Aniconism in Christianity - Early Christianity

Early Christianity

For more information, see Depiction of Jesus.

Several voices in Early Christianity expressed "grave reservations about the dangers of images", though contextualizing these remarks has often been the source of fierce controversy, as the same texts were brought out at intervals in succeeding centuries. This was firstly because of the Jewish background of most of the first Christians, and also because images were associated with the idolatry of the pagan Ancient Roman religion and other cults and religions around them. In the 1st century the issues are discussed in the Letters of St. Paul and a prohibition of idolatry is included in the Apostolic Decree. There are mentions of images of Jesus from the 2nd century onwards. The Catacombs of Rome contain the earliest images, mostly painted, but also including reliefs carved on sarcophagi. Jesus is often represented by pictogram symbols, though he is also portrayed. In the Dura-Europos church, of about 230-256, which of the the very early churches surviving is in the best condition, there are frescos of biblical scenes including a figure of Jesus, as well as Christ as the Good Shepherd.

At the Spanish Synod of Elvira (c. 305) bishops concluded, "Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration", the earliest such prohibition known. Eusebius had written a letter to Constantia (Emperor Constantine's sister) saying "To depict purely the human form of Christ before its transformation, on the other hand, is to break the commandment of God and to fall into pagan error";, though this did not stop her decorating her mausoleum with such images. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis wrote an appeal to John, Bishop of Jerusalem (c. 394) in which he recounted how he tore apart a curtain hanging on the doors of the church decorated with an image of 'Christ or one of the saints' and admonished the other bishop that such images are "opposed . . . to our religion", while also replacing the curtain with another expensively embroidered one. Other writers cited in later controversies were Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Lactantius, although evidence of opposition to images by church leaders is often also evidence of their usage in the church. In the 6th century Julian of Atramytion objected to sculpture, but not paintings, which is effectively the Orthodox position to the present day, except for small works.

It has been suggested that the question of images caused a tension in the early church between a theologically-trained clerical elite and the broad mass of followers of the church, and perhaps especially women; the letter of Eusebius being a leading piece of evidence cited here. However other scholars dispute this reading of the documentary evidence, pointing out that the physical evidence of sites such as the Catacomb of Callistus suggests that "church authorities at least tolerated if not approved both the decoration and the content of the iconography on its own property over a fairly long period of time".

There is some evidence that the use of images was regarded as especially characteristic of heretics. Irenaeus, (c. 130–202) in his Against Heresies (1:25;6) says scornfully of the Gnostic Carpocratians, "They also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles ". St. Irenaeus on the other hand does not speak critically of icons or portraits in a general sense, only of certain gnostic sectarians use of icons. On the other hand, by the 8th century there is evidence that opposition to images was associated with what was by then the largely vanished heresy of Arianism, though the historical evidence for this now appears slender, and important early figurative mosaics in Italy were created under Arian rule.