Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, Episode 71, Iconoclasm.

In 726, eight years after the siege had ended, the volcano lying beneath the island of

Thera erupted. This was the same place which had rained fiery hail down on the retreating Arab fleet

and known today as Santorini. The explosion sent lava and ash spewing high into the sky

and debris fell all across the Aegean as far afield as the coasts of Europe and Anatolia.

Everyone in the vicinity was talking about it, a spectacular natural disaster like this

always prompts discussion of what it might mean. The first conclusion that many in the Roman world

jumped to was that it was a manifestation of God's anger. The Emperor Leo agreed with his people.

He was already on a quest to appease God's anger and his search had focused on finding the

particular sins which the Roman people were committing that might have lost them their

Lord's favour. The eruption at Thera convinced him to act against idolatry. Leo sent soldiers

out of the palace and down to the great Chalke Gate which guarded the entrance to the Imperial precinct.

Their orders were to remove a large icon of Jesus Christ which adorned the gate.

Their work must have taken some time as a crowd began to gather menacingly a pole at the removal

of this sacred item. Once their numbers swelled a fight broke out which eventually led to soldiers

and civilians being killed. Undeterred by this popular resentment the Emperor would press on with

his policy to remove icons from the Empire. To stop his people's idolatrous ways and make them all

once again pleasing to God. That is the story that comes down to us from Theophaneis, one of our

key historians of this period. The whole narrative may be entirely fabricated, saved for the eruption

at Thera. And that in a nutshell is why iconoclasm, the popular name for the religious dispute about

to begin in Byzantium, is such a complicated issue. Why might Theophaneis make up a story like that?

Because our noble historian was on one side of a dispute which sought to define the identity

...