Religious and political destruction of the sacred images or monuments, usually (though not always) of
another religious group.
Byzantine Iconoclasm
Emperor
Leo III the Isaurian banned the use of
icons of
Jesus, Mary, and the
Saints and commmanded the destruction of these images. The
Iconoclastic Controversy was fueled by the refusal of many Christians resident outside the
Byzantine Empire, including many Christians living in the
Islamic Caliphate to accept the emperor's theological arguments.
Islamic Iconoclasm
Because of the prohibition against figural decoration in mosques - not, as is often said, a total ban on the use of images - Muslims have on occasion committed acts of iconoclasm against the devotional images of other religions. An example of this is the 2000 destruction of the monumental statues of the Buddha at Bamian by the
Taliban.
Reformation Iconoclasm
Some of the
Protestant reformers encouraged their followers to destroy
Catholic art works by insisting that they were idols.
Huldreich Zwingli and
John Calvin promoted this approach to the adaptation of earlier buildings for Protestant worship.
to be integrated
- Serapeum - Christian destruction (388) of temple in Alexandria
- Anglesey - Roman destruction of Druid shrine
- Adalbert of Prague - Christian vs. Sacred Oaks
- Martin of Tours - Christian vs. Sacred Tree