Before we delve into the story of today’s saint, we should first ask: what is iconoclasm?
Following the Council of Chalcedon, a controversy arose in the Eastern Church over whether it was permissible to depict Christ in icons. Influenced by the Islamic doctrine of God’s inaccessibility, those who opposed images argued that Christ could not be represented because He was true God, and they considered that icons placed too much emphasis on His humanity. Conversely, defenders of images claimed that the Spirit of God permeated visible representations of the invisible God. In 726, Emperor Leo III banned images and ordered their destruction in all churches and monasteries.
The ‘iconoclasts’, or detractors of images, based their argument on the Old Testament prohibition against making representations of God. This dispute, which raged fiercely for nearly a century, ended when the Church bindingly defined that icons of Christ and the saints could be venerated.