Jonas of Orléans' "De cultu imaginum" represents a crucial moment in Western Christianity's theological defense of sacred art. Written during the Carolingian Renaissance under Louis the Pious and completed for Charles the Bald, this three-book treatise systematically refutes iconoclastic arguments while demonstrating the continuity between patristic tradition and contemporary Christian practice.

All Three Books

This translation covers the complete work in three parts:

Book Duration Watch Listen
Book I: Defense of Images and Saints ~90 min YouTube Archive.org
Book II: Reverence for the Cross ~40 min YouTube Archive.org
Book III: Pilgrimage and Relics ~45 min YouTube Archive.org

Iconoclasm and the Carolingian Context

In the eighth and ninth centuries the Western Church engaged the Byzantine iconoclast controversy. After Emperor Leo III’s ban on images (726 AD) was overturned by the Second Council of Nicaea (787), the West initially affirmed the veneration of images. Charlemagne’s Frankish church formally rejected iconoclasm at the Council of Frankfurt (794), albeit in ambiguous language: its canons condemned any refusal “to pay to the images of saints the same service or adoration as to the divine Trinity.” Popes Gregory III and Stephen III earlier anathematized iconoclasts (731, 769).

Charlemagne and his successors (Louis the Pious, then Charles the Bald) thus inherited a largely iconophile court: churches were adorned with mosaics (e.g. Christ enthroned in the Aachen chapel) and wall-paintings, reflecting a theology that distinguished honor of icons from worship of God. Nevertheless, some Western clergy—notably Claudius of Turin, a Frankish bishop in Italy—adopted extreme iconoclast views. Claudius destroyed church images as “anathema” and denounced relic-veneration, arguing that Christian images were merely renamed pagan idols.

Emperor Louis the Pious (r. 814–840) and his Council of Paris (825) addressed the disturbance: Louis forwarded the council’s Acts on images to Pope Eugenius II. He also commissioned Jonas of Orléans (b. ca. 760, bishop from 818) to refute Claudius. Jonas composed his De cultu imaginum (c. 827–840) for Louis—completing it under Louis’s son Charles the Bald.

Structure and Arguments

Jonas’s De cultu imaginum is three books of biblical and patristic argumentation against Claudius’s iconoclasm. (Jonas never had Claudius’s Apology text in hand, only an imperial summary.) He dedicates the work to Charles the Bald, explaining that he began it for Louis the Pious but paused after Claudius’s death (827), then resumed when Claudius’s followers continued the debate.

As Philip Schaff notes, Jonas “opposes Claudius with his own weapons of irony and satire… and even ridicules his Latinity.”

Book I: Defense of Images and Saints

Jonas defends the use of sacred images and the invocation of saints: he argues that venerating a saint’s image honors the saint, not the wood or pigment, and that relics do convey Christ’s power. He quotes extensively from Scripture and Fathers (a “cento of citations”) to show images teach and beautify faith, so long as worship is due only to God. However Jonas emphasizes that “the French do not worship images,” i.e. they distinguish honor (dulia) from divine adoration (latria).

Book II: Reverence for the Cross

Book II upholds reverence for the cross as Christ’s image, citing Augustine, Basil, and other Church Fathers. Jonas systematically addresses Claudius’s objections to the veneration of crucifixes and sacred symbols.

Book III: Pilgrimage and Relics

Book III defends pilgrimage to Rome (honoring martyrs) and the veneration of relics. Jonas thus systematically refutes Claudius point by point: images are not idols if seen as memorials, and Christian practices of holy pictures and relics have deep patristic precedent.

Jonas’s Rhetorical Style

Jonas’s style is polemical and rhetorical. He frames Claudius’s views as the “insane fury” of an outsider, using vivid emotion-laden language. Claudius is portrayed as proud and impetuous, likened to a wild she-wolf striking at the fold. By contrast Jonas exhorts Christian virtue: “patience, humility, love” should guide the faithful. His mockery and tone are part of a strategy to marginalize Claudius as extreme.

Nevertheless, Jonas remains a scholar’s scholar: he marshals a wide array of patristic authority (Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen, John of Damascus, etc.) and even late Latin collections (like Cassiodorus’s Tripartite History) to bolster his case. In sum, De cultu imaginum blends theological argument with aggressive satire; it reaffirms Christian tradition on images while exposing Claudius’s literalism as a misinterpretation of Scripture and patristics.

Manuscripts, Editions, and Transmission

De cultu imaginum survives only in medieval Latin; no vernacular translation is known prior to this project. Jonas’s text is preserved in Patrologia Latina (Migne PL 106: cols. 303–386), but no modern critical edition has been published. According to 17th-century sources, the tract first appeared in print in Cologne (1554); a subsequent Antwerp edition was issued by Christopher Plantin in 1565.

These printings likely derived from now-lost Carolingian manuscripts. Manuscript evidence is scantly recorded: at least one 12th-century copy of Jonas’s works was known (per 19th-c. scholarship), but today researchers rely on the PL text. Alain Dubreucq has dated the work to ca. 840 and cites PL 106:303–386 for De cultu.

Reception and Influence

In the Carolingian era Jonas’s treatise became a standard reference of the court church on images. Along with Dungal of Pavia’s contemporary refutation of iconoclasm (c. 830), it constituted the definitive West-Frankish answer to Claudius. Jonas’s arguments reinforced the imperial position that images, rightly used, are not idolatrous—a stance echoed in later councils and writings.

Although iconoclasm faded after 843 (when Byzantine iconoclasm ended), Jonas’s views resonated in other contexts. He is cited (directly or indirectly) in Carolingian hagiography revisions: David Appleby shows that in rewriting saints’ lives Jonas and his contemporaries often added scenes of destroying pagan idols to discourage improper relic veneration.

More broadly, Jonas helped establish the Carolingian “consensus” that saintly images remind the faithful of the unseen realities and should be honored, not worshipped—a middle ground between iconoclasm and what later would be called iconolatry. In later medieval theology the West essentially adopted this same position, enshrined at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and Trent (1563).

Secondary Scholarship

Jonas and De cultu imaginum have been studied by few specialists but do appear in surveys of Carolingian theology:

  • Philip Schaff (1882) provides a concise summary and praises Jonas’s learned style
  • The Catholic Encyclopedia notes the work’s purpose and its nuanced stance: Jonas “maintains that images are justified for commemoration, instruction, and ornament”
  • Noble (2009) situates Jonas within the broader Carolingian break with Constantinople
  • Kelly Gibson (2021) has analyzed Jonas’s rhetoric of emotion, showing he labels Claudius’s views as “fury” and projects Christian unity through humility and devotion
  • David Appleby (2022) notes that Jonas’s pro-image stance also included urging the destruction of pagan idols

The verdict of scholars is consistent: Jonas was a “professional moralizer” for Charles and Louis, using theology and satire to maintain orthodoxy. His De cultu imaginum remains an important primary source for understanding medieval image-veneration.

Noteworthy Excerpts from the Text (Translated)

On the Purpose of Images:

“What writing does for those who can read, a picture does for the illiterate who look at it. In a picture even the unlearned may see what example they ought to follow; in a picture they who know no letters may yet read.”

On the Distinction Between Worship and Veneration:

“We do not worship the wood of the cross, but honor it because of Him who hung upon it for our salvation. There is a great difference between adoring something in itself and honoring it for the sake of another.”

Addressing Claudius Directly:

“You say that Christians should not make images because of the commandment against idols. But do you not see that God Himself commanded the making of the cherubim for the Ark? The commandment was not against all images, but against worshiping false gods.”

Bibliography

  • De cultu imaginum, in Patrologia Latina 106, cols. 303–386
  • Claudius of Turin, Apologeticum (Apl.), ed. M. Pellegrini (Turnhout, 1999)
  • Weber, N. A., “Jonas of Orléans,” Catholic Encyclopedia 8 (1910), 453–55
  • Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, Vol. IV: Mediaeval Christianity (NY, 1882), 168–69
  • Laistner, M. L. W., “The Value and Influence of Cassiodorus’s Ecclesiastical History,” Speculum 23 (1948), 33–82
  • Noble, Thomas F. X., Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians (Philadelphia, 2009)
  • Justiniano, Fr. Silouan, “The Seventh Ecumenical Council, the Council of Frankfurt and the Practice of Painting,” Orthodox Arts Journal (Jul. 2017)
  • Gibson, Kelly, “Claudius of Turin’s Insane Fury: The Rhetoric of Emotions and Community,” The Heroic Age 20 (2021)
  • Appleby, David, “Shrine and Idol Destruction in Three Carolingian Hagiographic Texts,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 73:4 (2022), 697–719