The Iconoclast Anathemas

The earliest stratum of the Synodikon’s condemnations is directed at iconoclasm — first at the positions, described with care and in sequence, and then at the heresiarchs by name. This file sets out that stratum from the two witnesses this collection has been able to use, notes where they diverge, and describes the theological argument the anathemas make.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Order of the Attack

The Synodikon’s iconoclast anathemas do not begin with names. They begin with positions, and they proceed by a deliberate narrowing: from the general refusal to depict, through the abuse of the word “uncircumscribed,” through the mishandling of the prophetic visions and of Moses, to the incorrigible. Only then are men named. That order is itself a statement: the object of an anathema is a teaching, and persons are named because and insofar as they are identified with it.

The Positions Condemned

Accepting the Incarnation in word while refusing its image. “To them who in words accept the Economy of the Incarnation of the Word of God, but will not tolerate its representation by icons, and thus in word they make a pretense of accepting, but in fact deny our salvation” (Synodikon, received Greek text as printed in the Triodion, English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston; the parallel in the primitive form: “On those who accept with their reason the incarnate economy of God the Word, but will not allow that this can be beheld through images, and therefore affect to receive our salvation in words, but deny it in reality” — Synodikon, trans. Andrew Louth, ed. to London, British Library, Additional MS 28816 by Archimandrite Ephrem [Lash]). The charge is not iconophobia but crypto-docetism: a confession that will not touch matter is not a confession of the Incarnation.

Abusing the term “uncircumscribed.” “To them who because of a mistaken adherence to the term uncircumscribed, wish not to depict in icons Christ, our True God, Who like us partook of flesh and blood, and thus show themselves to be Docetists” (received text; the primitive form has “who wickedly make play with the word ‘uncircumscribed’… and therefore show themselves to be fantasiasts,” with the allusion to Hebrews 2:14). The Greek term rendered “Docetists” and “fantasiasts” is the same: those who make the flesh an appearance. The argument is exact — if the Word is uncircumscribable in every respect after the Incarnation, the flesh He took was not a real human body, since a real body has an outline.

Conceding the prophetic visions but refusing the icon. Those who admit, even unwillingly, the visions of the prophets — but say either that the invisible essence itself was seen, or that these were images and types of the truth, and yet will not accept that “the Word become man, and his sufferings for our sake, may be depicted in icons” (Louth/Lash translation; substantially the same in the received text). The dilemma is sharp: if God could give Himself a form to a prophet before the Incarnation, the objection to depicting Him after it collapses.

Receiving the Prophet and refusing His grace in image. Those who hear “If ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me” (John 5:46) and Moses’ “The Lord our God will raise up for you a prophet like unto me” (Deuteronomy 18:15; cf. Acts 3:22), and say they receive the Prophet — but will not depict “the grace of the Prophet and our universal salvation such as He was seen, as He mingled with mankind, and worked many healings… and such as He was crucified, was buried, and arose” (received text). The list is the content of the Gospel, and the anathema’s force is that these events, having happened visibly, may be shown.

Incorrigibility. The severest clause, and the most carefully qualified. It falls on those who “persist in the heresy of denying icons, or rather the apostasy of denying Christ,” and who are not counseled by the Mosaic law, nor convinced by apostolic teaching, nor induced by “patristic exhortations and explanations,” nor “persuaded by the agreement of the Churches of God throughout the whole world,” but have joined themselves to “the portion of the Jews and Greeks” — since where the latter blaspheme the prototype directly, the former “have not blushed to insult in His icon Him that is depicted therein”; therefore, on those “incorrigibly possessed by this deception… as already being putrified members, and having cut themselves off from the common body of the Church,” anathema (received text; the same in the Louth/Lash translation, with “the lot of the Jews and the pagans [lit.: Greeks]”).

Two things deserve notice. The clause is expressly conditioned on incorrigibility after every remedy has been offered — law, apostle, father, and the consensus of the churches. And the excision is described as self-inflicted: they “have cut themselves off.” That is the Synodikon’s own account of what an anathema does (see What an Anathema Is and Is Not).

The Second Block of Icon Anathemas

A further set of shorter clauses appears in both witnesses, in the primitive form directly after the named heresiarchs and in the received text much later, after the accumulated medieval chapters:

on those who “apply the sayings of the divine Scripture that are directed against idols to the august icons of Christ our God and his saints”;
on those who “share the opinion of those who mock and dishonour the august icons” (the received text: “who knowingly have communion with those who insult and dishonor the venerable icons”);
on those who say “that Christians treat the icons like gods”;
on those who say “that another, apart from Christ our God, delivered us from the error of idols”;
on those who “dare to say that the Catholic Church has accepted idols, thus overthrowing the whole mystery and mocking the faith of Christians”

(Synodikon, Louth/Lash translation of BL Add. 28816; the same five, with two further clauses on defending a heretic and on refusing to venerate Christ depicted according to His humanity, in the received text). The received text also carries a clause against “the conclave that raged against the venerable icons” — the iconoclast assembly of Hiereia (754) — which does not appear in the primitive witness used here.

The first of these five is the theological hinge of the whole controversy in a single sentence: the iconoclast case rested on transferring the Old Testament prohibition of idols to the Christian image, and the Church’s answer was that the two are not the same thing, because the Word has become flesh (see Icons and Iconoclasm; The Theology of the Image; St. John of Damascus, whose Three Treatises supply the argument the anathema compresses).

The Named Iconoclasts

Three groups of names follow the positional anathemas in both witnesses, in the same order:

“Anastasios, Constantine and Nicetas, who, being unhallowed guides to perdition, were the originators of heresies during the reign of the Isaurians” — the three iconoclast patriarchs of Constantinople under the Isaurian emperors (received text; the Louth/Lash rendering: “those who started off the Isaurian heresies, unholy men and leaders to ruin”).

“Theodotus, Anthony and John, mutual instigators of evils who succeeded each other in their impiety” — the iconoclast patriarchs of the second iconoclasm, ending with John VII the Grammarian, whose deposition in 843 made the restoration possible.

“Paul, who turned back into a Saul, and to Theodore, surnamed Gastes, and to Stephan Molytes, and furthermore to Theodore Crithinus and Leon Laloudius”, together with whoever shares their impiety, “whatever his rank might be, in the clergy or in some office or in whatever occupation he pursues” (received text; the Louth/Lash version reads “Paul who turned back to Saul, and Theodorus called Gastes, and Stephen the Molutes, as well as Theodore Krithinus, and Louloudios the lion”). These are iconoclast clergy and officials of the second period, and the variation in the last name between the two witnesses is a small but instructive illustration of the textual situation.

Frederick Lauritzen notes that the men singled out in part of this material bear surnames, a feature Eleonora Kountoura Galake has connected with the reign of Constantine V, and that this block of anathemas — drawn, as Gouillard’s apparatus already indicated, from the acts of the council of 869–870 — concerns specifically the iconoclasts of the first iconoclasm and therefore entered the Synodikon after 870 (Frederick Lauritzen, “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites,” Studia Ceranea 7 [2017]: 121–128, at 124, 126, citing E. Kountoura Galake, “Iconoclast Officials and the Formation of Surnames during the Reign of Constantine V,” Revue des études byzantines 62 [2004]: 247–253, esp. 250).

That is a genuine and slightly surprising result: part of what a modern congregation hears as “the original anathemas against iconoclasm” is in fact a set of clauses imported a generation after 843 from the council that also settled the Photian affair.

What is not named. Neither witness consulted here anathematizes the iconoclast emperors by name — not Leo III, not Constantine V, not Leo V, not Theophilus. The condemnation of the Isaurian period is carried by the phrase “during the reign of the Isaurians,” and the named men are patriarchs and clerics. Given the hagiographical tradition that Theodora obtained her husband’s exemption from condemnation by name (see Theodora, Methodius, and 11 March 843), this silence is worth registering as a textual fact, while noting that the collection cannot establish a causal connection between the story and the text.

One Further Name

The received text carries a clause absent from the primitive witness used here: on Gerontios, “having his origins in Lampe but vomiting forth in Crete the venom of his loathsome heresy,” who “called himself the anointed one,” together with his writings and his followers (received text of the Triodion, following the named iconoclasts). This collection has not been able to establish from the scholarship available to it when this clause entered the text or precisely which movement it addresses, and does not guess.

The Argument These Anathemas Make

Read together, the iconoclast anathemas make one argument in several forms. The icon is not a devotional accessory but a consequence: because the Son of God took a real human nature, He may be shown; because He may be shown, refusing to show Him is a refusal of the nature He took; and because His saints share His sufferings, they too may be shown and honored — with honor relative to Him, not with the worship due to God alone.

Nothing in that argument is peculiar to art. It is the doctrine of Chalcedon applied to a canvas. That is why the Church called the feast the Triumph of Orthodoxy, and why the Synodikon could later grow to carry condemnations of errors that have nothing to do with images.

References

Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Received Greek text as printed in the Triodion; English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston. (The iconoclast anathemas; the named heresiarchs; the Gerontios clause.)
Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Trans. Andrew Louth, edited to London, British Library, Additional MS 28816 by Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash). (The primitive Constantinopolitan form of the same anathemas; the variant “Louloudios the lion.”)
Lauritzen, Frederick. “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites.” Studia Ceranea 7 (2017): 121–128. (The post-870 origin of part of the iconoclast material in the acts of 869–870; the surname evidence.)
Kountoura Galake, Eleonora. “Iconoclast Officials and the Formation of Surnames during the Reign of Constantine V.” Revue des études byzantines 62 (2004): 247–253. (Cited here through Lauritzen 2017.)
Gouillard, Jean. “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire.” Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967): 1–316. (The apparatus identifying the 869–870 material; cited at second hand through Lauritzen 2017.)