However, after Constantine’s death, the resolutions of the Seventh Council of Nicaea in 787 under Empress Irene ended the first iconoclastic period and reinstated the cult of images. Their position was manifested in the horos of the Synod, which addressed issues of “false” and “true” images, and the fundamental problem of how the divine or the nature of Christ can be represented at all. The iconoclasts won their first victory with the Synod of Hiereia, presided over by Constantine V in 754. Under Leo’s son, Constantine V (741-775 CE), the theological debate between iconodules (those who venerate images) and iconoclasts (those who destroy images) took shape. This act, which at first may not have intended to be iconoclastic, is seen as the inauguration of the first iconoclastic period (730-787 CE) in Byzantine (Krannich et al. Sometime between 726 and 730 CE, Emperor Leo III (717-741 CE) supposedly had an icon of Christ removed from the Chalke Gate of his palace and replaced it with a cross, the symbol of the former power and magnificence of the empire.
By deliberately adopting methodological approaches and terms that have been used for some time in Byzantine art history, relevant visual and textual evidence about the Buddhist tradition will be restructured and evaluated, and similarities and dissimilarities will be indicated. This paper, based on my talk in the series “Byzantium beyond its Eastern Borders,” hopes to contribute to the study of aniconic Buddhist art in India and China by referring back to the iconoclasm ( Bilderstreit) of the eighth and ninth centuries in the Byzantine Empire, and the subsequent development of an image theory, to justify the already well-established image cult. Discourses on images: Byzantium and the East
The Image of the Buddha: Buddha Icons and Aniconic Traditions in India and ChinaĬlaudia Wenzel, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
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