Iconoclasm without icons? The rediscovery of an aniconic tradition in late antique Christianity and how it was forgotten during Byzantine ‚Iconoclasm‘

没有偶像的反传统？

• 批准号: 406117376
• 负责人: Privatdozent Dr. Philipp Niewöhner
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Christliche Archäologie und Byzantinische Kunstgeschichte
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/406117376?language=en
• 关键词: Iconoclasm; without; icons; rediscovery; aniconic

The project has two main objectives. The first objective concerns late antique churches at Constantinople and Asia Minor and how they differed from churches in other regions of the late Roman Empire by refraining from iconic representations. Instead of monumental images of saints, late antique churches at Constantinople and Asia Minor appear to have displayed crosses. In addition, a general restraint in the use of figural representations seems to be confirmed by a preference for marble pavements or ornamental floor mosaics. In contrast to other regions, the late antique churches of Constantinople and Asia Minor contained few figural floor mosaics, and the existing ones were typically allegorical in character and may have only been used in certain contexts, for example baptisteries. In this way it may be shown that the late antique churches of Constantinople and Asia Minor were apparently committed to an aniconic tradition, which distinguished them from the rich figural decoration in other parts of the early Christian oecumene.This hypothesis has far-reaching consequences for the 'Iconoclasm' that preoccupied the Eastern Roman Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries and forms the second objective of the project. Byzantine 'Iconoclasm' has so far been conceptualized roughly along the same lines as the iconoclasm that took place in early modern Europe during the Reformation. Thus, 'iconoclasts' were believed to have attacked an established cult of images, thereby shaking Orthodox Christianity to its foundations. However, in view of the aniconic tradition of Constantinople and Asia Minor as described above, this hardly rings true, especially considering that the Byzantine Empire, which had shrunk considerably since late antiquity, concentrated essentially on this region in the eighth and ninth centuries. Therefore, the project proposes to investigate whether the aniconic tradition may have remained normative until the eighth century and whether the dispute over images commonly known as 'Iconoclasm' may in fact have been triggered not by the destruction of old icons, but, on the contrary, by the arrival of new ones, where such had not been customary.

该项目有两个主要目标。第一个目标是君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚的晚期古教堂，以及它们与罗马帝国晚期其他地区的教堂有何不同，因为它们避免了标志性的表现。君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚晚期的古代教堂似乎展示的是十字架，而不是不朽的圣徒形象。此外，在使用图形表示方面的普遍限制似乎被对大理石路面或装饰地板马赛克的偏好所证实。与其他地区相比，君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚的晚期古教堂很少包含人物地板马赛克，现有的教堂具有典型的寓言性质，可能只在某些情况下使用，例如洗礼堂。这样就可以表明，君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚的晚期古教堂显然致力于一种非标志性的传统，这使它们与早期基督教著作中其他地方丰富的人物装饰区别开来。这一假设对八世纪和九世纪东罗马帝国的“圣像破坏”产生了深远的影响，并形成了该项目的第二个目标。到目前为止，拜占庭式的“圣像破坏”的概念大致与近代欧洲宗教改革时期发生的圣像破坏如出一辙。因此，“圣像破坏者”被认为攻击了一种既定的偶像崇拜，从而动摇了东正教的基础。然而，鉴于上述君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚的标志性传统，这很难让人信服，尤其是考虑到拜占庭帝国自古代晚期以来已经大幅萎缩，在8世纪和9世纪主要集中在这一地区。因此，该项目建议调查无偶像的传统是否可能一直保持规范，直到8世纪，以及关于通常被称为“偶像破坏”的图像的争议是否实际上可能不是由旧图标的破坏引发的，而是相反，由于新图标的到来，这并不是习惯。