Iconophobia

Article summary

Iconophobia (literally fear of icons) refers to an aversion to images, especially religious icons. Iconophobia is differentiated from iconoclasm in that iconophobia refers to the aversion to or hatred of the images whereas iconoclasm refers to the actual destruction of images that may arise from iconophobia. Chari Larsson wrote: “If iconophobia is defined as the suspicion and anxiety towards the power exerted by images, its history is an ancient one in all of its Platonic, Christian, and Judaic forms. At its most radical, iconophobia results in an act of iconoclasm, or the total destruction of the image. At the other end of the spectrum, contemporary iconophobia may be more subtle. Images are simply withdrawn from circulation with the aim of eliminating their visibility.” The history of iconophobia begins with ancient Greece and Rome and continues with the violent iconoclasms of the period 726-842 in the Eastern Orthodox Church within the Byzantine Empire. But it is the Protestant Reformation that is most associated with iconophobia: “The Protestant Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517, brought iconophobia to the forefront of contemporary politics... Iconophobia was pushed to its extreme in the teachings of John Calvin... Protestant iconophobia had a huge and not exclusively negative impact on aesthetics and the history of art.…

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