Volume I Part 36 (2/2)

But especially were painted or graven images of holy personages supposed to be endowed with such powers. They had become objects of actual wors.h.i.+p. The facility with which the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, had given an aristocratic fas.h.i.+on to this idolatry, showed that the old pagan ideas had never really died out, and that the degenerated populations received with approval the religious conceptions of their great predecessors. The early Christian fathers believed that painting and sculpture were forbidden by the Scriptures, and that they were therefore wicked arts; and, though the second Council of Nicea a.s.serted that the use of images had always been adopted by the Church, there are abundant facts to prove that the actual wors.h.i.+p of them was not indulged in until the fourth century, when, on the occasion of its occurrence in Spain, it was condemned by the Council of Illiberis. During the fifth century the practice of introducing images into churches increased, and in the sixth it had become prevalent. The common people, who had never been able to comprehend doctrinal mysteries, found their religious wants satisfied in turning to these effigies. With singular obtuseness, they believed that the saint is present in his image, though hundreds of the same kind were in existence, each having an equal and exclusive right to the spiritual presence. The doctrine of invocation of departed saints, which a.s.sumed prominence in the fifth century, was greatly strengthened by these graphic forms. Pagan idolatry had reappeared.

[Sidenote: Simple fetiches replaced by images.]

[Sidenote: Bleeding and winking images.]

At first the simple cross was used as a subst.i.tute for the amulets and charms of remoter times; it const.i.tuted a fetich able to expel evil spirits, even Satan himself. This Being, who had become singularly debased from what he was in the n.o.ble Oriental fictions, was an imbecile and malicious though not a malignant spirit, affrighted not only at pieces of wood framed in the shape of a cross, but at the form of it made by the finger in the air. A subordinate daemon was supposed to possess every individual at his birth, but he was cast out by baptism.

When, in the course of time, the cross became a crucifix, offering a representation of the dying Redeemer, it might be supposed to have gathered increased virtue; and soon, in addition to that adorable form, were introduced images of the Virgin, the apostles, saints, and martyrs.

The ancient times seemed to have come again, when these pictures were approached with genuflexions, luminaries, and incense. The doctrine of the more intelligent was that these were aids to devotion, and that, among people to whom the art of reading was unknown, they served the useful purpose of recalling sacred events in a kind of hieroglyphic manner. But among the vulgar, and monks, and women, they were believed to be endowed with supernatural power. Of some, the wounds could bleed; of others, the eyes could wink; of others, the limbs could be raised. In ancient times, the statues of Minerva could brandish spears, and those of Venus could weep.

[Sidenote: Idolatry never extinguished in Greece and Italy.]

In truth, the populations of the Greek and Latin countries were no more than nominally converted and superficially Christianized. The old traditions and practices had never been forgotten. A tendency to idolatry seemed to be the necessary incident of the climate. Not without reason have the apologists of the clergy affirmed that image-wors.h.i.+p was insisted on by the people, and that the Church had to admit ideas that she had never been able to eradicate. After seven hundred years of apostolic labour, it was found that the populace of Greece and Italy were apparently in their old state, and that actually nothing at all had been accomplished; the new-comers had pa.s.sed into the track of their predecessors. It is often said that the restoration of image-wors.h.i.+p was owing to the extinction of civilization by the Northern barbarians. But this is not true. In the blood of the German nations the taint of idolatry is but small. In their own countries they gave it little encouragement, and, indeed, hastened quickly to its total rejection. The sin lay not with them, but with the Mediterranean people.

[Sidenote: Influence of the barbarians.]

Nor are those barbarians to be held accountable for the so-called extinction of civilization in Italy. The true Roman race had prematurely died; it came to an untimely end in consequence of its dissolute, its violent life. Its civilization would have spontaneously died with it had no barbarian been present; and, if these intruders produced a baneful effect at first, they compensated for it in the end. As, when fresh coal is added to a fire that is burning low, a still further diminution will ensue, perhaps there may be a risk of entirely putting it out; but in due season, if all goes well, the new material will join in the contagious blaze. The savages of Europe, thrown into the decaying foci of Greek and Roman light, did perhaps for a time reduce the general heat; but, by degrees, it spread throughout their ma.s.s, and the bright flame of modern civilization was the result. Let those who lament the intrusion of these men into the cla.s.sical countries, reflect upon the result which must otherwise have ensued--the last spark would soon have died out, and nothing but ashes have remained.

[Sidenote: Origin of Iconoclasm.]

Three causes gave rise to Iconoclasm, or the revolt against image-wors.h.i.+p: 1st, the remonstrances and derision of the Mohammedans; 2nd, the good sense of a great sovereign, Leo the Isaurian, who had risen by his merit from obscurity, and had become the founder of a new dynasty at Constantinople; 3rd, the detected inability of these miracle-working idols and fetiches to protect their wors.h.i.+ppers or themselves against an unbelieving enemy. Moreover, an impression was gradually making its way among the more intelligent cla.s.ses that religion ought to free itself from such superst.i.tions. So important were the consequences of Leo's actions, that some have been disposed to a.s.sign to his reign the first attempt at making policy depend on theology; and to this period, as I have elsewhere remarked, they therefore refer the commencement of the Byzantine empire. Through one hundred and twenty years, six emperors devoted themselves to this reformation. But it was premature. They were overpowered by the populace and the monks, by the bishops of Rome, and by a superst.i.tious and wicked woman.

[Sidenote: Inutility of miraculous images discovered in the Arab invasions.]

[Sidenote: Destruction and sale of idols by the Arabs.]

It had been a favourite argument against the pagans how little their G.o.ds could do for them when the hour of calamity came, when their statues and images were insulted and destroyed, and hence how vain was such wors.h.i.+p, how imbecile such G.o.ds. When Africa and Asia, full of relics and crosses, pictures and images, fell before the Mohammedans, those conquerors retaliated the same logic with no little effect. There was hardly one of the fallen towns that had not some idol for its protector. Remembering the stern objurgations of the prophet against this deadly sin, prohibited at once by the commandment of G.o.d and repudiated by the reason of man, the Saracen khalifs had ordered all the Syrian images to be destroyed. Amid the derision of the Arab soldiery and the tears of the terror-stricken wors.h.i.+ppers, these orders were remorselessly carried into effect, except in some cases where the temptation of an enormous ransom induced the avengers of the unity of G.o.d to swerve from their duty. Thus the piece of linen cloth on which it was feigned that our Saviour had impressed his countenance, and which was the palladium of Edessa, was carried off by the victors at the capture of that town, and subsequently sold to Constantinople at the profitable price of twelve thousand pounds of silver. This picture, and also some other celebrated ones, it was said, possessed the property of multiplying themselves by contact with other surfaces, as in modern times we multiply photographs. Such were the celebrated images ”made without hands.”

[Sidenote: The Emperor prohibits image-wors.h.i.+p.]

[Sidenote: The monks sustain it.]

It was currently a.s.serted that the immediate origin of Iconoclasm was due to the Khalif Yezed, who had completed the destruction of the Syrian images, and to two Jews, who stimulated Leo the Isaurian to his task.

However that may be, Leo published an edict, A.D. 726, prohibiting the wors.h.i.+p of images. This was followed by another directing their destruction, and the whitewas.h.i.+ng of the walls of churches ornamented with them. Hereupon the clergy and the monks rebelled; the emperor was denounced as a Mohammedan and a Jew. He ordered that a statue of the Saviour in that part of the city called Chalcopratia should be removed, and a riot was the consequence. One of his officers mounted a ladder and struck the idol with an axe upon its face; it was an incident like that enacted centuries before in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria. The sacred image, which had often arrested the course of Nature and worked many miracles, was now found to be unable to protect or to avenge its own honour. A rabble of women interfered in its behalf; they threw down the ladder and killed the officer; nor was the riot ended until the troops were called in and a great ma.s.sacre perpetrated. The monks spread the sedition in all parts of the empire; they even attempted to proclaim a new emperor. Leo was everywhere denounced as a Mohammedan infidel, an enemy of the Mother of G.o.d; but with inflexible resolution he persisted in his determination as long as he lived.

[Sidenote: They accuse the emperor of atheism.]

His son and successor, Constantine, pursued the same iconoclastic policy. From the circ.u.mstance of his accidentally defiling the font at which he was being baptized, he had received the suggestive name of Cop.r.o.nymus. His subsequent career was a.s.serted by the monks to have been foreshadowed by his sacrilegious beginnings. It was publicly a.s.serted that he was an atheist. In truth, his biography, in many respects, proves that the higher cla.s.ses in Constantinople were largely infected with infidelity. The patriarch deposed upon oath that Cop.r.o.nymus had made the most irreligious confessions to him, as that our Saviour, far from being the Son of G.o.d, was, in his opinion, a mere man, born of his mother in the common way. The truth of these accusations was perhaps, in a measure, sustained by the revenge that the emperor took on the patriarch for his indiscreet revelations. He seized him, put out his eyes, caused him to be led through the city mounted on an a.s.s, with his face to the tail, and then, as if to show his unutterable contempt for all religion, with an exquisite malice, appointed him to his office again.

[Sidenote: Council of Constantinople prohibits image-wors.h.i.+p.]

If such was the religious condition of the emperor, the higher clergy were but little better. A council was summoned by Constantine, A.D. 754, at Constantinople, which was attended by 388 bishops. It a.s.serted for itself the position of the seventh general council. It unanimously decreed that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, are blasphemous or heretical; that image-wors.h.i.+p is a corruption of Christianity and a renewed form of paganism; it directed all statues and paintings to be removed from the churches and destroyed, it degraded every ecclesiastic and excommunicated every layman who should be concerned in setting them up again. It concluded its labours with prayers for the emperor who had extirpated idolatry and given peace to the Church.

[Sidenote: Uproar among the monks.]

[Sidenote: The emperor retaliates.]

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