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descendants of the subjects of the Eastern emperor still go far beyond us in the use of such signs.

The development was then a question of general fashion rather than of principle. To the Byzantine Christian of the fifth and sixth centuries prostrations, kisses, incense were the natural ways of showing hon- our to any one; he was used to such things, even ap- plied to his civil and .social superiors; he was accus- tomed to treat symbols in the same way, giving them relative honour that was obviously meant really for their prototypes. And so he carried his normal habits with him into church. Tradition, the conservative instinct that in ecclesiastical matters always insists on custom, gradually stereotyped such practices till they were written down as rubrics and became part of the ritual. _Nor is there any su.spicion that the people, who were unconsciously evolving this ritual, confused the image with its prototype or forgot that to God only supreme homage is due. The forms they used [were as natural to them as saluting a flag is to us.

At the same time one mu.st admit that just before the Iconoclast outbreak things had gone very far in the direction of image-worship. Even then it is in- conceivable that any one, except perhaps the most grossly stupid peasant, could have thought that an image could hear prayers, or do anything for us. And yet the way in which some people treated their holy icons argues more than the merely relative honour that Catholics are taught to observe towards them. In the first place images had multiplied to an enormous extent everywhere; the walls of churches were covered inside from floor to roof with icons, scenes from the Bible, allegorical groups. (Dom Leclercq quotes S. Maria Antiqua built in the seventh century in the Ro- man Forum, with its systematic arrangement of paint- ings covering the whole church, as an example of this — Hefele-Leclercq, "Histoire desConciles", III, 610 sq.). Icons, especially in the East, were taken on journeys as a protection, they marched at the head of armies, and presided at the races in the hippodrome; they hung in a place of honour in every room, over every shop; they covered cups, garments, furniture, rings; wherever a possible space was found, it was filled with a picture of Christ, our Lady, or a saint. It is difficult to understand exactly what those Byzantine Chris- tians of the seventh and eighth centuries thought about them. The icon seems to have been in some sort the channel through which the saint was ap- proached; it has an almost sacramental virtue in arousing sentiments of faith, love and so on, in those who gazed upon it; through and by the icon God worked miracles; the icon even seems to have had a kind of personality of its own, inasmuch as certain pic- tures were specially efficacious for certain graces (see F. Marin, " Les moinesde Constantinople ", Paris, 1897, pp. 318-21; Hefele-Leclercq, op. cit., Ill, pp. 007-8). Icons were crowned with garlands, incensed, kis.sed. Lamps burned before them, hymns were sung in their honour. They were applied to sick persons by con- tact, set out in the path of a fire or flood to stop it by a sort of magic. In many prayers of this time the nat- ural inference from the words would be that the ac- tual picture is addressed.

If so much reverence was paid to ordinary images "made with hands", how much more was given to the miraculous ones "not made with hands" (f/xAves axeipoTToiriTai). Of these there were many that had de- scendcil miraculously from heaven, or — like the most famous of all at Edessa — had been produce<l liy our Lord Himself by impre.ssing His face on a cloth (see "Dict.d'arch.chr^t.", s. v. "Abgar". Thestory of the Edessa picture is the Eastern form of our \'eronica legend). The Emperor Michael II (S20-9), in his letter to Louis the Piotis, describes the excesses of the image- worshippers: "They have removed the holy cross from the churches and replaced it by images before which they burn incense. . . . They sing psalms be-

fore these images, prostrate themselves before them, implore their help. Many dress up images in linen garments and choose them as god-parents for their children. Others who become monks, forsaking the old tradition according to which the hair that is shorn off is received by some distinguished person, let it fall into the hands of some image. Some priests scrape the paint off images, mix it with the consecrated bread and wine and give it to the faithful. Others place the body of the Lord in the hands of unages from whicii it is taken by the communicants. Others again, despis- ing the churches, celebrate Divine Service in private houses, using an image as an altar" (Mansi, XIV, 417-22; Hefele-Leclercq, op. cit.. Ill, 2,612). These are the words of a bitter Iconoclast, and should, no doubt, be received with caution. Nevertheless most of the practices described by t he emperor can be estab- lished by other and quite unimpeachable evidence. For instance, St. Theodore of the Studion writes to congratulate an official of the court for having chosen a holy icon as godfather for his son (V. G., XCIX, 962-3; Hefele-Leclercq, loc. cit., 613). Such ex- cesses as these explain in part at least the Iconoclast reaction of the eighth century. And the Iconoclast storm produced at least one good result — the Seventh (Ecumenical Synod (Nicaja II, 787), which, while de- fending the holy images, explained the kind of worship that may lawfidly and reasonably be given to them and discountenanced all extravagances. A curious story, that illustrates the length to which the worship of images had gone by the eiglith century, is told in the "New Garden" (N^k UapaSelffiow — Pratum Sjiin'tu- ale) of a monk of Jerusalem, John Moschus (d. 619). This work was long attributed to Sophronius of Jeru- salem (Krumbacher, "Byz. Litt.", 188). In it the author tells the story of an old monk at Jerusalem who was much tormented by temptations of the flesh. At last the devil promised him peace on condition that he would cease to honour his picture of our Lady He promised, kept his word, and then began to suffer temptations against faith. He con.><ulted his abbot, who told him that he had better stiffer the former evil (apparently even give way to the temptation) "rather than cease to worship our Lord and God Jesus Christ with His mother " (quoted by Schwarzlo.se, " Der Bil- derstreit", pp. 19-20).

On the other hand, in Rome especially, we findthS^ position of holy images explained sol)erly and reason- \ ably. They arc the booksof the ignorant. This idea \ is a favourite one of St. (Gregory the C!reat (d.C04). He writes to an Iconoclast bishop, Serenus of Marseilles, who had destroyed the images in his diocese: "Not without reason has antiquity allowed the stories of saints to be painted in holy places. And we indeed entirely praise thee for not allowing them to be a<lored, l)ut we blame thee for breaking tliem. For it is one thing to adore an image, it is quite another thing to learn from the appearance of a picture what we mu.st adore. What l)ooks are to tho.'ic who can read, that is a picture to the ignorant who look at it; in a picture even the unlearned may see what example they should follow; in a picture they who know no letters may yet read. Hence, for liarbarians especially, a picture takes the place of a liook" (Ep. ix, 105, in P. L., LXXVII, 1027). But in the East, too, there were people who shared this more sober Western view. Anastasius, Bishop of Theopolis (d. 609), who was a frienil of St. Gregory and translate(l his " Regula pastor- alis" into Greek, expresses him.'^elf in almost the same way and makes the distinction between ■irpo(TKivi](ns anil XaTpe(a that became so famous in Iconoclast times: " We worship (TrpoaKwovfuv) men and the holy angels; we do not adore (XoTpei/o/ifi') them. Moses says: Thou shall worship thy God and Him only shall thou adore. Behold, before the word 'adore.' he puts 'only', but not before the wonl 'worship'; becau.se it is lawful to worsh ip [creatu res], since worship is only giving