Iconoclasm a religious movement of the 8th and 9th C. that denied the holiness of Icons and rejected icon veneration. Clerical opposition to the artistic depiction of sacred personages had its roots in late antiquity. In the 4th C. Eusebios of Caesarea, evidently drawing on the christology of Origen, denied the possibility of artistically delineating Christ’s image. There was also an Iconoclast movement in 7th-C. Armenia . In the early 8th C. several bishops in Asia Minor, notably Constantine of Nakoleia and Thomas of Claudiopolis, condemned the veneration of images, citing traditional biblical prohibitions against idolatry. Their views became a movement when Emp. Leo III began to support their position publicly in 726. His order to remove an icon of Christ from the Chalke gate caused a riot. In 730 Leo summoned a silention that forced Patr. Germanos I to resign and issued an edict commanding the destruction of icons of the saints. Persecutions under Leo appear to have been limited to instances of destroying church decorations, portable icons, and altar furnishings; there is no solid evidence of martyrdom.

The usurper Artabasdos temporarily restored icon veneration, but Constantine V broadened the theological base of Iconoclasm by personally writing treatises and organizing silentia. Constantine introduced an explicit christological aspect into Iconoclasm by asserting that a material depiction of Christ—who as God is uncircumscribable—threatened either to confuse or separate his two natures. In 754 Constantine summoned a council in Hieria, which condemned icon veneration as diabolical idolatry and insisted that the Eucharist was the only appropriate, nonanthropomorphic image of Christ. Constantine reportedly rejected worship of Relics and attacked the cult of Euphemia of Chalcedon, but the 754 council affirmed the efficacy of the intercession of saints and denied only the propriety of venerating them through material depictions.

The acts of the 754 council were not strongly enforced until the 760s, when several Iconophiles were executed, including Stephen the Younger. Constantine rigorously persecuted Iconophiles in Constantinople, esp. monks; strategoi such as Michael Lachanodrakon extended this antimonastic campaign into the provinces. Yet outside the capital Iconoclasm was irregularly supported and often restricted to redecorating churches with secular art. In the capital, according to the vita of Stephen the Younger, Constantine replaced pictures in the Church of the Virgin at Blachernai with “mosaics [representing] trees and all kinds of birds and beasts. …” Yet images of Christ and the saints remained in the sekreta of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, until 768/9, when Patr. Niketas I (766–80) had them removed. Iconoclasm waned after Constantine’s death: Leo IV persecuted only a small group of officials in Constantinople in 780, and in 787 Constantine VI, Irene, and Patr. Tarasios secured an official condemnation of Iconoclasm at the Second Council of Nicaea.

The emperors of the Amorian dynasty revived Iconoclasm, but it lacked the vigor of the 8th-C. movement. Leo V deposed Patr. Nikephoros I and summoned a synod in 815 that renounced the restoration of icons and rehabilitated the Hieria council . Michael II, although an Iconoclast, did not force the issue. Theophilos, influenced by John VII Grammatikos, prohibited the production of icons and persecuted prominent Iconophiles, including Euthymios of Sardis, Theodore Graptos, and the painter Lazaros, but in 843, Empress Theodora and Theoktistos engineered the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Although several church councils in the 860s and 870s condemned Iconoclasm again, it was no longer a major issue.

While Byz. sources blame external factors like Jewish magicians and Caliph Yazīd II for influencing Leo III and his supporters, modern scholarship offers various explanations for the development of Iconoclasm. Many specialists favor an ideological interpretation: Iconoclasm was the revival of ancient polemics against religious art , which harbored vestiges of paganism ; Leo III was attempting to purify religious doctrine and practice because God was punishing the Byz. for idolatry by sending Arab attacks and natural disasters, such as an earthquake on Thera in 726 . Other scholars emphasize economic motives: the emperors used Iconoclasm to confiscate monastic and ecclesiastical property . More recently, scholars have stressed the role of imperial power: Iconoclasm was the climax of Caesaropapism ; the reestablishment of the traditional imperial cult ; or the effort of emperors to establish their authority in ecclesiastical matters at a time when they were under pressure to regenerate Byz. society and ward off its external enemies. Another explanation considers Iconoclasm against the backdrop of the crisis of early Byz. Cities: for the secular clergy, particularly bishops, the potentially centrifugal nature of the cult of saints—physically localized and emotionally privatized by holy men, icons, relics, and monasteries—threatened their ability to retain a centralized ecclesiastical authority that could define the holy and shore up the weakened structures of Byz. civic life .

Economic and political factors played important roles in the development of Iconoclasm, but the central issue of the controversy was the doctrine of Salvation. By the 8th C. the Orthodox victory in the dispute over Christ’s human and divine natures had affirmed the possibility of man’s ascent to God, but without delimiting the instrumentality of salvation or the position of the holy in Byz. society. Iconoclasts were genuinely concerned that increasing devotion to icons, by effacing the distinction between the material image and its spiritual prototype, was encouraging idolatry  and thus blurring the crucial distinction between the sacred and the profane. The Iconoclasts accepted only the Eucharist, the church building, and the sign of the cross as being fully holy, because only those objects had been consecrated by God directly or through a priest and were thus capable of bringing human beings in contact with the divine, whereas icons and relics were illegitimately consecrated from below by popular veneration .

The outcome of Iconoclasm was a partial victory for both sides. The Iconophiles, aided by thinkers such as John of Damascus, won the theological battle by formulating a theory of images that regarded Icons as efficacious vehicles of the holy and having it formally endorsed as Orthodoxy. Yet the Iconophiles owed their triumph to sympathetic emperors, whose authority over church affairs was thereby strengthened. In particular, imperial jurisdiction over monasteries was established: strong, centralized monasteries  were undermined and increasingly replaced by smaller, less cenobitic monasteries under state patronage and control. Moreover, religious dissidents  failed in appeals to Rome to counter imperial efforts to dictate religious policy. The flight of many active monastic Iconophiles to the West permitted conformists like Photios and Euthymios to hold the patriarchate. Among other consequences, the Iconoclasts’ reliance on nonrepresentational religious art contributed to the exaltation of the cult of the Cross , while in the West imperial support for Iconoclasm provoked denunciations from popes Gregory II and Gregory III and pushed the papacy further toward dependence on the Franks .

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