The Amorians

Michael II the Amorian (820–29), born in Amorium, Phrygia in 770, entered the army as a young man and was soon appointed general. In 820, after his partisans assassinated Leo V, he seized power. He pursued a resolutely Iconoclast policy, albeit one that was more moderate than that of Leo V. In 823 he had to combat the Muslims, who succeeded in taking Crete, and he began combat in Sicily in 829.

When he died in 829, his son Theophilus (829–42), born in 813, began his reign. The reign of this emperor was exemplary and Theophilus stood out for his Iconoclast beliefs. He was determined to fight corruption and had major works carried out. As far as his foreign policy was concerned, he made war against the Abbasid caliphate, which had taken Sicily. Over the first years of his reign, Theophilus took in thousands of Persians who were fleeing the Arab invasion. He built up a large army with their support, and was victorious in Syria. In 837 the Byzantines and Persians together laid waste to Zibatra, the native village of Caliph al-Mu’tasim, who retaliated by gathering large number of troops and defeating the Byzantine army in 838. Amorion, Theophilus' native town and cradle of the Amorian dynasty, was razed. In 841 Theophilus took advantage of the tensions dividing the Arabs to have a truce with al-Mu’tasim signed.

When Theophilus died in 842 his son Michael III was only two years old. His mother Theodora (842–56), assisted by her brother Bardas, assumed the regency. Taking into consideration the fact that her husband's persecutions had had only negative consequences, particularly from a military point of view, and that the people were revolting against Iconoclasm, Theodora summoned a synod in March 843 to have the decisions of the 787 Council of Nicaea recognised. In March 843, the worship of icons was definitively re-established. On 11 March, the first Sunday of Lent, icons were solemnly reinstated. The date has been celebrated ever since by the Orthodox Church as the "Sunday of Orthodoxy".

The empire also faced the problem of the Paulicians, who advocated a return to original Christian practices and rejected the clergy, the saints and the religious ceremonies. The Paulicians, considered heretics and therefore persecuted by Theodora, allied themselves with the Arabs and helped them take the entire island of Sicily in 847. This was when Theodora undertook the conversion of the Slavs of the Peloponnese. Her reign ended in 856, when Bardas had her sister's adviser, Theoktistos, murdered. Theodora then took her retreat in a monastery, where she died in 867.

After his mother had been removed, Michael III entrusted government to Bardas, his uncle. The policy of converting the Slavs continued through the 860s: Boris I, king of the Bulgars, was the first of their sovereigns to convert to Christianity. In Asia Minor, Michael III continued his combat against the Muslims. In September 867, he was assassinated by Basil the Macedonian, who then seized power.

The Iconoclast emperors undertook no new projects, and were not concerned by the state of abandon in which the empire's cities, such as Thessalonica and Ephesus, now were. The public buildings of Constantinople were going to ruin. Refusing iconic representations, they destroyed the Christian decorations that ornamented even the interiors of the churches, replacing them with aniconic motifs like the great cross in the apse conch of Hagia Eirene in Constantinople, most certainly produced after the earthquake of 740. Hagia Eirene is the only church that has such an intact element of iconoclast decoration. At Hagia Sophia in Thessalonica and at the Dormition of the Virgin in Nicaea the trace of the arms of a large cross can clearly be distinguished around the decoration of the Virgin and Child, produced after 843.

Iconoclast monuments with profane decoration were far more common, but our only source of knowledge about them is texts. Greek monuments, such as the churches of Protothrones and Saint John the Baptist on Naxos, and Cappadocian monuments (Hagios Stephanos and Hagios Basilios) can also be cited; their decoration is comprised of the cross motif surrounded by geometrical and ornamental motifs.

Icons and reliquaries underwent a different fate. Since they were produced in faraway places, such as Saint Catherine's Monastery, sometimes beyond the border of the empire, their production escaped state control. Although it was difficult to display and venerate icons during this period, for they might have been destroyed, the panels certainly continued to be much appreciated objects of devotion. The same is true of reliquaries, which, because of their small size, could easily be preserved. Small, cross-shaped reliquaries that could be worn around the neck were extremely popular because they were thought to have prophylactic virtues. They are also of great artistic interest, and some, such as the Pliska reliquary, show ancient examples of a Christological cycle that flourished at the end of the Iconoclast crisis.

The period of crisis brought about by Iconoclasm led to the strengthening of imperial power. However, despite the efforts made by the Iconoclast emperors, the quarrel of images, far from lessening the power of the monasteries and putting an end to the worship of images, marked the beginning of the rise of these monasteries. They subsequently became major land-owning powers. It was also the period during which, paradoxically, icons were integrated into the liturgy.

E. Y.