Ágnes Kriza 6 Pro or Contra Filioque? Trinitarian Synthronoi Images at the Crossroads of the Catholic West and the Orthodox East (ca. 1300–1500) Since the ninth century, the Trinitarian teaching about the procession of the Holy Spirit has divided the Latin West and the Byzantine East. The Greeks maintained that the Holy Spirit originated from the Father only and could not accept the Latin filioque (“and the Son”) formula in the Creed, absent from the Greek Symbol of faith, which stipulated that the Holy Spirit proceeds both from the Father and the Son. This disagreement about the text of the Creed and the relationship between the Three Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity, the so-called filioque controversy, had a decisive role in the Schism between the Roman and Constantinopolitan Churches in 1054. 1 Simultaneously with this theological conflict, a development of anthropomor- phic Trinitarian iconography began after the Carolingian period in the West which led to the appearance and rapid dissemination of fully developed Trinitarian images from the eleventh century onwards. These Western artworks, ranging from illumina- tions and wall paintings to ivories, show the human figures of the Father and the Son accompanied by the dove of the Holy Spirit (Fig. 6.1). 2 Likewise, similar anthropomorphic Trinitarian images emerged in Byzantine manu- script and mural decorations after the first Millennium (Fig. 6.2). However, they were much less common than in the West, apparently due to the theological concerns they raised about the visualization of the invisible divinity and the Old Testament prohibi- tion of creating images of God (Exodus 20:4). 3 Although this apprehension existed in the West, too, it was especially prevalent in Byzantium, hindering the wide diffusion of anthropomorphic images of the Holy Trinity there. But over time, these concerns faded away and after the sixteenth century, various depictions of the Triune God with human characteristics became common in all regions of the post-Byzantine world and equally popular both in the Orthodox East and the Catholic West. This essay discusses some aspects of this iconographic process in Byzantine and post-Byzantine art and its 1 For a survey and a bibliography of the filioque debate, see A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 2 François Boespflug and Yolanta Zaluska, “Le dogme trinitaire et l’essor de son iconographie en occident de l’époque Carolingienne au IVe concile du Latran (1215),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 37 (1994): 181–240. 3 Fr. Steven Bigham, Image of God the Father in Orthodox Theology and Iconography (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995); André Grabar, L’iconoclasme byzantin: le dossier archéolo- gique (Paris: Flammarion, 1984), 460–474. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695618-008