tion of During the succeeding reigns to that of Leo the Armenian, Resumpmatters remained without change; but that emperor resumed Iconoclasm by the sucthe policy of Leo the Isaurian. By an edict he prohibited ceeding emimage-worship, and banished the Patriarch of Constantinople, perors. who had admonished him that the apostles had made images of the Saviour and the Virgin, and that there was at Rome a picture of the Transfiguration, painted by order of St. Peter. After the murder of Leo, his successor, Michael the Stammerer, showed no encouragement to either party. It was affirmed that he was given to profane jesting, was incredulous as to the resurrection of the dead, disbelieved the existence of the devil, was indifferent whether images were worshipped or not, and recommended the patriarch to bury the decrees of Constantinople and Nicæa equally in oblivion. His successor and son, however, observed no such impartiality. To Saracenic Their Saratastes, shown by his building a palace like that of the khalif; to a devotion to poetry, exemplified by branding some of his own stanzas on his image-worshipping enemies; to the composition of music and its singing by himself as an amateur in the choir; to mechanical knowledge, displayed by hydraulic contrivances, musical instruments, organs, automatic singingbirds sitting in golden trees, he added an abomination of monks and a determined iconoclasm. Instead of merely whitewashing the walls of the churches he adorned them with pictures of beasts and birds. Iconoclasm had now fairly become a struggle between the emperors and the monks. cenic tastes. storation of Again, on the death of Theophilus, image-worship triumph- Final reed, and triumphed in the same manner as before. His widow, image-worship by the Theodora, alarmed by the monks for the safety of the soul of Empress her husband, purchased absolution for him at the price of the Theodora. restoration of images. Such was the issue of Iconoclasm in the East. The monks proved stronger than the emperors, and, after a struggle of 120 years, the images were finally restored. In the West far more important consequences followed. worship in To image-worship Italy was devoutly attached. When the Imagefirst edict of Leo was made known by the exarch, it produced the West. a rebellion, of which Pope Gregory II. took advantage to sus It is sustained by the Pope, And by the Lombard king. 410 Image Worship sustained by the Pope. pend the tribute paid by Italy. In letters that he wrote to the emperor he defended the popular delusion, declaring that the first Christians had caused pictures to be made of our Lord, of his brother James, of Stephen, and all the martyrs, and had sent them throughout the world; the reason that God the Father had not been painted was that his countenance was not known. These letters display a most audacious presumption of the ignorance of the emperor respecting common Scripture incidents, and, as some have remarked, suggest a doubt of the Pope's familiarity with the sacred volume. He points out the difference between the statues of antiquity, which are only the representations of phantoms, and the images of the Church, which have approved themselves, by numberless miracles, to be the genuine forms of the Saviour, his mother, and his saints. Referring to the statue of St. Peter, which the emperor had ordered to be broken to pieces, he declares that the Western nations regard that apostle as a god upon earth, and ominously threatens the vengeance of the pious barbarians if it should be destroyed. In this defence of images Gregory found an active coadjutor in a Syrian, John of Damascus, who had witnessed the rage of the khalifs against the images of his own country, and whose hand, having been cut off by those tyrants, was miraculously rejoined to his body by an idol of the Virgin to which he prayed. But Gregory was not alone in his policy, nor John of Damascus in his controversies. The king of the Lombards, Luitprand, also perceived the advantage of putting himself forth as the protector of images, and of appealing to the Italians, for their sake, to expel the Greeks from the country. The Pope acted on the principle that heresy in a sovereign justifies withdrawal of allegiance, the Lombard that it excuses the seizure of possessions. Luitprand accordingly ventured on the capture of Ravenna. An immense booty, the accumulation of the emperors, the Gothic kings, and the exarchs, which was taken at the storm of the town, at once rewarded his piety, stimulated him to new enterprises of a like nature, and drew upon him the attention of his enemy the emperor, whom he had plundered, and of his confederate the Pope, whom he had overreached. Alliance between the Popes and Franks. 411 affairs at cens domi Mediterra nean. This was the position of affairs. If the Lombards, who were Position of Arians and therefore heretics, should succeed in extending this time. their sway all over Italy, the influence and prosperity of the papacy must come to an end; their action on the question of the images was altogether of an ephemeral and delusive kind, for all the Arian nations preferred a simple worship like that of primitive times, and had never shown any attachment to the adoration of graven forms. If, on the other hand, the Pope should continue his allegiance to Constantinople, he must be liable to the atrocious persecutions so often and so recently inflicted on the patriarchs of that city by their tyrannical master; and the breaking of that connection in reality involved no surrender of any solid advantages, for the emperor was too weak to give protection from the Lombards. Already had The Sarabeen experienced a portentous difficulty in sending relief from nate in the Constantinople, on account of the naval superiority of the Saracens in the Mediterranean. For the taxes paid to the sovereign no real equivalent was received; but Rome, in ignominy, was obliged to submit, like an obscure provincial town, to the mandates of the Eastern court. Moreover, in her eyes, the emperor, by reason of his iconoclasm, was a heretic. But if alliance with the Lombards and allegiance to the Greeks were equally inexpedient, a third course was possible. A mayor of Causes of the palace of the Frankish kings had successfully led his armies the Popes against the Arabs from Spain, and had gained the great victory Franks. of Tours. If the Franks, under the influence of their climate or the genius of their race, had thus far shown no encouragement to images, in all other respects they were orthodox, for they had been converted by Catholic missionaries; their kings, it is true, were mere phantoms, but Charles Martel had approved himself a great soldier; he was, therefore, an ambitious man. There was Scripture authority for raising a subordinate to sovereign power; the prophets of Israel had thus, of old, with oil anointed kings. And if the sword of France was gently removed from the kingly hand that was too weak to hold it, and given to the hero who had already shown that he could smite terribly with it-if this were done by the authority of the Pope, acting as the representative of God, how great the alliance of and the Revolt of the Pope from the emperor. gain to the Papacy! A thousand years might not be enough to separate the monarchy of France from the theocracy of Italy. The resistance which had sprung up to the imperial edict for the destruction of images determined the course of events. The Pope rebelled, and attempts were made by the emperor to seize and assassinate him. A fear that the pontiff might be carried to Constantinople, and the preparations making to destroy the images in the churches, united all Italy. A council was held at Rome, which anathematized the iconoclasts. In retaliation, the Sicilian and other estates of the Church were confiscated. Gregory III., who in the meantime succeeded to the Papacy, continued the policy of his predecessor. The emperor was defied. A fleet, which he fitted out in support of the exarch, was lost in a storm. With this termination of the influence of Constantinople in Italy came the imminent danger that the Pope must acknowledge the supremacy of the LomAlliance of bards. In his distress Gregory turned to Charles Martel. He the Pope sent him the keys of the sepulchre of St. Peter, and implored his assistance. The die was cast. Papal Rome revolted from her sovereign, and became indissolubly bound to the barbarian kingdoms. To France a new dynasty was given, to the Pope temporal power, and to the West of Europe a fictitious Roman empire. and the Franks. The monks. Their first position, The monks had thus overcome the image-breaking emperors, a result which proves them to have already become a formidable power in the state. It is necessary, for a proper understanding of the great events with which henceforth they were connected, to describe their origin and history. In the iconoclastic quarrel they are to be regarded as the representatives of the common people in contradistinction to the clergy; often, indeed, the representatives of the populace, infected with all its instincts of superstition and fanaticism. They are the upholders of miracle-cures, invocation of saints, worship of images, clamorous asserters of a unity of faith in the Church,—a unity which they never practised, but which offered a convenient pretext for a bitter persecution of heresy and paganism, though they were more than half pagan themselves. quent im It was their destiny to impress on the practical life of Eu- And subserope that mixture of Christianity and heathenism engendered provement. by political events in Italy and Greece. Yet, while they thus co-operated in great affairs, they themselves exhibited, in the most signal manner, the force of that law of continuous variation of opinion and habits to which all enduring communities of men must submit. Born of superstition, obscene in their early life, they end in luxury, refinement, learning. Theirs is a history to which we may profitably attend. hermits. From very early times there had been in India zealots who, The first actuated by a desire of removing themselves from the temptations of society and preparing for another life, retired into solitary places. Such also were the Essenes among the Jews, and the Therapeutæ in Egypt. Pliny speaks of the blameless life of the former when he says, "They are the companions of palms ;" nor does he hide his astonishment at an immortal society in which no one is ever born. Their example was not lost upon more devout Christians, particularly after the influence of Magianism began to be felt. Though it is sometimes said that the first of these hermits were Anthony and Paulus, they doubtless are to be regarded as only having rendered themselves more illustrious by their superior sanctity among a crowd of worthies who had preceded them or were their contemporaries. As early as the second and third centuries the practice of retirement had commenced among Christians; soon after, it had become common. The date of Hilarion is about A.D. 328, of Basil A.D. 360. Regarding prayer as the only occupation Their selfin which man may profitably engage, they gave no more attention to the body than the wants of nature absolutely demanded. A little dried fruit or bread for food, and water for drink, were sufficient for its support; occasionally a particle of salt might be added, but the use of warm water was looked upon as betraying a tendency to luxury. The incentives to many of their rules of life might excite a smile, if it were right to smile at the acts of earnest men. Some, like the innocent Essenes, who would do nothing whatever on the Sabbath, observed the denial. |