• In 753, the son of Leo, Constantine V, intensified the imperial
rejection of icons, identifying them as idols and aligning them with
both monophysitism and Nestorianism.
o Tarasius, the patriarch of Constantinople, appealed to Pope
Hadrian I, and under Leo IV (775–780), the imperial policy
was reversed.
o In 787, the seventh ecumenical council (the Second Council
of Nicaea) condemned iconoclasm and carefully defined the
proper degrees of veneration due icons.• Despite these decisions, iconoclasm remained a strong movement,
especially in the army, and in 814, a second iconoclastic controversy
erupted under Leo V, “the Armenian” (775–820), involving the
direct and violent persecution of monks who maintained devotion
to icons and the installation of patriarchs who were iconoclastic.
• The persecution continued until the death of the iconoclastic
emperor Theophilus in 842. His widow, acting as regent, installed
Methodius as the patriarch and ended the iconoclastic terror.
• Although iconoclasm was a distinctively Eastern issue, it had an
indirect and significant impact on Western Christianity.
o A mistranslation of the acts of the Second Council of Nicaea
led Frankish bishops to think that the “worship” of idols had
been sanctioned, and they eventually condemned the council
at the synod of Frankfurt in 794 and at a meeting of bishops in
Paris in 828.
o Only the work of several Latin theologians and the steadfast
stance of the papacy led to a gradual acceptance of the Second
Council of Nicaea in the West.o This misunderstanding, however, is usually taken to be one of
the decisive elements in the eventual schism between Greek and
Latin Christianity—along with the object lesson learned from the
rampant caesaropapism revealed in the iconoclasm controversy.