Byzantine Iconoclasm

Byzantine Iconoclasm was a controversy over the religious use of images, marked by two periods of official opposition in the Byzantine Empire, from 726 to 787 and 814 to 843.

Leo III the Isaurian: Byzantine emperor from 717 to 741, traditionally associated with the first imperial campaign against religious images. His reign is linked to the controversy’s first official phase, though the extent of his image bans remains disputed.
Icon: A sacred image, especially one depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint, used in Christian devotion. Icons were the objects whose production and veneration the controversy contested.
John of Damascus: A Christian theologian of the eighth century who defended the use and veneration of religious images. His treatises supplied influential arguments for images during the first iconoclast period.
Triumph of Orthodoxy: The restoration of icon veneration in Constantinople in 843, commemorated in the Eastern Orthodox Church. It marks the final defeat of official Byzantine iconoclasm.
Council of Hieria: An iconoclast council held near Constantinople in 754 that rejected the making and veneration of icons. It gave the first phase of opposition a formal theological statement.
Veneration: An act of reverence directed toward a sacred person or image, distinguished in Christian theology from worship owed to God. Defenders argued that honor shown to an icon passes to the person it depicts.
Germanus I of Constantinople: Patriarch of Constantinople from 715 to 730, remembered for opposing early imperial pressure against icons. His resistance connected the first imperial measures to a dispute over church authority.
Feast of Orthodoxy: An Eastern Orthodox observance on the first Sunday of Great Lent commemorating the restoration of icons in 843. Its annual rite preserves the controversy’s outcome as a living liturgical memory.
Second Council of Nicaea: The ecumenical council of 787 that restored the veneration of icons in the Byzantine Church. It ended the first official phase by distinguishing veneration from worship.
Incarnation: The Christian doctrine that the divine Son became human in Jesus Christ. Icon defenders argued that Christ’s visible human form made depiction possible.

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