Question

What was the iconoclast controversy?

Answer 1

Byzantine Empire was the Eastern half of the Roman Empire that split off and continued to exist for for 1000 years after the Roman Empire fell - it was based in the city of Constantinople, now called Istanbul in Turkey).

Basically the argument is over religious imagery, and whether the creation of images of holy figures causes those images to be worshipped in their own right - which some Christians at the time said was a form of idol-worship and therefore blasphemous.

See the attached Wikipedia link for greater detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Iconoclasm