Iconoclast

Iconoclast (pronounced ahy-kon-uh-klast)

(1) A person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc as being based on error or superstition.

(2) A breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration.

(3) An adherent of the heretical movement within the Greek Orthodox Church from 725-842 AD, which aimed at the destruction of icons and religious images.

1590–1600: From the Middle English, from the French iconoclaste from the Medieval Latin īconoclastēs from the Byzantine Greek εἰκονοκλάστης (eikonoklástēs) (literally image-breaker), the construct being eikono- (genitive eikonos) (icono-) + -klastēs (breaker), equivalent to klas-, variant stem of klân (to break) + -tēs (the agent noun suffix).  The early meaning referred literally to those who, in acts of theological obedience, broke or destroyed idols physically; the figurative meaning in reference to beliefs, cherished institutions etc emerged later, sources variously citing the first use between 1842-1858.  An older word for it was iconomachy (1580s), from the Greek eikonomakhia.  A clast is a technical word in geology to describe a fragment of rock broken from a larger rock or rock unit.  Iconoclast’s most commonly seen synonyms are unbeliever, questioner, dissenter, heretic, radical, dissident, nonbeliever, critic, rebel, revolutionist, cynic, sceptic, ruiner & non-conformist.

The Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy

The Iconoclastic Controversy, an eighth & ninth century dispute over the use of religious images in the Byzantine Empire, was one of the many squabbles in Christendom (and other religions) triggered by arguments between those reading ancient texts literally and those treating then as allegory.  The Iconoclasts, those who rejected images, objected to icon veneration essentially because of the Old Testament prohibition against images in the Ten Commandments and the possibility of idolatry.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4 (KJV 1611)

The defenders of the importance of imagery insisted upon their symbolic nature and the dignity of created matter and the controversy in Constantinople was nothing new.  From the Church’s earliest days, the making and veneration of portraits of Christ and the saints had been opposed by many but the use of icons nevertheless steadily gained in popularity, especially in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.  By the late sixth century, icons had become the object of an officially encouraged cult, sometimes implying a superstitious belief in their animation and the opposition to these practices became especially strong in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey).  In 726 the Byzantine emperor Leo III (circa 685–741) took a public stand against the perceived worship of icons, and in 730 proscribed their use, trigging a persecution of icon venerators that was most severe in the reign of Leo’s successor, Constantine V (741–775).  While the emperor’s scholars expressed the theological edit in elegant Byzantine script, on the ground, the smashing of icons and the attacks on the idolaters was done by angry mobs, assembled for the purpose by the social media of the day, events reprised in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries by protestants in the Netherlands who vandalized former Catholic churches in a second burst of iconoclasm.

Byzantine icons

Over the decades, in Byzantine fashion, power shifted between the factions.  In 787, the Empress Irene (circa 752–803) convoked the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea at which Iconoclasm was condemned and the use of images was again permitted.  The Iconoclasts regained power in 814 after the accession of Leo V (circa 755-820) and icons were again banned after a ruling at a council in 815, the prohibition lasting until the death of the Emperor Theophilus (Circa 800-842).  Within a year of his death, his widow, the Empress Theodora (circa 815–circa 870s), finally restored icon veneration, an event still celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Feast of Orthodoxy.  In a piece of theological sophistry which would have impressed any pope, Theodora noted she was permitting only veneration, not worship and in that state, the Eastern Orthodox view of icons has rested for more than a thousand years.