Leo III the Isaurian

venerated in the early church, and there were no councils that either promoted or rejected this practice, but there was resistance to it. Some people thought it could be idolatrous. In the fourth century AD, the Council of Elvira in Spain criticized the devotion of icons as too excessive. The bishop Basil of Caesarea supported the practice of devotion to icons because it gave honour to its prototype (i.e. Christ, Mary, or the Saints). This controversy continued to brew, and after 680 AD people began prostrating in front of icons, treated like relics of Saints, they were used as altars, and pieces of them were mixed into the Eucharistic bread. This all came to a head when in 730 AD Emperor Leo III issued edicts criticizing images and this began the iconoclasm (i.e. icon breaker) period. Leo never had any images removed or destroyed; rather he just had issues with their veneration. There were three concerns about venerating icons: 1) it went against the second commandment (not to worship graven images), 2) it was a recent practice, and 3) excessive devotion could lead to idolatry. For some bishops, lay devotion was running wild without proper theological reflection. It has also been suggested that iconoclasm was a response from bishops near the Turkey border to why the Byzantines were defeated by the Muslims there. The Muslims did not venerate images, and they won. The eventual suppression of icon veneration was only enforced within the confines of the Byzantine Empire, so…