an impenetrably dark age?

The so-called Byzantine iconoclast period is a ‘dark age’ whose obscurity is only randomly illuminated by the few remaining sources, and even these are difficult to interpret. Apart from in Italy, no archives have been preserved. The contemporary sources comprise two chronicles – that of Theophanes the Confessor, covering the period up to 813, and the Breviarium of Patriarch Nikephoros, which stops at 769 – and an account of Leo V’s reign whose author is known as the ‘Scriptor incertus’. The only near-contemporary chronicle for the reigns of Michael II and Theophilos is that of George the Monk, probably completed in 846 and reworked in 871–2, with Theophanes Continuatus being the most important of the later chroniclers to cover this period. Other sources include the Acts of the second council of Nicaea (787); these contain several extracts from the ruling of the iconoclast council of Hieria (754), which they set out to refute. Further sources include a legal code called the Ecloga (741); the Farmer’s law (or Nomos georgikos) – though this is not dated with precision; the Taktikon Uspensky (842–3); the correspondence of the monk Theodore the Stoudite, and of Bishop Ignatios of Nicaea (known as Ignatios the Deacon) from the first half of the ninth century; numerous saints’ Lives; and the polemical anti-iconoclast literature. We can add to these sources others of Arab, Syriac, Armenian and Greek origin from the caliphate, as well as several inscriptions and numerous seals.