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The Catholic Historical Review 86.3 (2000) 491-492



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Book Review

Die Patriarchen der ikonoklastischen Zeit:
Germanos I.--Methodios I. (715- 847)

Ancient and Medieval

Die Patriarchen der ikonoklastischen Zeit: Germanos I.--Methodios I. (715- 847). Edited by Ralph-Johannes Lilie. [Berliner Byzantinistische Studien, Band 5.] (New York: Peter Lang. 1999. Pp. xxxviii, 302. $51.95 paperback.)

This study of the patriarchs of Constantinople before, during, between, and after the two periods of Byzantine Iconoclasm shares its editor and most of its contributors with the new Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit (Berlin, 1999- ). Here the collaborators (Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Dietrich Stein, Ilse Rochow, Claudia Ludwig, Thomas Pratsch, and Beate Zielke) discuss the patriarchs in much more detail than a prosopographical format allows. But they also show the reflexive skepticism about the sources characteristic of recent Berlin Byzantinists, which often leads to arbitrary rewriting of history, argued on grounds of supposed plausibility rather than evidence.

For example, Rochow excludes reported iconophile motives for the conspiracies in which the "iconoclast" patriarchs Anastasius and Constantine II were implicated (pp. 25-26, 37-44), while Lilie dismisses reports that the "iconoclast" patriarch Paul VI abjured Iconoclasm before dying (pp. 53-56). With these accounts rejected, Pratsch has serious trouble trying to explain why after Iconoclasm the Church of Constantinople continued to honor the memories of these three "iconoclast" patriarchs (pp. 267-276). Yet surely believing the iconophile sources is easier than assuming that they whitewashed dedicated iconoclasts.

Lilie also discards reports that the future patriarch John VII taught the future emperor Theophilus in the 820's, maintaining that the prince was then too old for a tutor (pp. 172-174). Accepting a redating of Theophilus' marriage from 830 to 821 that confuses coronation as emperor with crowning as a bridegroom, Lilie argues that Theophilus was of marriageable age in 821 because of military exploits Lilie himself calls "Propaganda" and a story that Theophilus' daughter Maria married by 839. Lilie seems unaware that Maria was buried in a child-size coffin, or that coins throughout the 820's show Theophilus as a child or a beardless adolescent. (The references, along with evidence that Theophilus was baptized in 813, appear in a book and article of mine that Lilie cites but seems to have read too quickly, which could also have kept him from dating John VII's consecration fifteen months too early [p. 176].)

Zielke, casting doubt on J. Gouillard's carefully established attribution of the Life of Euthymius of Sardis to the future patriarch Methodius I (pp. 185-189), also doubts the evidence that Methodius prophesied the deaths of iconoclast emperors (pp. 205-214) and that Theophilus brought him to the palace because of his reputation as a prophet (pp. 214-215). She appears to want to absolve Methodius of superstition; but his interest in prophecy is evident from his adopting the name of the celebrated prophet (Pseudo-) Methodius. Zielke also doubts accounts of a mass dismissal of iconoclast clergy in 843 because they name only three bishops who were dismissed (pp. 231-244)--though no source names any bishop who was retained. Despite such skepticism, Bielke [End Page 491] considers the Magister Manuel a principal in ending Iconoclasm in 843 (pp. 216-220), overlooking H. Grégoire's demonstration that Manuel died in 838 (Byzantion, 9 [1934]).

On the other hand, Lilie refreshingly concludes that our sources overemphasize the importance of patriarchs in the Byzantine Church and exaggerate the significance of icons in Byzantine life (pp. 284-288). Observing that Iconoclasm was an initiative of emperors, he thinks that for most Byzantines whether icons hung in their churches or not was a relatively minor matter. He seems clearly right that the failure of even one cleric to protest the restoration of icons in 787 reveals not a betrayal of iconoclast convictions but an absence of them. Yet all the authors avoid concluding from the protests against Iconoclasm in 726 and 815 by a number of bishops, led by the patriarchs Germanus I and Nicephorus I, that iconophiles were more...

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