In the West, in Marseilles, Bishop Seraine in 598 tore down from the walls of the church and threw away the icons, which, according to his observation, were superstitiously revered by his flock. Pope Gregory the Great wrote to Serenus, praising him for his inconsideratum zelum, but rebuking him for destroying icons that serve the common people instead of books. The Pope demanded that Søren restore the icons and explain to his flock both his deed and the true way of venerating the icons.

B VII century.

John, Bishop of Thessalonica, defends icons against Christian objectors who, finding fault, say that even if it is possible to depict God appearing in the flesh, then on what basis should bodiless spirits, angels, be depicted?

A pilgrim to the East from the West, Arculf, at the end of the seventh century reports that he met iconoclastic currents on his way. In Constantinople itself, he saw how a ferocious fanatic tore down a wood-carved image of the Mother of God from the wall of a house and threw it into a latrine. It is known about the emperor Philippicus-Bardanes that before his overthrow in 713 he was going to issue a law against the worship of icons. He was so inclined both in his Monothelite ideology and in his local Armenian-Paulician (heretical) upbringing, hostile to the church cult.

Islam, which appeared in the seventh century, with its hostility to all kinds of depictions (pictorial and sculptural) of human and superhuman persons (impersonal pictures of the world and animals were not denied), revived doubts about the legitimacy of icons; far from everywhere, but in areas neighboring the Arabs: Asia Minor, Armenia. The population of these regions was racially different from the Hellenic regions of Morea, Attica, and Macedonia. There, in the center of Asia Minor, ancient anti-church heresies had lived and been hidden from time immemorial: Montanism, Marcionitism, Paulicianism—doctrines that were anti-cultural and anti-icon in spirit. On this point, Islam was more comprehensible to them and seemed to be more perfect, "spiritual" than Christianity. In this atmosphere, the emperors, who had withstood the centuries-old pressure of fanatical Islam, could not help being tempted to remove an unnecessary obstacle to peaceful coexistence with the religion of Mohammed. It is not for nothing that the defenders of icons called the iconoclastic emperors "σαρακηνοφρονοι — ρracinous philosophizing".

Such doctrinal servility to the enemy and rival of the Christian empire could not in itself explain the perverse enthusiasm that characterizes the iconoclastic program. Icons are only a part, a detail of their reform program. Yes, it's all about this state and cultural program of this period. What kind of program is it?

All historical sources of the time of iconoclasm belong to the persecuted and insulted Orthodox, and therefore depict the iconoclastic tsars in the darkest features.

Historical objectivity required corrections here, but the corrections soon turned into the opposite extreme. The sympathies of German Protestant historians and Oriental historians, such as Paparrigopoulo (History of the Hellenic People), are inclined to fully justify the iconoclastic emperors as mere progressive reformers. Our professor Ternovsky compares this assessment with the assessment in our history of Peter the Great's reforms. How difficult, he says, it would be to formulate an objective assessment of Peter's reforms if all historical sources were destroyed, except for the accusatory words of Stefan Yavorsky.

Orthodox chroniclers depict the matter in such a way that these emperors persecuted icons in their vandal rudeness and destroyed education and schools. But this must be accepted with an amendment. Even if the iconoclasts burned books hostile to them and closed Orthodox schools, they simultaneously encouraged other literature and supported other schools.

But the correctness of this feature of the "barbarism" of the iconoclasts must be understood more subtly. Byzantine enlightenment and intellectual culture had declined considerably since the time of Justinian the Great (527-565). The former subtle problems of dogmatics became beyond the strength of most theological minds. New generations could only grasp at a question more accessible to simplistic thinking. The emperors of the seventh century came from barbarian Isauria and Armenia. They were sometimes at the height of the enlightenment of their time, but the tone of their speculations was barbarously rationalistic. They touched upon a question that was generally understandable to the masses and brought the matter to bloody persecutions. This is their mistake and unpopularity in history.

In general, imperial iconoclasm now looms in history as a trend analogous to the spirit of the Renaissance. Such was the revolt of the worldly spirit against the clerical spirit of the Middle Ages. In the same spirit, the secular spirit of the German Kulturkampf rebelled against clericalism, and in Bismarck's time, the laic fanaticism of the French Third Republic, which was separating from the Catholic Church. This is a spirit akin to both our Russian liberal and radical "enlightenment," which has already assumed the barbarous immensity of Bolshevik despotism.

The iconoclastic sovereigns found that for the good of the state it was necessary to divert both manpower and money from monasticism and the church and direct everything to the state treasury and the army, to sweep "clericalism" out of the state. And indeed, pathological extremes were noticed in the concrete life of the state. Under Justinian II, Abba Theodotus was appointed Minister of Finance in 695. He proved cruel and unjust in collecting taxes, for which in 696 he was killed by the mob. Under Empress Anastasia II in 715, the deacon of the St. Sophia Church John, who was also killed by soldiers, was appointed commander-in-chief of the armies. Two monks in 696 were the main conspirators in the overthrow of Justinian II.

The iconoclastic emperors fought against monasteries and monks no less than against icons, preaching the secularization not only of monastic estates, but also of their entire life, culture, and literature. Monasteries not only absorbed the human material needed for the army, but also possessed great material values in the form of estates. At the same time, the iconoclastic emperors became doubly embittered against icons protected by monks, and in fact, they exterminated monasticism itself. In other words, the idea of abolishing icons in itself might not have flared up into such a stubborn struggle of the secular authorities, for icons in themselves were not so connected with material interests.

Inspired by secular state interests against the monastic style of popular piety, the emperors were carried away by the new "laic" spirit for that time. They scolded the monks "dressed in darkness, remembering nothing."