Epiphanius of Salamis, Doctor of Iconoclasm? Deconstruction of a Myth

By Steven Bigham

St. Epiphanius of Salamis lived in Cyprus during the 4th century. He is a Father of the Church known for his determined fight against heresy. And yet, five texts denouncing any use of images have been attributed to him. On the basis of these documents, he has been given, by some, the title of forerunner of the 8th-century Iconoclasm. He is supposed to have thought that any form of image veneration, however Christian the image may be, is a form of idolatry. In agreement with the Jewish religion, as some think, he is also said to have interpreted the 2nd Commandment as an absolute prohibition of any kind of image. In the eyes of some, he was the last witness of a primitive Christianity, aniconic and iconophobic. However, there exist numerous contradictions between the doctrine of these five iconophobic documents and that of the incontestably authentic works of St. Epiphanius. Is the Christian iconographic tradition a simple adaptation of figurative art by early Christians, in agreement with the Gospel and the faith of the Apostles, or is it a form of corruption of their pure, aniconic and iconophobic faith? The question of the authenticity of the five texts attributed to St. Epiphanius is therefore central. Only a full investigation of the five texts can decide the question. This book claims to have carried out exactly that kind of research, and the conclusion is that the iconophobic documents attributed to St. Epiphanius of Salamis are either forgeries or have been wrongly interpreted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Bigham
• Release date: Dec 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310934773

Book preview

EPIPHANIUS OF SALAMIS

Doctor of Iconoclasm?¹

Deconstruction of a Myth

By Steven Bigham

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Copyright © 2008-2015 by Steven Bigham

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Who was St. Epiphanius of Salamis?

1.2 The Authentic Works of St. Epiphanius of Salamis

1.3 The Theological Profile of St. Epiphanius of Salamis

1.4 The Problem

2 TRANSLATIONS OF THE ICONOPHOBIC DOCUMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO EPIPHANIUS OF SALAMIS (310/315-403)

2.1 Translations

2.1.1 Post-Scriptum of the Letter of Epiphanius Written to John, Bishop of Jerusalem

2.1.2 The Treatise of St. Epiphanius Against Those Who, Following an Idolatrous Practice, Make Images with the Intention of Reproducing the Likeness of Christ, the Mother of God, the Angels and the Prophets

2.1.3 The Dogmatic Letter

2.1.4 The Letter of Epiphanius, Bishop of the Cypriots, to the Emperor Theodosius

2.1.5 The Will of Epiphanius Addressed to the Members of His Church

2.2 A General Portrait of Epiphanius of Salamis as He is Presented in the Iconophobic Documents

3 THE BYZANTINE CONTROVERSY

3.1 The Timeline of the Byzantine Controversy

3.2 The Arguments of Byzantine Authors against the Authenticity of the Iconophobic Documents Attributed to Epiphanius, in Chronological Order

3.2.1 St. John of Damascus

3.2.2 The Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 787

3.2.3 St. Nicephorus of Constantinople, between 815 and 820

3.2.4 St. Theodore Studite restates two arguments already presented

3.2.5 Summary of the arguments of St. Nicephorus against authenticity, as presented in the Refutation and Destruction of the Arguments of Eusebius and Epiphanides, Stupidly Put forward against the Incarnation of Christ Our Savior

I. Introduction: Chapters 1-3

II. Chapter 4: the Will

III. Chapter 5: the Dogmatic Letter

IV. Chapters 6-13: the Treatise

V. Chapters 14-23: the Letter of Epiphanius to the Emperor Theodosius

VI. Chapters 24-30: Patristic Texts

3.2.6 The Post-Scriptum of the Letter to John of Jerusalem

4 THE MODERN CONTROVERSY

4.1 The Structure of the Debate

4.2 The History of the Modern Debate

4.2.1 Daniel Serruys

4.2.2 Simon Vailhé

4.2.3 Otto Bardenhewer

4.2.4 Karl Holl

4.2.4.1 Holl’s arguments against Serruys and Vailhé

4.2.4.2 Holl’s Arguments in Favor of Authenticity

4.2.1.3 Holl’s Arguments against Nicephorus

4.2.5 Joseph Wilpert

4.2.6 George Ostrogorsky

4.2.6.1 The Enumeration of Categories of Saints

4.2.6.2 Two Iconodule Theses

4.2.6.3 Two Camps at War

4.2.6.4 Where Are the Iconodule Writings of the Fourth century?

4.2.6.5 Epiphanius Anticipates the Iconoclastic Arguments

4.2.6.6 The Greek Text is not a Bad Translation of the Latin

4.2.6.7 Variety of Models

4.6.2.8 After the heresies and the idols: a Reference to the Panarion

4.6.2.9 Ostrogorsky Evaluates Certain Arguments

4.6.2.10 Epiphanius’s Attitude toward Images in the Panarion

4.6.2.11 Documents Full of Life

4.6.2.12 Judas’s Kiss

4.6.2.13 Parallel Expressions

4.2.6.14 Proposal for a Date

4.2.7 Henri Grégoire

4.2.8 Franz Dölger

4.2.9 Edward James Martin

4.2.10 Paul Maas

4.2.11 Venance Grumel

4.2.12 Hans von Barion

4.2.12.1 The Contradictions Alleged by Nicephorus

4.2.12.2 Holl’s Positive Arguments in Favor of his Position

4.2.12.3 Ostrogorsky’s Arguments in Favor of his Position

4.2.12.4 Points Put forward by Barion to Decide in Favor of Holl

4.2.13 George Ostrogorsky (Revised Position)

4.2.14 Edwyn Bevan

4.2.15 Paul Alexander

4.2.16 Ernst Kitzinger

4.2.17 Roger Tandonnet

4.2.18 John Meyendorff

4.2.19 Charles Murray

4.2.20 George Florovsky

4.2.21 Hans Georg Thümmel

4.2.22 Jaroslav Pelikan

4.2.23 Istvan Bugar

4.2.24 Oliver Kösters

4.2.25 Paul Speck

V EVALUATION OF THE ARGUMENTS DEALING WITH THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE ICONOPHOBIC DOCUMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO EPIPHANIUS OF SALAMIS

5.1. The Arguments against Authenticity

5.1.1 Style or doctrine?

5.1.2 The Accusation of a New Idolatry in the Church

5.1.3 The Absence of a Heresy of Christian Images in the Panarion

5.1.4 Epiphanius’s Attitude toward Images in the Panarion

5.1.5 The Transformation of the Historical Epiphanius into a Radical Iconophobe

5.1.5.1 The Latin Translation of the Post-Scriptum of the Letter to John of Jerusalem

5.1.5.2 Prostrating Oneself in Front of a Person or Thing

5.1.5.3 A Sentence in the Panarion

5.1.6 A Genealogical Question

5.1.7 An Archeological Question

5.1.8 The Letter to Theodosius: ...to have God painted in colors. Who ever heard of such a thing?

5.1.9 Precious but Unexploited Data

5.1.9.1 Epiphanius’s Ethnic Origin

5.1.9.2 The controversy over images in the fourth century

5.1.9.3 The Data Found in the Letter to Theodosius

5.1.9.4 Data Found in the Will

5.1.9.5 Data Found in the Dogmatic Letter

5.1.10 Are the Iconophobic Documents Docetic?

5.1.11 Did Epiphanius Think Jesus Was a Nazirite?

5.1.12 Disdain for Matter

5.1.13 Why Do Some Saints Refuse to Have People Prostrate Themselves in front of Them?

5.1.14 The Explanations of the Letter to John of Jerusalem

5.1.15 Epiphanius, Origenism, and Iconoclasm

5.2 Excursus on the Will: Authentic, Forgery, or Composite?

5.3 Interesting but not Very Convincing Arguments

5.3.1 The Metropolitan of Sardis

5.3.2 The Will is absent from the Life of St. Epiphanius

5.3.3 Idols are dead

5.3.4 The destruction of the relation type-prototype

5.3.5 The omission of the word eikôn

5.3.6 The commandment to paint images

5.3.7 The image made for Abgar

5.3.8 The Carpocratians show that Christians had images

5.3.9 Knowledge of Christian images

6 CONCLUSION

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foreword

Since the creation of the Chair of the History of Liturgical Arts and Iconology at St. Sergius Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris, which I have occupied since 1986, our research has been oriented in two directions: on the one hand, studies of a specifically iconographic nature, as defined by the famous Russian iconographic school whose best-known representatives have been F. Bouslaeff, N. Kondakoff, and D. Aïnaloff in Russia along with A. Grabar in France; and on the other, studies of a more theological nature which deal especially with the status and doctrine of the image in the Church, studies carried out in the perspective elaborated by L. Ouspensky, the creator of a new academic discipline which he himself called the theology of the icon.

It is especially in the framework of this second orientation that the visits of Fr. Steven Bigham to the Institute have been a precious enrichment for the research and teaching of our Chair. From the beginning, we sensed a deep agreement with Fr. Steven on the perverse nature of confessional prejudices which have carefully maintained and repeated, from generation to generation, a good number of myths: for example, the supposed, doctrinal aniconism of the first Christians or the existence of a theologically motivated hostility toward images which goes back to the apostles and was preached by the most enlightened of the Fathers. It was this hostility which finally burst forth for everyone to see in the great movement of Byzantine iconoclasm which, being concerned with a pure and spiritual Christianity, rejected as pagan and idolatrous the making of any liturgical images and, even more, their veneration. What is more, I have always felt that any serious study of the theology of the icon requires a detailed analysis of the founding documents of iconoclasm just as much as the answers of the holy apologists. We were thus immediately faced with the very serious question of the authenticity of these documents and have noted, with a certain relief, that in the final analysis, according to the most recent research, there are only three documents which deserve a detailed study: canon 36 of the Council of Elvira, the so-called letter of Bishop Eusebius² in Palestine to the Empress Constantia, and finally a group of writings attributed by the iconoclasts to St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, a prolific writer, Father of the Church, and specialist on Christian heresies.

This latter group of writings has already been the object of a rather violent controversy between the German Protestant historian, Karl Holl, and the young, Russian Orthodox scholar, George Ostrogorsky, who, in his famous Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen Bilderstreites (Breslau, 1929), felt he had proved, against Holl, the inauthenticity of the pseudo-Epiphanian corpus. Let us remember that his arguments impressed such eminent scholars as Fr. G. Florovsky and Fr. J. Meyendorff. The former spoke of these writings as being most certainly inauthentic while the latter qualified them as being of a doubtful authenticity. In the final analysis, it was less the unquestionable scholarly respectability of Holl than the inertia of the German academic world and its confessional solidarity which brought about the nearly unanimous rejection of Ostrogorsky’s arguments by the disciples of Adolf von Harnack and those who followed his lead. The reader can follow the stages and the argumentation in this present work.

I would therefore like to underscore here the merit of Fr. Steven for having been receptive to my proposition to open once again the thorny dossier of the so-called iconoclasm of Epiphanius despite the nearly 80 years of peaceful, scholarly consensus. Enthusiastic and full of self-effacement, he refused the easy solution which has been adopted by the vast majority of those who have seen fit to deal with the question by simply aligning themselves with the opinion of one or the other main authors: Holl or Ostrogorsky. On the contrary, he did not hesitate to take up the challenge of reconsidering the vast dossier with its two sections. The first, of course, is the Byzantine controversy, but he knew quite well that it constitutes in its own right the determining element in a correct understanding of the second section, the modern debate, and this is what Holl did not want to recognize. The courage of our Canadian friend has been rewarded. His deconstruction of the myth of Epiphanius’s iconoclasm cannot be ignored by any scholar who will henceforth deal with this subject to which Fr. Steven has been able to bring new elements and a personal reflection.

This postdoctoral study, with a rich bibliography and very useful annexes for further research, is intended not only for the scholarly public, knowledgable about the intricacies of Byzantine iconoclasm, but also for those of the larger public, obviously educated, who desire to delve more deeply into a problem whose real scope was missed by a good number of historians, Byzantinists, and theologians of all categories. In this sense, all readers will appreciate in the first part the English translation of the corpus delicti itself, that is, all the iconophobic writings attributed to Epiphanius, which are completed by his astute general portrait—as it is presented in the iconophobic writings. The second part deals with the Byzantine controversy, its chronology, and the arguments of the ancient authors against the authenticity of the writings, among whom the lion’s share goes obviously to the patriarch St. Nicephorus and his major work—still under appreciated—Refutation of Eusebius and Epiphanides. The third part contains a detailed dossier of the modern controversy which presents for all researchers not only a gold mine of precious information on a debate, which as Fr. Steven has proved is still not closed, but also a vast fresco of the astonishing twists and turns that the paths of knowledge and its transmission have often taken. In the fourth part, the author gives us his personal evaluation of all the arguments against the authenticity of the iconophobic writings attributed to Epiphanius.

From the conclusion, we would especially like to highlight the following points:

1.We take it for that it is not credible that Epiphanius of Salamis could have claimed that no one, at the end of the fourth century, had ever heard of Christian images.

2.We accept that the iconophobic writings manifest a docetic Christology, that is, a one-sided Christology, leaning in favor of the divinity, which thus diminishes the full reality of the humanity. This orientation clearly contrasts with the opinions of Epiphanius.

3.However eccentric Epiphanius of Salamis may have been, there is no authentic witness that allows us to see him as an extreme iconophobe or an iconophobe of any sort, nothing that allows us to call him Doctor of iconoclasm."

4.We accept Nicephorus’s point that the key to solving the authenticity question is found in the doctrinal differences between the two corpora [the true and the false writings of Epiphanius: N. Ozoline] and not in the similarities of literary style.

It is in fact this last argument, proof of the holy patriarch’s clear vision, which seems to me to be decisive for solving the authenticity question regarding the iconophobic corpus falsely attributed to Epiphanius. We also note that the doctrinal similarity with the so-called Letter of Eusebius to Constantia was not lost on the scholarly Nicephorus. It seems to me that this allows a common appreciation of both the pseudo-Eusebian letter and the pseudo-Epiphanian corpus. The obvious anachronism of their overall problematic is glaringly visible, for it is there that the question of venerating icons is central. However, as we know from archeological and liturgical sources, icons, in the technical sense of portable portraits of Christ and the saints as well as the liturgical veneration of these images, did not yet exist either at the end or, even less, at the beginning of the fourth century. What is more, Christ’s material, human body is seen to have been dissolved in his divine nature, which indicates a clearly Monophysite tendency, and this had already previously been noted by Ostrogorsky and in our own time strongly underscored by von Schönborn. The iconoclastic forgers thus succeeded, even without using the word aperigraptos, in proclaiming the indescribability of the Savior, for we must not abase with lifeless and dead colors the blinding brightness of the radiant, unspeakable divine glory of Christ and the saints. And finally, all the writings in question express the same dualistic revulsion, typically Neo-Platonic and Origenistic, toward the body and the flesh for which there is no hope of salvation.

The conclusion is obvious to everyone: the iconoclasts lacked patristic quotations that witnessed to an unquestionable condemnation of the veneration of icons. In their eyes, the two famous bishops, Eusebius and Epiphanius, under whose names fraudulent documents were composed, lent themselves better than any others to such a hoax. It seems clear to me that the decisive arguments for or against a fraud are not found on the side of philological proofs. The Byzantine falsifiers easily imitated the style and terminology of the fourth-century authors. Nonetheless, besides the unquestionably anachronistic character of the supposed practice of venerating images at the time of Eusebius and Epiphanius, the most irrefutable indication of forgery consists, as Fr. Steven has also said, in their identical theological argumentation. Falsely attributed to the two bishops, this argumentation perfectly coincides with the theses of the choir director of iconoclasm, Constantine V Copronymus and his entourage. It is they, in my opinion, who are the real authors of the pseudo-Epiphanian writings as well as the so-called letter of Eusebius to Constantia.

Fr. Nicholas Ozoline

1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Who was St. Epiphanius of Salamis?

St. Epiphanius was born around 315 in Eleutheropolis, Palestine. We know nearly nothing of this period, and the little information we do possess is disputed, as we will see later on. Very young—we cannot say more—he went to Egypt to study, and there, either on finishing them or interrupting them, he adopted the monastic life. Around the age of 20 to 30—scholars do not agree—he returned to Palestine where he founded a monastery at Besanduc, near Eleutheropolis, and he became its higumen. For unknown reasons, St. Epiphanius left Palestine and immigrated to Cyprus³ where, in 367⁴, the bishops of the island elected him head of the Church of Salamis, that is, archbishop of Cyprus, and he remained at that post until his death in 403.

The life of St. Epiphanius is therefore divided into four periods of varying lengths the dating of which is only approximate, except for the last period:

1. 315 to 330: his earliest years in Palestine;

2. 330 to 340: his education and monastic training in Egypt;

3. 340 to 367: his leading of the monastery in Besanduc, Palestine;

4. 367 to 403: his episcopate in Salamis, Cyprus, lasting nearly 40 years⁵.

As a result of his written works, his travels, his asceticism, and his fight against any and all heresies, St. Epiphanius acquired a worldwide reputation for holiness of life and purity of doctrine⁶. Even though many revered him, from the greatest of this world to the most humble, he was not appreciated by everyone. His unbending opinions and the ferocious determination of his fight against heresies and those he considered heretics made for him many enemies. He was no doubt sometimes the source of his own problems.

1.2 The Authentic Works of St. Epiphanius of Salamis

St. Epiphanius’s reputation rests primarily