Imago Dei: The Byzantine Apologia for Icons

by Jaroslav Pelikan, Judith Herrin

Overview

A sweeping account of the controversies surrounding the worship of images in the early Byzantine church

In 726, the Byzantine emperor, Leo III, issued an edict that all religious images in the empire were to be destroyed, a directive that was later endorsed by a synod of the church in 753 under his son, Constantine V. If the policy of Iconoclasm had succeeded, the entire history of Christian art—and of the Christian church, at least in the East—would have been altered.

Iconoclasm was defeated by Byzantine politics, popular revolts, monastic piety, and, most fundamentally of all, by theology, just as it had been theology that the opponents of images had used to justify their actions. Analyzing an intriguing chapter in the history of ideas, the renowned scholar Jaroslav Pelikan shows how a faith that began by attacking the worship of images ended first in permitting and then in commanding it.

Pelikan charts the theological defense of icons during the iconoclastic controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries, whose high point came in 787, when the Second Council of Nicaea restored the cult of images in the church. He demonstrates how the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation eventually provided the basic rationale for images: because the invisible God had become human and therefore personally visible in Jesus Christ, it became permissible to make images of that Image. And because not only the human nature of Christ, but that of his Mother had been transformed by the Incarnation, she, too, could be “iconized,” together with all the other saints and angels.

The iconographic “text” of the book is provided by one of the very few surviving icons from the period before Iconoclasm, the Egyptian tapestry Icon of the Virgin now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Other icons serve to illustrate the theological argument, just as the theological argument serves to explain the icons.

In an incisive foreword, Judith Herrin explains the enduring importance of the book and discusses how later scholars have built on Pelikan’s work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691141251
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	09/26/2011
Series:	The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts , #35
Edition description:	With a New foreword by Judith Herrin
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Jaroslav Pelikan (1923–2006) was the author of more than thirty books, including the five-volume Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. In 2004, he received the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences. Judith Herrin is professor emeritus in the Department of Classics at King’s College London.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Preface xix

Illustrations xxi

Abbreviations xxiii

Introduction: The Idea in the Image


Chapter 1: The Context

Religion and "Realpolitik" Byzantine Style 7


Chapter 2: Graven Images

The Ambiguity of the Iconographic Tradition 41


Chapter 3: Divinity Made Human

Aesthetic Implications of the Incarnation 67


Chapter 4: The Senses Sanctified

The Rehabilitation of the Visual 99


Chapter 5: Humanity Made Divine

Mary the Mother of God 121


Chapter 6: The Great Chain of Images

A Cosmology of Icons 153


Bibliography 183

Index 194

Editorial Reviews

"The book is beautifully produced. Instructive and pleasing, Imago Dei repays both close reading and close viewing."

Cross Currents

"[Pelikan's] extraordinary breadth as a historian, not to mention his mastery of the Christian theological traditions, enables him to establish a proper context and a necessary rhetoric for the exploration of Byzantine icons."—-John Wesley Cook, Theology Today

"This book is genuine cause for celebration. I look forward to recommending it heartily to students and colleagues alike."—-Alexander Golitzin, Patristics

From the Publisher

"Pelikan clearly delineates the path the theological defense of icons took during the iconoclastic controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries . . . Commendably Pelikan addresses the role played by the other senses in the defense of icons. The fact that touch, taste, audition and smell were acceptable made it easier to argue for the place of the visual."

Theological Studies

[L]ucid, crisp, inclusive, comprehensive, and articulate.

History of Christianity - Daniel J. Sahas

[T]his book is genuine cause for celebration. I look forward to recommending it heartily to students and colleagues alike.

Patristics - Alexander Golitzin

[Pelikan's] extraordinary breadth as a historian, not to mention his mastery of the Christian theological traditions, enables him to establish a proper context and a necessary rhetoric for the exploration of Byzantine icons.

Theology Today - John Wesley Cook

[L]ucid, crisp, inclusive, comprehensive, and articulate.
— Daniel J. Sahas

History of Christianity

[T]his book is genuine cause for celebration. I look forward to recommending it heartily to students and colleagues alike.
— Alexander Golitzin

Patristics

[Pelikan's] extraordinary breadth as a historian, not to mention his mastery of the Christian theological traditions, enables him to establish a proper context and a necessary rhetoric for the exploration of Byzantine icons.
— John Wesley Cook

Theology Today

Here is a book for specialists and advanced students on the eighth-century Byzantine theological controversy over the role of icons--or images--in the Christian religion. Pelikan, a distinguished historian of religion at Yale, gives a detailed review of this complex issue, using as a focus one of the few pre-Iconoclastic images to survive, a textile in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The discussion is detailed and, dealing with now-obscure theological sources and ideas, requires close attention. For advanced collections in religion and medieval art only.-- Jack Perry Brown, Ryerson & Burnham Libs., Art Inst. of Chicago

Library Journal