Second Council of Nicaea

The Second Council of Nicaea was the seventh ecumenical council recognised by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, convened in Nicaea, in present-day Turkey, by the Byzantine empress Irene and the patriarch Tarasios. Its purpose was to end the first period of iconoclasm, the movement that had rejected and destroyed religious images in the Byzantine Empire. The bishops decided that icons could be venerated, and made a distinction between veneration, which could be given to images, and worship, which belonged to God alone. The decisions were based on the argument that honour paid to an image passes to the person depicted. Iconoclasm returned in the early 9th century, and the veneration of icons was finally restored in 843.

Open on the timeline