Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/273

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 251 the levity of the capital and the inventive genius of the Byzan- tine clergy, while the rude and remote districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred luxury. Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians maintained, after their conversion, the simple worship which had preceded their sepa- ration ; and the Armenians, the most warlike subjects of Rome, were not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to the sight of images.^" These various denominations of men afforded a feud of prejudice and aversion, of small account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune of a soldier, a prelate, or an eunuch, might be often connected with the powers of the church and state. Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo th«jcono- Leo the Third,!*^ who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended suoce'8sor| ' ' /• 1 1 ^-^^ T26-840 the throne of the East. He was ignorant of sacred and pro- fane letters ; but his education, his reason, perhaps his inter- course with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with an hatred of images ; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious : he assembled a great council of senatoi's and bishops, and enacted, with their consent, that all the images should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the churches, where they might be visible to the eyes, and inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it was impossible, on either side, to check the rapid though adverse impulse of veneration and abhorrence ; '■' 'Apixeuioi's Kal 'XKafxavols eTrcVrjs r) ayiuiv etKoi'ioi' TrpoCKiii'rjO'is d?7»)yopeu-oi (NlCe- tas, 1. ii. p. 258 [p. 527, ed. Bonn]). The Armenian churches are still content with the cross (Missions du Levant, torn. iii. p. 148) ; but surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the superstition of the Germans of the xiith century. I'' Our origmal, but not impartial, monuments of the Iconoclasts must be drawn from the Acts of the Councils, torn. viii. and i.x. Collect. Labb^, edit. Venet., and the historical writings of Theophanes, Nicephorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonaras, &c. Of the modern Catholics, Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Ale.xander (Hist. Eccles. Seculum viii. and i.. ), and Maimbourg (Hist, des Iconoclastes) have treated the subject with learning, passion, and credulity. The Protestant labours of Frederic Spanheim (Historia Imaginum Restituta) and James Basnage (Hist, des Eglises R^formt^es, torn. ii. 1. xxiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. [See further Appendix i.J