The Apogee - Byzantium 02 by John Julius Norwich Page B
Authors: John Julius Norwich
Tags: History, Non-Fiction
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become reconciled with Theophilus and had been living for some years in quiet retirement in the Imperial Palace - to prepare the agenda and the necessary documentation.
On the whole, the Council passed off smoothly enough, the only major problem being presented by John the Grammarian, who refused to resign and whom it consequently proved necessary to depose. Even then, according to several normally reliable sources, he could not be induced to leave the Patriarchal Palace and, when Bardas went to reason with him, pulled up his robes and exhibited several unpleasant abdominal wounds which he claimed to be the work of a platoon of soldiers sent to evict him but which were subsequently revealed to have been self-inflicted. Finally however he agreed to go quietly, and retired to his villa on the Bosphorus - where, his enemies whispered, he abandoned himself to necromancy and the black arts. Methodius was elected in his place, and the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council - that which had put an end to the first period of iconoclasm in 787 - were confirmed. At the Empress's insistence, however, her dead husband's name was omitted from the lists of those prominent iconoclasts who were now anathematized as heretics. The story, assiduously circulated, that he had repented on his deathbed and that Theodora had held an icon to his lips as he expired can safely be discounted, and probably gained little enough credence at the time; but it got everybody out of a potentially embarrassing position and no serious objections were raised.
The victory was won: a victory not of iconodule over iconoclast but of clarity over mysticism, of Greek thought over Oriental metaphysics, ultimately of West over East - a victory every bit as crucial for the cultural life of the Empire as were, for its political development, the triumph over the Persians and the continuing struggle against the Arabs. And, as with so many victories, it almost certainly owed its long-term success to the moderation and magnanimity shown by the victors. On 11 March — which chanced to be the first Sunday in Lent, a day still celebrated by the Eastern Church as the Feast of Orthodoxy - a service of thanksgiving was held in St Sophia, attended by the entire imperial family and by vast crowds of monks from all the neighbouring monasteries. 1 Icons by the hundred were carried shoulder-high, and thenceforth gradually reappeared on the walls of the churches; but there was no sudden or uncontrolled proliferation such as might have provoked indignant reaction from the diehards. Even the ever-controversial image of Christ from above the Chalke had to wait some years before its eventual restoration, and it was almost a quarter of a century before the first figurative mosaic was unveiled in the Great Church itself 2 - that huge, haunting image of the Virgin and Child enthroned which, after more than eleven centuries, still gazes impassively down on us today.
Nor, despite his past sufferings, did Patriarch Methodius show any desire for vengeance. Anathematized the iconoclast leaders might be; they were never ill-treated, still less deprived of their liberty. Such expressions of indignation as there were came, on the contrary, from the iconodules - notably the fanatical monks of the Studium, whose vitriolic attacks on the Patriarch when he passed them over for promotion to vacant sees in favour of moderates like himself finally obliged him to excommunicate them en masse. By this time, we are told, they had even tried to force his resignation - by the singularly inept contrivance of bribing a young woman to accuse him of seduction. At the ensuing inquiry Methodius is said to have given visual proof of his innocence by producing for inspection those parts which might have been thought most directly responsible for the alleged offence, explaining the shrivelled remnants of his manhood with a story of how, years before in Rome, a
Genesius maintains that these included representatives from
On the whole, the Council passed off smoothly enough, the only major problem being presented by John the Grammarian, who refused to resign and whom it consequently proved necessary to depose. Even then, according to several normally reliable sources, he could not be induced to leave the Patriarchal Palace and, when Bardas went to reason with him, pulled up his robes and exhibited several unpleasant abdominal wounds which he claimed to be the work of a platoon of soldiers sent to evict him but which were subsequently revealed to have been self-inflicted. Finally however he agreed to go quietly, and retired to his villa on the Bosphorus - where, his enemies whispered, he abandoned himself to necromancy and the black arts. Methodius was elected in his place, and the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council - that which had put an end to the first period of iconoclasm in 787 - were confirmed. At the Empress's insistence, however, her dead husband's name was omitted from the lists of those prominent iconoclasts who were now anathematized as heretics. The story, assiduously circulated, that he had repented on his deathbed and that Theodora had held an icon to his lips as he expired can safely be discounted, and probably gained little enough credence at the time; but it got everybody out of a potentially embarrassing position and no serious objections were raised.
The victory was won: a victory not of iconodule over iconoclast but of clarity over mysticism, of Greek thought over Oriental metaphysics, ultimately of West over East - a victory every bit as crucial for the cultural life of the Empire as were, for its political development, the triumph over the Persians and the continuing struggle against the Arabs. And, as with so many victories, it almost certainly owed its long-term success to the moderation and magnanimity shown by the victors. On 11 March — which chanced to be the first Sunday in Lent, a day still celebrated by the Eastern Church as the Feast of Orthodoxy - a service of thanksgiving was held in St Sophia, attended by the entire imperial family and by vast crowds of monks from all the neighbouring monasteries. 1 Icons by the hundred were carried shoulder-high, and thenceforth gradually reappeared on the walls of the churches; but there was no sudden or uncontrolled proliferation such as might have provoked indignant reaction from the diehards. Even the ever-controversial image of Christ from above the Chalke had to wait some years before its eventual restoration, and it was almost a quarter of a century before the first figurative mosaic was unveiled in the Great Church itself 2 - that huge, haunting image of the Virgin and Child enthroned which, after more than eleven centuries, still gazes impassively down on us today.
Nor, despite his past sufferings, did Patriarch Methodius show any desire for vengeance. Anathematized the iconoclast leaders might be; they were never ill-treated, still less deprived of their liberty. Such expressions of indignation as there were came, on the contrary, from the iconodules - notably the fanatical monks of the Studium, whose vitriolic attacks on the Patriarch when he passed them over for promotion to vacant sees in favour of moderates like himself finally obliged him to excommunicate them en masse. By this time, we are told, they had even tried to force his resignation - by the singularly inept contrivance of bribing a young woman to accuse him of seduction. At the ensuing inquiry Methodius is said to have given visual proof of his innocence by producing for inspection those parts which might have been thought most directly responsible for the alleged offence, explaining the shrivelled remnants of his manhood with a story of how, years before in Rome, a
Genesius maintains that these included representatives from
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