Early in the eighth century, however, Emperor Leo III (717–41) launched an attack on the use of icons. Perhaps he was motivated by a sense of the empire’s wrongdoing. Christianity taught that God punished the children of Israel because of their idolatry. Perhaps the humiliating defeats and losses of the previous century, as well as the calamitous earthquake early in Leo’s reign, were intended to bring “God’s new chosen people” to their senses. In any case, before the end of the seventh century, feeling against the icons developed and spread.
