A Companion to Byzantine Iconoclasm ed. by Mike Humphreys (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Companion to Byzantine Iconoclasm ed. by Mike Humphreys Sophie Schweinfurth A Companion to Byzantine Iconoclasm Edited by Mike Humphreys Brill's Companion to the Christian Tradition, Vol. 99. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021. Pp. xvii + 630. ISBN: 978-9004339903. This sizable volume is a daring venture and is wisely entitled "A Companion to Byzantine Iconoclasm." Although it assembles many of the most established scholars on the topic, it does not claim to be "The Companion to Byzantine Iconoclasm," as the editor of the volume concedes in his preface. The reason for the impossibility of compiling "The Companion to Byzantine Iconoclasm" lies in the nature of its subject: there are few other topics which have gained more attention and critical debate in early medieval history, church history, and Byzantine Studies than the period of Byzantine iconoclasm. Due to the groundbreaking research of older scholarship, the mainly iconophile sources have been thoroughly deconstructed to their interpolated extent, which has profoundly undermined the narrative of iconoclasm as predominantly violent action against images. Concerning the degree of the extensive examination of iconoclasm, Avril Cameron recognized "a subject which … has been done to death" (Cameron 1992). The result is that every scholar who gets involved into the case of iconoclasm is walking on thin ice due to the unreliability of the textual and material evidence. As significant as the deconstruction of the iconophile sources was for the scholarly debate, it creates a dilemma for further research: staying caught in the web of historical revisionism, which is in danger to become redundant, or putting the pieces together to (re)produce a narrative of Byzantine Iconoclasm, which will always be fragmentary (60). It is refreshing that Mike Humphreys' introduction addresses the problem of revisionism ("a wave of revisionist scholarship," 4) in the study of Byzantine Iconoclasm right at the beginning of the volume. This is an elegant acknowledgement that dilemma just described eventually will (or should) not be solved but is part of the subject of the history of iconoclasm itself. Intended to be a companion to address "both newcomers and specialists" (vii), the introduction gives an overview of the principal parameters on which the historical construction of Byzantine Iconoclasm is based. After an in-depth outline in the introduction, the volume starts with the period and the role of images before iconoclasm (Part I), following a recent line of research which understands especially the seventh century not only as a time of deep crisis but as a decisive transformation period between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Robin Jensen addresses the fact that for theological texts before the sixth century, the multi-present Christian imagery was a negligible subject, indicating that Christian art in general was not regarded as questionable (141). The complexity and richness of early Christian art [End Page 569] is neither remarked on nor mirrored by contemporary texts (143). Benjamin Anderson, augmenting Peter Brown's influential proposition, emphasizes two closely related phenomena which were restricted to Constantinople and its direct hinterland, preconditioning the concurrent cause of a new "discourse of images" (185)—that is, iconoclasm—in the seventh century: the foundation of monasteries by an aristocratic elite and the embellishment of the associated churches with monumental images of Christ visualizing a certain position in recent Christological debates, both eluding control by bishops and emperors. Anderson's conclusions from the monumental evidence are worthy of discussion. The fundamental question of the sources for the understanding of iconoclasm is the main focus of Part II. Mike Humphreys' and Jesse. W. Torgerson's account of the most relevant sources from historiography is an encouraging methodological survey demonstrating that, even in the minefield of the textual evidence from the iconoclastic period, there is a path forward for further insight if we follow "the traces of selectiveness" (229)" of which every text is a document. Similarly, Richard Price's chapter on the theological texts (acts, treatises, hagiography) is less skeptical of the sources in question but tries to show that the impact of iconoclasm varies depending on the genre. The hagiography of the time particularly "bears witness to the continuing strength of traditional motifs" (250) rather than being saturated by iconophile thought...