About 340 bishops attended; as the See of Constantinople was vacant by the death of Anastasius, Theodosius of Ephesus and Pastilias of Perge presided. Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem refused to send legates, since it was clear that the bishops were summoned merely to carry out the emperor's commands. The event showed that the patriarchs had judged rightly. The bishops at the synod servilely agreed to all Constantine's demands. They decreed that images of Christ are either Monophysite or Nestorian, for — since it is impossible to represent His Divinity — they either confound or divorce His two natures. The only lawful representation of Christ is the Holy Eucharist. Images of saints are equally to be abhorred; it is blasphemous to represent by dead wood or stone those who live with God. All images are an invention of the pagans — are in fact idols, as shown by Ex xx, 4, 5; Deut. v, 8; John iv, 24; Rom. i, 23-25. Certain texts of the Fathers are also quoted in support of Iconoclasm. Image-worshippers are idolaters, adorers of wood and stone; the Emperors Leo and Constantine are lights of the Orthodox faith, our saviours from idolatry. A special curse is pronounced against three chief defenders of images — Germanus, the former Patriarch of Constantinople, John Damascene, and a monk, George of Cyprus. The synod declares that "the Trinity has destroyed these three" ("Acts of the Iconoclast Synod of 754" in Mansi XIII, 205 sq.).

The bishops finally elected a successor to the vacant see of Constantinople, Constantine, bishop of Sylaeum (Constantine II, 754-66), who was of course a creature of the Government, prepared to carry on its campaign. The decrees were published in the Forum on 27 August, 754. After this the destruction of pictures went on with renewed zeal. All the bishops of the empire were required to sign the Acts of the synod and to swear to do away with icons in their dioceses. The Paulicians were now treated well, while image-worshippers and monks were fiercely persecuted. Instead of paintings of saints the churches were decorated with pictures of flowers, fruit, and birds, so that the people said that they looked like grocery stores and bird shops. A monk Peter was scourged to death on 7 June, 761; the Abbot of Monagria, John, who refused to trample on an icon, was tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea on 7 June, 761; in 767 Andrew, a Cretan monk, was flogged and lacerated till he died (see the Acta SS., 8 Oct.; Roman Martyrology for 17 Oct.); in November of the same year a great number of monks were tortured to death in various ways (Martyrology, 28 Nov.). The emperor tried to abolish monasticism (as the centre of the defence of images); monasteries were turned into barracks; the monastic habit was forbidden; the patriarch Constantine II was made to swear in the ambo of his church that although formerly a monk, he had now joined the secular clergy. Relics were dug up and thrown into the sea, the invocation of saints forbidden. In 766 the emperor fell foul of his patriarch, had him scourged and beheaded and replaced by Nicetas I (766-80), who was, naturally also an obedient servant of the Iconoclast Government. Meanwhile the countries which the emperors power did not reach kept the old custom and broke communion with the Iconoclast Patriarch of Constantinople and his bishops. Cosmas of Alexandria, Theodore of Antioch, and Theodore of Jerusalem were all defenders of the holy icons in communion with Rome. The Emperor Constantine V died in 775. His son Leo IV (775-80), although he did not repeal the Iconoclast law was much milder in enforcing them. He allowed the exiled monks to come back, tolerated at least the intercession of saints and tried to reconcile all parties. When the patriarch Nicetas I died in 780 he was succeeded by Paul IV (780-84), a Cypriote monk who carried on a half-hearted Iconoclast policy only through fear of the Government. But Leo IV's wife Irene was a steadfast image-worshipper. Even during her husband's life she concealed ho}y icons in her rooms. At the end of his reign Leo had a burst of fiercer Iconoclasm. He punished the courtiers who had replaced images in their apartments and was about to banish the empress when he died 8 September, 780. At once a complete reaction set in.

II. The Second General Council (Nicea Ii, 787)

The Empress Irene was regent for her son Constantine VI (780-97), who was nine years old when his father died. She immediately set about undoing the work of the Iconoclast emperors. Pictures and relics were restored to the churches; monasteries were reopened. Fear of the army, now fanatically Iconoclast, kept her for a time from repealing the laws; but she only waited for an opportunity to do so and to restore the broken communion with Rome and the other patriarchates. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Paul IV, resigned and retired to a monastery, giving openly as his reason repentance for his former concessions to the Iconoclast Government. He was succeeded by a pronounced image-worshipper, Tarasius. Tarasius and the empress now opened negotiations with Rome. They sent an embassy to Pope Adrian I (772-95) acknowledging the primacy and begging him to come himself, or at least to send legates to a council that should undo the work of the Iconoclast synod of 754. The pope answered by two letters, one for the empress and one for the patriarch. In these he repeats the arguments fo r the worship of images agrees to the proposed council, insists on the authority of the Holy See, and demands the restitution of the property confiscated by Leo III. He blames the sudden elevation of Tarasius (who from being a layman had suddenly become patriarch), and rejects his title of Ecumenical Patriarch, but he praises his orthodoxy and zeal for the holy images. Finally, he commits all these matters to the judgment of his legates. These legates were an archpriest Peter and the abbot Peter of St. Saba near Rome. The other three patriarchs were unable to answer, they did not even receive Tarasius's letters, because of the disturbance at that time in the Moslem state. But two m onks, Thomas, abbot of an Egyptian monastery and John Syncellus of Antioch, appeared with letters from their communities explaining the state of things and showing that the patriarchs had always remained faithful to the images. These two seem to have acted in some sort as legates for Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.

Tarasius opened the synod in the church of the Apostles at Constantinople. in August, 786; but it was at once dispersed by the Iconoclast soldiers. The empress disbanded those troops and replaced them by others; it was arranged that the synod should meet at Nicaea in Bithynia, the place of the first general council. The bishops met here in the summer of 787, about 300 in number. The council lasted from 24 September to 23 October. The Roman legates were present; they signed the Acts first and always had the first place in the list of members, but Tarasius conducted the proceeding, apparently because the legates could not speak Greek. In the first three sessions Tarasius gave an account of the events that had led up to the Council, the papal and other letters were read out, and many repentant Iconoclast bishops were reconciled. The fathers accepted the pope's letters as true formulas of the Catholic Faith. Tarasius, when he read the letters, left out the passages about the restitution of the confiscated papal properties, the reproaches against his own sudden elevation and use of the title Ecumenical Patriarch, and modified (but not essentially) the assertions of the primacy. The fourth session established the reasons for which the use of holy images is lawful, quoting from the Old Testament passages about images in the temple (Ex., xxv, 18-22; Num., vii, 89; Ezech., xli, 18-19; Hebr., ix, 5), and also citing a great number of the Fathers. Euthymius of Sardes at the end of the session read a profession of faith in this sense. In the fifth session Tarasius explained that Iconoclasm came from Jews, Saracens, and heretics; some Iconoclast misquotations were exposed, their books burnt, and an icon set up in the hall in the midst of the fathers. The sixth session was occupied with the Iconoclast synod of 754; its claim to be a general council was denied, because neither the pope nor the three other patriarchs had a share in it. The decree of that synod (see above) was refuted clause by clause. The seventh session drew up the symbol (horos) of the council, in which, after repeating the Nicene Creed and renewing the condemnation of all manner of former heretics, from Arians to Monothelites, the fathers make their definition. Images are to receive veneration (proskynesis), not adoration (latreia); the honour paid to them is only relative (schetike), for the sake of their prototype (for the text of this, the essential definition of the council, see IMAGES, VENERATION OF). Anathemas are pronounced against the Iconoclast leaders; Germanus, John Damascene, and George of Cyprus are praised. In opposition to the formula of the Iconoclast synod the fathers declare: "The Trinity has made these three glorious" (he Trias tous treis edoxasen). A deputation was sent to the empress with the Acts of the synod; a letter the clergy of Constantinople acquainted them with its decision. Twenty-two canons were drawn up, of which these are the chief:

  • canons 1 and 2 confirm the canons of all former general councils;
  • canon 3 forbids the appointment of ecclesiastical persons by the State; only bishops may elect other bishops;
  • canons 4 and 5 are against simony;
  • canon 6 insists on yearly provincial synods;
  • canon 7 forbids bishops, under penalty of deposition, to consecrate churches without relics;
  • canon 10 forbids priests to change their parishes without their bishops consent;
  • canon 13 commands all desecrated monasteries to be restored;
  • canons 18-20 regulate abuses in monasteries.

An eighth and last session was held on 23 October at Constantinople in the presence of Irene and her son. After a discourse by Tarasius the Acts were read out and signed by all, including the empress and the emperor. The synod was closed with the usual Polychronia or formal acclamation, and Epiphanius, a deacon of Catania in Sicily, preached a sermon to the assembled fathers. Tarasius sent to Pope Adrian an account of all that had happened, and Adrian approved the Acts (letter to Charles the Great) and had them translated into Latin. But the question of the property of the Holy See in Southern Italy and the friendship of the pope towards the Franks still caused had feeling between East and West; moreover an Iconoclast party still existed at Constantinople, especially in the army.

III. The Second Iconoclast Persecution

Twenty-seven years after the Synod of Nicaea, Iconoclasm broke out again. Again the holy pictures were destroyed, and their defenders fiercely persecuted. For twenty-eight years the former story was repeated with wonderful exactness. The places of Leo III, Constantine V, and Leo IV are taken by a new line of Iconoclast emperors — Leo V, Michael II, Theophilus. Pope Paschal I acts just as did Gregory II, the faithful Patriarch Nicephorus stands for Germanus I, St. John Damascene lives again in St. Theodore the Studite. Again one synod rejects icons, and another, following it, defends them. Again an empress, regent for her young son, puts an end to the storm and restores the old custom — this time finally.

The origin of this second outbreak is not far to seek. There had remained, especially in the army, a considerable Iconoclast party. Constantine V, their hero had been a valiant and successful general against the Moslems, Michael I (811-13), who kept the Faith of the Second Council of Nicaea, was singularly unfortunate in his attempt to defend the empire. The Iconoclasts looked back regretfully to the glorious campaigns of his predecessor, they evolved the amazing conception of Constantine as a saint, they went in pilgrimage to his grave and cried out to him: "Arise come back and save the perishing empire". When Michael I, in June, 813, was utterly defeated by the Bulgars and fled to his capital, the soldiers forced him to resign his crown and set up one of the generals Leo the Armenian (Leo V, 813-20) in his place. An officer (Theodotus Cassiteras) and a monk (the Abbot John Grammaticus) persuaded the new emperor that all the misfortunes of the empire were a judgment of God on the idolatry of image-worship. Leo, once persuaded, used all his power to put down the icons, and so all the trouble began again.

In 814 the Iconoclasts assembled at the palace and prepared an elaborate attack against images, repeating almost exactly the arguments of the synod of 754. The Patriarch of Constantinople was Nicephorus I (806-15), who became one of the chief defenders of images in this second persecution. The emperor invited him to a discussion of the question with the Iconoclasts; he refused since it had been already settled by the Seventh General Council. The work of demolishing images began again. The picture of Christ restored by Irene over the iron door of the palace, was again removed. In 815 the patriarch was summoned to the emperor's presence. He came surrounded by bishops, abbots, and monks, and held a long discussion with Leo and his Iconoclast followers. Inn he same year the emperor summoned a synod of bishops, who, obeying his orders, deposed the patriarch and elected Theodotus Cassiteras (Theodotus I, 815-21) to succeed him. Nicephorus was banished across the Bosporus. Till his death in 829, he defended the cause of the images by controversial writings (the "Lesser Apology", "Antirrhetikoi", "Greater Apology", etc. in P. G., C, 201-850; Pitra, "Spicileg. Solesm.", I, 302-503; IV, 233, 380), wrote a history of his own time (Historia syntomos, P. G., C, 876-994) and a general chronography from Adam (chronographikon syntomon, in P. G., C, 995-1060). Among the monks who accompanied Nicephorus to the emperor's presence in 815 was Theodore, Abbot of the Studium monastery at Constantinople (d. 826). Throughout this second Iconoclast persecution St. Theodore (Theodorus Studita) was the leader of the faithful monks, the chief defender of the icons. He comforted and encouraged Nicephorus in his resistance to the emperor, was three times banished by the Government, wrote a great number of treatises controversial letters, and apologies in various forms for the images. His chief point is that Iconoclasts are Christological heretics, since they deny an essential element of Christ's human nature, namely, that it can be represented graphically. This amounts to a denial of its reality and material quality, whereby Iconoclasts revive the old Monophysite heresy. Ehrhard judges St. Theodore to be "perhaps the most ingenious [der scharfsinnigste] of the defenders of the cult of images" (in Krumbacher's "Byz. Litt.", p. 150). In any case his position can be rivalled only by that of St. John Damascene. (See his work in P. G., XCIX; for an account of them see Krumbacher, op. cit., 147-151, 712-715; his life by a contemporary monk, P. G., XCIX, 9 sq.) His feast is on 11 Nov. in the Byzantine Rite, 12 Nov. in the Roman Martyrology.

The first thing the new patriarch Theodotus did was to hold a synod which condemned the council of 787 (the Second Nicene) and declared its adherence to that of 754. Bishops, abbots, clergy, and even officers of the Government who would not accept its decree were deposed, banished, tortured. Theodore of Studium refused communion with the Iconoclast patriarch, and went into exile. A number of persons of all ranks were put to death at this time, and his references; pictures of all kinds were destroyed everywhere. Theodore appealed to the pope (Paschal I, 817-824) in the name of the persecuted Eastern image-worshippers. At the same time Theodotus the Iconoclast patriarch, sent legates to Rome, who were, however not admitted by the pope, since Theodotus was a schismatical intruder in the see of which Nicephorus was still lawful bishop. But Paschal received the monks sent by Theodoret and gave up the monastery of St. Praxedes to them and others who had fled from the persecution in the East. In 818 the pope sent legates to the emperor with a letter defending the icons and once more refuting the Iconoclast accusation of idolatry. In this letter he insists chiefly on our need of exterior signs for invisible things: sacraments, words, the sign of the Cross. and all tangible signs of this kind; how, then, can people who a admit these reject images? (The fragment of this letter that has been preserved is published in Pitra, "Spicileg. Solesm.". II, p. xi sq.). The letter did not have any effect on the emperor; but it is from this time especially that the Catholics in the East turn with more loyalty than ever to Rome as their leader, their last refuge in the persecution. The well-known texts of St. Theodore in which he defends the primacy in the strongest possible language — e. g., "Whatever novelty is brought into the Church by those who wander from the truth must certainly be referred to Peter or to his successor.... Save us, chief pastor of the Church under heaven" (Ep. i, 33, P. G., XCIX, 1018); "Arrange that a decision be received from old Rome as the custom has been handed down from the beginning by the tradition of our fathers" (Ep. ii, 36; ibid., 1331 —were written during this persecution).

The protestations of loyalty to old Rome made by the Orthodox and Catholic Christians of the Byzantine Church at the time are her last witness immediately before the Great Schism. There were then two separate parties in the East having no communion with each other: the Iconoclast persecutors under the emperor with their anti-patriarch Theodotus, and the Catholics led by Theodore the Studite acknowledging the lawful patriarch Nicephorus and above him the distant Latin bishop who was to them the "chief pastor of the Church under heaven". On Christmas Day, 820, Leo V ended his tyrannical reign by being murdered in a palace revolution that set up one of his generals, Michael II (the Stammerer, 820-29) as emperor. Michael was also an Iconoclast and continued his predecessors policy, though at first he was anxious not to persecute but to conciliate every one. But he changed nothing of the Iconoclast law and when Theodotus the anti-patriarch died (821) he refused to restore Nicephorus and set up another usurper, Antony, formerly Bishop of Sylaeum (Antony I, 321-32). In 822 a certain general of Slav race, Thomas, set up a dangerous revolution with the help of the Arabs. It does not seem that this revolution had anything to do with the question of images. Thomas represented rather the party of the murdered emperor, Leo V. But after it was put down, in 824, Michael became much more severe towards the image-worshippers. A great number of monks fled to the West, and Michael wrote a famous letter full of bitter accusations of their idolatry to his rival Louis the Pious (814-20) to persuade him to hand over these exiles to Byzantine justice (in Manse, XIV, 417-22). Other Catholics who had not escaped were imprisoned and tortured, among whom were Methodius of Syracuse and Euthymius, Metropolitan of Sardes. The deaths of St. Theodore the Studite (11 Nov., 826) and of the lawful patriarch Nicephorus (2 June, 828) were a great loss to the orthodox at this time. Michael's son and successor, Theophilus, (829-42), continued the persecution still more fiercely. A monk, Lazarus, was scourged till he nearly died; another monk, Methodius, was shut up in prison with common ruffians for seven years; Michael, Syncellus of Jerusalem, and Joseph, a famous writer of hymns, were tortured. The two brothers Theophanes and Theodore were scourged with 200 strokes and branded in the face with hot irons as idolaters (Martyrol. Rom., 27 December). By this time all images had been removed from the churches and public places, the prisons were filled with their defenders, the faithful Catholics were reduced to a sect hiding about the empire, and a crowd of exiles in the West. But the emperor's wife Theodora and her mother Theoctista were faithful to the Second Nicene Synod and waited for better times.

Those times came as soon as Theophilus died (20 January, 842). He left a son, three years old, Michael III (the Drunkard, who lived to cause the Great Schism of Photius, 842-67), and the regent was Michael's mother, Theodora. Like Irene at the end of the first persecution, Theodora at once began to change the situation. She opened the prisons, let out the confessors who were shut up for defending images, and recalled the exiles. For a time she hesitated to revoke the Iconoclast laws, but soon she made up her mind and everything was brought back to the conditions of the Second Council of Nicea. The patriarch John VII (832-42), who had succeeded Antony I, was given his choice between restoring the images and retiring. He preferred to retire. and his place was taken by Methodius, the monk who had already suffered years of imprisonment for the cause of the icons (Methodius I, 842- 46). In the same year (842) a synod at Constantinople approved of John VII 's deposition, renewed the decree of the Second Council of Nicaea and excommunicated Iconoclasts. This is the last act in the story of this heresy. On the first Sunday of Lent (19 February, 842) the icons were brought back to the churches in solemn procession. That day (the first Sunday of Lent) was made into a perpetual memory of the triumph of orthodoxy at the end of the long Iconoclast persecution. It is the "Feast of Orthodoxy" of the Byzantine Church still kept very solemnly by both Uniats and Orthodox. Twenty years later the Great Schism began. So large has this, the last of the old heresies, loomed in the eyes of Eastern Christians that the Byzantine Church looks upon it as a kind of type of heresy in general the Feast of Orthodoxy, founded to commemorate the defeat of Iconoclasm has become a feast of the triumph of the Church over all heresies. It is in this sense that it is now kept. The great Synodikon read out on that day anathematizes all heretics (in Russia rebels and nihilists also) among whom the Iconoclasts appear only as one fraction of a large and varied class. After the restoration of the icons in 842, there still remained an Iconoclast party in the East, but it never again got the ear of an emperor, and so gradually dwindled and eventually died out.

IV. Iconoclasm in the West

There was an echo of these troubles in the Frankish kingdom, chiefly through misunderstanding of the meaning of Greek expressions used by the Second Council of Nicaea. As early as 767 Constantine V had tried to secure the sympathy of the Frankish bishops for his campaign against images this time without success. A synod at Gentilly sent a declaration to Pope Paul I (757-67) which quite satisfied him. The trouble began when Adrian I (772-95) sent a very imperfect translation of the Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea to Charles the Great (Charlemagne, 768-8l4). The errors of this Latin version are obvious from the quotations made from it by the Frankish bishops. For instance in the third session of the council Constantine, Bishop of Constantia, in Cyprus had said: "I receive the holy and venerable images; and I give worship which is according to real adoration [kata latreian] only to the consubstantial and life-giving Trinity" (Mansi, XII, 1148). This phrase had been translated: "I receive the holy and venerable images with the adoration which I give to the consubstantial and life- giving Trinity" ("Libri Carolini", III, 17, P. L. XCVIII, 1148). There were other reasons why these Frankish bishops objected to the decrees of the council. Their people had only just been converted from idolatry, and so they were suspicious of anything that might seem like a return to it. Germans knew nothing of Byzantine elaborate forms of respect; prostrations, kisses, incense and such signs that Greeks used constantly towards their emperors, even towards the emperor's statues, and therefore applied naturally to holy pictures, seemed to these Franks servile, degrading, even idolatrous. The Franks say the word proskynesis (which meant worship only in the sense of reverence and veneration) translated adoratio and understood it as meaning the homage due only to God. Lastly, there was their indignation against the political conduct of the Empress Irene, the state of friction that led to the coronation of Charlemagne at Rome and the establishment of a rival empire. Suspicion of everything done by the Greeks, dislike of all their customs, led to the rejection of the council did not mean that the Frankish bishops and Charlemagne sided with the Iconoclasts. If they refused to accept the Nicene Council they equally rejected the Iconoclast synod of 754. They had holy images and kept them: but they thought that the Fathers of Nicaea had gone too far, had encouraged what would be real idolatry.

The answer to the decrees of the second Council of Nicaea sent in this faulty translation by Adrian I was a refutation in eighty-five chapters brought to the pope in 790 by a Frankish abbot, Angilbert. This refutation, later expanded and fortified with quotations from the fathers and other arguments became the famous "Libri Carolini" or "Capitulare de Imaginibus" in which Charlemagne is represented as declaring his convictions (first published at Paris by Jean du Tillet, Bishop of St-Brieux, 1549, in P. L. XCVIII, 990-1248). The authenticity of this work, some time disputed, is now established. In it the bishops reject the synods both of 787 and of 754. They admit that pictures of saints should be kept as ornaments in churches and as well as relics and the saints themselves should receive a certain proper veneration (opportuna veneratio); but they declare that God only can receive adoration (meaning adoratio, proskynesis); pictures are in themselves indifferent, have no necessary connexion with the Faith, are in any case inferior to relics, the Cross, and the Bible. The pope, in 794, answered these eighty-five chapters by a long exposition and defence of the cult of images (Hadriani ep. ad Carol. Reg." P. L., XCVIII, 1247-92), in which he mentions, among other points, that twelve Frankish bishops were present at, and had agreed to, the Roman synod of 731. Before the letter arrived the Frankish bishop; held the synod of Frankfort (794) in the presence of two papal legates, Theophylactus and Stephen, who do not seem to have done anything to clear up the misunderstanding. This Synod formally condemns the Second Council of Nicea, showing, at the same time, that it altogether misunderstands the decision of Nicaea. The essence of the decree at Frankfort is its second canon: "A question has been brought forward concerning the next synod of the Greeks which they held at Constantinople [the Franks do not even know where the synod they condemn was held] in connexion with the adoration of images, in which synod it was written that those who do not give service and adoration to pictures of saints just as much as to the Divine Trinity are to be anathematized. But our most holy Fathers whose names are above, refusing this adoration and serve despise and condemn that synod." Charlemagne sent these Acts to Rome and demanded the condemnation of Irene and Constantine VI. The pope of course refused to do so, and matters remained for a time as they were, the second Council of Nicaea being rejected in the Frankish Kingdom.

During the second iconoclastic persecution, in 824, the Emperor Michael II wrote to Louis the Pious the letter which, besides demanding that the Byzantine monks who had escaped to the West should be handed over to him, entered into the whole question of image-worship at length and contained vehement accusations against its defenders. Part of the letter is quoted in Leclercq-Hefele, "Histoire des conciles", III, 1, p. 612. Louis begged the pope (Eugene II, 824-27) to receive a document to be drawn up by the Frankish bishops in which texts of the Fathers bearing on the subject should be collected. Eugene agreed, and the bishops met in 825 at Paris. This meeting followed the example of the Synod of Frankfort exactly. The bishops try to propose a middle way, but decidedly lean toward the Iconoclasts. They produce some texts against these, many more against image-worship. Pictures may be tolerated only as mere ornaments. Adrian I is blamed for his assent to Nicaea II. Two bishops, Jeremias of Sens and Jonas of Orléns, are sent to Rome with this document; they are especially warned to treat the pope with every possible reverence and humility, and to efface any passages that might offend him. Louis, also, wrote to the pope, protesting that he only proposed to help him with some useful quotations in his discussions with the Byzantine Court; that he had no idea of dictating to the Holy See (Hefele, 1. c.). Nothing is known of Eugene's answer or of the further developments of this incident. The correspondence about images continued for some time between the Holy See and the Frankish Church; gradually the decrees of the second Council of Nicaea were accepted throughout the Western Empire. Pope John VIII (872-82) sent a better translation of the Acts of the council which helped very much to remove misunderstanding.

There are a few more isolated cases of Iconoclasm in the West. Claudius, Bishop of Turin (d. 840), in 824 destroyed all pictures and crosses in his diocese forbade pilgrimages, recourse to intercession of saints, veneration of relics, even lighted candles, except for practical purposes. Many bishops of the empire and a Frankish abbot, Theodomir, wrote against him (P. L. CV); he was condemned by a local synod. Agobard of Lyons at the same time thought that no external signs of reverence should be paid to images; but he had few followers. Walafrid Strabo ("De. eccles. rerum exordiis et incrementis" in P. L., CXIV, 916-66) and Hincmar of Reims ("Opusc. c. Hincmarum Lauden.", xx, in P. L. CXXVI) defended the Catholic practice and contributed to put an end to the exceptional principles of Frankish bishops. But as late as the eleventh century Bishop Jocelin of Bordeaux still had Iconoclast ideas for which he was severely reprimanded by Pope Alexander II.

References

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Further reading

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