Byzantine Icons and the Controversy

Mosaic Architecture Icons Sculpture Illumination

Historical Context

The Byzantine history beginning with the raise of Constantinople by Constantine I, in 324. The Christianized eastern part of the Roman Empire, or Byzantium, however is regarded to both the state and the culture in the middle ages. Constantine the Great, first Christian Roman emperor, established tolerance for Christianity throughout the Roman Empire through the Edict of Milan in 313. He also transferred his capital from Rome to Constantinople, on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium. Byzantine was the former name of the Empire's capital city, Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).

Byzantine is identified in three parts: First Flowering, Second Flowering, and Third Flowering. First Flowering, most important part, is identified through Justinian, the emperor of the six century. And Justinian is called the Caesaropapist , divine-right rule. Under Justinian many churches were build that is very important today. Justinian I (527-65) sought to reestablish the direct rule of Constantinople poised by the ideal of universal empire embracing the whole Mediterranean, he embarked on a heroic campaign, retaking first North Africa and then after a devastating 20 years war, Italy. During the sixth century, the emperor Justinian controlled most of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. He was an ambitious builder, his greatest monument being the magnificent domed church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which was constructed in just five years (532-37).

The Byzantine emperors were believed to be the earthly vicars of Jesus Christ, whose imperial will was God's will. Under the rule of Justinian, Orthodox Christianity became Constantinople's only lawful religion. The history of Byzantine art is divided into the three periods of its greatest glory-Early, Middle, and Late.

Works of art and structures works produced in the city of Byzantium after Constantine made it the capital of the Roman Empire (A.D. 330) and the work done under Byzantine influence, as in Venice, Ravenna, Norman Sicily, as well as in Syria, Greece, Russia, and other Eastern countries. After the Arab/Muslim conquest of Egypt and Syria, the nature of the state and culture was transformed. Byzantium became much more a Greek state. All the cities except Constantinople faded away to small fortified centers, and the military organization of the empire came to be based on a series of local armies.

The Iconoclastic controversy mid seventh century generally accounted as the low point of Byzantine history, where literature and even saints' lives even less art survives. The late antique urban culture collapse and the artistic activity was temporarily disrupted by the Iconoclastic controversy (726–843), that resulted in the extensive destruction of figurative works of art and the restriction of permissible content to ornamental forms or to symbols like the cross.

This Iconoclastic Controversy comes to show intellectual vitality, and the appearance of one most sophisticated analyses of the nature and function of art. Between 867-1056, Byzantium's political power reached its highest point as former territories were incorporated in the Empire, and an element of multi-ethnicity was restored. This period is also significant as the time in which Byzantine culture was spread among the Slavs and other Balkan peoples.