Byzantium and the Icons

The empire that did not fall

When we speak of "the fall of Rome" in 476, we mean the West. In the East, the Roman Empire continued for nearly another thousand years. Its people called themselves Romaioi, Romans. Historians later named it the Byzantine Empire, after Byzantium, the old name of its capital, Constantinople. It spoke Greek, but it carried on Roman law and government, and it was passionately Christian.

For Byzantines, the empire was the earthly image of God's heavenly kingdom. The emperor was God's chosen ruler, "equal to the apostles," defender of the true faith. The church and the state were meant to work in harmony, an ideal called Symphonia. Western critics later accused Byzantium of "Caesaropapism," letting the emperor rule the church. The reality was more complicated. Emperors called councils and appointed patriarchs, but when they tried to impose doctrine against the church's conscience, monks and bishops often resisted, sometimes to the death.

At the heart of Byzantine Christianity stood Hagia Sophia, Justinian's great church of Holy Wisdom (537). Its vast dome seemed to float on light. When envoys of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv visited it in the 980s, the Russian chronicle reports that they did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth. Orthodox worship, with its incense, chant, processions, icons and long liturgies, was meant to be "heaven on earth."

What is an icon?

An Icon (Greek eikon, "image") is a sacred picture of Christ, Mary, the saints or biblical scenes, usually painted on wood in a formal, symbolic style. In Orthodox practice icons are not simply decorations or teaching aids. They are windows into heaven, means of meeting the holy person they depict. Believers kiss them, bow before them, light candles and burn incense before them, and pray in front of them.

By the 600s icon veneration was hugely popular in the Byzantine world. Icons were credited with miracles. Some were even said to be "not made by human hands." Cities carried them in procession to protect them from attack.

The iconoclast storm

In the 720s the emperor Leo III the Isaurian (the Isaurian) began to oppose icons. Tradition says he had an image of Christ removed from the gate of his palace in 726, sparking a riot. His son Constantine V pursued the policy more fiercely, holding a council in 754 that condemned icons as idols. Icons were destroyed or whitewashed, replaced by crosses or plain decoration. Monasteries, the strongholds of icon devotion, were attacked, and some monks were tortured or killed. This movement is called Iconoclasm, "image-breaking."

Why did it happen? Historians suggest several reasons:

• Biblical: The Ten Commandments forbid "graven images." Iconoclasts saw icon veneration as idolatry.
• Theological: They argued that Christ's divine nature cannot be depicted, so an image either shows only his humanity (dividing Christ, like Nestorius) or claims to show his divinity (confusing the natures).
• Military: The empire was losing to the Muslims, who, like the Jews, forbade images in worship. Some may have concluded that God was punishing Byzantium for idolatry.
• Political: Attacking icons also weakened the powerful monasteries.

The iconoclast controversy

The defense of the icons

The greatest defender of icons was John of Damascus, writing safely in Muslim-ruled Palestine. His argument centered on the incarnation:

• In the Old Testament God was invisible and could not be pictured. But in Christ, the invisible God became visible, with a human face. "I do not worship matter," he wrote, "but I worship the Creator of matter, who became matter for my sake."
• To refuse to depict Christ is to deny that he really became human.
• Honor given to an image passes to the person it represents, as Basil of Caesarea (the Great) had said long before.
• There is a crucial difference between worship (latreia), due to God alone, and veneration or honor (proskynesis), which may be given to icons, saints and holy things.

In Constantinople the monk Theodore the Studite led monastic resistance and was repeatedly exiled.

Women and the restoration

Icons were restored twice, both times under empresses. In 787 the empress Irene of Athens, ruling for her young son, called the Second Council of Nicaea, the seventh and last ecumenical council recognized by the Orthodox. It approved the veneration of icons and adopted John of Damascus' distinction between veneration and worship.

Iconoclasm returned in 815. It was finally ended in 843 by the empress Theodora (wife of Theophilos), regent for her son. Icons were restored with a great procession on the first Sunday of Lent. The Orthodox Church still celebrates this every year as the "Triumph of Orthodoxy." It became a defining moment of Orthodox identity.

The West's response was confused. The pope accepted Nicaea II, but Charlemagne's theologians, working from a bad Latin translation that blurred "veneration" and "worship," rejected it. Western Christians used religious art, but never gave images quite the same theological role. Eight centuries later, Protestant reformers would launch their own wave of iconoclasm (see Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed).

Missions to the Slavs

Byzantium's great missionary achievement was among the Slavic peoples. In 863 the emperor sent two brothers from Thessalonica, Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius, to Moravia (in the modern Czech Republic) at its prince's request. They were fluent in Slavonic. They created an alphabet, the Glagolitic script, and translated the Bible and liturgy into Slavonic. This was controversial in the West, where some insisted that only Hebrew, Greek and Latin were fit for worship. Methodius faced imprisonment by German bishops. The Moravian mission eventually failed, but their disciples took their work to Bulgaria. There the Cyrillic alphabet, named in Cyril's honor, developed. It is still used for Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian and other languages.

The decision to worship in the people's own language, rather than imposing Greek, shaped Orthodox mission ever since. Orthodox churches became national churches with their own languages.

In 988, Prince Vladimir the Great of Kyiv chose Byzantine Christianity for his people. The Russian Primary Chronicle tells a famous though probably legendary story. He sent envoys to investigate the religions of his neighbors. Islam was rejected because it banned alcohol ("Drinking is the joy of the Rus'"). Judaism was rejected because the Jews had lost their land. Western Christianity was found joyless. But in Hagia Sophia his envoys found beauty beyond words. Vladimir was baptized, married the Byzantine emperor's sister, and had the people of Kyiv baptized in the Dnieper River. This "Baptism of Rus'" is the founding event of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian Christianity.

Prayer of the heart

Byzantine spirituality reached heights of mystical prayer. Monks of Mount Athos, a peninsula in Greece covered with monasteries, practiced Hesychasm (from hesychia, "stillness"). They repeated the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," in rhythm with the breath, seeking an experience of God's uncreated light, like the light the disciples saw at Christ's transfiguration. In the 1340s Gregory Palamas defended this practice and distinguished between God's unknowable essence and his "energies," through which people can truly experience God. Hesychasm remains central to Orthodox spirituality.