Second Council of Nicaea (787)

The seventh ecumenical council, called by the empress Irene and her son Constantine VI and presided over by the patriarch Tarasius, which ended the first period of iconoclasm. It condemned the iconoclast synod of 754 and defined that the images of Christ, his Mother, the angels and the saints may be venerated with honour and reverence, since the honour passes to the one depicted, while adoration belongs to God alone; twenty-two canons followed. The Frankish court, working from a bad translation, answered it in the Caroline Books. Its own texts are on this site in Henry R. Percival's 1900 translation.