The Iconoclastic Controversy
Against this background the Church was torn, in the eighth century, by the bitter controversy over the use of icons. Representations of Christ, his Mother and the saints had been widely used in the Eastern Church for several centuries.
Painted on board or made of mosaic, portable or attached to churches and other buildings, icons had come to play an important part in popular piety. Superstition often attached to their veneration, and the danger of idolatry was never far away. A powerful movement against the use of icons developed in the first half of the eighth century, and was supported by the Emperor Leo (717-41), who in 730 deposed Patriarch Germanus I and replaced him by the iconoclast Anastasius. Under his son Constantine those who venerated icons—iconodules—were openly persecuted. A council called by the Emperor in 754 in Constantinople condemned both the veneration and the making of images. Fierce persecution of the iconodules, chief among whom were the monks, followed. It came to an end under Leo IV, on whose death in 780 his widow the Empress Irene prepared the way for the restoration of icons. In 787 a council, the Seventh Ecumenical, met in Nicea, and proclaimed the Orthodox teaching on icons and their veneration, which had been formulated in the earlier part of the century by John of Damascus. The council endorsed his view that the legitimacy of icons derived from the Incarnation itself, by which the invisible God became visible in Jesus Christ, and by his Incarnation sanctified the material creation. Icons were to be made and placed, together with the image of the cross, in churches and houses, inside and outside, and were to be venerated with the worship of reverence, clearly distinct from that of adoration, reserved for God alone.Persecution of iconodules was renewed after Irene’s death in 802, and continued until 842, under Leo V, Michael II and Theophilus. On the first Sunday of Lent 843, under Theophilus’ widow Empress Theodora, icons and their veneration were finally restored. So integral to Orthodox faith and worship had icons become that the ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’ has been commemorated annually ever since on the first Sunday in Lent. The council of 787 was the last of the Ecumenical Councils which defined Orthodox dogma, and the Orthodox Church came to think of itself as the Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.