Quotes from the lesson:

Lactantius (d. 325 AD): “Religion consists in divine things, and there is nothing divine except in heavenly things; it follows that images are without religion, because there can be nothing heavenly in that which is made from the earth…There is no religion in images, but a mimicry of religion.” (Antenicene Fathers 7:68).

Arnobius (d. 330 AD): “What then? Without these, do the gods not know that they are worshiped? … What greater wrong, disgrace, and hardship, can be inflicted than to acknowledge one god, and yet make supplication to something else – to hope for help from a deity, and pray to an image without feeling?”

Synod of Elvira (early 300s): Canon 36: “Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration.”

Eusebius (d. 339 AD): “Can it be that you have forgotten that passage in which God lays down the law that no likeness should be made either of what is in heaven or what is in the earth beneath? Have you ever heard anything of the kind either yourself in church or from another person? Are not such things banished and excluded from churches all over the world, and is it not common knowledge that such practices are not permitted to us alone?”

Gregory the Great (d. 604 AD): “It has come to our ears that your Fraternity, seeing certain adorers of images, broke and threw down these same images in Churches. And we commend you indeed for your zeal against anything made with hands being an object of adoration; but we signify to you that you ought not to have broken these images. For pictorial representation is made use of in Churches for this reason; that such as are ignorant of letters may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books. Your Fraternity therefore should have both preserved the images and prohibited the people from adoration of them, to the end that both those who are ignorant of letters might have wherewith to gather a knowledge of the history, and that the people might by no means sin by adoration of a pictorial representation.”

Council of Hieria (754 AD): “The name Christ signifies God and man. Consequently it is an image of God and man, and consequently he has in his foolish mind, in his representation of the created flesh, depicted the Godhead which cannot be represented, and thus mingled what should not be mingled. Thus he is guilty of a double blasphemy–the one in making an image of the Godhead, and the other by mingling the Godhead and manhood…When, however, they are blamed for undertaking to depict the divine nature of Christ, which should not be depicted, they take refuge in the excuse: We represent only the flesh of Christ which we have seen and handled. But that is a Nestorian error. For it should be considered that that flesh was also the flesh of God the Word, without any separation, perfectly assumed by the divine nature and made wholly divine.” [Source: Internet History Sourcebooks: Medieval Sourcebook (fordham.edu)]

Oxford Dictionary of Worship: “[These icons] have played an integral role in liturgical services… Icons were regularly carried around city walls in procession by clergy during prayers of intercession for deliverance from wars or natural disasters. Icons were venerated and kissed by the faithful as part of the liturgy. During the services, clergy censed icons, which were illumined by candles and lights, as part of their circuit of the church building. Later iconographic programs that decorated church buildings illustrated the entire festal liturgical year with images that would include the feasts of Christ and his mother.”