Seventh Ecumenical Council

The Second Council of Nicaea is recognized as the last of the first seven ecumenical councils by the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. In addition, it is also recognized as such by Old Catholics and others. Protestant opinions on it are varied.

The Council assembled in 787 AD in Nicaea (site of the First Council of Nicaea; present-day İznik, Bursa, in Turkey), to restore the use and veneration of icons (or holy images),Gibbon, p. 1693. which had been suppressed by imperial edict inside the Byzantine Empire during the reign of Leo III (717–741). His son, Constantine V (741–775), had held the Council of Hieria to make the suppression official.

The Council determined that the honorary veneration (''timētikē proskynēsis'') of icons was permitted, and that the true adoration (''alēthinē latreia'') was reserved for God alone. It further stated that the honor paid to the icon eventually passes over to the individual that it represents, thus, veneration of an icon could not be idolatrous as the iconoclasts believed. The iconodule position was not justified by Christological arguments (as in the Council of Hieria), rather, the antiquity of iconodulia and the Incarnation of Christ, which was said to make acceptable the depiction of Christ, were emphasized.

Background

The veneration of icons had been banned by Byzantine Emperor Constantine V and supported by his Council of Hieria (754 AD), which had described itself as the seventh ecumenical council. The Council of Hieria was overturned by the Second Council of Nicaea only 33 years later, and has also been rejected by Catholic and Orthodox churches, since none of the five major patriarchs were represented. The emperor's vigorous enforcement of the ban included persecution of those who venerated icons and of monks in general. There were also political overtones to the persecution—images of emperors were still allowed by Constantine, which some opponents saw as an attempt to give wider authority to imperial power than to the saints and bishops. Constantine's iconoclastic tendencies were shared by Constantine's son, Leo IV. After the latter's early death, his widow, Irene of Athens, as regent for her son, began its restoration for personal inclination and political considerations.

On Christmas Day 784, the head of the imperial chancellery, Tarasios, was appointed successor to the iconoclast Patriarch of Constantinople, Paul IV, by Irene. Together they were attempting to solemnize the iconodule reversal of imperial policy with an ecumenical council. Pope Adrian I was invited to participate, and gladly accepted, sending two legates.

In 786, the council met in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. However, soldiers in collusion with iconoclast bishops entered the church, and broke up the assembly. As a result, Irene resorted to a stratagem. Under the pretext of responding to an alleged Arab attack in Asia Minor, the iconoclastic bodyguard was sent away from the capital—then disarmed and disbanded. Tarasios dealt with the episcopal opposition by allowing notoriously iconoclast bishops to retain their positions so long as they made a public admission of error, and also by disguising two eastern monks as envoys of the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem, to justify the council's claim to ecumenical status.

The Council was again assembled, this time in the symbolic location of Nicaea, the site of the first ecumenical council. The council assembled on 24 September 787 at the Hagia Sophia. It numbered about 350 members; 308 bishops or their representatives signed. Tarasios presided, and seven sessions were held in Nicaea.

Proceedings

The twenty-two canons drawn up in Constantinople also served ecclesiastical reform. Careful maintenance of the ordinances of the earlier councils, knowledge of the scriptures on the part of the clergy, and care for Christian conduct are required, and the desire for a renewal of ecclesiastical life is awakened.

The council also decreed that every altar should contain a relic, which remains the case in modern Catholic and Orthodox regulations (Canon VII), and made a number of decrees on clerical discipline, especially for monks when mixing with women.

Reception

The papal legates voiced their approval of the restoration of the veneration of icons in no uncertain terms, and the Patriarch sent a full account of the proceedings of the council to Pope Adrian I, who had it translated ( Pope Anastasius III later replaced the translation with a better one). While Adrian's legates were returning from Constantinople to Rome with a copy of the ''Acts'' of the Council, the deposed Lombard king Adalgis along with a Byzantine expeditionary force were disembarking in Italy to drive out the Franks. The proceedings of the Council proclaimed the unity of the Byzantine emperor and pope on iconodulia, intentionally neglecting to mention Charlemagne, King of the Franks, which enraged the Franks who the Pope was attempting to align himself with. However, the Franks successfully repelled the Byzantine expedition, and Adrian's relations with Charlemagne were restored despite his diplomatic blunder.

The Frankish clergy initially rejected the Council at a synod in 794. Charlemagne supported the composition of the '' Libri Carolini'', which was most likely composed in summer 793 by the influential Carolingian theologian, Theodulf of Orléans, in Saint Emmeram's Abbey, Regensburg. The main purpose of the work was to rebut the decrees of the Council, especially the "errors of the Greeks". Modern scholarship tends to judge the Latin translation of the ''Acts'', which Theodulf used, to be very poor: "a monument of inadequate translation. Its garbled nature gave rise to outrage among the court theologians"; it is also said to be, "bedeviled by inaccurate and in some cases intentionally incorrect translations". Theodulf's judgment was that Irene's aim was to "promote the superstitious adoration of images" through the council. Theodulf cited Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo as iconoclast witnesses. A copy was sent to Pope Adrian, who responded with a refutation of the Frankish arguments. The ''Libri'' would thereafter remain unpublished until the Reformation, and the Council was subsequently accepted as the Seventh Ecumenical Council by the Catholic Church. According to the ''Libri'', the ruling of the council against iconoclasm led to "civil war" within the Empire, and other ninth-century iconodule sources condemn clergymen and laymen who remained iconoclasts.

The Council, or rather the final defeat of iconoclasm in 843, is celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Eastern Catholic Churches of Byzantine Rite as "The Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy" each year on the first Sunday of Great Lent, the fast that leads up to Pascha (Easter), and again on the Sunday closest to 11 October (the Sunday on or after 8 October). The former celebration commemorates the defeat of iconoclasm, while the latter commemorates the council itself. The Papacy did not formally confirm the decrees of the council until 880.

Many Protestants who follow the French reformer John Calvin generally agree in rejecting the canons of the Council, which they believe promoted idolatry. He rejected the distinction between veneration (''douleia'', ''proskynēsis'') and adoration (''latreia'') as unbiblical "sophistry" and condemned even the decorative use of images. In subsequent editions of the ''Institutes'', he cited the ''Libri Carolini''.

Bishops of Dalmatia

It is particularly interesting that four Dalmatian bishops are among the signatories of the synod, whose cities were no longer under Byzantine rule. These Dalmatian bishoprics had been dissolved earlier. So the question arises of when these bishoprics were re-established in these medieval Dalmatian cities.

The four Dalmatian bishops who signed the synod were the following, in order.

* “Ioannes episcopus sanctae ecclesiae Salonentianae” (John of Salona- Split)
* “Laurentius episcopus sanctae Absartianensis ecclesiae” (Lawrence of Osor)
* “Ursus episcopus Avaritianensium ecclesiae” (Ursus of Rab)
* “Ioannes episcopus Decateron” (John of Kotor)

This suggests that new bishoprics was founded or old (Early Christian) episcopal seats were re-established in this area. The founding of these bishoprics is attested by the 8th century '' Chronicon Gradense''. The chronicle reports the foundation of several Dalmatian bishoprics, such as the bishopric of Rab as "Avoriciensis/Avonciensis ecclesia", the foundation of the bishopric of Krk as "episcopatus in Vegla", the foundation of the bishopric of Osor as "episcopatus in Asparo", and the bishopric of Pićan as "episcopus Pathensis". As the chronicle reports a Dalmatian provincial synod held in the city of Grado.

Critical edition of the Greek text

*''Concilium universale Nicaenum Secundum, in Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum'', ser. 2, vol. 3, in 3 parts, ed. Erich Lamberz, Berlin 2008–2016. Also includes the Latin translation by Anastasius Bibliothecarius.

Translations

There are only a few translations of the above Acts in the modern languages.
* English translation made in 1850 by an Anglican priest, John Mendham; with notes taken largely from the attack on the council in the '' Libri Carolini''. The aim of the translation was to show how the Catholic veneration of images is based on superstition and forgery.
* The Canons and excerpts of the Acts in '' The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church'', translated by Henry R. Percival and edited by Philip Schaff (1901).
* Translation made by Kazan Theological Academy (published from 1873 to 1909) – a seriously corrupted translation of the Acts of the Councils into Russian.
* A relatively new Vatican's translation (2004) into Italian language. Publishers in Vatican mistakenly thought that they made the first translation of the Acts into European languages.
* The new (2016) Russian version of the Acts of the Council is a revised version of the translation made by Kazan Theological Academy, specifying the cases of corruption by the Orthodox translators. There are several dozens of such cases, some of them are critical.
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See also

* Plato of Sakkoudion
* Sabas of Stoudios
* Fourth Council of Constantinople (Eastern Orthodox)
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References

Sources

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* Calvin, John, ''Institutes of the Christian Religion'' (1559), translated by Henry Beveridge (1845). Peabody: Hendrickson, 2008.
* Gibbon, Edward. '' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire''. New York:Random House Inc., 1995.
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Further reading

* L. Brubaker and J. Haldon, ''Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680 to 850: A History'' (Cambridge 2011).

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