Read the text. Five episodes have been removed from the article. Choose from points a-f the one which fits each gap 1-5. There is one extra point which you do not need to use

The word ‘icon’ derives from the Greek ‘eikon’ and means an image to which special veneration is given.

The first Christian images appeared around the third century. That could be the reason why during the first two hundred years of its existence, the new religion, probably affected by its Jewish roots and the Second Commandment, “Thou shall not make unto thee any graven images” (Exodus 20: 4), objected to representational sacred art. When Christians finally turned to art to aid them in promoting the religion, they found many convertible examples in the earlier art of mystery religions and in the pagan art of the Roman Empire …(1) By the time Christianity became the official religion of the Byzantine Empire, the iconography was developing vigorously and the basic compositional schemes were well established.

In 726, the Emperor Leo III and a group of traditionalists, arguing that misinterpretation of religious images often lead to heresy, banned all pictorial representations and began a systematic destruction of holy images, known as the period of iconoclasm. (2) Such confusion or separation was heresy.

To fight the iconoclasts, the iconodules (the defenders or lovers of icons) had to find powerful spokesmen who would come up with convincing formulations to prove that icons were not worshipped but venerated and that such veneration was not idolatry. (3) The iconoclasts thought that what is spiritual must be non-material. But is we allow no place to Christ’s humanity, to his body, we betray the Incarnation and we forget that our body and our soul must be saved and transfigured. (4)

The Empress Irene suspended the iconoclastic persecutions in 780. Seven years later the Seventh Ecumenical Synod in Nicaea reaffirmed the veneration of icons. (5) Only in 843, during the reign of the Empress Theodora, the iconoclasts were defeated for good; the day of their defeat is celebrated each year on the first Sunday after Lent as Triumph of Orthodoxy.

 

a. The iconodules based their defense on the idea of identity and necessity: “Man himself is created after the image and likeness of God; therefore there is something divine in the art of making images”.

b. However, the attacks on the icons were renewed by Leo the Armenian in 815.

c. Naturally they incorporated various elements from a number of sources: from Hellenic art they borrowed gracefulness and clarity of composition; from the Roman art they took the hierarchical placement of figures and symmetry of design; from Syrian art they took dynamic movements and energy of represented characters; and from Egyptian funeral portraits they borrowed large almond-shaped eyes, long and thin noses, and small mouths.

d. Thus, Iconoclasm was not only a controversy about religious art, but about the Incarnation and the salvation of the entire material cosmos.

e. After the triumph of the icon lovers, iconography developed at an unprecedented speed. By the end of the tenth century most iconographic formulae had been firmly established and had been exported to the Orthodox countries.

f. The iconoclast rejected the images of Christ because for them they were simply material images which either confused or separated the two natures of Christ.

Answer the questions:

1. What was the main disagreement between iconoclasts and iconodules?

2. What features has iconography inherited from different religions?

3. Why was it difficult to create a holy image?