Empire of Icons and Blood: Reviewing Byzantium 2: The Apogee

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In this #bookreview of the second volume in the Byzantium trilogy: The Apogee, John Julius Norwich chronicles the empire’s dazzling yet precarious golden age—from the ruthless Empress Irene blinding her own son to seize power, to the Triumph of Orthodoxy under Theodora, to the fateful 1042 uprising that restored imperial sisters to the throne. This was Byzantium at its most powerful: reconquering lands, reviving art, and defending icons as windows to the divine. Yet within this splendor festered fatal contradictions—imperial paranoia, theological rigidity, and the growing rift with Rome that exploded in 1054. Norwich tells it all with narrative flair, but beneath the pageantry lies a deeper truth: the apogee was also the beginning of the end.

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**SHOW NOTES**

1. John Julius Norwich (1929–2018) was less a dry academic than a narrative historian in the grand Victorian tradition—a diplomat-turned-writer who believed history should be told with pace, color, and human drama. Son of a British viceroy and godson of Winston Churchill, he wrote Byzantium not as a scholar cloistered in footnotes, but as a storyteller determined to rescue an empire from obscurity.

2. Saint Irene of Athens (c. 752–803) was Byzantine empress who rose from imperial consort to sole ruler. Initially regent for her young son, Constantine VI, she consolidated power through political maneuvering and ruthless piety, championing the restoration of icons during the Iconoclast controversy. But when Constantine came of age and sought to rule independently, Irene refused to relinquish control. In 797, she orchestrated his brutal blinding—a traditional Byzantine method of rendering a rival unfit for rule—leaving him to die shortly after from his wounds.

3. Iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire—particularly the 8th- and 9th-century campaigns against religious images—was significantly influenced by the rise of Islam, which strictly prohibited figural representation in sacred contexts. As the Islamic Caliphate expanded rapidly into Byzantine territories (Syria, Egypt, North Africa), Byzantine emperors like Leo III observed that Muslim military success seemed tied to their aniconic piety, contrasting with Christian defeats. Moreover, Jewish communities within the empire, also aniconic, reinforced this critique.

4. The Triumph of Orthodoxy in 843 marked the definitive end of Byzantine Iconoclasm, and it was secured by Empress Theodora, widow of the iconoclast emperor Theophilos. Acting as regent for her young son Michael III, Theodora deftly reversed decades of imperial policy, convening a synod that restored the veneration of icons and condemned iconoclasm as heresy. Though her husband had fiercely persecuted iconophiles, Theodora, guided by monks like Methodios, moved swiftly and decisively to reinstate sacred images, declaring that “the grace of God has been restored to the empire.”

5. The Paulicians (sometimes called Paulians) were a Christian sect of Armenian origin that emerged in the 7th century, blending elements of Marcionism, Manichaeism, and early adoptionist Christology. They rejected the Old Testament, venerated only the Gospel of Luke and Paul’s epistles, and denied the divinity of Christ and the reality of the Incarnation.

6. “And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.” Matthew 19:9

7. In 1042, Constantinople erupted in a popular uprising against the deeply unpopular Emperor Michael V Kalaphates, who had earlier deposed and brutally tonsured his adoptive mother, the revered Empress Zoë Porphyrogenita—a symbol of imperial legitimacy. When Michael attempted to exile Zoë entirely, the citizens of Constantinople, backed by the clergy and nobility, stormed the Great Palace, chanting “We want Zoë!” and demanding her restoration. Michael fled but was captured, blinded, and confined to a monastery.

8. The Great Schism of 1054 was precipitated not by official papal policy, but by overzealous legates acting without Pope Leo IX’s explicit authorization. Sent to Constantinople to negotiate differences, the legates, led by Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, grew frustrated by Patriarch Michael I Cerularius’s refusal to submit to Roman authority. In a dramatic breach of protocol, they stormed into Hagia Sophia during liturgy on July 16, 1054, and slapped a bull of excommunication on the altar—not just against Cerularius, but implicitly against the entire Eastern Church.

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