Icon Veneration As a Stumbling Block

ICON VENERATION AS A STUMBLING BLOCK

Theodore Abu Qurra and Byzantine Orthodox Iconoclasts in the Early Abbasid Society

Nestor Kavvadas

1. iconoclasm and Fear: Theodore Abu Qurra’s Testimony

It probably was in the first decades of the ninth century that Theodore abu Qurra, the first Orthodox Christian theologian ever to write in Arabic, com- posed a treatise in defence of the veneration of icons and addressed it to a certain Abu Yanna, possibly a clergyman of the Church of the True Icon of Christ in Edessa.1 This treatise is an appeal, as stated in its opening lines, to the ‘many Christians’ who ‘are abandoning the prostration to the icon of Christ our God … The same, too, with the icons of his saints’. These Chris- tians of Edessa who were giving up the veneration of the holy icons were doing so, Theodore says, because ‘anti-Christians, especially those claiming to have in hand a scripture sent down from God,’ – that is, the Muslims with their Qur’an – ‘are reprimanding them for their prostration to these icons, and because of it they are imputing to them the worship of idols, and the transgression of what God commanded in the Torah and the Prophets, and they sneer at them’.2 It was this Muslim pressure that had ‘frightened away from prostration to the holy icons’, as Theodore puts it, a considerable number of his Orthodox co-religionists in Edessa, Theodore’s own home- town and perhaps the major outpost of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity beyond the Euphrates in the lands of northern Mesopotamia that were then still heavily populated by Miaphysite Syrians.

1 On this treatise, see now V.-O. Mihoc, Christliche Bilderverehrung im Kontext islamischer Bilderlosigkeit: Der Traktat über die Bilderverehrung von Theodor Abū Qurrah (ca. 755 bis ca. 830) (Wiesbaden, 2017), esp. pp. 105-119. 2 Theodore Abū Qurrah, A Treatise on the Veneration of the Holy Icons, transl. S. Griffith (Leuven, 1997), pp. 28ff. 72 Nestor Kavvadas

However, this insinuation that it was only out of fear of the Muslims that many Orthodox Christians distanced themselves from icon veneration had become a standard argument against Iconoclasts of any provenience already before Theodore abu Qurra’s times. It was first launched more than half a century earlier against Constantinopolitan Iconoclasts: these were accused by the anti-Iconoclast party of denouncing icon veneration only to flatter the much-feared Muslim Arab Empire, to escape Muslim accusations of idolatry, and to achieve a sort of overall compromise both ideologically and politically.3 Could it be then that Theodore abu Qurra is just reproducing that standard argument in order to disqualify the pro-Iconoclast Edessenes as cowards? Or is he rather describing the state of affairs? Christians living in the ʽAbbāsid Empire do indeed appear to have had serious reasons to be fearful when paying honour to the holy icons in Theodore’s days. As he reports in the same treatise, ‘Christians who make icons of Christ and his saints in their churches, and who make prostrations to their icons’, that is, his fellow Icono- philes, were seen as ‘engaging in behaviour that would appear to more staid minds to be revolting, to the point that they are immersed in meanness’;4 and ‘the disdain these people endure is what is plainer than the sun for the purpose of accommodating themselves to Him [sc. to the Crucifix]’.5

3 This denigrating genealogy of Iconoclasm was recounted by John, the alleged delegate of the Patriarch of Jerusalem at the 7th Ecumenical Council of Nicea (787). John explained to the Council – with the authority of someone (allegedly) speaking on behalf of a Patri- arch from the ʽAbbāsid Empire – that the ‘first inventor’ of Iconoclasm was a Jewish sorcerer, who promised the Caliph Yazid supernatural longevity if he would forbid Chris- tian veneration of icons. Yazid did so, and the ‘Pseudo-bishop of Nakoleia’, one of the Leo III’s leading Iconoclasts, followed, and after him the Byzantine Emperor himself; see Concilium universal Nicaenum secundum – Concilii actiones IV-V, ed. E. Lamberz, Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, series secunda, vol. IV.2 (Berlin – Boston, 2012), pp. 590- 596; although this speech by John is the earliest extant Greek witness of this legend, it is clearly much older than the Council; see Chr. Sahner, ‘The First Iconoclasm in Islam: A New History of the Edict of Yazid II (AH 104 AD 723)’, Der Islam, 94 (2017), pp. 5-56, esp. pp. 12-13; on this legend and its roots, see esp. St. Gerö, Byzantine Iconoclasm during the Reign of Leo III with Particular Attention to the Oriental Sources (Louvain, 1973), pp. 59-84; P. Speck, Ich bin’s nicht, Kaiser Konstantin ist es gewesen: die Legenden vom Einfluss des Teufels, des Juden und des Moslem auf den Ikonoklasmus (Bonn, 1990), pp. 25-113. 4 Theodore Abū Qurrah, A Treatise on the Veneration of the Holy Icons (see n. 2), p. 93. 5 Ibid., p. 95 Icon Veneration as a Stumbling Block 73

Clearly, for Theodore abu Qurra only the iconophile Christians were ‘immersed in meanness’ and had to ‘endure the disdain’ of the Muslim rul- ing class – and thus were imitating, in a sense, Christ’s passion itself. As he explains, ‘were there none of these icons in our churches, what we have mentioned [sc. the Muslim disdain for the icon of the Crucifix] would never occur to the minds of most of these people going inside our churches. As for the icons, they are what arouse them to reproach us’.6 Now, this assertion of Theodore seems not to be just an effort to style his fellow anti-Iconoclasts as the only Christians that have the courage of their convictions – and thus stress the contrast with the supposedly cowardly Icon- oclasts. For a hadith that seems only slightly earlier to Theodore’s own times, as it is handed down to us by the prominent scholar of legal tradition ‘Abd ar-Razzāq aṣ- Ṣan῾ānī in the late eighth or the early ninth century, indeed forbids Muslims to enter only those among the Christian churches where icons are venerated.7 After all, it was in that same era of the early ʽAbbāsids (and Theodore abu Qurra) that Islamic aniconism was finally established, after a series of ahādīth and perhaps even a caliphal decree had paved the way during the eighth century.8 And some scholars have suggested that this assertion of

6 Ibid. 7 A hadith that ‘Abd ar-Razzāq attributes to Sufyan ath-Thawri (716-778) has it that ῾Abdallāh ibn ῾Abbās, Muhammad’s cousin, ‘abhorred praying in a Church when there ;ابن عبس انه كنا يكره ان يصلي في الكنيسة إذا كنا فيها تماثيل) ’were likenesses [sc. icons] in it see ῾Abd-ar-Razzāq aṣ-Ṣan῾ānī, al- Muṣannaf, ed. Ayman Naṣr ad-Dīn al-Azharī (Beirut, 2000), vol. 1, hadith 1610; cf. J. Signes-Codoñer, ‘Melkites and Icon Worship during the Iconoclastic Period’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 67 (2013), pp. 135-187, on p. 140, n. 31); ‘Abd ar-Razzāq also relates (in two slightly different versions) an anecdote about the Caliph Umar: ‘When Umar entered Syria, one of the powerful among the Christians prepared him a dinner and invited him; but Umar said that he would not enter a Church because لما قدم عمر الشم صنع) ’[of the pictures that were in it – that is, of the likenesses [sc. icons له رجل من عزماء النصاري ظعاما ودعاه فقال عمر إنا لا يدخل كنائسكم من الصور التي فيها. يعني Abd-ar-Razzāq, al- Muṣannaf, hadith 1612; (this version is attributed by ar-Razziq῾ ;التماثيل to Caliph Umar’s eldest son, ῾Abdallāh bin ῾Umar); ‘Abd ar-Razzāq is considered a highly influential authority – he was one of ibn Hanbal’s teachers: see S. Lucas, Constructive Critics, Ḥadīth Literature, and the Articulation of Sunnī Islam: the Legacy of the Generation of Ibn Sa῾d, Ibn Ma῾īn, and Ibn Ḥanbal (Leiden, 2004), p. 208 – and a relatively reliable transmitter of earlier traditions: see H. Motzki, ‘The Muṣannaf of ʽAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʽānī as a Source of Authentic Aḥādīth of the First Century A.H.’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 50 (1991), pp. 1-21, esp. p. 21. 8 See D. van Reenen, ‘The Bilderverbot, a New Survey’, Der Islam, 67 (1990), pp. 27-77, esp. pp. 69-70; the author dates the Bilderverbot to the second-third quarter of the eighth 74 Nestor Kavvadas

Islamic aniconism under the early ʽAbbāsids could be seen as an act of setting a(nother) mark of differentiation vis-à-vis the Christians.9 Be this as it may, at the end of that early ʽAbbāsid era, which was the time when Christians were first reduced to minorities all over the Middle East as an ‘early Muslim majority’ emerged, Caliph al-Mutawakkil could put an icon of Mary and Christ in front of a Christian and check his reactions to decide if he should deem him an idolater or not.10 Thus, Theodore abu Qurra’s straightforward rejection, in his aforemen- tioned treatise, of the claim of certain Iconoclast Christians that, by giving up the veneration of the icons, they do not stop scandalising Muslims, for they would be appalled just as well by the aniconic cross of the Iconoclast churches, after all does not seem so dubious. Theodore states that the argument is simply not true: a Muslim would not be scandalised by a Cross when entering a Church, but only by the holy icons. And this, for him, is all the more reason to keep them there.11

2. Iconoclasts in the Byzantine Orthodox Communities and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem

This position of Theodore abu Qurra, as well as his entire treatise, is not only indicative of how a then growing Muslim majority in the Fertile

century, revising Rudi Paret’s attempt to date it back into the seventh century, cf. R. Paret, ‘Die Entstehungszeit des islamischen Bilderverbots’, Kunst des Orients, 11 (1976/1977), pp. 158-181, esp. pp. 177-178; cf. also S. Bashear, ‘The Images of Mecca: A Case-Study in Early Muslim Iconography’, Le Muséon, 105 (1992), pp. 361‒377; Sahner, ‘The First Iconoclasm in Islam’ (see n. 3), pp. 51-52. 9 Cf. e.g. S. Griffith, ‘Crosses, Icons and the Image of Christ in Edessa: The Place of Icono- phobia in the Christian-Muslim Controversies of Early Islamic Times’, in Transformations of Late Antiquity: Essays for Peter Brown, eds. Ph. Rousseau and M. Papoutsakis (Farnham, 2009), pp. 63‒84, esp. pp. 71-72; Sahner, ‘The First Iconoclasm in Islam’ (see n. 3), p. 50. 10 Or, at least an anecdote about this sounded credible enough to be included in a (dubious) autobiographical note attributed to Ḥunain bin Isḥāq, see , ‘The Autobiography of Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq (809-873 or 877)’, transl. M. Cooperson, in Interpreting the Self: Auto- biography in the Arabic Literary Tradition, ed. D.F. Reynolds (Berkeley etc., 2001), pp. 107-118; concerning the authenticity question, see G. Strohmaier, ‘Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq und die Bilder’, Klio, 43-45 (1965), pp. 525-33. 11 Cf. Theodore Abū Qurrah, A Treatise on the Veneration of the Holy Icons (see n. 2), pp. 94ff. Icon Veneration as a Stumbling Block 75

Crescent saw Orthodox Christian icon veneration. It is, at the same time, a critical testimony of a division within the Orthodox Christian populations and/or elites. At least in the city of Edessa, home to the greatest Byzantine Orthodox community beyond the Euphrates, there was a considerable group of such Byzantine ‘Orthodox’ Christians that turned against the veneration of icons in their churches and, at the same time, denied vehemently that they were just accommodating to Muslim aniconism therewith – that is, they claimed to have other, obviously theological reasons to support their Icono- clast stance. This is not the only such indication. We hear from other sources that, at roughly the same time, a bishop Kosmas of Epiphania was deposed and excommunicated for being an Iconoclast;12 we also hear that Michael Synkel- los, a high official of the Jerusalem Patriarchate who some time before had worked together with Theodore abū Qurra on a mission to the Armenian Church, once met with a group of Iconoclast monks at Seleukeia, the harbour of Antioch.13 Another piece of evidence is the case of the Orthodox martyr Romanos, an anti-Iconoclast Byzantine monk who ended up, after long adventures, in the vast prison of Bagdad. There he had to face violent attacks of Iconoclast fellow prisoners incited by a certain nobleman named George.14 There is even clear evidence that one or more Orthodox Patriarchs of the ʽAbbāsid Empire failed to demonstrate the energetic support for the anti- Iconoclast cause that some expected from them. This is clearly implied in a letter that Theodore the Studite, the leading figure of resistance to Imperial Iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire, addressed to Patriarch Thomas of Jeru- salem to express his gratitude to him for his energetic support. The Studite abbot also voices his dismay about some other patriarch(s) – i.e., Christopher of Alexandria or Job of Antioch, or both – who had not taken stances against Iconoclasm during the reign of the deceased Iconoclast Emperor Leo V.15

12 Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883), pp. 433-434. 13 The Life of Michael the Synkellos, ed. M. Cunningham (Belfast, 1991), p. 60. 14 P. Peeters, ‘S. Romain le néomartyr († 1 mai 780) d’après un document géorgien’, Analecta Bollandiana, 30 (1911), pp. 393-427, esp. p. 418. 15 Theodore’s accusations against (one or more) anonymous patriarch(s) who failed to do their duty and turn overtly against Iconoclasm are not implicitly directed against Thomas, as J. Signes-Codoñer maintains; see his ‘Theodore Studite and the Melkite Patriarchs on Icon Worship’, in L’aniconisme dans l’art religieux byzantin. Actes du colloque de Genève (1-3 octobre 2009) (Geneva, 2015), pp. 95-103. The latter argues with Theodore’s closing 76 Nestor Kavvadas

So, even if the patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch only possessed a very restricted influence at that time, it is a fact that, for a certain period, no less man than a patriarch had deviated from the anti-Iconoclast line upheld by the Jerusalem-centred leadership of the Byzantine Orthodox populations of the ʽAbbāsid Empire and had maintained a compliant silence or even taken a pro-Iconoclast stance. Still, it remains a fact that the informal leadership of the Caliphate’s Orthodox population was staunchly anti-Iconoclast. That informal leader-

words of a rough sketch of the turbulent political situation in Byzantium following Emperor Leo’s killing and the revolt of Thomas the Slav, and paraphrases these sentences as follows: ‘that it is good to stop discussing about images, for neither the patriarch needs indoctrination nor is it the appropriate time to do so’ (ibid., p. 97); cf. Theodoros Stu- dites, Epistulae, ed. G. Fatouros (Berlin – New York, 1992), esp. 469, 37-9: ἀρκεῖ γάρ, ἡγοῦμαι, ἐπὶ τῆς εἰκόνος ἐᾶσαι τὸν λόγον, μήτε τῆς ὑμῶν μεγαλονοίας ἐνδεομένης μαθήσεως μήτ’ αὖ τοῦ καιροῦ ἐπιτρέποντος φαίειν ἐκδηλότερα. Based on this rendering, Signes-Codoñer suggests ‘that we could even read ironically this comment: now, that the worst persecution is over, it is no more the time for discussing about icons!’ (‘Theodore Studite and the Melkite Patriarchs on Icon Worship’, p. 97). However, in the aforemen- tioned sentence the word ‘εἰκὼν’ does not mean ‘icon’, or (religious) image, as Signes- Codoñer suggests: ‘εἰκὼν’ refers here clearly to the image, just sketched by Theodore, of the winter passing away and giving place to the first light of spring, an image that func- tions as a metaphor for the end of a period of hard times marked by the insurgence of Thomas the Slav (Theodoros Studites, Epistulae, ep. 469, 35-7). Thus, the meaning of the Greek sentence, is: ‘it is enough, I think, to stay with/at this metaphor and stop speaking, as neither is your great intelligence in need of information nor do the circumstances allow to speak more overtly’. What Theodore says to Patriarch Thomas is that the metaphor of the ending winter that Theodore just used to illustrate the chaos caused by the revolt of Thomas the Slav is enough for Thomas to understand exactly what he means, and that anyway he cannot write in a more open manner about this burning issue of high politics – perhaps because this would have been too risky, as the letter could be intercepted. Fur- thermore, Signes-Codoñer’s suggestion to read Theodore’s open praise of Pope Paschal for his struggle against Imperial Iconoclasm as an implicit criticism, by contrast, of the sup- posed inertia of all Patriarchs of the East, including Thomas (‘Theodore Studite and the Melkite Patriarchs on Icon Worship’, p. 97), seems incongruent with the letter’s overall tenor. In this letter, praise of pope Paschal matches praise of Patriarch Thomas. In Theo- dore’s eyes, Thomas has indeed shown his ‘τὸ θεομίμητον ὑμῶν καὶ εὐσυμπάθητον’, his ‘τὸ σύμψυχον ἡμῖν καὶ ὁμόγνωμον’, inasmuch as he effectively separated himself not just from the enemies of the Iconoclast party, but also from those who – under the pressure of Leo V’s Iconoclast policy – have deserted the Iconophile camp: ‘πρὸς τοὺς τοῖς ἐναντίοις, ὁποῖοί ποτε ἦσαν [i.e, even if the Byzantine emperor himself is one of them], αὐτομολήσαντας διακρινόμενον’ (Theodoros Studites, Epistulae, ep. 469, 12-16). In The- odore’s eyes it was clear that Thomas had taken stances and had done his duty as an Orthodox Patriarch, while some of his colleagues had not. Icon Veneration as a Stumbling Block 77 ship was based in Jerusalem, with the Patriarch of the Holy City and his staff as executive authority and the great monasteries of the Judean desert together with a vast network of archontic Orthodox families as its backbone;16 and that leadership had made a clear choice. Then Patriarch Thomas of Jerusa- lem, a most influential churchman who stood in direct contact with almost all major sovereigns of his times, from Charlemagne and Hārūn ar-Rašīd to Pope Leo III and the Byzantine emperor,17 sided with Theodore the Studite and his anti-Iconoclast Byzantine church party from the first moment that the second Iconoclastic crisis broke out under Emperor Leo V, taking action even in Constantinople itself. Thomas’ close associates and envoys Michael the Synkellos and the brothers Theodore and Theophanes Graptoi, were even put in detention in Constantinople and were tortured for their anti- Iconoclast activities. Moreover, this connection between Theodore the Stu- dite’s Constantinopolitan anti-Iconoclasts and the Orthodox Church of the Holy Land was not restricted to their respective leaders. It was powered by an entire network of personal friends and contacts of Theodore the Studite who lived in Jerusalem or travelled there, as well as by influential Orthodox Palestinian immigrants in Constantinople.18

16 Cf. S. Griffith, ‘Michael, the Martyr and Monk of Mar Sabas Monastery, at the Court of Caliph Abd Al-Malik: Christian Apologetics and Martyrology in the Early Islamic Period’, Aram, 6 (1994), pp. 115-148, esp. pp. 147-148; Idem, ‘Christians, Muslims, and Neo-Martyrs. Saints’ Lives and Holy Land History’, in Sharing the Sacred: Religious Con- tacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, First-Fifteenth Centuries, eds. A. Kofsky and G. Stroumsa (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 163-207, esp. pp. 181ff.; Idem, ‘Melkites, Jacobites and the Christological Controversies in Arabic in Third-Ninth Century Syria’, in Syrian Christians under Islam. The First Thousand Years, ed. D. R. Thomas (Leiden, 2001), pp. 9-56, esp. pp. 17-18; and N. Kavvadas, Jerusalem zwischen Aachen und Bagdad: Zur Existenzkrise des byzantinischen Christentums im Abbasidenreich (Stuttgart, 2017), pp.18ff. 17 See Kavvadas, Jerusalem zwischen Aachen und Bagdad (see n. 16); Idem, ‘The First Blast: The Jerusalem Filioque Conflict of 807 and its Politics’, Aram, 31 (2019) [forthcoming]; on Patriarch Thomas’ activities, see also Chysostomos Papadopoulos, Ἱστορία τῆς Ἐκκλησίας Ἱεροσολύμων [History of the Church of Jerusalem] (Jerusalem-Alexandria, 1910), pp. 312ff.; K. Schmid, ‘Aachen und Jerusalem’, in Das Einhardkreuz: Vorträge und Studien der Münsteraner Diskussion zum arcus Einhardi, ed. K. Hauck (Göttingen, 1974), pp. 122-142, esp. pp. 139-140; M. Borgolte, Der Gesandtenaustausch der Karolinger mit den Abbasiden und mit den Patriarchen von Jerusalem (München, 1978), pp. 86ff. 18 On the anti-Iconoclast stance of the Jerusalem-centred informal leadership of the Cali- phate’s Byzantine Orthodox communities, its ties with Theodore the Studite’s Byzantine anti-Iconoclasts and the activities of Michael Synkellos and the Graptoi brothers, see the book on Thomas of Jerusalem currently in preparation by the author. 78 Nestor Kavvadas

Seeing this clear stance of the Jerusalem-centred leadership of the Cali- phate’s Orthodox populations, a question arises as to the identity of those Iconoclast voices coming from among the Caliphate’s Orthodox. Some anonymous monks in the Syrian harbour of Seleukeia, Kosmas of Epipha- neia, Byzantine Iconoclasts in Arab captivity, and finally, a patriarch of Anti- och: did these apparently disparate people have any mutual connections, any common interests, or even a common political project?

3. The ‘Accommodationist’ Tendency

The question can be approached by looking at the (anticipated) implications of their pro-Iconoclast tendency as regards their relation to the Muslim rul- ing class and, in particular, to a neo-conservative party around the upcoming class of the religious scholars (ʽulamāʼ), a party that was labelled the ‘consti- tutional bloc’ by Montgomery Watt and was contrasted by him to an ‘auto- cratic bloc’ around the Caliph and his vizier.19 Just as telling are the implications of a pro-Iconoclast stance in connection with the relations of Christians to certain northern Mesopotamian and Syro-Palestinian Arab military elites who were reacting at that time against the growing power of the Iranian Barmakid viziers and who seem to have catalysed the change of the social climate vis-à-vis the Christian and Jewish populations, a change concomitant with the shrinkage of Christian communities and the emergence of great Muslim majorities.20 For that matter, one should not discard the simple but reasonable assumption of Theodore abu Qurra that removing the icons from

19 See W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh, 1973), esp. pp. 173ff. 20 On the military elites undermining Barmakid power (till the fall of the Barmakids in 803), see H. Kennedy, The Early Abbasid Caliphate (London – Totowa, NJ, 1981), esp. pp. 121ff.; cf. A. Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir: l’espace syrien sous les derniers Omeyyades et les premiers Abbassides (v. 72-193/692-809) (Leiden – Boston, 2011), esp. pp. 451ff.; on the simultaneous shrinking of Christian populations, cf. R. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge, MA, 1979), esp. pp. 43ff. and 80ff.; M. Morony, ‘The Age of Conversions: A Reassessment’, in: Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, eds. M. Gervers and R. Jibran Bikhazi (Toronto, 1990), pp. 135-150, esp. pp. 138ff.; R. Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule: A Historical and Archaeological Study (Princeton, 1995), pp. 139-159 and pp. 220-225; for further references to scholarship corroborating Bulliet’s results, see Kavvadas, Jerusalem zwischen Aachen und Bagdad (see n. 16), p. 67, n. 101. Icon Veneration as a Stumbling Block 79 churches and leaving only aniconic crosses would indeed have a strong soothing effect on these Arab military elites as well as on Muslim neo- conservatives. Now, could it be that this tendency to accommodate very widely to the sentiments of the neo-conservative Muslim elites was indeed the one major feature common to all different pro-Iconoclast circles among the Orthodox Christians of the Caliphate? The sure thing is that this very same tendency to accommodate gave rise to opposition against the Jerusalem-centred Orthodox leadership not only in the question of the veneration of the holy icons, but also in another major contemporary controversy. This was about the veneration of the neo-martyrs, i.e., the first Christian martyrs to be killed under Muslim Arab rule (as a group distinct from the ancient martyrs of the pre-Constantine Roman period). The liturgical veneration of the neo-martyrs was indeed a new phenomenon that was emerging in the Orthodox communities of Syro-Pales- tine, together with a considerable mass of literary lives of such neo-martyrs, at roughly the same time as the second Iconoclast controversy, that is, in the outgoing eighth century and in the first half of the ninth – the time when Christian communities were shrinking rapidly.21 This emergence of the veneration of neo-martyrs attests not only to the multiplying acts of oppression against Orthodox Christians and the growing number of victims,22 but also to a clear decision of the Caliphate’s Orthodox Church to acknowledge these victims as saints, honour their memory in the Churches, and thus practically proclaim that the uncompromising attitude for which these martyrs had paid with their lives was the hallmark par excel- lence of Christian self-consciousness in an environment of increasing uncer- tainty.23 This decision was taken and enforced by the informal leadership of

21 On this phenomenon, see Chr. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World (Princeton, 2018); cf. Idem, ‘Old Martyrs, New Martyrs and the Coming of Islam: Writing Hagiography after the Conquest’, in Cultures in Motion. Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, eds. A. Izdebski and D. Jasinski (Kraków, 2014), pp. 89-112. 22 This escalation is witnessed also by several contemporary Syriac and Christian Arabic sources; see, among others, Le synaxaire arabe jacobite, ed. R. Basset, Patrologia Orientalis, 16 (Paris, 1922), p. 233; Joseph J. Hazzaya, On Providence, ed. N. Kavvadas (Leiden – Boston, 2016), pp. 12-17. 23 In contrast, we have hardly any lives of Syriac Miaphysite or Nestorian neo-martyrs, and only singular traces of the existence of such neo-martyrs survive; cf. J. Tannous, 80 Nestor Kavvadas the Caliphate’s Orthodox, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and its elite network. It was in Jerusalem and in its nearby monasteries that most of these lives were written, mostly in Greek, and then translated into Arabic and Georgian, the other major languages of the Orthodox communities of the Middle East, to be circulated all over the Fertile Crescent and beyond. The role that the informal Orthodox leadership played in this process is mirrored even in the text of the earliest neo-martyr’s lives, where prominent figures such as Patriarch Thomas of Jerusalem, or Theodore abu Qurra, are mentioned time and again as persons of the highest ecclesiastical authority.24 But several of these neo-martyrs’ lives testify at the same time to the existence of a stream or party coming from within the Byzantine Orthodox communities that opposed vehemently the veneration of these novel saints. It seems that also this party was most influential. Its arguments are reported and refuted at length in several neo-martyrs’ lives; but, unfortunately, we are never given any precise information as to the identity of its leaders or speak- ers. What the neo-martyr’s lives do let us know is, however, that these opponents of the neo-martyrs’ veneration were almost everywhere in the Ortho- dox Churches of the Middle East, from Palestine to Georgia. Could it be that this network opposing the emerging veneration of neo- martyrs was identical with the one that adopted a pro-Iconoclast stance favouring removal of the icons from Byzantine Orthodox Churches? In both cases, we have to do with people promoting an ‘accommodationist’ stance, with people countering the uncompromising attitude taken by the Patriar- chate of Jerusalem, and therefore coming into conflict with its leading figures, the Patriarch himself and his closest collaborators like Theodore abu Qurra

‘L’hagiographie syro-occidentale à la période islamique’, in L’hagiographie syriaque, ed. A. Binggeli (Paris, 2012), pp. 225-245. 24 Cf. The Martyrdom of St. Michael of Mar Saba, ed. C. Kekelidze, in Monumenta Hagi- ographica Georgica, pars prima: Keimena I, ed. Idem (Tbilisi, 1918), pp. 165-173, on pp. 165 and 173; cf. M. Blanchard, ‘The Georgian Version of the Martyrdom of St. Michael, Monk of Mar Sabas Monastery’, Aram, 6 (1994), pp. 149-163, on pp. 149 and 158; Μαρτύριον τῶν ἁγίων πατέρων τῶν ἀναιρεθέντων ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων, ἤγουν Σαρακηνῶν, ἐν τῇ μεγίστῃ Λαύρᾳ τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Σάβα [Martyrdom of the holy Fathers who were killed by the barbarians, i.e. the Saracenes, in the Great Lavra of our holy Father Sabas] (BHG 1200), ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, in Συλλογὴ παλαιστινῆς καὶ συριακῆς ἁγιολογίας [Collection of Palestinian and Syrian hagiographies], ed. Idem (St. Petersburg, 1907; repr. Thessaloniki, 2001). Icon Veneration as a Stumbling Block 81 or Michael the Synkellos; furthermore, we have to do with two positions – rejection of the veneration of the icons and of the veneration of (neo)martyrs, which means also of their relics and icons – that almost always went together in the Byzantine Iconoclast conflict as well as almost all along Church history down to the Reformation, for they express the same fundamental theological mentality: the martyrs are, as implied by Theodore abu Qurra, living icons of Christ, and rejecting them is rejecting the very principle of iconicity that underlies also the veneration of the holy icons (i.e., the principle that the veneration passes over from the image to the depicted person). It appears that we are, in both cases, dealing with the same oppositional tendency that one could name, with Christian Sahner, ‘accommodationist’.25 The story of how that ‘accommodationist’ opposition, with all its connections to the rising neo-conservative Arab military elites and with all the natural attractions of its stance, was finally overcome by the Jerusalem- centred leadership of the Caliphate’s Orthodox Churches still awaits writing. To be sure, the staunchly anti-Iconoclast line of the Jerusalem leadership proved instrumental to raise the veneration of the holy icons – and, simul- taneously, the veneration of the neo-martyrs, the living icons of Christ – to a mark of identity and a stigma of otherness for the Byzantine Orthodox communities of the Middle East, not only possibly exposing them to acts of oppression from certain influential Muslim elites, but also making them and their churches look different from those of Miaphysites and – all the more so – of so-called Nestorian communities,26 communities that, while never overtly adopting an Iconoclast stance, neither gave the icons such a domi- nant place in their churches as they had in the Byzantine Orthodox ones, nor gave the theological idea of iconicity the same pivotal role it assumed in Orthodox theology and church life.27 This particular identity mark was then

25 On this, cf. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam (see n. 21). 26 Th. Kremer, ‘Bildverständnis, Bilderverbot und Bilderverehrung in den syrischen Kirchen’, in Syrische Studien: Beiträge zum 8. Deutschen Syrologie-Symposium in Salzburg 2014, ed. D.W. Winkler (Vienna, 2016), pp. 271-306, esp. p. 301. 27 See ibid.; cf. M. Mundell, ‘Monophysite Church Decoration’, in Iconoclasm: Papers Given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, March 1975, eds. A. Bryer and J. Herrin (Birmingham, 1977), pp. 59-74, esp. p. 74. Regarding the Miaphysite Armenian Church, cf. Sirarpie Der Nersessian, ‘Image Worship in Armenia and Its Opponents’, Armenian Quarterly, 1 (1946), pp. 67-81; L. Brubaker and J. Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca 680–850). The Sources: An Annotated Survey (Aldershot, 82 Nestor Kavvadas connected, in the eyes of the Caliphate’s Byzantine Orthodox, with such names as John of Damascus, Theodore abu Qurra, and Thomas of Jerusa- lem.

Abstract

While earlier scholarship had thought of the Caliphate’s Byzantine Orthodox (“Melkite”) Church as being as staunchly anti-iconoclast as John of Damascus and Theodore abu Qurra – its most celebrated theologians – were, more recent research has highlighted the existence of divergent, sometimes overtly pro- iconoclast voices in the Melkite communities. The impression is given that there was a wide variety of Melkite attitudes towards Constantinopolitan Iconoclasm. However, some of the key sources to that period seem to suggest that this apparent variety of attitudes is largely reducible to an underlying conflict between the anti-iconoclast leadership of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem – being a kind of an informal leadership of the Melkite communities – and an influential, “accomodationist” opposition within the Melkite world, which consistently opted against the promotion of practices that could provoke Muslim reactions, such as the veneration of the neomartyrs and of the Holy Icons. Keywords: Iconoclasm, Islam, Melkites, Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Thomas of Jerusalem

2001), pp. 267-268 and A. Eastmond, ‘Other Encounters: Popular Belief and Cultural Convergence in Anatolia and the Caucasus’, in Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anato- lia, eds. A.C.S. Peacock, B. De Nicola and S. nur Yildiz (Abingdon, 2016), pp. 183-214, on p. 191.