Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm is the conviction that icons, images, or monuments should be destroyed, typically driven by religious or political motives. People who practice or support this are known as iconoclasts—a label that later broadened to describe anyone who attacks deeply held beliefs or established institutions as false or harmful. On the other side, someone who respects or worships religious images is called an iconolater by iconoclasts; in Byzantine contexts, such a person is termed an iconodule or iconophile. Iconoclasm is distinct from *damnatio memoriae*, the destruction of a specific ruler’s images after their death or overthrow.

Although iconoclasts can belong to a different religion than the one whose images they target, the practice more often arises from internal sectarian conflicts within a single faith. The word itself comes from the Byzantine Iconoclasm—the eighth- and ninth-century struggles over religious icons in the Byzantine Empire. Iconoclasm appears more frequently in religions that reject idolatry, especially the Abrahamic faiths. Outside religion, it can refer to movements that systematically destroy symbols of an ideology or cause, such as the removal of monarchist emblems during the French Revolution.

**Early religious iconoclasm**

In the Bronze Age, the most notable episode of iconoclasm happened in Egypt during the Amarna Period. Akhenaten, ruling from his new capital Akhetaten, transformed Egyptian art and launched a campaign against traditional gods, promoting a state monolatry focused on the sun-disk god Aten. He ordered royal officials to chisel out every reference to Amun and other deities from tombs, temple walls, and cartouches, aiming to convince people that Aten was the sole true god. After his death, public references to Akhenaten himself were destroyed. Scholar Jan Assmann contrasts Egyptian and Israelite views: for Egyptians, destroying cult images was the worst religious crime; for Israelites, the worst crime was idolatry. He suggests that the traditions of Akhenaten the iconoclast and the Golden Calf of idolatry may have influenced each other inversely.

**Judaism**

The Hebrew Bible records that God commanded the Israelites to demolish all engraved stones, molded images, and high places of the Canaanites upon entering the Promised Land. King Hezekiah later purged Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem and destroyed all figures throughout the Land of Israel, including the Nehushtan, as described in the Second Book of Kings. His son Manasseh reversed these reforms.

**Iconoclasm in Christian history**

Early Christianity was largely aniconic. Church Fathers like Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria considered the Ten Commandments binding on Christians. Early apologists argued that God could not be represented and that material things, unlike divine beings, decay. Marcus Minucius Felix stated that Christians lacked images because they worshiped an invisible God. Aniconism became prominent during the Byzantine Iconoclasm of the eighth century and again in the sixteenth century, when Calvinism rejected all images in churches—a practice that continues in conservative Reformed and Anabaptist churches today. The Catholic and Lutheran churches, however, defend the use of sacred images in worship spaces.

Scattered early opposition to images is reported: the Synod of Elvira’s Canon 36 may have endorsed iconoclasm, stating that pictures should not be placed in churches to avoid worship or adoration. The date of this canon is debated. Proscription of images ceased after pagan temples were destroyed. Widespread Christian iconography only began after Christianity was legalized under Emperor Constantine (around 312 AD), when Christian groups destroyed the images and sculptures of the Roman polytheist state religion. Early theologians with iconoclastic tendencies included Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Lactantius, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, and Epiphanius.

**Byzantine era**

After the reign of Emperor Justinian (527–565), the use of images increased dramatically in both volume and quality, prompting a growing aniconic reaction. A notable shift occurred in 695, when Justinian II’s...