Between the late seventh and the mid-ninth centuries, a debate about sacred images – conventionally addressed as ‘Byzantine iconoclasm’ – engaged monks, emperors, and popes in the Mediterranean area and on the European continent. The importance of this debate cannot be overstated; it challenged the relation between image, text, and belief. A series of popes staunchly in favour of sacred images acted consistently during this period in displaying a remarkable iconophilia or ‘love for images’. Their multifaceted reaction involved not only council resolutions and diplomatic exchanges, but also public religious festivals, liturgy, preaching, and visual arts – the mass-media of the time. Embracing these tools, the popes especially promoted themes related to the Incarnation of God – which justified the production and veneration of sacred images – and extolled the role and the figure of the Virgin Mary.
Despite their profound influence over Byzantine and western cultures of later centuries, the political, theological, and artistic interactions between the East and the West during this period have not yet been investigated in studies combining textual and material evidence. By drawing evidence from texts and material culture – some of which have yet to be discussed against the background of the iconoclastic controversy – and by considering the role of oral exchange, Iconophilia assesses the impact of the debate on sacred images and of coeval theological controversies in Rome and central Italy.
By looking at intersecting textual, liturgical, and pictorial images which had at their core the Incarnate God and his human mother Mary, the book demonstrates that between c.680–880, by unremittingly maintaining the importance of the visual for nurturing beliefs and mediating personal and communal salvation, the popes ensured that the status of sacred images would remain unchallenged, at least until the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.
Author(s): Francesca Dell'Acqua
Series: Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 444
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of illustrations
Colour plates
Foreword and acknowledgements
Abbreviations
A note on translations, names, and place names
List of popes
Introduction
1 A word on words
2 The standpoints
3 A question of method
4 The objectives
5 The outline
6 A final remark
1 Before iconoclasm and its early echoes (680s–750s)
1 The ‘visual’ before Byzantine iconoclasm
2 The Sixth Ecumenical Council
3 The Council in Trullo
4 Urban processions in honour of Mary
5 Proto-iconoclasm, or damnatio memoriae?
6 A ‘mural icon’ in S. Sabina
7 The life of Gregory II
8 An inscription from a Lombard court
9 The life of Gregory III
10 With the help of Mary
Conclusions
2 Words, images, and religious practices in the iconophile discourse (754–790s)
1 The Council of Hiereia (754): against or according to tradition?
2 John of Damascus. A living icon of ‘orthodoxy’ in Rome?
3 Germanos of Constantinople: an alleged exile in Rome?
4 Later echoes of iconoclasm in Rome
5 Dissenting refugees
6 The apse of S. Maria Antiqua: Mary above all saints
7 Synods and florilegia (760s)
8 Pope Hadrian I’s Synodica and the iconophile Council of Nicaea II
9 The Hadrianum to Charlemagne
10 Words matter: adoration versus veneration
11 Papal artistic patronage as an iconophile argument
12 The authority of Gregory the Great between Rome and Francia
13 Raising the bar: The Libri Carolini
Conclusions
3 Textual icons: Iconophile thinking and preaching in central Italy
1 A witness of iconophile thinking in central Italy
2 Autpert and the popes of his time
3 Autpert and iconoclasm
4 Textual icons
5 Mary in central Italy
6 Homilies and iconophile propaganda?
7 Graeca consuetudine
8 Texts and images
Conclusions
4 A glimpse of salvation: Christ as light between the first and second iconoclasm
1 Christ as the ‘Redeeming Light’ in Rome
2 The case of S. Zeno
3 Beyond the transfiguration in S. Prassede and S. Cecilia
4 A stained-glass panel with Christ from S. Vincenzo al Volturno
5 Circumscribing the uncircumscribable
6 The context of the Crypt of Epyphanius
7 The legacy of Autpert
8 Iconophilia as official policy
9 Again on dissenting refugees
10 The Synod of Paris (825) and the papal response
Conclusions
5 Christ Child as the Lamb of God on the altar
1 The Presentation as epiphany between the fifth and the eighth centuries
2 Christ on the altar
3 The feast of light in Jerusalem and Rome
4 Other themes of the feast
5 The earliest Latin homilies on the Presentation
6 Autpert’s novel approach
7 Going to embrace the Christ–Light
8 The idea of the altar
9 On the circulation of iconophile (?) amulets
Conclusions
6 Figuring intercession: The Assumption of Mary
1 John VII and Mary orans as Adsumpta
2 Mary orans as Adsumpta on a Merovingian fabric
3 A paradoxical image: Mary in the Greek tradition
4 The triumphant Mary: early western arts and texts
5 A ‘cameo’ of the Adsumpta in the Homiliary of Agimundus
6 The Carolingian controversy on the Assumption and Paschal I
7 A Theotokos–Adsumpta in S. Maria in Domnica?
8 Mary as threshold and gate of heaven
9 A humble queen in the Crypt of Epyphanius
10 Prefiguring her own Assumption
11 The Assumption in the late Carolingian period
12 The Dormition in Rome
Conclusions
Appendix 1: Mary as queen of heaven
Appendix 2: Mary as gate of heaven and ladder to heaven
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
