The first Sunday of Lent is known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy. It commemorates the end of the iconoclastic controversy, the bitterest period of internal dissension in the history of the Orthodox Church, comparable in some ways to the Reformation in the West, though the outcome was not, happily, a permanent schism.
An proto-iconoclastic undertone, contending that the custom of venerating images of Christ, the Theotokos and the saints contravened the Second Commandment, had long existed in fastidious religious circles. It may have been reinforced by the rise of Islam, with its severe prohibition of any kind of representation of the human form. In 726, Emperor Leo III initiated the strife by ordering the removal of a much revered icon of Christ from one of the gates of his palace in Constantinople. Four years later he officially condemned icon veneration and installed a Patriarch who shared his views. For more than a century thereafter, the clash between iconoclasts (“image breakers”) and iconophiles (“image lovers”) was the major ideological breach within the Byzantine Empire.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council, convened at Nicaea in 787, settled the controversy theologically with a dogmatic decision that is accepted by the Universal Church:
We define that the holy icons, whether in color, mosaic, or some other material, should be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on the sacred vessels and liturgical vestments, on the walls, furnishings, and in houses and along the roads, namely the icons of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, that of our Lady the Theotokos, those of the venerable angels and those of all saintly people. Whenever these representations are contemplated, they will cause those who look at them to commemorate and love their prototype. We define also that they should be kissed and that they are an object of veneration and honor (timitiki proskynisis), but not of real worship (latreia), which is reserved for Him Who is the subject of our faith and is proper for the divinenature. . . . For the honor rendered to the icon is in effect transmitted to the prototype; he who venerates the icon, venerates in it the reality for which it stands.
The Council’s decree did not settle the issue in the secular world. Emperor Leo V (813-820) revived official iconoclasm, which remained ascendant for thirty years. Then, following the death of Emperor Theophilos, who had been one of the fiercest persecutors of iconophiles, his widow Theodora, acting as regent for their son Michael III, renounced iconoclasm and returned a magnificent array of icons to the Church of St. Sophia in a great procession held on March 11, 843. That event, called the “Triumph of Orthodoxy”, is recalled in today’s divine liturgy.
The classic exposition of the theology of icons is On the Holy Images, written by St. John of Damascus in response to Emperor Leo’s actions. Ironically, this great Father of the Church lived in a region under Moslem control and came from a family that provided government officials to the Caliphate. He would probably have been martyred had he written within the reach of Imperial justice.
St. John’s central argument is that the Incarnation of Christ demonstrates that the divine can properly be represented materially. If not, how could the eternal Second Person of the Trinity have been embodied in a human being?
Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God. How could God be born out of lifeless things? And if God's body is God by union, it is immutable. The nature of God remains the same as before, the flesh created in time is quickened by, a logical and reasoning soul.
I honor all matter besides, and venerate it. Through it, filled, as it were, me. Was not the with a divine power and grace, my salvation has come to thrice happy and thrice blessed wood of the Cross matter? Was not the sacred and holy mountain of Calvary matter? What of the life-giving rock, the Holy Sepulcher, the source of our resurrection: was it not matter? Is not the most holy book of the Gospels matter? Is not the blessed table matter which gives us the Bread of Life' Are not the gold and silver matter, out of which crosses and altar-plate and chalices are made? And before all these things, is not the body and blood of our Lord matter? Either do away with the veneration and worship due to all these things, or submit to the tradition of the Church in the worship of images, honoring God and His friends, and following in this the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Icons and iconography are more conspicuous in the Orthodox Church than anywhere else in Christendom and play a leading role in every Orthodox Christian’s devotion. Hence, it is meet and right that they should be singled out for special attention at the beginning of Lent.
Sidelight: The debate over icons forms the central theme of what is perhaps the only science fiction story ever based on a genuine, accurately portrayed theological question, “Images” by Harry Turtledove (Asimov’s, March 1987; Agent of Byzantium (1988)). The hero, Basil Argyros, is a Byzantine official living in the early 14th Century. In his alternative timeline, Mohammed converted to Christianity and was ultimately canonized, Islam never existed, and the Late Roman Empire flourishes throughout the Mediterranean world. In “Images” Argyros confronts a nascent iconoclastic movement and devises against it the same arguments as St. John of Damascus, with more immediate success.
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