RELIGIONS AND FIGURATVE REPRESENTATION

The Carolingian moment

This Gregorian midway position represents an essential realignment, which would only slowly gain currency. Frequently restated thereafter, it was not, at the time, followed with much effect. In sharp contrast with the Byzantine world, the issue of figuration was not that controversial in Latin Christendom. Not until the infamous iconoclastic controversy that shook the Byzantine world between 730 and 843 did it rear its head.

The second Council of Nicaea (787) instituted a theology of icons based on positions outlined by John of Damascus[1] who valued images. The interpretation given of them kept no less to the Augustinian canon: as material pointers, memory aids, images may be an object of veneration, but not of adoration. The first versions of the acts of the council, approved by pope Adrian I[2], were met with the consternation and incomprehension of Carolingian[3] scholars who deemed the text an apology of idolatry. Indeed the Latin translation, which gave the two terms of veneration (proskunesis) and adoration (latreia) the same translation of adoratio, blotted out the distinction between them, running counter to Western praxis. At the request of Emperor Charlemagne[4], Theodulf of Orléans[5] drafted an Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (The work of King Charles against the Synod), known thereafter as the Libri Carolini (Charles' Books), which proposed to refute every last point of the acts of the Council and define a Latin position on images.

Outwardly the Libri Carolini kept closely in line with the Gregorian position, that of a midway path on the issue of representation: neither iconoclasm nor adoration. Images may therefore be admitted in churches for decorative purposes with captions to avoid any mistake in identification or interpretation. They must be means to an end, the recall of the high points of a history given as holy. Yet the libri Carolini were careful to recall that this is only a last resort, it has no place among scholars, thereby introducing a radical social and intellectual cleavage: images are memory aids and accordingly suitable only for those who have no way to remember. The Nicaean conclusions were thoroughly refuted. An image should be disconnected from its model, it was to be carefully distinguished from the person represented. The image was never but a fiction liable to lead astray and no substitute for the knowledge of God. Access to God could only be achieved through the “Word”, the “Verb”. The insistence on the Tables of the Law being written not drawn was intended to entrench in no uncertain terms this hierarchy and to affirm the indisputable supremacy of the letter over the image. However, alongside the argumentation adopted to frame a degree of tolerance towards images prefaced with the rejection of their adoration, Carolingian scholars itemized other objects as signposting the divine: relics, for higher clergy the Holy Book and, above all, the cross, the only object, in their view, truly worthy of veneration.

Faced with patent papal hostility the Carolingian court eluded a confrontation: The Libri Carolini were wisely kept under wraps. As a result, since they were not disseminated, they did not amount to a doctrinal reference but rather to an overview of the Latin position with regards to images. Now there is no escaping the fact that all Western figuration practices [doc 11] have honoured this thinking and this tradition. Though images may be present in worship, and be venerated for what they represent, they are not the object of any form of adoration whatsoever. Such positions evinced a Carolingian will to keep to a new via media poised between the rejection of images and their adoration, midway between Byzantine iconoclasm and the Roman Papacy's iconophile stance. This stand led in actual fact to a gradual drift from the Libri's rigid attitude to a deliberate return to the Gregorian tradition. It essentially boiled down to finding the right balance, giving its due weight to the signified, what the image is pointing to. This divesting the image of its sacral charge accounts for the Carolingian period's substantial iconographic output. Beyond places of worship, the splendor of manuscript illustrations [doc 12] contrasts with the Libri Carolini's doctrinal rigor. This latter form of imagery remained restricted to a narrow enlightened circle: the very scholars for whom they were supposedly not intended.

Theodulph's oratory at Germigny-Des-Prés (Loiret) mosaic of the central apseInformationsInformations[6]
Codex Aureus of LorschInformationsInformations[7]
Codex Aureus of LorschInformationsInformations[8]
  1. John of Damascus

    Born in Christian Arab family in Damascus, John Mansour belonged to the wealthy literate classes. He first worked for the Umayyad caliph. At the time of the first iconoclasm, he opposed the Byzantine emperor's position and penned a vigorous defense of the use of imagery in worship. Faced with a vindictive Byzantine authority he chose to withdraw from the world and became a monk, which did not curb his active fight against iconoclasm He published three treatises against the iconoclasts (as well as others against the Jacobites, the Nestorians and the Manicheans).

    Philosopher, theologian He is the author of De fide orthodoxa and The Fountain of Knowledge which was going to be the reference in the East throughout the Byzantine Middle-Ages. It would be translated three times into Latin from the 9th to the 13th century. It contributed to the dissemination of the Aristotelian vocabulary in Latin and to the rough systematization implemented by the Scholastics. In the Byzantine Empire, his works in Greek propose the adoration of the unknowable God by means of hymns or icons. He fought Islam on doctrinal grounds, defining that religion as a Christian heresy while still retaining the respect of Muslim elites. Anathemised at the Council of Hieria (745), he was made a Doctor of the Church by the Roman Catholic Church (1890)

  2. Adrian I (d. 795)

    Pope from 772 to795. Faced with the Lombard threat, he chose to bypass Constantinople's imperial oversight and called Charlemagne to the rescue. The Frankish expedition ended with the seizure of Pavia, the Lombard capital, and Charlemagne in possession of the Italian crown. The Carolingian authority acknowledged Adrian's ownership of the duchy of Spoleto and the city of Perugia, thereby adding to the size of the Papal States.

  3. Carolingian

    Qualifies the period of the 8th and 9th centuries marked in Latin Christendom by the domination of the Frankish kingdom, a stable and powerful entity, which reached a kind of apotheosis with Charlemagne's reign. A Christian prince, protector of the pope, defender of the Church against the “unbelievers”, he brought under his authority the Gaulish, German and Italian territories. His imperial coronation in Rome on Christmas day 800 was the consecration of his domination. Reclaiming a title fallen out of use in Europe since 476, it marks the rebirth of the Latin world as a political, military and economic force. This political and military domination found an echo in an unprecedented intellectual, spiritual and artistic flourishing (the “Carolingian renaissance”). The monarch's fame was such that the dynasty is named after him even though he did not found it.

  4. Charlemagne

    Carolus Magnus, known as Charlemagne sovereign of the Frankish kingdom from 768 to 814. At the death of his father (Pepin III the Short, he accessed to power and promptly sidelined his brother to govern alone. Although he did not found it, he left his name to the Carolingian dynasty because of the prestige associated to his person and reign. Through conquest (Bavaria, Italy, Saxony, Catalogna) he considerably enlarged the kingdom the organisation of which he undertook around a royal court which he had soon fixed in Aachen. The imperial coronation in Rome on 25 December 800 consecrated the return of a Christian Empire in the west. This political re-birth of the Christian West was also a cultural revival which saw the thriving of arts and letters. At his death in 814, he left to his son Louis the Pious a prosperous empire, a fitting match to the Byzantine Empire.

  5. Theodulf of Orléans

    A Spanish born Visigoth, he arrived at Charlemagne's court around 780 and was soon Bishop of Orléans. In 804, at Alcuin's death, he became Charlemagne' theological and ecclesiastical adviser, a position he still held under Louis the Pious. In 818, he was accused of conspiracy and exiled to Angers where he died. He produced intellectual work of major import and worked at the revision of the Biblical text undertaken by Alcuin. Having authored theology treatises, he is presumed to have supervised and organised the Libri Carolini, the Carolingian response to the images controversy. As a poet (80 pieces attributed to him have been preserved) he also proves a fine connoisseur of the Latin classics.

  6. Wikimedia CC public domain

  7. Wikimedia CC public domain

  8. Wikimedia CC public domain.

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