Image, Icon, Idol: Theories and Practices in Byzantium, Islam, and the Latin West

Catalog description

This course explores the phenomenon of iconoclasm, iconophobia, and aniconism as markers of a vast and profound cultural transformation of the Mediterranean in the period from the seventh to the ninth centuries. As the Arabs established the Umayyad caliphate in the seventh century, quickly conquering Holy Land, Egypt, and advancing all the way to Spain, they perpetrated an identity crisis in the region. By the seventh century three large political entities formed in the Mediterranean - the Umayyads, the Carolingians, and the Byzantines - each competed for legitimacy; all three emerged from the ashes of Late Antique culture, yet each tried to carve out an identity out of this common foundation. In this parting of the ways, the three cultures took among others the issue of what constituted an image and what role it played in devotion. Eikn, imago, ura became the basis on which to built differences and accuse the other political players of idolatry.