International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Olga N. Izotova
St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Moscow, Russian Federation; 
[e-mail]
A Hagiographer Monk Sabas (ΙΧ C.) as a Participant of the Image Debates
The text concerns theory of sacred images in the lives of two saints of iconoclastic time by 
Sabas (ΙΧ C.), who was a monk and a byzantine writer. The text contains a brief sketch of Sabas’ 
life. On his own evidence, Sabas was acquainted with main characters of his works, st. Ioannikios 
the Great and st. Peter of Atroa. The hagiographer worked as a simple monk in monasteries of Asia 
Minor during their lives. The vitas were written by him later in the fifties or sixties of ΙΧ C., probably 
in the monastery of Antidion, besides st. Peter’s life was edited by the author himself.
Following the information about the hagiographer the careful analysis of the passages 
concerning or making casual mention of sacred images is made. The first redaction of st. Peter’s life 
includes only a brief confession of the veneration of icons, but the second version has a rather more 
detailed excursus of holy images theory and the st. Ioannikios’ life contains three creeds relating 
icons. The general topics brought up in both lives are doctrine of Christ as the image of God the 
Father and a man as an image of God, which the hagiographer takes as basis of the image veneration, 
the christological basis of pro-image teaching, comprehension of iconoclasm as a kind of Docetism.
Although the hagioghrapher was not one of the main disputants of iconoclastic controversy 
as well as he did not aim at writing a treatise refuting iconoclastic doctrine, reading his works 
carefully we can see he use quite complicated terminology of pro-icon writers elaborated at the 
end of the image debates, such as notion of «circumscription» (περιγραφή). Sabas does not only 
confirm dogmas of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (relative adoration proper to icons, moving of 
honor accorded to the image to its prototype), but also emphatically uses in his texts such concepts 
as an image of God the Father in Christ and an image of God in a man to ground permissibility of 
pictorial images. This condition enables to conclude that this theme may take on special significance 
during the second iconoclast period.

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