Η περιπλοκότητα του ζητήματος της Εικονομαχίας στις πηγές
Primary sources betray the construction of competing and overlapping narratives that identify a series of possible origins and identities for Iconoclasm. Nikephoros, Theophanes and George the Monk focused on the imperial role of the crisis. For Nikephoros, who probably wrote in the 780s, Leo III was moved to attack the cult of icons in order to appease the divine wrath, expressed in a massive volcanic explosion on the island of Thera, awakened by this cult. By slightly altering the chronology, Theophanes, writing about 813, argued that Leo’s iconoclasm was influenced by Jewish ideas imported from an iconoclastic islamic world. George the Monk, whose Chronicle probably dates to the 860s, expanded on his discourse of outside influence, adding a vivid picvture of Leo’s destruction of knowledge within the Empire, marked by his closure of the school at the Chalkoprateia church. In contrast, the Seventh Ecumenical Council, held in 787, built a narrative of iconoclasm that was primarily ecclesiastical. It is notable that in this account it was a bishop, Constantine of Nacoleia, who disseminated alien ideas.
The very earliest witnesses to iconoclasm are similarly divided. The Three Orations on the Images by John of Damascus, of which the first two were certainly composed about 730, portrayed iconoclasm as an imperial adventure. This point was also apparent throughout the heavily interpolated letters of Pope Gregory II to Leo III (perhaps about 800 in the form we see them today). In contrast, the letters of Patriarch Germanos to three of his bishops, written between 726 and 729, suggest that iconoclasm was a matter that has arisen within the church itself – a point that Pope Gragory’s letter to Germanos does nothing to contradict. Our sources, therefore, find several causes for iconoclasm: it can be ecclesiastical and it can be imperial, it can be a Christian heresy and it can be a set of alien ideas infecting the body of the Christian church. The implications of these broad definitions were expanded upon – a work that has continued to occupy modern historians.
C. Barber, Figure and Likeness. On the limits of representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton – Oxford 2002) p. 8-9.
Το ζήτημα εξωτερικών, ανατολικών επιρροών στο κίνημα της Εικονομαχίας στο Βυζάντιο
Quant à l'influence de l'Islam comme du judaisme, proposée par les sources et par certains historiens modernes, on peut être sceptique: Leon II qui a, plus qu'aucun autre empereur, combattu sans relâche les troupes arabo-musulmanes, n'avait aucune raison d'imiter le pouvoir califal, cette imitation ne pouvant lui être d'aucun profit; de même, on ne voit guère cet empereur, qui avait imposé aux juifs la conversion forcée, appliquer les préceptes vétérotestamentaires par imitation ou contagion. En revanche, judaisme et islam ne sont pas sans relation avec le déclenchement de l'iconoclasme, mais d'une façon indirecte, autre que celle, caricaturale et polémique, mise en avant par les sources.
M.-F. Auzépy, “Les enjeux de l’Iconoclasme” in Cristianità d’Occidente e Cristianità d’Oriente (Secoli VI-XI) [=Settimane di Studio della Fondazione centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 51] (Spoleto 2004) p.141.
Εικονομαχία και καλλιτεχνική παραγωγή
It is worth stressing that the Byzantines themselves rarely used the word Iconoclasm; instead they preferred iconomachy (image struggle) a term that more accurately responds to the period as we now understand it: there is remarkably little evidence for any actual iconoclast destruction; and as the often-cited letter sent by the emperors Michael II and Theophilos in 824 to Louis the Pious admits, the iconoclast emperors continued to allow «those images that had been placed higher to remain». This is important, not only because it demonstrates that Byzantine Iconoclasm was more flexible than later, European iconoclast movements, but also because it means that the context for works produced during Iconoclasm was predetermined: anything produced during Iconoclasm had to be seen within a framework created long before it, and in a framework that was not, on the whole, visibly affected by Iconoclasm.
L. Brubaker, «The artisanal production of second Iconoclasm (815-843)» in M. Kaplan (ed.) Monastères, images, pouvoirs et société à Byzance (Paris 2006), p. 136-7.
Πλευρές της θεολογίας στην περίοδο της Εικονομαχίας
Η εικονομαχική θεολογία του Κωνσταντίνου Ε΄: Η εικόνα δεν είναι απλή ομοίωσις, αλλά μοιράζεται την ίδια ουσία με το πρωτότυπο.
(332 Β) «Ὁ εἷς ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν εἰς ἓν πρόσωπον λήξας, πῶς ἔχει εἰκονισθῆναι, τῆς μιᾶς φύσεως μὴ περιγραφομένης;» (332 D) […] Πλὴν ταῦτα λιπὼν ἐντεῦθεν, ἐφ’ ἕτερον μετέρχεται λόγον, καὶ ἅγει εἰς μέσον τὸν ἄρτον καὶ τὸν οἶνον, ἅπερ εἰς τὰ θεῖα παραλαμβάνεται μυστήρια, καί φησιν, ὅτι «Κατὰ τὴν θεότητα αὐτοῦ, προγνοὺς τὸν θάνατον καὶ τὴν ἀνάστασιν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὴν εἰς οὐρανοὺς ἄνοδον, καὶ ἵνα τὸ μνημόσυνον τῆς ἐνανθρωπήσεως αὐτοῦ διηνεκῶς ἔχωμεν οἱ πιστεύσαντες εἰς αὐτὸν, νύκτα καὶ ἡμέραν.» (333 Β) […] «Ἐκέλευσε τοῖς ἁγίοις αὐτοῦ μαθηταῖς καὶ ἀποστόλοις παραδοῦναι δι’ οὗ ἠράσθη πράγματος, τύπον εἰς σῶμα αὐτοῦ· ἵνα διὰ τῆς ἱερατικῆς ἀναγωγῆς, κἂν εἰ ἐκ μετοχῆς καὶ θέσει γίνηται, λάβωμεν αὐτὸ ὡς κυρίως καὶ ἀληθῶς σῶμα αὐτοῦ.» (336 Α) […] «Καὶ κἂν ὡς εἰκόνα τοῦ σώματος αὑτοῦ θελήσωμεν λογίσασθαι ὡς ἐξ ἐκείνου παραχθὲν, ἔχομεν αὐτὸ εἰς μόρφωσιν τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ.» Ὥσπερ ἀνωτέρω ἔλεγεν ἁπατώμενος ὁ σοφὸς, εἰκόνα καὶ πρωτότυπον εἰς μηδὲν ἀλλήλων διαφέρειν· οὕτω δὴ κἀνταῦθα περὶ αὐτῶν ἀποφαίνεται.
Κωνσταντίνος Ε΄, παρατίθεται από τον πατριάρχη Νικηφόρο, Αντίρρησις δευτέρα 2-3, PG 100, col. 332 B-336 A.
Το πλατωνικό υπόβαθρο της εικονόφιλης θεολογίας της εικόνας
This difference between Iconoclast and Iconodule is fundamental to the understanding of the apologetic of the controversy. The Iconoclast held that a material object could be the habitation of a spiritual being - that the οὐσίαι of both coalesced into one οὐσία - so any worship of the image was in the nature of idolatry. Against this the Iconodules laboured to show that, however close the connextion between the image and original, their οὐσίαι were different - hence the worship of images was legitimate as this worship could be referred to the prototype. Essentially this was a Platonic view.
L.W. Barnard, The Graeco-Roman and Oriental Background of the Iconoclastic Controversy (Leiden 1974), p. 93.
Η σωτηριολογική διάσταση της εικονόφιλης θεολογίας της εικόνας
[... Methode] concède aux iconodules que Dieu ne saurait être «décrit», c'est-à-dire défini par une image, parce que l'image ne reproduit que ce qui est matière. Mais [...] representer l'une seulement des deux natures du Christ n'est pas nier son autre nature. C'est plutôt apprendre quelque chose sur cette nature divine [...]: pour [les iconoclastes], pas de représentation du Christ, parce que son image apparente, en matière terrestre, n'est qu'un objet sans vie; pour [les iconodules], au contraire, la même image matérielle du Christ est réalisable (ou alors il n'y aurait pas eu d'oeuvre de salut), et quoiqu'elle ne figure que le Verbe incarné, elle sert justement à comprendre l'autre nature du Christ, sa nature divine, et notamment le fait qu'elle ne peut être representée. [...] C'est une rehabilitation systématique de la chair, en ce qui concerne le Christ, et bien entendu, cette attitude est l'antithèse au dénigrement de la matière par les iconoclastes. Or cette tendance à réhabiliter la chair dans le corps du Christ signifie qu'on était devenu conscient d'un fait qui allait être essentiel pour le sort ultérieur des images saintes à Byzance: que le Christ par son incarnation très effective a conféré au corps humain un prestige qui, depuis ce temps, lui restera acquis. S'il reste vrai que le divin n'est pas représentable, le corps matériel, qui chez le Christ fut habité par Dieu, cesse d'être cet objet muet et sans vie qui ne pouvait rien apprendre sur Dieu.
A Grabar, L'iconoclasme byzantin. Dossier archéologique (Paris 21984), p. 192-3.