Where is iconoclasm located

Controversy over the nature of religious images was not new in the sixteenth century. The same tension had rocked the Byzantine Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries. Like the earlier Byzantine case, strict reformers believed images were inherently sinful. The northern humanist Desiderius Erasmus noted that the physical veneration of an object made it an active agent and turned it into an idol, pushing the objects and images traditionally at the heart of northern European piety into the zone of the idolatrous.

Therefore, to use an image as part of your prayers creates idols — the very sin explicitly condemned in the Second Commandment, which reads:. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, 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; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Exodus Luther himself was not entirely anti-image, stating that if there was no sin in the heart, there was no risk in seeing images with your eyes. However, the faithful needed to remove the roots of sin in themselves; they needed to worship God and not a material object which takes the place of God. Luther later clarified that what the second commandment prohibited was images of God; images of saints or crucifixes were not condemned by him as they serve as memorials.

The precise nature of the debate varied widely based on location, and violence against images erupted at different times in different cities throughout Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium, and England.

The debate about the nature of images seems abstract and it is impossible to know to what extent the theological details were the motivations of any specific iconoclast. In the case of the Beeldenstorm of , we can focus on a few factors to more closely examine one particular case and the intersection of tensions that led to violence.

Studying the Beeldenstorm is complicated by the fact that it took many different forms depending on the local conditions and the range of responses to both religious and political circumstance. European territories under the rule of the Philip II of Spain around , with the Spanish Netherlands in light green public domain. Debates over religious imagery occurred at the same time as other complex disputes.

Political tensions were running high. At the time, most of the land that now constitutes The Netherlands and Belgium was the Spanish Netherlands — an assortment of territories brought together through marriages and dynastic alliances and owing fealty to the King of Spain.

The Spanish Crown supported an aggressive Catholic identity and agenda and vigorously pursued heretics anyone not practicing Catholicism in line with the teachings of the Church in Rome. The Spanish Inquisition existed specifically to root out those who were not Catholic enough.

Though we tend to think of the Inquisition as something confined to the Iberian peninsula Spain and Portugal , it also had a significant impact on Northern Europe. The first church council concerned with religious imagery. On behalf of the church, the council endorsed an iconoclast position and declared image worship to be blasphemy. This council reversed the decrees of the Council of Hieria and restored image worship, marking the end of the First Byzantine Iconoclasm.

Iconoclasm is generally motivated by an interpretation of the Ten Commandments that declares the making and worshipping of images, or icons, of holy figures such as Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and saints to be idolatry and therefore blasphemy.

Most surviving sources concerning the Byzantine Iconoclasm were written by the victors, or the iconodules people who worship religious images , so it is difficult to obtain an accurate account of events. However, the Byzantine Iconoclasm refers to two periods in the history of the Byzantine Empire when the use of religious images or icons was opposed by religious and imperial authorities.

The movement was triggered by changes in Orthodox worship that were themselves generated by the major social and political upheavals of the seventh century for the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine Iconoclasm. A depiction of the destruction of a religious image under the Byzantine Iconoclasm, by Chludov Psalter, 9th century CE.

Traditional explanations for Byzantine Iconoclasm have sometimes focused on the importance of Islamic prohibitions against images influencing Byzantine thought. According to Arnold J. Toynbee, for example, it was the prestige of Islamic military successes in the 7th and 8th centuries that motivated Byzantine Christians to adopt the Islamic position of rejecting and destroying idolatrous images.

The role of women and monks in supporting the veneration of images has also been asserted. Social and class-based arguments have been put forward, such as the assertion that iconoclasm created political and economic divisions in Byzantine society, and that it was generally supported by the eastern, poorer, non-Greek peoples of the empire who had to constantly deal with Arab raids.

Byzantine iconoclasm was revived again in , but was ultimately condemned in Such is the general account of the iconoclast controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries in Byzantium. However, extant objects from the provinces during that period suggest a more complex, nuanced situation.

Certain examples of what was previously understood to be "textbook" iconoclasm may signify something else altogether. A number of churches and synagogues located in Jordan and Palestine show signs of apparent iconoclastic activity from the eighth century.

Between the s and s, the mosaic floors in these buildings, which originally included depictions of humans and animals, were at least partially rearranged to depict inanimate subjects like vegetation. Stone tesserae. Madaba Archaeological Park, Jordan. Images: www. However, these buildings were located in regions under Muslim, not Byzantine, rule from the time of the seventh century. Furthermore, recent scholarship reveals that the effects of Byzantine iconoclasm were largely confined to Constantinople and its environs.

What, then, was behind this eighth-century "iconoclasm" in Jordan and Palestine? Did the reach of Constantinople's policies really extend beyond the borders of its military control? While Byzantine iconoclasm was primarily concerned with the veneration of images of Christ and the saints, the rearranging of the mosaics in question seems directed against depiction of any animate figures.

It has also been observed that the revised images depicting vegetation are very similar to mosaic images in Umayyad mosques, like those in the Friday Mosque in Damascus. Details of the mosaics on the western courtyard wall from the Friday Mosque, Damascus, — Left: Detail showing a pastoral scene punctuated by tall trees.