or ICONOCLASTAE, breakers of images; a name which the church of Rome gives to all who reject the use of images in religious matters.—The word is Greek, formed from εἰκών, image, and κλάσσω, ῥυπάνσει, "to break."

In this sense, not only the reformed, but some of the eastern churches, are called ICONOCLASTES, and esteemed by them heretics, as opposing the worship of the images 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 a little after the commencement of the eighth century, when the worship of them became common. See IMAGE. But the tumults occasioned by it 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, who issued out an edict in the year 726, abrogating, as some say, the worship of images, and ordering all the images, except that of Christ's crucifixion, to be removed out of the churches; but according to others, this edict only prohibited the paying to them any kind of adoration or worship. This edict occasioned a civil war, which broke out in the islands of the Archipelago, and by the suggestions of the priests and monks, ravaged a 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 violated their allegiance, and rising in arms either massacred or banished all the emperor's deputies and officers. In consequence of these proceedings, Leo assembled a council at Constantinople in 730, which degraded Germanus, the bishop of that city, who was a patron of images; and he ordered all the images to be publicly burnt, and inflicted a variety of severe punishments upon such as were attached to that idolatrous worship. Hence arose two factions; one of which adopted the adoration and worship of images, and on that account were called iconoduli or iconodules; and the other maintained that such a 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 εἰκών, image, and μαχομαι, I contend,) and iconoclastae. The zeal of Gregory II. in favour of image worship, was not only imitated, but even surpassed by his successor Gregory III., in consequence of which the Italian provinces were torn from the Grecian empire.

Constantine, called Copronymus, from στέρησις, "ster- marks of religious homage or adoration. The council of Paris, assembled in 824 by Louis the Pious, resolved to allow the use of images in the churches, but severely prohibited rendering them religious worship. 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 Iconoclasts still had their adherents among the Latins; the most eminent of whom 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 both against the use and worship of them. 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 11th century, on occasion of the emperor Alexius's converting the figures of silver that adorned the portals of the churches into money in order to supply the exigencies of the state. The bishop obstinately maintained that he had been guilty of sacrilege; and published a treatise, in which he affirmed, that in these images there resided an inherent sanctity, and that the adoration of Christians ought not to be confined to the persons represented by these images, but extended to the images themselves. The emperor assembled a council at Constantinople, 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, dissatisfied even with these absurd and superstitious decisions, was sent into banishment. In the western church, the worship of images was disapproved and opposed by several considerable parties, as the Petrossians, Albigenses, Waldenses, &c. till at length this idolatrous practice was entirely abolished in many parts of the Christian world by the Reformation. See IMAGE.