Iconoclast, << y KON uh klast, >> has come to mean a person who attacks long-established beliefs. The word iconoclast comes from the Greek words eikon (image) and klastes (breaker). In the days of the early Christian church, people who opposed the veneration of images—that is, the showing of reverence for images—were called iconoclasts. A long dispute had divided the church, especially in the East, about images of Jesus Christ and the saints in churches. Emperor Leo III in 726 issued an order that all images and paintings in churches should be covered or destroyed. This order divided the church into opposing groups. The iconoclasts favored removing the images, but many people, particularly monks and women, opposed the iconoclasts.
After the second Nicene Council met in 787, Empress Irene of the Byzantine Empire permitted the veneration of images, as long as this veneration had a different quality from that owed to God (see Nicene Councils ). Finally, in 843, the Eastern Church again permitted pictures, but not complete statues or images, in churches. Members of the Roman Catholic Church venerate images as symbols of the people whom the images represent.
