The Church Fathers · c. 726–730
The Letters on the Holy Images
Germanus of Constantinople · c. 634 – c. 740
What it is
Three letters to bishops who had begun removing images, written by the patriarch as the emperor turned against them. We do not make gods of colours, he argues; we remember, as a man keeps a portrait of someone absent. He resigned rather than sign the decree.
Why it lasted
The earliest documents of the iconoclast controversy from inside it, written before John of Damascus and by a man with something to lose. Read into the record at Nicaea II, which vindicated him fifty-seven years after he was forced out.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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