Book 2 — CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE PAPACY (continued 2)

But these two powerful prelates were not the only champions of their cause whose writings made a strong impression on their age. It is singular that the most admired defender of images in the East was a subject not of the emperor but of the Mohammedan sultan. John of Damascus was famed as the most learned man in the East, and it may show either the tolerance, the ignorance, or the contempt of the Mohammedans for these Christian controversies, that writings which became celebrated all over the East should issue from one of their capital cities, Damascus.

In the West, all power, almost all pretension to power, excepting over Sicily and Calabria, expired with Leo;[90] and this independence partly arose out of and was immeasurably strengthened by the faithful adherence of the West to image-worship.

CONSTANTINE COPRONYMUS (741-775 A.D.)

Leo was succeeded by his son Constantine. The name by which this emperor was known is a perpetual testimony to the hatred of a large part of his subjects. Even in his infancy he was believed to have shown a natural aversion to holy things, and in his baptism to have defiled the font. Constantine Copronymus sounded to Greek ears as a constant taunt against his filthy and sacrilegious character.

The accession of Constantine (741), although he had already been acknowledged for twenty years with his father as joint emperor, met formidable resistance. The contest for the throne was a strife between the two religious parties which divided the empire. During the absence of Constantine, on an expedition against the Saracens, a sudden and dangerous insurrection placed his brother-in-law, Artavasdes, on the throne. Constantinople was gained to the party of the usurper by treachery. The city was induced to submit to Artavasdes only by a rumour, industriously propagated and generally believed, of the death of Constantine. The emperor on one occasion had been in danger of surprise, and escaped by the swiftness of his horses.

[742-746 A.D.]

In the capital, as throughout Greece and the European part of the empire, the triumph of Artavasdes was followed by the restoration of the images. Anastasius, the dastard patriarch of Constantinople, as he had been the slave of Leo, now became the slave of the usurper, and worshipped images with the same zeal with which he had destroyed them. He had been the principal actor in the deception of the people by the forged letters which announced the death of Constantine. He plunged with more desperate recklessness into the party of Artavasdes. The monks, and all over whom they had influence, took up the cause of the usurper; but the mass of the people, from royal respect for the memory of Leo, or from their confidence in the vigorous character of Constantine and attachment to the legitimate succession, from indifference or aversion to image-worship, still wavered, and submitted rather than clamorously rejoiced in the coronation of Artavasdes.

But Constantine Copronymus with the religious opinions inherited the courage, the military abilities, and the popularity with the army which had distinguished his father Leo. After some vicissitudes, a battle took place near Ancyra, fought with all the ferocity of civil and religious war. After an obstinate resistance, and after having suffered all the horrors of famine, Constantinople was taken. Artavasdes was punished by the loss of his eyes.

Constantine was a soldier, doubtless of a fierce temper; the blinding and mutilation of many, the beheading a few of his enemies, the abandonment of the houses of the citizens to the plunder of his troops, was the natural course of Byzantine revolution; and these cruelties have no doubt lost nothing in the dark representations of the emperor’s enemies, the only historians of the times. But they suffered as rebels in arms against their sovereign, not as image-worshippers. The fate of the patriarch Anastasius was the most extraordinary. His eyes were put out, he was led upon an ass, with his face to the tail, through the city; and after all this mutilation and insult, for which, considering his tergiversation and impudent mendacity, it is difficult to feel much compassion, he was reinstated in the patriarchal dignity. The clergy in the East had never been arrayed in the personal sanctity which, in ordinary occasions, they possessed in the West; but could Constantine have any other object in this act than the degradation of the whole order in public estimation?

THIRD COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (746 A.D.)

[746-766 A.D.]

For ten years Constantine refrained from any stronger measures against image worship. In the tenth year of Constantine rumours spread abroad of secret councils held for the total destruction of images. Either the emperor must have prepared the public mind for this great change with consummate address, or reverence for images must have been less deeply rooted in the East than in the West, otherwise it can scarcely be supposed that so large a number of the clergy as appeared at the Third Council of Constantinople (746) would have slavishly assented to the strong measures of the emperor. Three hundred and forty-eight bishops formed this synod.

Part of the proceedings of this assembly have been preserved in the records of the rival council, the second held in Nicæa. The passages are cited in the original words, followed by a confutation, sanctioned apparently by the Nicene bishops. The Council of Constantinople proscribes the lawless and blasphemous art of painting. The fathers of Constantinople assume, as boldly as the brethren of Nicæa their sanctity, that all images are the invention of the devil; that they are idols in the same sense as those of the heathen. Nor do they hesitate to impute community of sentiment with the worst heretics to their opponents. They thought that they held the image-worshippers in an inextricable dilemma. If the painters represented only the humanity of Christ, they were Nestorians; if they attempted to mingle it with the divinity, they were Eutychians, circumscribing the infinite and confounding the two substances. It was impiety to represent Christ without his divinity, Arianism to undeify him, despoil him of his godhead.

The Council of Nicæa admits the perfect unanimity of the Council of Constantinople. These 348 bishops concurred in pronouncing their anathema against all who should represent the incarnate Word by material form or colours, who should not restrict themselves to the pure spiritual conception of the Christ, as he is seated, superior in brightness to the sun, on the right hand of the Father; against all who should confound the two natures of Christ in one human image, or who should separate the manhood from the Godhead in the second person of the indivisible Trinity; against all who should not implore the intercession of the Virgin in pure faith, as above all visible and invisible things; against all who should set up the deaf and lifeless images of saints, and who do not rather paint the living likenesses of their virtues in their own hearts. All images, whether statues or paintings, were to be forcibly removed from the churches; everyone who henceforth should set up an image, if a bishop or priest, was to be degraded; if a layman, excommunicated. They proceed to curse by name the principal asserters of image-worship. “Anathema against the double-minded Germanus, the worshipper of wood! Anathema against George (of Cyprus), the falsifier of the traditions of the fathers! Anathema against Mansar (they called by this unchristian-sounding name the famous John of Damascus), the Saracen in heart, the traitor to the empire—Mansar the teacher of impiety, the false interpreter of Holy Scripture!”

Thus was image-worship proscribed by a council, in numbers at least of weight, in the severest and most comprehensive terms. The work of demolition was committed to the imperial officers; only with strict injunctions, not perhaps always obeyed, to respect the vessels, the priestly vestments, and other furniture of the churches, and the cross, the naked cross without any image. The crucifix was of a later period.

THE WAR ON MONASTERIES

[766-775 A.D.]

But if the emperor had overawed, or bought, or compelled the seemingly willing assent of so large a body of the eastern clergy, the formidable monks were still in obstinate implacable opposition to his will. It was now fanaticism encountering fanaticism. Everywhere the monks preached resistance to the imperial decree, and enough has been seen of their turbulent and intractable conduct to make us conclude that their language at least would keep no bounds. Stephen, the great martyr of this controversy, had lived as a hermit in a cave near Sinope for thirty years.

The emperor sent the patriarch to persuade him to subscribe the decrees of the Council of Constantinople. The patriarch’s eloquence was vain. The emperor either allowed or compelled the aged monk to retire to the wild rock of Proconnesus, where, to consummate his sanctity, he took his stand upon a pillar. His followers assembled in crowds about him, and built their cells around the pillar of the saint. But the zeal of Stephen would not be confined within that narrow sphere. He returned to the city, and in bold defiance of the imperial orders denounced the iconoclasts. He was seized, cast into prison, and there treated with unusual harshness. But even there the zeal of his followers found access. Constantine exclaimed, in a paroxysm of careless anger, “Am I or this monk the emperor of the world?” The word of the emperor was enough for some of his obsequious courtiers; they rushed, broke open the prison, dragged out the old man along the streets with every wanton cruelty, and cast his body at last into the common grave of the public malefactors.

The emperor took now a sterner and more desperate resolution. He determined to root out monkery itself. The monks were driven from their cloisters, which were given up to profane and secular uses. Consecrated virgins were forced to marry; monks were compelled, each holding the hand of a woman, doubtless not of the purest character, to walk round the Hippodrome among the jeers and insults of the populace. Throughout the whole empire they were exposed to the lawless persecutions of the imperial officers. Their zeal or their obstinacy was chastised by scourgings, imprisonments, mutilations, and even death. The monasteries were plundered, and by no scrupulous or reverent hands; churches are said to have been despoiled of all their sacred treasures, the holy books burned, feasts and revels profaned the most hallowed sanctuaries.

Multitudes fled to the neighbouring kingdoms of the less merciless barbarians; many found refuge in the West, especially in Rome. The prefect of Thrace was the most obsequious agent of his master’s tyranny. The patriarch himself was accused of having used disrespectful language towards the emperor. Already he had been required to acquit himself of imputing Nestorianism to his master; now his accusers swore on the cross that they had heard him hold conference with one of the conspirators. Constantine ordered the imperial seal to be affixed on the palace of the patriarch, and sent him into banishment.

For some new offence, real or supposed, the exiled patriarch was brought back to the capital, scourged so cruelly that he could not walk, and then carried in a litter, and exposed in the great church before all the people assembled to hear the public recital of the charges made against him, and to behold his degradation. At each charge the secretary of his successor smote him on the face. He was then set up in the pulpit, and while Nicetas read the sentence of excommunication, another bishop stripped him of his metropolitan pall, and calling him by the opprobrious name Scotiopsis, “face of darkness,” led him backwards out of the church. The next day his head, beard, eyebrows were shaved; and as we have already said, he was put upon an ass, and paraded through the circus (his own nephew, a hideous, deformed youth, leading the ass), while the populace jeered, shouted, spat upon him. He was then thrown down, trodden on, and in that state lay till the games were over. Some days after the emperor sent to demand a formal declaration of the orthodoxy of his own faith and of the authority of the council. The poor wretch acknowledged both in the amplest manner; as a reward he was beheaded, while still in a state of excommunication, and his remains treated with the utmost ignominy.

This odious scene, blackened it may be by the sectarian hatred of the later annalists, all of whom abhorred iconoclasm, has been related at length, in order to contrast more fully the position of the bishop of Rome. This was the second patriarch of Constantinople who had been thus barbarously treated, and seemingly without the sympathy of the people; and now, in violation of all canonical discipline, the imperial will had raised a eunuch to the patriarchate. What wonder that pontiffs like Gregory II and Gregory III should think themselves justified in throwing off the yoke of such a government, and look with hope to the sovereignty of the less barbarous barbarians of the north—barbarians who, at least, had more reverence for the dignity of the sacerdotal character.

If the Byzantine historians, all image-worshippers, have not greatly exaggerated the cruelties of their implacable enemy Constantine Copronymus, they have assuredly not done justice to his nobler qualities, his valour, incessant activity, military skill, and general administration of the sinking empire, which he maintained unviolated by any of its formidable enemies, and with imposing armies, during a reign of thirty-five years, not including the twenty preceding during which he ruled as the colleague of his father Leo. Constantine died, during a campaign against the Bulgarians, of a fever which, in the charitable judgment of his adversaries, gave him a foretaste of the pains of hell. His dying lips ordered prayers and hymns offered to the Virgin, for whom he had always professed the most profound veneration, utterly inconsistent, his enemies supposed, with his hostility to her sacred images.

HELENA AND IRENE

[775-787 A.D.]

A female had been the principal mover in the great change of Christianity from a purely spiritual worship to that paganising form of religion which grew up with such rapidity in the succeeding centuries; a female was the restorer of images in the East, which have since, with but slight interruption, maintained their sanctity. The first, Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, was a blameless and devout woman, who used the legitimate influence of her station, munificence, and authority over her imperial son, to give that splendour which to her piety appeared becoming to the new religion; to communicate to the world all those excitements of symbols, relics, and sacred memorials which she found so powerful in kindling her own devotion. The second, the empress Irene, wife to the son and heir of Constantine Copronymus, an ambitious, intriguing, haughty princess, never lost sight of political power in the height of her religious zeal, and was at length guilty of the most atrocious crime against God and womanhood.

Irene, during the reign of her husband Leo, surnamed the Khazar, did not openly betray her inclination to the image-worship which she had solemnly forsworn under her father-in-law Constantine. On his death (780) she at once seized the government in the name of her son Constantine, who was but ten years old. Her creature, Patriarch Tarasius, summoned a council on image-worship.

The council met in Constantinople (785), but with the army and a large part of the populace of Constantinople image-worship had lost its power. The soldiery, attached to the memory and tenets of Constantine Copronymus, broke into the assembly, and dispersed the affrighted monks and bishops.

SECOND COUNCIL OF NICÆA (787 A.D.)

[787-842 A.D.]

Nicæa was chosen for the session of the council, no doubt on account of the reverence which attached to that city, hallowed by the sittings of the first great council of Christendom. Decrees issued from Nicæa would possess peculiar force and authority; this smaller city, too, could be occupied by troops on whom the empress could depend, and in the meantime Irene managed to disband the more unruly soldiery. Thus, while the Bulgarians menaced one frontier and the Saracens another, she sacrificed the safety of the empire, by the dissolution of her best army, to the success of her religious designs.

The council met at Nicæa. The number of ecclesiastics is variously stated from 330 to 387. Among these were at least 130 monks or abbots, besides many bishops, who had been expelled as monks from their sees, and were now restored. They repudiated the so-called Council of Constantinople, as a synod of fools and madmen, who had dared to violate the established discipline of the church and impiously reviled the holy images. They showered their anathemas on all the acts, on all the words, on all the persons engaged in that unhallowed assembly.

The fathers of Nicæa impaired a doubtful cause by the monstrous fables which they adduced, the preposterous arguments which they used, their unmeasured invectives against their antagonists. With one voice they broke out into a long acclamation: “We all believe, we all assent, we all subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of all the world. We, who adore the Trinity, worship images. Whoever does not the like, anathema upon him! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema on all who communicate with them who do not worship images!”

Among the acclamations and the anathemas which closed the Second Council of Nicæa, echoed loud salutations and prayers for the peace and blessedness of the new Constantine and the new Helena. A few years passed and that Constantine was blinded, if not put to death, by his unnatural mother, whom religious faction had raised into a model of Christian virtue and devotion.

The controversy slept during the reign of Nicephorus, and that of Michael, surnamed Rhangabé. The monks throughout this period seem to form an independent power (a power no doubt arising out of and maintained by their championship of image-worship), and to dictate to the emperor, and even to the church. On the other hand, among the soldiery are heard some deep but suppressed murmurs of attachment to the memory of Constantine Copronymus. Leo the Armenian ascended the throne.

As Irene had promoted Tarasius, so Leo raised an officer of his household, Theodotus Cassiteras, to the patriarchal throne. Image-worship was again proscribed by an imperial edict. The worshippers are said to have been ruthlessly persecuted; and Leo, according to the phraseology of the day, is accused of showing all the blood-thirstiness without the generosity of the lion. Yet no violent popular tumult took place; nor does the conspiracy which afterwards cut short the days of Leo the Armenian appear to have been connected with the strife of religious factions. Whatever hopes the clergy, at least the image-worshippers, or the monks, might have conceived at the murder of Leo, which they scrupled not to allege as a sign of the divine disfavour towards the iconoclasts, were disappointed on the accession of Michael the Stammerer. He favoured the Jews in the exaction of tribute (perhaps he was guilty of the sin of treating them with justice), he fasted on the Jewish Sabbath, he doubted the resurrection of the dead, and the personality of the devil, as unauthorised by the religion of Moses. Image-worship he treated with contemptuous impartiality. In a great public assembly (assembled for the purpose), he proclaimed the worship of images a matter altogether indifferent.

Theophilus could not but perceive the failure, and disdained to imitate his father’s temporising policy, who endeavoured to tolerate the monks, while he discouraged image-worship. He avowed his determination to extirpate both at once. Leo the Armenian and Michael the Stammerer had attempted to restrict the honours paid to images; Theophilus prohibited the making of new ones, and ordered that in every church they should be effaced, and the walls covered with pictures of birds and beasts. The sacred vessels, adorned with figures, were profaned by unhallowed hands, sold in the public markets, and melted for their metal. The prisons were full of painters, of monks and ecclesiastics of all orders. The monks, driven from their convents, fled to desert places; some perished of cold and hunger, some threw off the proscribed dress, yet retained the sacred character and habits; others seized the opportunity of returning to the pleasures as to the dress of the world.

The history of iconoclasm has a remarkable uniformity: another female in power, another restoration of images. After the death of Theophilus his widow Theodora administered the empire in the name of her youthful son Michael, called afterwards the Drunkard. Theodora, like her own mother Theoctista, had always worshipped images in private. No sooner was Theophilus dead than the monks, no doubt in the secret of Theodora’s concealed attachment to images, poured into Constantinople from all quarters. She now ventured to send an officer of the palace to command the patriarch, Joannes the Grammarian, either to recant his iconoclastic opinions, or to withdraw from Constantinople. The patriarch is accused of a paltry artifice. He opened a vein in the region of his stomach, and showed himself wounded and bleeding to the people. The rumour spread that the empress had attempted to assassinate the patriarch. But the fraud was detected, exposed, acknowledged. The abashed patriarch withdrew, unpitied and despised, into the suburbs (842). Methodius was raised to the dignity of the patriarchate. The worshippers of images were in triumph.

But Theodora, still tenderly attached to the memory of her husband, demanded, as the price of her inestimable services in the restoration of images, absolution for the sin of his iconoclasm and his persecution of the image-worshippers.

All was now easy; the fanaticism of iconoclasm was exhausted or rebuked. A solemn festival was appointed for the restoration of images. The whole clergy of Constantinople, and all who could flock in from the neighbourhood, met in and before the palace of the archbishop, and marched in procession with crosses, torches, and incense, to the church of St. Sophia. There they were met by the empress and her infant son Michael, Feb. 19th, 842. They made the circuit of the church, with their burning torches, paying homage to every image and picture, which had been carefully restored, never again to be effaced till the days of later, more terrible iconoclasts, the Ottoman Turks.

The Greek church from that time has celebrated the anniversary of this festival with loyal fidelity. The successors of Methodius, particularly the learned Photius, were only zealous to consummate the work of his predecessors, and images have formed part of the recognised religious worship of the Eastern world.b

FOOTNOTES