Iconoclasts

in the history of the Eastern church, a sect bent on removing images from the service of the church. The term means image breakers. The Iconoclasts flourished during the eighth and ninth centuries. They interpreted the second commandment to forbid all artistic symbols, whether painted, engraved or carved. They held that the ignorant degraded symbols into idols. They rose in influence under the Greek emperor, Leo the Isaurian, by whom images were ordered out of the churches. Eastern mobs sacked the sacred edifices in religious fury, cutting canvas from frames, defacing artistic walls, smashing priceless statuary, and breaking carvings from the stone work. A great schism arose. The eastern and the western branches of the church separated. The Roman or western church resisted the iconoclastic movement and church art was preserved up to the time of the Protestant Reformation, when the vandal mob defaced and destroyed many valuable works, particularly in Germany, the Low Countries, and in Scotland. England also has much to regret at the hands of iconoclasts.