Definition of the Council of Hieria

The council was called by the emperor Constantine V. Theophanes says that it sat from 10 February to 8 August 754 in the palace of Hieria and then moved to the church of Blachernae, and that no one was present from Rome, Alexandria, Antioch or Jerusalem. It called itself the seventh ecumenical council.

What remains of it is the definition (horos), preserved in the minutes of the sixth session of the Second Council of Nicaea Restores Icons, where a bishop read it out section by section and a deacon read a prepared refutation after each. In it the iconoclasts speak in their own words, though the text reaches us through their opponents. The text argues from the doctrine of Christ’s two natures, appeals to Scripture and to passages from the fathers, forbids images in churches and in private houses, and at the same time upholds the intercession of Mary and the saints and forbids anyone to plunder church plate on the pretext of destroying images.