How do you get iconoclasm

The image represents the Iconoclast theologian, John the Grammarian, and an iconoclast bishop destroying an image of Christ. State Historical Museum, Moscow. The original theological basis for iconoclasm was fairly weak.

Arguments relied mostly on the Old Testament prohibition quoted above. But it was clear that this prohibition was not absolute since God also instructs how to make three dimensional representations of the Cherubim heavenly spirits or angels for the Ark of the Covenant, which is also quoted in the Old Testament, just a couple of chapters after the passage that prohibits images Exodus — Emperor Constantine V gave a more nuanced theological rationale for iconoclasm.

Figure 4. Madonna with Christ , 9th century, mosaic, Hagia Sophia Istanbul. This mosaic follows the iconoclastic crisis and revives stylistic elements from early Christian art. The iconophile pro-icon counter-argument was most convincingly articulated by St.

John of Damascus and St. Theodore the Studite. The Byzantine Emperor Leo III launched the first great campaign against icons around with his decree prohibiting representations of religious figures. Soon his supporters were tearing down existing ones.

Tumultuous times often give rise to eras in which purity and clarity are sought. For the next two generations, Eastern and Western Christianity were embroiled in the iconoclast versus iconodule iconophile debate. The Protestant Reformation, in many ways a fundamentalist revolt, sparked iconoclastic riots across Europe in the 16th century.

The stark plainness of the Puritan chapel was, after all, a theological statement, just as the Counter-Reformation was, filling churches with the drama of Baroque and Rococo art. And so it goes, for religion is predicated on rules, and the question has always been: who makes these rules, who defines the theology? Within this struggle, the power to command, or indeed to deny, forms of representation is of enormous importance. The iconoclastic masters of that cluster of magnificent tenements, the Bucoleon, had especial claims upon his recollection.

On this, as we shall in another chapter see, the popes had revolted from their iconoclastic sovereigns of Constantinople. New Word List Word List. The use of images of the holy increased in Orthodox worship, and these images increasingly came to be regarded as points of access to the divine.

Leo III interpreted his many military failures as a judgment on the empire by God, and decided that they were being judged for their worship of religious images. Emperor Leo III, the founder of the Isaurian Dynasty, and the iconoclasts of the eastern church, banned religious images in about CE, claiming that worshiping them was heresy; this ban continued under his successors.

He accompanied the ban with widespread destruction of religious images and persecution of the people who worshipped them. The western church remained firmly in support of the use of images throughout the period, and the whole episode widened the growing divergence between the eastern and western traditions in what was still a unified church, as well as facilitating the reduction or removal of Byzantine political control over parts of Italy.

In CE, Constantine summoned the first ecumenical council concerned with religious imagery, the Council of Hieria; bishops attended. John of Damascus, a Syrian monk living outside Byzantine territory, became a major opponent of iconoclasm through his theological writings.

After Leo IV too died, Irene called another ecumenical council, the Second Council of Nicaea, in CE, that reversed the decrees of the previous iconoclast council and restored image worship, marking the end of the First Iconoclasm. This may have been an attempt to soothe the strained relations between Constantinople and Rome. Emperor Leo V the Armenian instituted a second period of Iconoclasm in CE, again possibly motivated by military failures seen as indicators of divine displeasure.