Second Council of Nicaea
The seventh ecumenical council, convened by Empress Irene, condemned iconoclasm and restored the veneration of icons, distinguishing it from the worship due to God alone.
- Date
- 24 September – 23 October 787exact date · duration: 29 daysDate in the Julian calendar
- Place
- Nicaeatoday: İznik, Bursa Province, Turkey · Balkans and Anatolia
- Participants
- Byzantine Empire, Irene of Athens
- Threads
- Early medieval Europe (500–1000)
- Also known as
- Seventh Ecumenical Council; Седьмой Вселенский собор; Nicaea II
A first attempt to hold the council in Constantinople in 786 was broken up by iconoclast soldiers of the guard. Having transferred the unreliable regiments, Irene and Patriarch Tarasios convened the bishops at Nicaea, with papal legates present; the sessions opened on 24 September 787, and the final session was held on 23 October in the presence of Irene and her son Constantine VI in Constantinople.
The council declared that images of Christ, the Virgin, the angels and the saints should receive honourable veneration (proskynesis), but not the true worship (latreia) reserved for God, and annulled the iconoclast Council of Hieria (754). Charlemagne’s theologians, working from a faulty Latin translation, attacked the decisions in the Libri Carolini. Iconoclasm returned in 815 and was finally ended in 843.
Connections
Part of
- Byzantine Iconoclasmbetween 726 and 730 – 11 March 843 · Balkans and Anatolia
Related events
- First Council of Nicaeabetween May and June 325 – between July and August 325 · Balkans and AnatoliaThe seventh ecumenical council met in the same city as the first (325)
Same participants
- The Khazar rulers adopt Judaismbetween 740 and 861 · Eastern Europevia Byzantine Empire
Adjacent events in the thread
- Saxon Wars772–804 · Western and Central Europe
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within 25 years of this event
Western and Central Europe
- Saxon Wars772–804
- Viking raid on Lindisfarne8 June 793
- Battle of Roncevaux Pass15 August 778
- Coronation of Charlemagne25 December 800
- Siege of Pavia and fall of the Lombard kingdomSeptember 773 – June 774
Eastern Europe
- The Khazar rulers adopt Judaismbetween 740 and 861
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Second Council of Nicaea
- Wikipedia (Russian): Второй Никейский собор
- Price R. (tr.) The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787). — Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018.
- Wikidata: Q187201