An icon is a holy picture of Jesus, Mary, the angels or the saints used in Christian worship. The word comes from the Greek word eikon, which means image. Both Catholic and Orthodox churches use images but in the Orthodox church it is more developed.
In the 700s and 800s icons nearly tore the Christian world apart. The use of images was an ancient custom among Christians, yet it seemed to go against what the Ten Commandments says about making images.
On one side was the pope. He said that images were an ordinary and respectable part of Christian worship so long as one did not take it too far and start worshipping icons in and of themselves. This had been common sense among Christians for centuries.
On the other side was Leo III, who ruled the Byzantine empire. He headed the iconoclasts, the “image breakers”. He said icons were too close to idol worship, that Christianity in fact was losing to Islam because of it, that it was weakening the empire.
In 724 Leo outlawed icons. His followers entered churches and destroyed all the icons they could find. When the monks stood against him, they were attacked, thrown in prison or killed. When the patriarch of Constantinople stood up to him, he was removed. When the pope stood up to him, he was threatened. (The pope lived outside the Byzantine empire).
In time the iconoclasts came to oppose monasticism and praying to saints as well. It was all very Zwingli.
In the west images were seen as a way to reach those who could not read. They help us to remember the stories and heroes of the faith. They can move us to a deeper faith. They act as art.
In the east this was taken much further: God used them to work miracles, heal the sick, stop floods. Some icons came from heaven, some wore crowns, some were even godparents! People sang songs in their honour, kissed them, used them in prayer.
But some began to pray to them, as if icons could hear and had a power of their own, apart from God.
Things had gone too far.
Yet iconoclasm was a cure far worse than the disease. At root it doubted that God could and does work through material means. People like this wind up doubting the sacraments or even that God once became man as Jesus Christ.
By 787 bishops from all over the Christian world met at Nicaea to settle the matter. They said that the cross and images should be shown respect and honour because of what they represent. By honouring a picture of Jesus we are honouring Jesus himself. That is right and good. What is wrong is to worship an image in its own right, to believe it has a power of its own apart from God.
For most that settled the matter. But it was not quite the end: another period of persecution by the iconoclasts followed in 814, but by 842 iconoclasm was dead and gone.
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