The literal drama of church history

My new book concerns the iconoclasm struggles of the eighth and ninth centuries, the battle over whether to venerate or reject sacred images. When I began this project, I knew I would be addressing issues of history and theology. What amazed me was how much time I spent on the theory and practice of drama and theater. Perhaps this should have been obvious. In a society where life is so saturated with liturgy and sacrament, that drama—that staginess—pervades public life. This realization makes me rethink many church history texts I thought I knew well.

Most of the history of the Roman/Byzantine world in this period is written in terms of emperors, generals, and patriarchs, with ordinary people largely absent from the political realm. In reality, emperors were keenly aware of the need to cultivate public opinion. A culture of constant spectacle projected the image of power, through the pageantry linked to great religious festivals, with its heavily symbolic routine of parades and public appearances. In Constantinople, the central public institution was the Hippodrome, the setting for the chariot races, where groups of faithful fans gathered under various colors. But the Hippodrome, the people’s arena, was also the scene of events that required mass participation in state occasions where emperors were celebrated and foes humiliated. The public joined the theatrical action through chants or ritualized exchanges with the emperor.

The great iconoclast ruler Constantine V made brilliant use of such performances. In a terrifying example from the 760s, he demonstrated his fury with the monks who opposed his religious policies. He began an appearance in the Hippodrome by crying out that he could no longer tolerate that God-hated swarm. The vast crowd supposedly answered, unprompted, that their good master—literally, their despot—would never again see a trace of the monks’ black habits in the city.