CHAPTER IV.

ICONOCLASM.

A.D. 717-775.

THE gradual advance of a reverence for images and pictures, from the time when art began to be taken into the service of the Church, has been related in the preceding volume. But when it had reached a certain point, art had little to do with it. It was not by the power of form or colour that the religious images influenced the mind; it was not for the expression of ideal purity or majesty that one was valued above another, but for superior sanctity or for miraculous virtue. Some were supposed to have fallen down from heaven; some, to have been the work of the evangelist St. Luke; and to others a variety of legends were attached. Abgarus, king of Edessa, it was said, when in correspondence with our Lord, commissioned a painter to take the Saviour's likeness. But the artist, dazzled by the glory of the countenance, gave up the attempt; whereupon the Saviour himself impressed his image on a piece of linen, and sent it to the king. This tale was unknown to Eusebius, although he inserted the pretended correspondence with Abgarus in his history; and the image was said, in consequence of the apostasy of a later king, to have been built up in a wall at Edessa, until, after a concealment of five centuries, it was discovered by means of a vision. By it, and by a picture of the Blessed Virgin, "not made with hands," the city was saved from an attack of the Persians. Cloths of a like miraculous origin (as was supposed) were preserved in other places; and many images were believed to perform cures and other miracles, to exude sweat or odoriferous balsam, to bleed, to weep, or to speak.

f

When images had become objects of popular veneration, the

a In the account of the controversies as to "images," the word will be used to express paintings as well as works of sculpture.

bPp. 345-6, 567-8.

e Milman, ii. 90-3. d See vol. i. p. 3.

e i. 13. Procopius, two centuries later, says that our Lord was popularly believed to have promised that Edessa

should be impregnable (De Bello Pers. ii. 12); but he does not mention the image.

Evagrius, v. 27; Cedren. 176-7.

Gibbon, iv. 465-7; Neand. v. 278. Heraclius took one with him in his Persian expedition. Georg. Pisida de Exp. Pers. i. 139, seqq. (Patrol. Gr. xcii.)

cautions and distinctions which divines laid down for the regulation of it were found unavailing. Three hundred years before the time which we have now reached, Augustine, while repelling the charge of idolatry from the Church, had felt himself obliged to acknowledge that many of its members were nevertheless "adorers of pictures ;" and the superstition had grown since Augustine's day. It became usual to fall down before images, to pray to them, to kiss them, to burn lights and incense in their honour, to adorn them with gems and precious metals, to lay the hand on them in swearing, and even to employ them as sponsors at baptism.'

The moderate views of Gregory the Great as to the use and the abuse of images have been already mentioned. But although, of the two kindred superstitions, the reverence for relics was more characteristic of the western, and that for images of the eastern Church, the feeling of the West in behalf of images was now increased, and the successors of Gregory were ready to take a decided part in the great ecclesiastical and political movements which arose out of the question.

m

Leo the Isaurian, who had risen from the class of substantial peasantry through the military service of Justinian II., until in 717" he was raised by general acclamation to the empire, was a man of great energy, and, as even his enemies the ecclesiastical writers do not deny, was possessed of many noble qualities, and of talents which were exerted with remarkable success, both in war and in civil administration. In the beginning of his reign he was threatened by the Arabs, whose forces besieged Constantinople both by land and by sea; but he destroyed their fleet by the new invention of the "Greek fire," " compelled the army to retire with numbers much diminished by privation and slaughter, and by a succession of victories delivered his subjects from the fear of the Arabs for many years

It was not until after he had secured the empire against foreign enemies that Leo began to concern himself with the affairs of religion. In the sixth year of his reign' he issued an edict ordering that Jews and Montanists should be forcibly baptised.

h See vol. i. p. 346.

i Basnage, 1335; Schröckh, xx. 515-6; Neand. v. 278; Schlosser, 410.

Page 26. To the same purpose is part of another letter, which, however, labours under suspicion-ix. 52, Ad Secundinum.

m Neand. v. 278.

Finlay, ii. 17, 29.

• Gibbon, iv. 410-1; Schlosser, 140-2; Finlay, vol. ii., c. 1.

PAs to this, see Gibbon, iv. 182-4. 4 Nic. Cpol. 35; Theophan. 607-613; Finlay, ii. 17-22.

r Schlosser, 161. I have generally followed this writer as to the order and

Theophan. 600-6; Pagi, xii. 263; dates of the proceedings under Leo.

8

The Jews submitted in hypocrisy, and mocked at the rites which they had undergone. The Montanists, with the old fanaticism of the sect whose name they bore, appointed a day on which, by general concert, they shut themselves up in their meeting-houses, set fire to the buildings, and perished in the flames.

A.D. 724.

X

From these measures it is evident that Leo seriously misconceived the position of the temporal power in matters of religion, as well as the means which might rightly be used for the advancement of religious truth. In the following year, after a consultation with his officers, he made his first attempt against the superstitious use of images." The motives of this proceeding are matter of conjecture. It is said that he was influenced by Constantine, bishop of Nacolia, and by a counsellor named Bezer, who had for a time been in the service of the caliph, and is described as an apostate from the faith. Perhaps these persons may have represented to him the difficulties which this superstition opposed to the conversion of Jews and Mahometans, who regarded it as heathen and idolatrous; they may, too, have set before him the risk of persecution which it must necessarily bring on the Christian subjects of the caliphs." Leo had seen that towns which relied on their miraculous images had fallen a prey to the arms of the Saracens, and that even the tutelar image of Edessa had been carried off by these enemies of the cross. And when, by whatsoever means, a question on the subject had been suggested, the inconsistency of the popular usages with the letter of Holy Scripture was likely to strike forcibly a direct and untutored mind like that of the emperor. But in truth it would seem—and more especially if we compare Leo's measures against images with those against Judaism and Montanism-that his object

See Schröckh, xix. 316.

Whether they were the same sect with the Montanists of earlier history, is a question. Dean Milman supposes them to have been probably Manichæans (ii. 96). Baronius also thinks that they may have been Manichæans, and supposes that they were called Montanists (MovTavoús, Theophan. 617), from having been driven to take refuge among the mountains (722. 1). But see Pagi's note to the contrary. The sect may have been identical with the early Montanists, although its doctrines may have undergone much change in the course of five centuries and a half. Peter of Sicily, in the ninth century, however, mentions the Montanists as distinct from

Manichæans, p. 42, ed. Rader.

b

"Schlosser, 166. The chronology is doubtful. See Hefele, iii. 345, who questions the statements as to a consultation. 346.

* See Walch, x. 204; Gfrörer, ii. 102.

was as much to establish an ecclesiastical autocracy as to purify the practice of the Church.d

The earlier controversies had shown that the multitude could be violently agitated by subtle questions of doctrine which might have been supposed unlikely to excite their interest. But here the matter in dispute was of a more palpable kind. The movement did not originate with a speculative theologian, but with an emperor, acting on his own will, without being urged by any party, or by any popular cry. An attack was made on material and external objects of reverence, on practices which were bound up with their daily familiar religion, and by means of which the sincere, although unenlightened, piety of the age was accustomed to find its expression. It merely proposed to abolish, without providing any substitute, without directing the mind to any better and more spiritual worship; and at once the people, who had already been discontented by some measures of taxation, rose in vehement and alarming commotion against it. The controversy which had occupied the Church for a century was now forgotten; Monothelites were absorbed among the orthodox when both parties were thrown together by an assault on the objects of their common veneration.

A.D. 726.

Leo would seem not to have anticipated such an excitement. He attempted to allay it by an explanation of the edict which had been issued. It was not, he said, his intention to do away with images, but to guard against the abuse of them, and to protect them from profanation, by removing them to such a height that they could not be touched or kissed. But the general discontent was not to be so easily pacified, and events soon occurred which added to its intensity. A Saracen army, which had advanced as far as Nicæa, was believed to be beaten off by the guardian images of the city." A volcanic island was thrown up in the Ægean, and the air was darkened with ashes-prodigies which, while the emperor saw in them a declaration of heaven against the idolatry of his subjects, the monks, who had possession of the popular mind, interpreted as omens of wrath against his impious proceedings.h The monkish influence was especially strong among the islanders of the Archipelago. These rose in behalf of images; they set up one Cosmas as a pretender to the

Finlay, ii. 10. 67.

e Baron. 722. 3; Walch, x. 73; Schröckh, xx. 513; Neand. v. 273, 306; Döllinger, i. 348; Giesel. II. i. 5-6; Milman, ii. 87-9.

Goldast. 'Imperialia Decreta de

cultu Imaginum,' Francof. 1608, p. 16. Baron. 726. 1-5; Schlosser, 167. Walch (x. 225-6) and Hefele (iii. 347) question this.

Theophan. 624. h Nic. Cpol. 37.

throne, and an armed multitude, in an ill-equipped fleet, appeared before Constantinople. But the Greek fire discomfited the disorderly assailants; their leaders were taken and put to death;1 and Leo, provoked by the resistance which his edict had met with, issued a second and more stringent decree, ordering that all images should be destroyed, and that the place of such as were painted on the walls of churches should be covered with whitewash.*

The emperor, relying on the pliability which had been shown on some former occasions by Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople,m had made repeated attempts to draw him into the measures against images." But Germanus, who was now ninety-five years of age, was not to be shaken. He reminded Leo of the oath which he had taken at his coronation, to make no innovations in religion. It is said that in a private interview he professed a conviction that images were to be abolished, "but," he added, “not in your reign." "In whose reign, then?" asked Leo. "In that of an emperor named Conon, who will be the forerunner of Antichrist." "Conon," said the emperor, "is my own baptismal name." Germanus argued that images were meant to represent, not the Trinity, but the Incarnation; that, since the Saviour's appearance in human form, the Old Testament prohibitions were no longer applicable; that the Church had not condemned the use of images in any general council: and he referred to the Edessan impression of our Lord's countenance, and to the pictures painted by St. Luke. "If I am a Jonas," he said, "throw me into the sea. Without a general council, I can make no innovation on the faith." He refused to subscribe the new edict, and resigned his see, to which his secretary Anastasius was appointed."

Jan. 730.

A serious disturbance soon after took place on the removal of a noted statue of the Saviour, which stood over the "Brazen Gate" of the imperial palace, and was known by the name of "the Surety." This figure was the subject of many marvellous legends, and was held in great veneration by the people.

A.D. 730.

of the promise to Conon that he should be emperor, Finlay, ii. 29-32.

P Nic. Cpol. 38; Vita Steph. jun. in Patrol. Gr. c. 1085; Theophan. 626-9; Baron. 726. 6; Pagi, xii. 387-8; Walch, x. 172, 182, 240; Schlosser, 175-6.

¶ 'AVTIQWVNTŃs. This name was derived from a tale of its having miraculously become security for a pious sailor who had occasion to borrow money. Hefele, iii. 348.