Chromatic Weapons: The Function of Colour in the Age of Iconoclasm, c.726-867

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I will produce a synthesised analysis of disparate, frequent, references to the concept of colour across a range of textsproduced by Eastern Christian communities between c.726-867. These texts, written as direct responses towards theperiod's episodic outbreaks of scepticism towards veneration of religious images, are in both Arabic and Greek, andcome both from Byzantium and from Orthodox communities living under Islam. The project has two parts, following theperiods of official 'iconoclasm' in the Byzantine Church: c.726-787, and c.810-867. I merge language analysis with vitalintellectual and theological contexts to suggest how, and why, notions of colour were inflected across time and space.Furthermore, by incorporating wider context, I examine how different factors, specific to the particular situations ofrespective authors, might have informed their strategies regarding colour. My sources range from the Syrian monasticJohn Damascene (d.c.750), the first author of specific literature to address such crises, to the Patriarch Photius; whose867 Homily 17 celebrated the first public icon inauguration since image-veneration was permanently restored asorthodoxy by the Byzantine Church. I also utilise the Acts of the 787 Council of Nicaea; the surviving fragments of the'iconoclastic' councils of 754 and 815; and writings by 8th-century theologians: the Byzantine Theodore Stoudite andPatriarch Nicephorus, and the Arabic-speaking Syrian Melkite Theodore Abu Qurrah.