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

该项目有两个主要目标。第一个目标是关于君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚的晚期古董教堂，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的晚期古董教堂似乎展示了十字架，而不是不朽的圣徒形象。此外，对大理石人行道或装饰地板马赛克的偏爱似乎证实了对人物表现的普遍限制。与其他地区形成对比的是，君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚的晚期古董教堂几乎没有象征性的地板马赛克，现有的教堂通常是寓言性质的，可能只在某些情况下使用，例如洗礼。通过这种方式，可以看出君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚的晚期古董教堂显然致力于一种非标志性的传统，这将它们与早期基督教时代其他地区丰富的象征性装饰区分开来。这一假设对8世纪和9世纪困扰东罗马帝国的“偶像破坏”产生了深远的影响，并构成了该项目的第二个目标。到目前为止，拜占庭式的“打破传统观念”被概念化，大致与宗教改革时期发生在早期现代欧洲的观念颠覆观念大致相同。因此，“破坏偶像的人”被认为攻击了一个既定的图像崇拜，从而动摇了东正教的根基。然而，鉴于上述君士坦丁堡和小亚细亚的非标志性传统，这几乎不像是真的，特别是考虑到拜占庭帝国自远古晚期以来已经大幅缩小，基本上在8世纪和9世纪集中在这一地区。因此，该项目建议调查非偶像传统是否在8世纪之前一直是规范的，以及关于通常被称为“破坏偶像”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，而是由新图标的到来引发的，而这些新图标并不是由传统的图标引发的。

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.