a term which came into use in the eighth century, and signifies breakers of images. There existed at that time a fierce controversy between the Eastern and Western Churches about the lawfulness of using images in churches. Leo the Isaurian received the epithet of Iconoclast from passing an edict (A.D. 726) for the violent destruction of images. The disturbances to which the execution of this law gave rise settled down into a civil war which ultimately extended to Asia and Italy. In 730 Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, was degraded for his partiality to images by the council assembled by Leo. All the images, except that of the crucifixion, were ordered to be burned, and those who worshipped them to be punished. Copronymus, also called the Iconoclast, got an act passed condemnatory of images at the council which assembled in 754. Leo IV., who became Emperor in 775, had recourse to penal measures against image worshippers; but he was poisoned in 780 by his wife Irene, who mounted the throne, and at the second Nicean Council (A.D. 786) not only procured the revocation of all the previous edicts against images, but issued decrees against all who should maintain that God was the sole object of adoration. The tide, however, was turned by Leo the Armenian, in 814, and the same policy was pursued by his successors, Michael and Theophilus. But in 842 Theodora procured the re-enactment of the edicts which had been passed by Irene in favour of idolatry.

The Iconoclasts in the beginning of the eighth century were zealously opposed by the Pontiffs Gregory I. and II. Hence as there were Iconoclastae or Iconomachi, those who broke or opposed images, so there were Iconoduli and Iconolaters, or those who offered adoration to images. The question finally produced a schism between the churches of the East and the West. The Latins held that images might be allowed to aid the memory, and the Eastern Church allowed pictures for the same purpose. The Latins, however, soon proceeded to increase their veneration for the images of saints, till at last they worshipped them. In 823 Claudius, Bishop of Turin, cast all the images, and even the cross, out of the churches. The Albigenses and Waldenses disapproved of image worship. Charlemagne engaged in the controversy, and four books which he published against the worship of images were approved of by the council of 300 bishops assembled at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 794.