Council of Hieria

The Council of Hieria (today Fenerbahçe / Istanbul) convened by Emperor Constantine V in 754 in Constantinople Hieria at Opel. The council condemned the worship of images and excommunicated John of Damascus and Germanus of Constantinople Opel. The Second Council of Nicaea rejected the Council of Hieria 33 years later as " pseudo- synod ".

Constantine V was iconoclast. After a rebellion of his brother Artabasdos he reconquered Constantinople Opel and should be cracked down the Ikonodulen. However, since only sources of the images friends have survived, this representation is obviously tendentious (see Byzantine Iconoclasm ). There is a lack of reliable evidence that there has been persecution because of the veneration of images. More likely political opponents of the Emperor have been glorified in retrospect to martyrs of the pictures friends. The decisions of the Council seem to have had no crackdown Pictures Friends consequence. Vandalism against church institutions was even explicitly prohibited. Whether the policy of the Emperor also really was rejected in the population, as suggested by the later sources, is unclear. A merciless iconoclasts seems not the Emperor at any rate to have been.