Its copies. CHAP. century, these images, made without hands (in Greek, XLIX. it is a single word'), were propagated in the camps and cities of the Eastern empire'2: they were the objects of worship, and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger or tumult, their venerable presence could revive the hope, rekindle the courage, or repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of these pictures, the far greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil, could only pretend to a secondary likeness and improper title: but there were some of higher descent, who derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with the original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miraculous and prolific virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation with the image of Edessa; and such is the veronica of Rome, or Spain, or Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony and bloody sweat applied to his face, and delivered to an holy matron. The fruitful precedent was speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs. In the church of Diospolis in Palestine, the features of the mother of God" were deeply inscribed in a marble column: the East and West have been decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the evangelist, who was perhaps a physician, has been forced to exercise the occupation of a painter, so profane and odious in the eyes of the primitive Christians. The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of Homer, and the chissel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind with momen, tary devotion: but these Catholic images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last de generacy of taste and genius'. 11 AxpoTointos. See Ducange, in Gloss. Græc. et Lat. The subject is treated with equal learning and bigotry by the Jesuit Gretser (Syntagma de Imaginibus non Manû facts, ad calcem Codini de Officiis, p. 289-330.) the ass, or rather the fox, of Ingoldstadt (See the Scaligerana); with equal rea son and wit by the protestant Beausobre, in the ironical controversy which he has spread through many volumes of the Bibliothéque Germanique (tom. xviii. p. 1-50. xx. p. 27-68. xxv. p. 1-36. xxvii. p. 85-118. xxviii. p. 1— 33. xxxi. p. 111-148. xxxii. p. 75–107. xxxiv. p. 67—96.) 12 Theophylact Simocatta (l. ii. c. 3. p. 34. l. iii. c. 1. p. 63.) celebrates the θεανδρικών εικασμα, which he styles αχειροποιητον ; yet it was no more than a copy, since he adds, αρχετυπον το εκείνον οι Ρωμαιοι (of Edessa.) θρησκεύεσι τε agentov. See Pagi, tom. 1. A. D. 586, No. 11. 13 See, in the genuine or supposed works of John Damascenus, two passages on the Virgin and St. Luke, which have not been noticed by Gretser, nor consequently by Beausobre (Opera Joh. Damascen. tom. i. p. 618. 631.) 66 14. Your scandalous figures stand quite out from the canvas: they are as bad as a group of statues!" It was thus that the ignorance and bigotry of a Greek priest applauded the pictures of Titian, which he had ordered, and refused to accept. XLIX. Opposi The worship of images had stolen into the church by CHAR insensible degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as productive of comfort and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the eighth tion to century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, the more image worship. timorous Greeks were awakened by an apprehension, that under the mask of Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers: they heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant charge of the Jews and Mahometans', who derived from the Law and the Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative worship. The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal and depreciate their authority; but the triumphant Musulmans, who reigned at Damascus, and threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the accumulated weight of truth and victory. The cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, had been fortified with the images of Christ, his mother, and his saints and each city presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous defence. In a rapid conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those cities and these images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of these mute and inanimate idols. For a while Edessa had braved the Persian assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became the slave and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three hundred years, the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of Constantinople, for a ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver, the redemption of two hundred Musulmans, and a perpetual truce for the territory of Edessa. In this season of distress and dismay, the eloquence of the monks was exercised in the defence of images; and they attempted to prove, that the sin and schism of the greatest 15 By Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the origin of the Iconoclasts is imputed to the caliph Yezid and two Jews, who promised the em pire to Leo; and the reproaches of these hostile sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy for restoring the purity of the Christian worship (see Spanheim, Hist. Imag. c. 2). 16 See Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 267.) Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 201.) and Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 264.) and the Criticisms of Pagi (tom. iii. A. D. 944). The prudent Franciscan refuses to determine whether the image of Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa; but its repose is inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is no longer famous or fashionable. XLIX. CHAP. part of the Orientals had forfeited the favour and annihilated the virtue, of these precious symbols. But they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church. As the worship of images had never been established by any general or positive law, its progress in the Eastern empire had been retarded, or accelerated, by the differences of men and manners, the local degrees of refinement, and the personal characters of the bishops. The splendid devotion was fondly cherished by the levity of the capital, and the inventive genius of the Byzantine clergy, while the rude and remote districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred luxury. Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians maintained, after their conversion, the simple worship which had preceded their separation; and the Armenians, the most warlike subjects of Rome, were not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to the sight of images. These various denominations of men afforded a fund of prejudice and aversion, of small account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune of a soldier, a prelate, or an eunuch, might be often connected with the powers of the church and state. Leo, the Icono Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emclast, and peror Leo the third, who, from the mountains of Isauhis succes- ria, ascended the throne of the East. He was ignorant sors, of sacred and profane letters; but his education, his reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with an hatred of ima ges; and it was held to be the duty of a prince, to impose A. D. 726 -840. 17 Αρμενίοις και Αλαμάνοις επίσης η αγίων εικονων προσκύνησις απηγόρευται (Nicetas, 1. ii. p. 258). The Armenian churches are still content with the cross (Missions du Levant, tom. iii. p. 148.) but surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the superstition of the Germans of the xiith century. 18 Our original, but not impartial, monuments of the Iconoclasts must be drawn from the Acts of the Councils, tom. viii and ix. Collect. Labbé, edit. Venet. and the historical writings of Theophanes, Nicephorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonaras, &c. Of the modern Catholics, Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander (Hist. Eccles. Seculum viii and ix.) and Maimbourg (Hist, des Iconoclastes), have treated the subject with learning, passion, and credulity. The protestant labours of Frederic Spanheim (Historia Imaginarum Restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformées, tom. ii. 1. xxiii. p. 13391385.) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indiffer ence. on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But CHAP. in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of XLIX. toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious; he assembled a great council of senators and bishops, and enacted with their consent, that all the images should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the churches, where they might be visible to the eyes, and inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it was impossible on either side to check the rapid though adverse impulse of veneration and abhorrence in their lofty position, the sacred images still edified their votaries and reproached the tyrant. He was himself provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation the example of the Jewish king, who had broken without scruple the brazen serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence as well as the use of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images, as an article of faith, and by the authority of a general council: but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son Constantine"; and though it is stigmatised by triumphant bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The debates and decrees of Their symany provincial synods introduced the summons of the nod of 19 Some flowers of rhetoric are Zuvedev mapavoμor xxι adsor, and the bishops της ματαιοφροσιν. By Damascenus it is styled ακυρος και άδεκτος (Ope ra, tom. i. p. 623). Spanheim's Apology for the Synod of Constantinople (p. 171, &c.) is worked up with truth and ingenuity, from such materials as he could find in the Nicene Acts (p. 1046, &c.) The witty John of Damascus converts Oxom8s into EmiσKorss makes them xoanduxes, slaves of their belly, &c. Opera, tom. i. p. 306. Constantinople, XLIX. A. D. 754. CHAP. general council which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, and was composed of the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia ; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were the slaves of the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the churches of Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general council: yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding assemblies which had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic faith. After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed an unanimous decree, that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical; that image worship was a corruption of Christianity and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor. In their loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits of their temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they entrusted the execution of their spiritual censures. At Constantinople, as in the former councils, the will of the prince was the rule of episcopal faith; but on this occasion, I am inclined to suspect that a large majority of the prelates sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of hope and fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel: nor was it easy for them to discern the clue, and tread back the mazes, of the labyrinth. The worship of images was inseparably blended, at least to a pious fancy, with the cross, the Virgin, the Saints and their relics: the holy ground was involved in a cloud of miracles and visions; and the nerves of the mind, curiosity and scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of obedience and belief. Constantine himself is accused of indulging a royal license to doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the Catholics20, but they were deeply inscribed in the public and pri Their creed. 20 He is accused of proscribing the title of saint; styling the Virgin, mother of Christ; comparing her after her delivery to an empty purse; of Arianism, Nestorianism, &c. In his defence, Spanheim (c. iv. p. 207.) is |