Charles' Books

The Opus Caroli regis contra synodum ("The work of King Charles against the Synod"), also known as Libri Carolini ("Charles' Books"), was a series commissioned by Charlemagne to counter the work of the Second Council of Nicaea. It was specifically written to argue against the Council's decrees about icons.

Held in 787, this Council reversed Emperor Leo III's decree decades earlier that religious images were forbidden. The Council decided that religious images were not only allowed, but the reverence and prayers aimed at them actually transferred to the saint or member of the Trinity which they represented. In fact, every altar should have in it a saint's relic.

Charlemagne, a devout Christian, had a different approach to the subject of religious icons, and decided it should be made known. In the 790s (prior to him being named Holy Roman Emperor in 800), he ordered an elaborate statement on the subject. 

The opening statement is rather strong:

In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ beginneth the work of the most illustrious and glorious man Charles, by the will of God, king of the Franks, Gauls, Germany, Italy, neighboring provinces, with the assistance of the king, against the Synod which in Greek parts firmly and proudly decreed in favour of adoring images recklessly and arrogantly, ...

The argument was a compromise between Leo III's strict iconoclasm and the Council's "reckless and arrogant" acceptance of honoring images. Charlemagne believed in religious images, but not treating them as anything more than images: do not burn incense before them, or votive candles. Do not pray to them, but to the figure they represent.

Was this document necessary? What was Charles' reason for arguing against the Council? The iconoclasm debate was considered a Byzantine issue; Nicaea was deep into the "Greek parts," as far from Gaul as one could get. It is possible that Charlemagne was partially motivated by the desire to oppose what he considered decisions coming out of the Eastern Empire, since it had offended him over the rejection of his daughter's marriage to its emperor and its decision to support his rival in Lombardy.

Charles did not have this statement sent to the pope after all; it is assumed that he decided not to antagonize the Church by arguing that Nicaea was wrong in its conclusions. The document did not disappear, however, and was found and published centuries later, in 1549. Calvin and the Protestant reformation found in it support for their beliefs. Christian churches these days almost all contain some images.

So who was the author? To whom did Charlemagne turn for this important work? Some assume Alcuin had a hand in it, but there is a better candidate. Some of the Latin language matches the style of Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, one of Charlemagne's "puzzle masters." Clearly, he was good at more than acrostics, and we'll talk about him next time.

Liutprand of the Lombards

In order to preserve Western Europe for Christendom and repel the Muslim invasions, Charles Martel enlisted the aid of Liutprand, King of the Lombards (c.680 - 744). His reign from 712 until his death in 744 was one of the longer and more productive reigns in Lombardy.

He almost didn't make it. Due to political intrigue, his family was destroyed by rivals: the usurper Aripert II exiled his father King Ansprand to Bavaria, blinded his brother, and cut off the ears and noses of his mother and sister. Liutprand was young enough to be considered harmless, and so was spared and sent to Bavaria with his father.

King Ansprand returned with an army of Bavarians and Austrians. Aripert fled towards Gaul, but drowned crossing a river. On Ansprand's deathbed, the Lombard nobles called Liutprand and declared him his father's co-ruler. This practice—declaring a co-ruler—made succession clear and ensured there would always be a functioning ruler. Liutprand did the same with his own son in later years when Liutprand was ill. Ansprand died the next day.

The illustration shows a large part of the Italian Peninsula under Lombard rule, and Liutprand can take credit for that by taking advantage of local hostilities. Byzantine Emperor Leo III made edicts against icons in 726. Pope Gregory II, however, rejected iconoclasm. Some parts of the peninsula (remember that at this time "Italy" is not a country but a large number of independent states) accepted Leo's edicts; some did not. The clash was serious: for example, the Byzantine Duke of Naples was killed by a mob while trying to destroy religious icons.

Liutprand took advantage of the civil discord to take his armies south and conquer much of the peninsula. On approach to Rome, he was met by Pope Gregory at the ancient city of Sutri, where the two negotiated a deal by which the papacy would get control of Sutri and some other towns as a donation to the pope (the start of establishing the Papal States), and Liutprand was allowed to take as much other territory as he was able.

As the longest-reigning Lombard king, it would be inappropriate to try to summarize his rule in one brief post. His later relationships with popes and the Carolingians and his legal reforms deserve their own attention. Stay tuned.

The Umayyad Caliphate

After the Rashidun Caliphate came the Umayyad Caliphate in 661 CE, with a dynastic rule starting with Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan, the governor of Syria. The Umayyad Caliphate used Damascus as their capital, rather than Medina.

The Umayyad Caliphate saw a period not only of expansion, but also of unification and reform. One example was when an earlier policy of paying stipends to retired military and their descendants was deemed an untenable drain on financial resources and was eliminated in favor of only paying active military.

The Byzantine gold solidus—a standard in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond—was replaced in 693 by the dinar (see an example here). The dinar originally had the head of the caliph on it, but this use of images lasted only a few years before religious objections replaced it with quotations from the Koran. Other coinage used in Muslim-ruled lands also had imagery replaced in the next few years.

Arabic became the official language of all territories of the caliphate, and government officials who spoke Persian and Greek needed to learn Arabic to keep their posts.

The Dome of the Rock was completed in Jerusalem in 691/692. Although Mecca retained importance for Muslims, it is thought that the Umayyad creation of the Dome of the Rock was intended to take some of the importance away from Mecca, since the Umayyads were originally condemned in Mecca by those faithful to the previous Rashidun Caliphate.

The Umayyad expansion consolidated all of Northern Africa and moved into the Iberian Peninsula. It is their presence in Spain that led to the first big clash with Western Europe, when in 721 Odo the Great fought them at the Battle of Toulouse. I'll tell you about Toulouse tomorrow.

John of Damascus

John of Damascus was born into a well-to-do Arab-Christian family in Damascus around 675 CE. His father was an official serving the Umayyad Caliphate. He was a priest, a composer of hymns (some of which are still used in Eastern Orthodox liturgy), and a defender of Christianity. He was interested in law, theology, music, and philosophy.

He lived near the end of patristic development of church dogma, and is considered the last of the Eastern Orthodox Doctors of the Church, being referred sometimes specifically as the Doctor of the Assumption because of his writing on the Assumption of Mary.

He spoke out in contrast to the Eastern tradition of iconoclasm. He wrote three (that we know of) works defending icons:

You see that He forbids image-making on account of idolatry, and that it is impossible to make an image of the immeasurable, uncircumscribed, invisible God. You have not seen the likeness of Him, the Scripture says, and this was St Paul’s testimony as he stood in the midst of the Areopagus: ‘Being, therefore, the offspring of God, we must not suppose the divinity to be like unto gold, or silver, or stone, the graving of art, and device of man.’

These injunctions were given to the Jews on account of their proneness to idolatry. Now we, on the contrary, are no longer in leading strings. Speaking theologically, it is given to us to avoid superstitious error, to be with God in the knowledge of the truth, to worship God alone, to enjoy the fulness of His knowledge. We have passed the stage of infancy, and reached the perfection of manhood. We receive our habit of mind from God, and know what may be imaged and what may not. [link]

The anti-Semitism is not unique. Other works of his show strong hostility to other groups: Against the Jacobites; Against the Nestorians; Dialogue against the Manichees; On the Faith, Against the Nestorians; On the Two Wills of Christ (Against the Monothelites); as well as the straightforward On Right Thinking.

He was also, unsurprisingly, opposed to Islam; one of the first known Christian writers to attack it. In Concerning Heresy he claims Muslims first worshipped Aphrodite, and that Mohammad learned Christianity from an Arian monk instead of true Christianity. Also, he criticizes the claim that Mohammad received the Koran from God in his sleep, because there were no witnesses. Moses received the Torah in front of the Israelites, Jesus was foretold by the Old Testament, but no witnesses exist to support Mohammad's claims, and no prophecies in the Bible foretold Mohammad.

John was also a promoter of perichoresis, the idea that the members of the Trinity are constantly "going around" each other, endlessly interacting and being intertwined. This sounds obvious (maybe) to anyone raised in a Christian environment, but pre-Nicene Councils, focus on the Trinity was often on distinguishing between the three to explain why three were needed. Perichoresis ties their being/existence closer together.

John of Damascus died 4 December 749. He is considered a saint in the Catholic Church, as well as Eastern and Ethiopian Orthodox Churches, the Anglican Communion, and Lutheranism. His feast day is 4 December and 27 March. He is there patron of pharmacists, theology students, and icon painters!

As mentioned above, John's writings helped define the dogma of the early Church. Next I want to go a little deeper into his unofficial title "Doctor of the Assumption."

The Second Council of Nicaea

We have talked about the Council of Nicaea before, but always the First Council in 325. There were several ecumenical councils. The seventh was the second to be held in Nicaea, and was called to deal with the subject of iconoclasm.

I addressed iconoclasm before: the idea that images of religious figures should be forbidden came from Moses' third commandment about not making "graven images."  In 787, the Second Council met to deal with the subject (they hoped) once and for all.

Arguments for included invoking various lines from the Old Testament:

• Genesis 31:34 : "Now Rachel had taken the images, and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban searched all the tent, but found them not."
• Exodus 25:19, regarding the fashioning of the Ark of the Covenant: "And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end."
• Ezekiel 41:18: And it was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub; and every cherub had two faces

...and others.

Over the course of three weeks (24 September to 13 October), presentations were made followed by debate. At the end, the use of religious images was allowed, reversing the edict against them made by Byzantine Emperor Leo III decades earlier. The official statement made declared that veneration offered to the image was actually passed to the subject of the image, and was therefore a good thing.

This Council also declared that every altar should contain a saint's relic. Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches still adhere to this practice.

Not Made By Hand

17th century painted icon (ironically) representing
the "Not Made by Human Hands" tradition;
the Greek letters in the halo indicate that it
is an acheiropoieton.

Speaking of iconoclasm (as we just were in the post on the halo in art), did the Middle Ages or the Church have a position on images not made by hand? If images of the divine were blasphemous, how would one deal with Veronica's Veil, the cloth used by Veronica to wipe the face of Jesus while on his way to Golgotha? His likeness mysteriously appeared on the cloth. Was this not an icon, and proof that icons were acceptable to God?

To be honest, the early Middle Ages should not have had to deal with this dilemma, since the story of Veronica is not found in the Gospels and is not readily known until almost the 13th century. In fact, it is our old friend Gerald of Wales who first records anything in the West about the veil, which he says he saw on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1199. (Gerald is the first to point out that the name "Veronica" is Latin "vera+icon"; that is, "true+image.")*

Authentic or not, it was the start of a trend of cloths that showed the face of Jesus without having been made by human agency. Icons such as this had a name, Acheiropoieta, "not made by hands" (Greek ἀχειροποίητα).

Despite the "not made by hands" label, many items that fell into this category were made by human hands, so long as those hands were holy, or the subject was an acheiropoieton. Saint Luke was said to have painted a portrait of Mary when he visited her. If this image survived, it would be an acceptable icon. Also, human reproductions of Acheiropoieta were considered by some to be as sacred as the originals, and as acceptable in the face of the iconoclasm controversy.

An eastern Church Council of 836 declares certain items to be legitimate Acheiropoieta: the Image of Edessa, a square of cloth containing the face of Jesus; an image in Lydda (now Israel) of the Virgin that appeared miraculously on a pillar in a church; another image of Mary in Lydda that appeared in another church. Unfortunately, there was no Church Council of 836, and the document is considered fraudulent.

Acheiropoieta are usually considered to have miraculous properties. On the Island of Cyprus there is an Acheiropoietos Monastery, named so because of an Acheiropoieton that miraculously moved from Asia Minor in the 11th century to save itself from a Turkish invasion.

*To the Middle Ages, this was proof that the world is composed of patterns and symbolism. To later historians, this suggests that "Veronica" was an ideal name made-up expressly for this anecdote.

Haloes

(photo credit Conor Hogan, 2014)

The picture here is medieval, although not from the Middle Ages. It's of the dome of Our Lady of Victory Church in Lackawanna, NY. It was taken and sent to me by someone who asked "Why is the halo triangular?" It turns out that there have been many ways over the centuries to express saintliness or godliness through the use of different styles of halo.

"Halo" comes from the Greek ἅλως, which means the "shining disk" of the sun or moon.* There have been many representations of haloes in art throughout the whole of art history. Sometimes they are represented as rays shining out from the head of a special person. Often they are circular. The circle may be portrayed as a disk behind the saint's head, looking like a large dinner plate floating so that his or her head is perfectly centered in the circle. In the Renaissance (see the top image here), when realistic perspective became a goal in art, the halo was often shown as if it were a perfectly round and flat disc that was attached to the back of the head, so that at an angle you would see it as an elliptical hat (check out the fancy hats here). Later, it was fashionable to portray it as a simple lighted "hoop," as we see in this 15th-century painting.

There were some special haloes, used in only certain circumstances. Members of the Holy Trinity could be seen with a halo that had three rays (or sets of three lines) extending from the head to the circumference. We see that in the diagram to the right. A halo made of stars was used only for the Blessed Virgin Mary (here is a sample, connecting her to the EU flag), because of the woman whose head was surrounded by 12 stars mentioned in the Book of Revelation who gives birth to the child who was to rule all nations.

Which leaves the triangle. The triangle also represented the Trinity, but was used solely for depicting God the Father. This was perhaps because the triangle is the obvious symbol for the Trinity. It could be because God the Father rules in Heaven, and "heaven" or the area above the earth was sometimes represented symbolically as a triangle. Earth's symbol was a square, due to the four cardinal directions and the "four corners of the earth," and if you look from one horizon to straight up and then down to the far horizon, you have drawn a triangle with your eyes.

So, the church in Lackawanna, NY, drew from some old symbolism for the depiction of God on the dome; clearly, it was not built by iconoclasts.

*You can see examples of the meteorological phenomena that inspired the word here.

Iconoclasm

The word "iconoclast" today usually denotes someone who challenges tradition, but the origin of the word was in the religiously and politically charged world of Constantinople in the Early Middle Ages.

To be honest, "iconoclast" (a destroyer of religious images belonging to his own culture) and its opposite, "iconodule" or "iconophile," were terms created much later by historians to describe the iconomachia (war of icons) of the late 8th and early 9th centuries in the Byzantine Empire.

Each side had its arguments, of course. The iconoclasts invoked the third of Moses 10 Commandments against "making graven images." They argued that any proper image had to be made from the same substance as the original, and therefore wood and stone were not appropriate to portray flesh. The only substance available to represent Christ was the Eucharist, which had been decreed to be Christ's flesh. Also, images were incapable of representing Christ's divinity as well as his humanity. Images had been condemned in churches by the Synod of Elvira in 305, because they might distract people from the true reason for being in church.

The iconodules had their own reasons. Once God incarnated as Jesus, representations of the divine on Earth became justified. God did tell Moses to add cherubim to the Ark. Although idols might be false, icons represented important real people and things. Also, there were miracles associated with icons, attesting to divine approval.

There were two periods, called the First Iconoclasm—from 726-787, begun by Emperor Leo III when he replaced an image of Christ with a cross at the entrance to the palace—and the Second Iconoclasm—in 814-842, when Emperor Leo V thought his military failures were the result of displeasing God. Leo III's major opponent was the venerable St. John of Damascus. Leo V had to contend with the prolific pen of St. Theodore of Stoudios.

Iconoclasm was largely an Eastern Christian conflict. Western Christianity never became seriously concerned with it, to the delight of art historians.