Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/53

Rh in the same strong spirit, now of persuasion, now of rebuke, as Claudius; but no controversy ever arose over his utterances. The heads of the church were with him; but at the same time the masses were fast bound by superstition. Agobard may have calculated the injury which the character of an iconoclast would inflict upon his personal influence over them. He may have felt the hopelessness of the undertaking, and held it wiser, and in the end more effectual, to elevate the people gradually by the voice of reason.

The difference, therefore, between him and Claudius regards chiefly the means to carry out their common aims. But Agobard is always guided by a calmer and clearer perception than his vehement ally. (Lib. contra corum superstitionem qui picturis et imaginibus sanctorum adorationis obsequium deferendum putant, xxxiii. 294 F.) He desires, indeed, the removal of all pictures from the churches, but he admits that they are essentially innocent and only rendered pernicious by abuse. (Cap. xxxii. 294 E.) The ancients, he says, ''had figures of the saints, painted or carved, but for the sake of history, for record not for worship; as, for example the acts of synods, wherein were portrayed the catholics upheld and victorious, and the heretics by the discovery of the falsehood of their vile doctrine convicted and expelled, in memorial of the strength of the catholic faith, even as pictures stand in record of foreign or domestic wars. Such we have seen in divers places: yet none of the ancient catholics held that they should be worshipped or adored.'' (cap. xxxiii. p. 294 F.) The pictures in churches should be looked at just as any other pictures. Only the faithlessness of the age, which will find some special virtue in them, forces him to condemn them utterly. (cap. xxiv. p. 292 D.) God must be worshipped without any sensuous representations. (cap. xxxi. p. 294 D: cf. ep. ad Barthol. vii. p. 282 C.) Whosoever adoreth a picture or a statue, carved or molten, payeth not worship to God nor honoureth the angels or holy men, but is an idolator: he is beguiled to evil under the fairest disguises of devotion; (2 Cor. xi. 14.) Satan transformeth himself into an angel of light. The opposition of spirit and matter is as real to him as to Claudius. He, too, held that (capp. xv., xvi. p. 290 B, D.) visible objects were a hindrance not a help to the perception of the invisible. (cap. xxxiii. p. 294 F.) When faith