Council of Nicea II (787)

STAMENKA E. ANTONOVA

After the doubly successful defense of Con­stantinople against the Arabs by General Leo the Isaurian in 717 and 718, he claimed for himself the title of emperor, reigning as Leo III. The new emperor (possibly because of his Syrian background) had a particularly strong dislike for the widespread veneration of icons in the East, as he considered it to be a form of idolatry which was forbidden by Scripture. Leo was determined to cleanse the Eastern Churches of this cultic practice and in 730 he embarked on a policy of iconoclasm for the destruction of sacred images by publishing an edict against the cult of icons and ordering their removal from the churches and from public places. Consequently, Leo’s agents destroyed thousands of images, beginning with the Great Image of Christ on the Chalke Gate into the palace, and including many other great works of art; for the soldiers were generally indifferent to the sentiments of the people and to their expressions of piety and worship.

From the beginning, a rift was set up between Iconoclasts (emperor and soldiery) and Iconodules (monastics and aristocratic women, and laity). When the iconodules attempted to protest these radical measures, many were brutally arrested, abused and exiled. Upon Leo’s death in 740, he was succeeded by his son Constantine V (740–75), who continued stringent policies against iconodules and executed 16 iconodule martyrs in 766. During the reign of Leo III and Constantine V, their policy of iconoclasm created a deep rift between Rome and Constantinople, especially as the pope gave protection to the iconodule cause. Constantine V was succeeded by Leo IV (775–80), who abolished the radical measures of persecu­tions against iconodules, although he him­self was not interested in the restoration of the cult of icons. After the death of Leo IV in 780, his wife Empress Irene became the regent of their son Constantine VI and the co-emperor, since the heir of the deceased emperor was too young to assume power independently. It was she who worked to reverse the imperial iconodule policy. In 786 she summoned a council in Hagia Sophia to restore the icons, but it was disrupted by rebellious guards from the capital. She quietly reassigned them outside the city and in the following year, 787, achieved a great triumph for the iconophile party by holding the planned council at Nicea, which legitimated the use of images, clarifying the terminology appropriate to worship. The council affirmed that adora­tion (latreia) was due to God alone, but that reverence to saints and holy things (douleia, proskynesis) contributed to the proper worship of God and was not in conflict with it. The teachings of the iconodule theologians, especially Sts. John of Damascus, Germanus of Con­stantinople, and Theodore the Studite, were elevated as Orthodox standards. Veneration of icons was affirmed as central to Ortho­dox faith.

The Second Council of Nicea was soon seen as an ecumenical council (though the West was dubious about it for a while, having received a defective copy of the state­ment of faith) and it has remained as the seventh and last of the ecumenical councils in Orthodox estimation. Empress Irene and her son were present for the proceedings, as were two papal legates and over three hundred bishops. Behind the theological debate on the appropriateness of the use and veneration of icons was a deeper meta­physical dialogue centered on the concepts of reality and image, on sacramentality and right representation. These complex ideas were deeply rooted in ancient philosophy. The Council of Nicea exposed iconoclasm as a form of Platonism, or a belief system that denigrated the central fact of the incar­nation, preferring abstract symbolism, and a tendency of thought that resisted the idea that matter could be a valid medium of grace and divine revelation.

Despite the political effects of the icono­clastic problem on the East and the West and the eventual agreement between the two on the validity of the cult of icons, the attachment to the principle of the quasi­sacramental character of the holy icons was to a certain degree a special proprium of the Orthodox world, an attitude to wor­ship that partly separated it from the Latin Church, and much more so from the later Reformed Churches that arose out of west­ern Catholicism.

SEE ALSO: Ecumenical Councils; Icono- clasm; Iconography, Styles of; St. John of Damascus (ca. 675-ca. 750); St. Theodore the Studite (759–826)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Giakalis, A. (1994) Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Lossky, V. and Ouspensky, L. (1982) The Mean­ing of Icons, trans. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladi­mir’s Seminary Press.

McGuckin, J. A. (1993) “The Theology of Images and the Legitimation of Power in Eighth Century Byzantium,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 37, 1: 39–58.

Sahas, D. (1986) Icon and Logos: Sources in Eight-Century Iconoclasm. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Tanner, N. P. and Albergio, G. (eds.) (1990) Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. London: Sheed and Ward.

Wolmuth, J. (ed.) (1989) Streit um das Bild: Das II Konzil von Nizaea (787) in okumenische Perspektive. Bonn: Bouvier.