Iconoclasm, the Breaking of Images

By the seventh century, icons, painted images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints, had become central to Christian devotion in the Byzantine Empire. Believers kissed them, lit candles before them and carried them in processions, and some icons were said to work miracles or protect cities. At the same time, the empire was suffering heavy defeats against the expanding Islamic caliphate. Some churchmen and rulers asked whether God was punishing Christians for something, and whether the honour paid to images had crossed into idolatry, forbidden by the second commandment.

Tradition dates the beginning of imperial opposition to icons to 726, under Emperor Leo III. His son Constantine V went further, writing theological arguments against images and calling the Council of Hieria in 754, which condemned their veneration. Iconoclasts held that a true image of Christ was impossible, because an image could show only his human nature, not his divinity. Constantine V argued that the only true image of Christ was the Eucharist, and iconoclasts continued to honour the cross. Many icons were removed or covered, and some monks who resisted were punished.

Defenders of icons, the iconophiles, answered with a theology of images. John of Damascus, a monk living under Muslim rule in Palestine, argued that because God had become visible in Christ, Christ could be depicted, and that the honour given to an icon passes to the person it represents. In 787 the Second Council of Nicaea, called by Empress Irene, adopted this view. It distinguished proskynesis, the veneration due to images, from latreia, the worship due to God alone.

The peace did not last. In 815 Emperor Leo V revived iconoclasm, and it remained imperial policy until 843, when Empress Theodora, ruling for her young son, restored the icons. The Orthodox churches still celebrate this event every year on the first Sunday of Lent as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. In the century that followed, Byzantine churches were richly decorated with mosaics and frescoes, and the icon became a defining feature of Eastern Christianity.

Almost everything we know about this period was written by the victors. Iconophile chronicles and saints’ lives describe iconoclast emperors as cruel persecutors, and many famous episodes, such as Leo III tearing down an icon of Christ over the palace gate, appear only in later sources. Historians such as Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon argue that the opposition to images was more gradual and less violent than these accounts suggest, though the conflict was real and some opponents suffered imprisonment, exile or worse. Few figurative images from before the period survive in the capital, which historians attribute partly to iconoclasm and partly to later losses.

The oldest surviving icons, some of them painted in encaustic wax in the sixth or seventh century, are kept today at the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, far beyond the reach of Constantinople’s emperors. Their survival shows what may have been lost elsewhere. The memory of the struggle also shaped Orthodox identity: the defence of icons came to be seen as a defence of the Incarnation itself, and the saints who resisted the iconoclast emperors were honoured as confessors of the faith. In the West, the popes rejected iconoclasm, and the dispute widened the growing distance between Rome and Constantinople.

Seven centuries later, image-breaking returned in western Europe. Protestant reformers attacked many aspects of medieval devotion, including the veneration of saints, relics and statues. In Wittenberg in 1522, followers of the reformer Andreas Karlstadt removed images from churches, and Martin Luther returned from his hiding place at the Wartburg to preach against violent change. Luther held that images were not forbidden in themselves and that the problem lay in hearts that trusted in them, so many Lutheran churches kept their altarpieces.

Reformed leaders such as Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich and later John Calvin in Geneva took a stricter line, insisting that images in churches broke the commandment against idols. In Zurich the city council ordered the orderly removal of images in 1524; whitewash covered paintings, statues were taken down and some precious objects were melted. In other cities, including Basel in 1529, crowds forced the pace. In England, the government of Edward VI ordered images removed from churches in 1547–1548, and in Scotland image-breaking accompanied the Reformation of 1559–1560.

The most dramatic outbreak came in the Low Countries. On 10 August 1566, after a Protestant sermon, a crowd attacked a monastery chapel at Steenvoorde in Flanders. Within weeks the Beeldenstorm, or iconoclastic fury, swept through Antwerp, Ghent and many other towns, and hundreds of churches and monasteries were stripped of images. Historians stress that the destruction was usually targeted at objects, not people, and was often carried out by small groups. The Spanish crown’s harsh response helped trigger the long revolt that led to the independence of the northern Netherlands.

Iconoclasm is easily confused with aniconism, the avoidance of images in worship, but the two differ. Judaism’s second commandment forbids making images for worship, and synagogues generally have no figures of God; yet ancient synagogues such as that at Dura-Europos in Syria were decorated with painted biblical scenes, and floor mosaics with human figures survive from late antique Palestine.

In Islam, the Qur’an condemns idols, and tradition recalls that Muhammad cleared the idols from the Kaaba in Mecca in 630. Some sayings attributed to the Prophet warn against makers of images, and Islamic religious buildings use calligraphy and geometric and plant patterns rather than human or animal figures. Muslim scholars disagreed about how far the rule extended. In palaces, books and everyday objects, figurative art flourished, from Umayyad desert palaces to Persian and Mughal miniatures. Avoiding images in worship thus shaped a distinctive and celebrated artistic tradition rather than an absence of art.

Across these traditions, arguments about images have always been arguments about how the divine can be present in the world. Today the Orthodox churches honour icons, many Protestant churches use art freely, and the remains of broken statues in European churches are preserved as part of their history. Iconoclasm is remembered less as simple vandalism than as a sign of how much religious images have mattered.