The status of images in a religious culture dominated by the written word
The written word held a major role in the religious culture prevailing within the Byzantine Empire, a fact nobody disputes not even the iconodules. For the social elites in a position to have their children educated, the curriculum targeted three age groups: the propaideia dispensed to children between six and ten, wherein reading and writing were mastered through the Holy Books. The paideia aimed at teenagers between eleven and eighteen focussed on general education (geometry, arithmetic, grammar, music, dialectic) with special attention given to rhetoric and public speaking. The brighter students taught their younger classmates. Beyond that, after the closure of the School of Athens by Justinian[1] and the conquest of Alexandria by the Arabs, higher education was dispensed in Constantinople.
As can be seen, religion had not taken over the whole cultural field. Profane imagery was never forbidden throughout the time of the Iconoclastic crisis. The art of miniature painting was passed on and found diverse expressions. Although written sources from the time that would offer a better idea of cultural practices are relatively scarce, it is established that the theatre – as well as dance – were practiced; but we lack the descriptions that would enable us appreciate their modalities.
The iconoclastic episode was not experienced in isolation within the Byzantine Empire. Beyond its inroads into the Carolingian Empire, it also impacted on communities living under Muslim rule and on the canons adopted by their Muslim leadership. Muslim aniconism - more emphasised in the Hadith[2] than in the Quran - was marked by a reaction against Christian iconography in Syria. Elsewhere, the iconographic programme of some monuments, e.g. the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was meant to match Bethlehem's Basilica of the Nativity's and, likewise, the cross set on steps present on some byzantine coins is echoed in an Islamic coin where the removed crossbar allows for the Prophet's vertical staff to stand on similar steps.
The Iconoclastic crisis in the Byzantine Empire testifies to a major theological question for Christians who profess a God made man in the person of Jesus: is not giving Jesus the figure of a man a negation of his divinity? And would not laying claims to representing the divinity be a denial of their humanity? And what of the scriptural prohibition on the representation of the Godhead? The iconodules offer an answer to this treble conundrum: the image as such represents neither the divinity nor the humanity of Christ but the unity of both “natures”. However the debate smouldered within the Orthodox church as well as in Western Christendom ready to rekindle at the time of the Protestant Reformation.
