The iconoclast controversy
Byzantium tears itself apart for a century over whether images may be venerated.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 117 years
- Known to
- ± 2 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
From 726 CE emperors order the destruction of religious images, arguing they violate the commandment against graven images; monasteries resist fiercely. The dispute runs, with an interruption, until 843. It is not merely aesthetic — it concerns whether the divine can be represented at all, and therefore what the incarnation means. Enormous quantities of earlier Byzantine art are destroyed, and the eventual defence of images by John of Damascus shapes Orthodox theology permanently.