When, therefore, a soldier was commissioned to take it down, crowds of women rushed to the place, and clamorously entreated him to spare it. He mounted a ladder, however, and struck his axe into the face; whereupon the women dragged down the ladder, the soldier was either killed by the fall or by their hands, and his body was torn in pieces. They were now excited to frenzy, and, having been joined by a mob of the other sex, rushed to the new patriarch's house with the intention of murdering him. Anastasius took refuge in the palace, and the emperor sent out his guards, who suppressed the commotion, but not without considerable bloodshed.s "The Surety" was taken down, and its place was filled with an inscription, in which the emperor gave vent to his enmity against images. t This incident was followed by some proceedings against the popular party. Many were scourged, mutilated, or banished; and the persecution fell most heavily on the monks, who were especially obnoxious to the emperor, both as leaders in the resistance to his measures, and because the images were for the most part of their manufacture. Leo is charged with having rid himself of his controversial opponents by shutting up schools for general education which had existed since the time of the first Christian emperor," and even by burning a splendid library, with the whole college of professors who were attached to it.* But beyond the emperor's dominions the cause of images found a formidable champion in John of Damascus, the most celebrated theologian of his time. John, according to his legendary biographer, a patriarch of Jerusalem who lived two centuries later, TÓTATOι avopes) is suspicious. Basnage (1346) says that the library was really destroyed by an accidental fire, which he places under Basiliscus, and Mr. Finlay under Leo (ii. 52). Walch regards the story as fabulous (as does also Hefele, iii. 346), but thinks that the schools may have been suspended for a time by Leo (x. 184, 231-4). Schlosser, however, upholds it. 163-4. Baron. 727, 18-20. John was author of the earliest work of systematic theology, A Correct Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. (Έκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς op@odógov níσTEWS.) This was long the standard authority in the Greek church. In the west, it became known from the 12th century by a Latin translation, and John is considered as the ancestor of the schoolmen. Schröckh, xx. 230327; Hagenbach, i. 390-1; Gfrörer, ii. 107; Giesel. vi. 438. was a civil officer, high in the service of the caliph of Damascus, when his writings against the emperor's measures provoked Leo to attempt his destruction." A letter was counterfeited in imitation. of his handwriting, containing an offer to betray Damascus to the Greeks, and this (which was represented as one of many such letters) Leo enclosed to the caliph, with expressions of abhorrence against the pretended writer's treachery. The caliph, without listening to John's disavowals of the charge, or to his entreaties for a delay of judgment, ordered his right hand to be cut off; and it was exposed in the market-place until evening, when John requested that it might be given to him, in order that by burying it he might relieve the intolerable pain which he suffered while it hung in the air. On recovering it, he prostrated himself before an image of the Virgin Mother, prayed that, as he had lost his hand for the defence of images, she would restore it, and vowed thenceforth to devote it to her service. He then lay down to sleep; the "Theotokos" appeared to him in a vision, and in the morning the hand was found to be reunited to his arm. The caliph, convinced of John's innocence by this miracle, requested him to remain in his service; but John betook himself to the monastery of St. Sabbas, near Jerusalem, where the monks, alarmed at the neophyte's great reputation, were perplexed how to treat him, and subjected him to a variety of degrading, and even disgusting, trials. But his spirit of obedience triumphed over all; he was admitted into the monastery, and was afterwards advanced to the order of presbyter. a Of the three Orations in which John of Damascus asserted the cause of images, two were written before, and the third after, the forced resignation of Germanus. He argues that images were forbidden to the Jews lest they should fall into the error of their heathen neighbours, or should attempt to represent the invisible Godhead; but that, since the Incarnation, these reasons no longer exist, and we must not be in bondage to the mere letter of Scripture. True it is that Scripture does not prescribe the veneration of images; but neither can we read there of the Trinity, or of the Coessentiality, as distinctly set forth; and images stand on the same ground with these doctrines, which have been gathered by the fathers from the Scriptures. Holy Scripture countenances images by the directions for the making of the Cherubim, and also by our Lord's words as to the tribute-money. As that which bears 2 Vita Joh. Damascen. 15-20, in his works, ed. Le Quien, Paris, 1712, t. i. pp. x.-xiii. Against this tale. see Bas nage, 1279; Spanheim, i. 740. b Orat. i. 7, 8, 16; ii. 7, 8. Cæsar's image is Cæsar's, and is to be rendered, to him; so, too, that which bears Christ's image is to be rendered to Christ, forasmuch as it is Christ's. That images are material, is no good reason for refusing to reverence them; for the holy places are material, the ink and the parchment of the Gospels are material, the eucharistic table, its vessels and its ornaments,-nay, the very body and blood of the Saviour,are material. "I do not," says John, "adore the matter, but the Author of matter, who for my sake became material, that by matter He might work out my salvation." Images, he continues, are for the unlearned what books are for those who can read; they are to the sight what speech is to the ears. He distinguishes between that sort of worship which is to be reserved for God alone," and that which for His sake is given to His angels and saints or to consecrated things. He rejects the idea that, if the images of the Saviour and of the Blessed Virgin are to be allowed, those of the saints should be abolished; if (he holds) the festivals of the saints are kept, if churches are dedicated in their honour, so, too, ought their images to be reverenced.' He adduces a host of authorities from the fathers, with much the same felicity as his quotations from Scripture, while the story of Epiphanius and the painted curtain, which had been alleged by the iconoclasts, is set aside on the ground that the letter which contains it might be a forgery, or that Epiphanius might have intended to guard against some unrecorded local abuse; that the Cypriot bishop's own church still used images, and that, in any case, the act of an individual does not bind the whole church." He denies that the emperor has any authority to legislate in ecclesiastical affairs:-"The well-being of the state," he says, "pertains to princes, but the ordering of the church to pastors and teachers ;" and he threatens Leo with scriptural examples of judgment against those who invaded the rights of the church.° m In Italy, the measures of Leo produced a great agitation. The allegiance of that country had long been gradually weakening. The exarchs were known to the people only as taxgatherers who drained them of their money, and sent it off to Constantinople; for defence against the Lombards or other enemies, the Italian sub jects of the empire were obliged to rely on themselves, without any expectation of effective help from the emperor or his lieutenant.P The pope was the virtual head of the Italians; and the connexion which the first Gregory and his successors had laboured to establish with the Frankish princes, as a means of strengthening themselves against the empire, had lately been rendered more intimate by the agency of the great missionary Boniface. But the ancient and still undiminished hatred with which the Romans regarded their neighbours the Lombards weighed against the motives which might have disposed the popes to take an opportunity of breaking with the empire; and Gregory II., although he violently opposed Leo on the question of images, yet acted in some sort the part of a mediator between him and his Italian subjects." 730. Gregory, on receiving the edicts against images, rejected them. The people of Ravenna expelled the exarch, who sought a refuge A.D. 726- at Pavia. Liutprand, king of the Lombards, eagerly took advantage of the disturbances to pour his troops into the imperial territory, and, sometimes in hostility to the exarch, sometimes in combination with him against the pope, endeavoured to profit by the dissensions of his neighbours. The exarch was killed in the course of the commotions. The pope, hoping for the conversion of Leo (as it is said by writers in the Roman interest ), restrained the Italians from setting up a rival emperor; and, when Liutprand, in alliance with a new exarch, appeared before the walls of Rome, he went out to him, and prevailed on the Lombard king to give up his design against the city. Thus far, therefore, it would appear that the Emperor was chiefly indebted to Gregory for the preservation of his Italian dominions.' But the relations between these potentates were of no friendly kind. It is said that repeated attempts were made by Leo's order to assassinate Gregory; perhaps the foundation of the story may have been that, as the pope himself states, there was an intention of carrying him off to the east, as Martin had been carried off inthe preceding century." On the resignation of Germanus, Gregory refused to acknowledge his successor, and wrote to Leo in a style P Schröckh, xix. 518; Milman, ii. 143. 9 Schröckh, xix. 519-20. See the next chapter. * Schlosser, 172-4. • Anastas. 156. Ib. 157; P. Warnefr. de Gestis Langob. vi. 49. The history of these movements is very intricate, and is full of matter for dispute. Dean Milman's X account (ii. 204-7) is the clearest. See also Baron. 726. 25, seqq.; Walch, x. 248-255, 280; Schröckh, xix. 52, seqq.; Schlosser, 167-9; Giesel. II. i. 32-3; Hefele, iii. 352, seqq. "Greg. II. ap. Hard. iv. 11; Anastas. 156-7; Walch, x. 283-5; Schröckh, xix. 521; xx. 548. * Schlosser, 177. ... of vehement defiance. He urges the usual arguments in behalf of images, and reproaches the emperor with his breach of the most solemn engagements. "We must," he says, "write to you grossly and rudely, forasmuch as you are illiterate and gross. . . . . . Go into our elementary schools, and say, 'I am the overthrower and persecutor of images;' and forthwith the children will cast their tablets at you, and you will be taught by the unwise that which you refuse to learn from the wise." Leo, he says, had boasted of being like Uzziah; that, as the Jewish king destroyed the brazen serpent after it had existed 800 years, so he himself had cast out images after a like time; and the pope, without raising any question either as to Jewish or Christian history, makes him welcome to the supposed parallel. It would, he says, be less evil to be called a heretic than an iconoclast; for the infamy of the heretic is known to few, and few understand his offence; but here the guilt is palpable and open as day. Leo had proposed a council, as a means of settling the question; but he is told that the proposal is idle, inasmuch as, if a council were gathered, he is unfit to take the part of a religious emperor in it. To say, as he had said, “I am emperor and priest," might become one who had protected and endowed the church, but not one who had plundered it, and had drawn people away from the pious contemplation of images to frivolous amusements; emperors are for secular matters, priests for spiritual. The pope mocks at the threat of carrying him off to Constantinople; he has but to withdraw twenty-four furlongs from the walls of Rome into Campania, and his enemies would have to pursue the winds. Why, it had been asked, had the six general councils said nothing of images? As well, replies Gregory, might you ask why they said nothing of common food and drink ; images are matters of traditional and unquestioned use; the bishops who attended the councils carried images with them. The emperor is exhorted to repent and is threatened with judgments; he is charged to take warning from the fate of the Monothelite Constans, and from the glory of that prince's victims, the martyrs Maximus and Martin. The sequel of Gregory's proceedings is matter of controversy. His two letters (Hard. iv. 1-18) were first published by Baronius (xii. 346-359), but were wrongly referred by him to the year 726, whereas they were really written about 729, according to Muratori (IV. i. 343) and Jaffé, or within the last four months of 730, according to Pagi. (xii. 345, 390.) Hefele, however, is inclined to agree with Baronius as to the earlier of the letters (iii. 370-2). Their genuineness has been questioned, but is generally allowed. Walch, x. 174; Schröckh, XX. 535-6. The mistake will be readily seen. |