The Second Iconoclasm and the Triumph of Orthodoxy (815–843)

The second imperial iconoclasm, from its revival under Leo V in 815 to its final defeat under the Empress Theodora in 843. This file follows the renewed persecution, the resistance of St. Theodore the Studite and Patriarch Nikephoros, and the definitive restoration of the icons — the event the Church commemorates every year as the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Revival Under Leo V (815)

The settlement of Nicaea II held for a generation, through the reigns of Irene, Nikephoros I, and Michael I. It was overturned by Leo V “the Armenian” (emperor 813–820). Facing military reverses against the Bulgars, Leo — like Leo III before him — appears to have concluded that the empire’s misfortunes were divine punishment for icon veneration, contrasting the military success of the earlier iconoclast emperors with the defeats suffered under the iconophiles (Theophanes Continuatus, Chronographia, on Leo V’s reasoning; Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford, 1997, pp. 431–435). In 815 Leo convened a synod at Hagia Sophia which repudiated Nicaea II and reinstated the decisions of the iconoclast Council of Hieria (754), inaugurating the second iconoclasm (the 815 synod is known chiefly through the refutations of Patriarch Nikephoros and later iconophile sources; Paul J. Alexander, The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople, Oxford, 1958).

The second iconoclasm is generally reckoned by scholars to have been theologically less creative and, on the whole, less violent than the first — a revival and defense of the earlier position rather than a fresh doctrinal departure — though it produced its own confessors and its own literature (Brubaker and Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, Cambridge, 2011, on the character of the second phase). Its two great opponents were the deposed Patriarch Nikephoros and the abbot of the Stoudios monastery, St. Theodore the Studite.

The Resistance: Nikephoros and Theodore the Studite

Patriarch Nikephoros of Constantinople (patriarch 806–815) refused to accept the reversal of Nicaea II and was deposed and exiled by Leo V in 815; from exile he composed extensive refutations of iconoclasm (the Antirrhetici against Constantine V and the Apologeticus), which are among the principal theological monuments of the second period and a chief source for the lost iconoclast arguments (Nikephoros, Antirrhetici; Alexander, The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople, 1958). He died still in exile in 828.

St. Theodore the Studite (759–826), abbot of Stoudios, became the most public and organized defender of the icons in the second iconoclasm. He refused Leo V’s demand, led his monks in an open procession of icons on Palm Sunday in defiance of the imperial ban, and was arrested, scourged, and exiled, moved from place to place and repeatedly punished, sustaining the resistance through a vast correspondence that rallied the iconophiles and appealed even to Rome (Theodore the Studite, Letters; Life of Theodore the Studite; Roman Cholij, Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holiness, Oxford, 2002; see St. Theodore the Studite). His three Refutations of the Iconoclasts (Antirrhetici), translated as On the Holy Icons, gave the iconophile Christology its sharpest form: that the icon is grounded in the hypostasis of the incarnate Word, who, being truly a man, is circumscribable and depictable (Theodore, On the Holy Icons, trans. Roth, SVS Press, 1981; see Theodore the Studite and the Christological Argument).

The persecution continued under Leo V’s successors Michael II (820–829), who was more tolerant but did not restore the icons, and above all Theophilus (829–842), the last and most convinced iconoclast emperor, under whom the iconophile confessors again suffered — among them the brothers Theophanes and Theodore, the “Graptoi” (“the inscribed”), so called because Theophilus had iconoclast verses tattooed on their faces, and the iconographer St. Lazarus, whose hands were reportedly burned for painting icons (Theophanes Continuatus; the Synodikon of Orthodoxy and later hagiography commemorate these confessors; Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State, 1997). [Disputed: the more lurid details of Theophilus’ persecution — the branding of the Graptoi, the burning of Lazarus’ hands — come from iconophile hagiographic sources written after the restoration and should be read as their partisan witness rather than as neutrally documented fact (per METHODOLOGY §3.5).]

The Triumph of Orthodoxy (843)

Theophilus died in January 842, leaving his widow, the Empress Theodora, as regent for their infant son Michael III. Theodora was an iconophile — tradition holds that she had secretly venerated icons even during her husband’s reign — and she moved, with the newly appointed iconophile patriarch Methodius, to restore the icons definitively. A synod in Constantinople in early 843 reaffirmed Nicaea II and the veneration of images, and on the First Sunday of Great Lent — 11 March 843 — a solemn procession restored the icons to Hagia Sophia (the sources for 843 include the Synodikon of Orthodoxy itself and later accounts; Jean Gouillard, “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie,” Travaux et Mémoires 2, 1967; Patricia Karlin-Hayter, “Icon Veneration: Significance of the Restoration of Orthodoxy?”, in Byzantine Orthodoxies, 2006). This restoration proved final: no Byzantine emperor after 843 attempted to abolish the icons, and the event has been commemorated ever since as the Triumph of Orthodoxy (He Kyriake tes Orthodoxias), kept every year on the First Sunday of Great Lent (see The Triumph of Orthodoxy (843)).

Theodora is remembered with veneration for the restoration; a persistent tradition holds that she secured the memory of her husband Theophilus in her negotiations with the synod, seeking that the last iconoclast emperor not be condemned by name — a story that belongs to the hagiography of the restoration and is reported as such (the “pardon of Theophilus” appears in later accounts of 843; Karlin-Hayter, in Byzantine Orthodoxies, 2006). [Disputed: the “pardon of Theophilus” narrative, in which Theodora obtains from the assembled fathers a forgiveness or non-condemnation of her iconoclast husband, is preserved in later and legend-tinged sources and its historicity is uncertain; it is reported here as a tradition of the restoration, not as established fact.]

The Meaning of the Second Ending

The two iconoclasms had different textures — the first doctrinally inventive and, in its Constantinian phase, harsh; the second largely a reprise, defended by confessors rather than martyrs on the scale claimed for the first — but they ended in the same place: the Church’s settled confession, twice defined and twice restored, that the veneration of icons is orthodox and belongs to the confession of the Incarnation (Brubaker and Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, 2011). What Nicaea II had defined in 787, the Triumph of 843 made permanent, and the Synodikon of Orthodoxy fixed the memory of both the defense and the defeat of iconoclasm in the Church’s annual liturgy. From 843 the icon was not merely permitted but woven into the very self-understanding of Byzantine and, through it, all Orthodox Christianity — so that “the Triumph of Orthodoxy” came to name not only the victory over iconoclasm but the integrity of the whole Orthodox faith (Gouillard, “Le Synodikon,” 1967; see The Triumph of Orthodoxy (843)).

References

Theodore the Studite. On the Holy Icons (the Antirrhetici). Trans. Catharine P. Roth. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press (PPS), 1981.
Alexander, Paul J. The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople: Ecclesiastical Policy and Image Worship in the Byzantine Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958. (The 815 synod, Nikephoros’ deposition and refutations.)
Cholij, Roman. Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. (Theodore’s resistance, exiles, and correspondence.)
Brubaker, Leslie, and John Haldon. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680–850: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. (The character of the second iconoclasm; the source problem.)
Karlin-Hayter, Patricia. “Icon Veneration: Significance of the Restoration of Orthodoxy?” In Byzantine Orthodoxies, ed. Andrew Louth and Augustine Casiday. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. (The events of 843 and the “pardon of Theophilus.”)
Gouillard, Jean. “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire.” Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967): 1–316.
Treadgold, Warren. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. (Leo V, Theophilus, Theodora, and the chronology of 815–843.)