Why was the issue of icons such a dramatic confrontation in the Byzantine Empire? What will be an ...

Emperor Leo III began to ruminate on whether the use of icons in religious worship constituted a violation of the Commandment regarding no graven images. This stirred an argument within Christianity about the appropriateness of using images and whether or not the coming of Christ had removed the Old Testament prohibition. Adherents argued that it was not worship of the objects themselves, but merely a representation of the divine in order to feel a spiritual closeness to God, Jesus or the Virgin Mary. At the Council of Constantinople in 754, Leo III banned all icons except for the Cross. The Western Church centered in Rome even weighed in, arguing that the position taken by Leo and other iconoclasts was heretical. Finally, with the ascent of Irene in 775, as regent for her son, Constantine VI, the iconoclastic conflict came to an end when she reinstated the use of icons.