Iconoclasm - Major Instances

Major Instances

• In Judaism, King Hezekiah purged Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel of figures, including the Nehushtan, as recorded in the Second Book of Kings. His reforms were reversed in the reign of his son Manasseh.
• A midrash included in Genesis Rabba attributes a major act of iconoclasm to Abraham. Although not attested in the Biblical account of the Partriarch's life, it became an important aspect of Abraham's character in later Jewish tradition.
• During the process of Christianisation under Constantine, groups destroyed the images and sculptures expressive of the Roman Empire's polytheist state religion.
• The Eastern Orthodox Church had a period of Byzantine iconoclasm during the late medieval years, in which some groups destroyed the church's religious imagery.
• During the rule of Girolamo Savonarola in Florence between 1494 and 1497, the Bonfire of the Vanities took place. Books, works of art, mirrors, cosmetics, sculptures, gaming tables, chess pieces, musical instruments, fine dresses and women’s hats were burnt in public view.
• When Spanish and Portuguese Christians took control of Iberia, they built churches over mosques and destroyed other imagery of Islam.
• Shahjahan during his rule destroyed hundreds of Hindu temples.
• Muhammad of Ghor destoyed several Hindu temples and relics and looted the temple wealth.
• During the Protestant Reformation and the European wars of religion, known as the Beeldenstorm in the Netherlands, Protestants destroyed traditional (by then considered Catholic) imagery in churches, including paintings, sculptures and other representations. In some instances, Protestants destroyed the imagery of other Protestants.
• Most of the moai of Easter Island were toppled during the 18th century in the iconoclasm of civil wars.
• Most of the Polytheistic religious deities and texts of Pre-Western Americas, Oceania, and Africa, were destroyed by Christian missionaries and their converts.
• During the French Revolution, people widely destroyed religious and monarchical imagery.
• During and after the Russian Revolution, widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery took place, as well as destruction of imagery related to the Czar.
• During and after the Communist overthrow of the monarchy in China, as well as during the later Cultural Revolution, there was widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery in China, including in Tibet.
• After the Second Vatican Council in the late twentieth century, some Roman Catholic parish churches discarded much of their traditional imagery, art, and architecture.
• During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Budapest, and through the fall of Communism in 1989, protesters often attacked and took down sculptures and images of Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR.
• The Taliban destroyed two ancient statues of Buddha at Bamyan in Afghanistan.
• The destruction of the sphinx nose, the white washing of rulers of Europe during the Dark Ages, the depiction of Christ during the renaissance.