ICONOCLASTES, or Iconoclastae, breakers of images; a name given to all those who reject the use of images in religious matters. The word is Greek, formed from s∕κwι∕, imago, image, and κλα<m∕v, rumpere, to break.

In this sense, not only the reformed, but some of the eastern churches, are called Iconoclastes, and esteemed heretics, as opposing the use of images in the worship of God and the saints, and breaking their figures and representations in churches.

The opposition to images began in Greece under the reign of Bardanes, who was created emperor of the Greeks soon after the commencement of the eighth century, when the worship of images became common. But the tumults thus occasioned were quelled by a revolution, which, in 713, deprived Bardanes of the imperial throne. The dispute, however, broke out with redoubled fury under Leo the Isaurian, in the year 726, who issued an edict abro [7:12:241]gating? as some say, the worship of images, and ordering all images, except that of Christ’s crucifixion, to be removed from the churches; but, according to others, this edict only prohibited the paying to them any kind of adoration. This edict occasioned a civil war, which ravaged part of Asia, and afterwards reached Italy. The civil commotions and insurrections in Italy were chiefly promoted by the Roman pontiffs, Gregory I. and II. Leo was excommunicated, and his subjects in the Italian provinces rising in arms, either massacred or banished all the emperor’s deputies and officers. In consequence of these proceedings, Leo assembled at Constantinople in 730 a council, which degraded Germanus, the bishop of that city, who was a patron of images; he also ordered all the images to be publicly burned, and inflicted a variety of severe punishments upon such as were attached to idolatrous worship. Hence arose two factions; one of which adopted the adoration of images, and on that account were called iconoduli or ico-nolatroe ; whilst the other maintained that such worship was unlawful, and that nothing was more worthy the zeal of Christians than to demolish and destroy those statues and pictures which were the occasions of this gross idolatry; and hence they were distinguished by the titles of iconomachi (from ŝ/ζων, image, and μuγοi, I contend) and iconoclastes. The zeal of Gregory II. was not only imitated, but even surpassed, by his successor Gregory III. in consequence of which the Italian provinces were separated from the Grecian empire.

Constantine, surnamed Copronymus (from x<wrgoς, stercus, and οwμa, name, because he was said to have defiled the sacred font at his baptism), succeeded his father Leo in 741, and in 754 he convened a council at Constantinople, regarded by the Greeks as the seventh oecumenical council, which solemnly condemned the use of images in public worship. Leo IV. who was declared emperor in 775, pursued the same measures, and had recourse to the coercive influence of penal laws, in order to extirpate idolatry. Irene, the wife of Leo, poisoned her husband in 780; assumed the reins of empire during the minority of her son Constantine; and in 786 summoned a council at Nice in Bithynia, known by the name of the Second Nicene Council, which abrogated the laws and decrees against the new idolatry, restored the use of images and of the cross, and denounced severe punishments against those who maintained that God was the only object of religious adoration. In this contest, the Britons, Germans, and Gauls, were of opinion that images might be lawfully continued in churches, but they considered the worship of these as highly injurious and offensive to the Supreme Being. Charlemagne distinguished himself as a mediator in this controversy. He ordered four books concerning images to be composed, refuting the reasons urged by the N icene bishops to justify the use of images; and these books he sent to Adrian the Roman pontiff in 790,. in order to engage him to withdraw his approbation of the decrees of the last council of Nice. Adrian wrote an answer; and in 794, a council of three hundred bishops, assembled by Charlemagne at Francfort-on-the-Mayn, confirmed the opinion contained in the four books, and solemnly condemned the use of images. In the Greek church, after the banishment of Irene, the controversy about images broke out anew, and was carried on by the contending parties, with various and uncertain success, during the half of the ninth century. But the scene changed on the accession to the empire of Leo the Armenian, who in 814 assembled a council at Constantinople, which abolished the decrees of the Nicene council. His successor Michael, surnamed Balbus, disapproved of the worship of images, and his son Theophilus treated them with great severity; but the Empress Theodora, after his death, and during the minority of her son, assembled a council at Constantinople in 842, which reinstated the decrees of the second Niccne council. The council held at the same place under Photius, in 879, and reckoned by the Greeks the eighth general council, confirmed and renewed the Nicene decrees.

The Latins were generally of opinion, that images might be suffered as the means of aiding the memory of the faithful, and of calling to their remembrance the pious exploits and virtuous actions of the persons whom they represented; but they detested all thoughts of paying them the least marks of religious homage or adoration. The council assembled at Paris in 824, by Louis the Meck, resolved to allow the use of images in the churches, but severely prohi.- bited rendering them religious homage. Nevertheless, towards the conclusion of this century, the Gallican clergy began to pay a kind of religious homage to the images of saints, and their example was followed by the Germans and other nations. However, the Iconoclastes still had their adherents amongst the Latins. The most eminent of these was Claudius, bishop of Turin, who, in 823, ordered all images, and even the cross, to be cast out of the churches, and committed to the flames; and he wrote a treatise, in which he declared against the use as well as against the worship of images. He condemned relics, pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and all voyages to the tombs of saints; and to his writings and labours it was owing that the city of Turin and the adjacent country was, for a long time after his death, much less infected with superstition than the other parts of Europe. The controversy concerning the sanctity of images was again revived by Leo, bishop of Chalcedon, in the eleventh century, on occasion of the Emperor Alexius converting the figures of silver which adorned the portals of the churches into money in order to supply the exigencies of the state. The bishop maintained that he had been guilty of sacrilege, and published a treatise in defence of his views. The emperor assembled at Constantinople a council, which determined that the images of Christ and of the saints were to be honoured only with a relative worship; and that invocation and worship were to be addressed to the saints only as the servants of Christ, and on account of their relation to him as their master. Leo, being dissatisfied with these decisions, was sent into banishment. In the western church, the worship of images was disapproved and opposed by several considerable parties, as the Petrobossians, Albigenses, Waldenses, and others, until at length this practice was entirely abolished in many parts of the Christian world by the Reformation.