Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm is the belief in destroying icons and other images or monuments, primarily for religious reasons. People who engage in iconoclasm are called iconoclasts. They believe that icons serve as idols and that Christians worship the icons rather than God and, therefore, commit idolatry. People who are in favor of icons and against iconoclasm are called iconophiles. There were two iconoclasms in the Byzantine Empire: the first from 726 to 787 and the second from 814 to 842.

Iconoclasm first began and was enforced during the reign of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian and continued under his successors. It was motivated by an interpretation of the Ten Commandments of the Bible, which forbade the making, veneration, and worshipping of “graven images, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

Unable to deduce why the Muslims were so successful in battle and the Byzantines were not, the Byzantines concluded that because the Muslims had no religious icons (the Koran forbade them) and the Byzantines venerated them, God was favoring the Muslims.