Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/47

Rh the churches, - formed the more present evil against which he set himself to do continual battle. (Jon. 168 G.) He called for the utter destruction of all images and pictures throughout his diocese. (Dungal. Responsa contra perversas Claudii Taurin. episc. sententias, p. 223 F.) He forbade the observance of saints' days, and the very mention of saints in the liturgy. Foremost in executing the work, he raised a storm about him: his life was not safe. (Dungal, ibid. p. 199 D: cf. infra pp. 31 sqq.) The people were passionately excited, but the protection or favour of higher powers was probably with him, and his name is not to be added to the roll of martyrs who have perished for lack of sympathy with the grosser needs of their contemporaries.

Yet the truth is that, with all his fanaticism, Claudius alone of his age grasped the inevitable consequences of its spiritual condition. It was an age of materialism, and there was no possibility that the images could remain in churches without the people worshipping them, or that if they worshipped them they would understand the nice distinction between this worship and that of God laid down by the second Nicene council. Claudius denounces this inevitable polytheism. If, he says, ''they worship the images of saints after the fashion of demons, - that is, of course, in the manner of the old gods of the country, - they have not left idols but changed their names. He was accused of inventing a new heresy. (Apol., ap. Jon. 169 F, 170 A.) Nothing, he replies, can be falser. I preach no sect, but hold the unity and expound the verity of the church. Sects and schisms, heresies and superstitions, I have ever, so far as in me lay,''