The Functions of Colour in the Age of Iconoclasm, ca. 691—867

This thesis examines attitudes to colour among the image-sceptic, or ‘iconoclast’ Byzantine Christians who dominated the Byzantine Church between ca. 726–787 and 815–843. It consists of five chapters, which use texts and archaeology to test whether these iconoclasts expressed any marked hostility towards colour as part of their opposition to the veneration of images. Chapter One introduces the sources and situates this thesis within a broader scholarly context, including recent development in ‘Chromatic History’. Chapter Two then introduces some of the crucial dynamics of Byzantine colour and vision, and explores their relationships to ideas in the surviving iconoclast theology. Chapter Three evaluates how this theory compares with evidence of iconoclastic practice. Firstly, it surveys what iconoclast compositions told their adherents to do about colour. Secondly, it compares these instructions to accounts of iconoclastic destruction in chronicles and hagiography. Chapter Four then sets up this cumulative evidence against the archaeological record of iconoclast artistic production, mostly from building decoration. The chapter’s first half is a chromatic analysis of sites more reliably attributed to iconoclast agency. The second half then introduces the question of colour to sites at the Empire’s peripheries, the dates of which are more contested but which demonstrate colour’s importance to analysis of sacred art across the history Byzantium. Chapter Five is a specific study of iconoclastic attitudes to the use of colours to depict Christ. It analyses iconoclast comments on this and brings them into the broader contexts of changing attitudes towards Christ’s appearance before and after iconoclasm. This scope also explains the thesis’ terminal points of 691 and 867; respectively the first major Church Council ruling on images, and the first public inauguration of an icon since 843. They allow the thesis to explore the wider contributions of iconoclast chromatic thought towards Byzantine spirituality.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Wood, Julian

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sarris, Peter

• Byzantium
• Christianity
• Colour
• History
• Iconoclasm
• Islamic History
• Medieval
• Theology

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/cc163beb-5651-4548-8fbd-a388199b90c1/download
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language

eng

Author Identifier

0009-0009-4363-0284

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/398375