iconoclastic

In 726 CE, the Byzantine Emperor Leo III ordered the removal of a large golden image of Christ from the Chalke Gate in Constantinople. Soldiers pried it from the wall. The crowd that had gathered to watch killed the officer who gave the order. This act of state set off a century-long controversy in the eastern Roman Empire, splitting the church, ending careers, and destroying monasteries across the eastern Mediterranean.

The Greek words for this policy were eikon (image) and klaein (to break): iconoclasm, the breaking of icons. The Iconoclast Controversy ran in two phases, from 726 to 787 and from 815 to 843. Emperors who supported image-breaking believed that the veneration of icons was idolatry. Their opponents, including the theologian John of Damascus writing around 730, argued that the Incarnation had made physical representation of Christ not merely permissible but necessary. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 settled the first phase by restoring image veneration.

The Greek compound ikonoklastes entered Byzantine Latin as iconoclastes and arrived in English in the 17th century to describe the historical controversy. By the 18th century, English writers were using it metaphorically for anyone who attacked established institutions or cultural orthodoxies. The adjective form iconoclastic appeared in the mid-19th century, when Victorian journalism needed a single word for the boldness of reformers who refused to respect what everyone else found sacred.

The word found particular traction as a compliment. What the Byzantine church called heresy, the 19th-century press called courage. An iconoclastic economist, an iconoclastic scientist, an iconoclastic poet: in each case the adjective praised the willingness to strike at what others held inviolable. This is a remarkable semantic reversal: Byzantine iconoclasts were condemned at councils and venerated images were restored over their graves, while their English descendants are celebrated in newspaper profiles.