Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/172

 164 ICONOCLASTS when images were first introduced by Chris- tians into public worship. The prevailing opinion is that they passed from the family into the temple at the end of the 3d century, and that their public use became general at the close of the 4th. The visible representation of the cross found its way earlier both into eccle- siastical and domestic life. This custom and the feeling out of which it grew varied widely among different nations. In Egypt and through- out Africa the use of images met with but lit- tle favor. Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Augustine discountenanced it. Both the Greeks and Romans favored the fine arts, but there always existed among Christians an aver- sion toward anything which resembled the old pagan union of art and religion. The first note of the iconoclastic warfare came from Mar- seilles, where the bishop, Serenus, caused all images to be demolished and cast out of church- es. For this he was twice censured by Pope Gregory the Great, who, while blaming the superstitious use of images, advised their em- ployment as a means of instruction for the un- lettered who could not read the Holy Scrip- tures. In the East, Constantino had embel- lished the public monuments and churches erected by himself in his new imperial city with representations of religious objects taken from the circle of the Old and New Testa- ments. Very soon this use became interwoven with the whole domestic and public life of the Greek and Asiatic Christians. Churches, to- gether with their books, furniture, and vest- ments, private houses and public edifices, household utensils and wearing apparel, were profusely ornamented with images of Christ, the martyrs, and Biblical personages. Statues of costly materials adorned the public squares and the approaches to the imperial palaces. The people were not slow in going to extrava- gant lengths. Reports of miraculous effects produced by some images attracted crowds of pilgrims. In the course of the 6th century it became a custom in the Greek church to make prostrations before images as a token of rever- ence to the persons whom they represented. The Manichanshad already characterized these practices as idolatry, and the Jews denounced them as an apostasy from the divine -law. About the year 600 Leontius, a Cyprian bish- op, wrote a treatise against the Jews and in vindication of the lawfulness of the custom. In the next century the Mohammedans wher- ever they prevailed forbade the worship of images. Moved by these circumstances, the Byzantine emperor Leo the Isaurian issued a first ordinance in 726, directed not against the images themselves, but against such signs of an idolatrous homage as prostration and kneel- ing down before them. This measure, coun- selled by Constantino, bishop of Nacolia in Phrygia, and countenanced by a large number of other eastern prelates, met with resistance from Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, and from the mass of the people. Besides se- rious disturbances in many places, the inhabi- tants of the Cyclades rebelled against the em- peror and equipped a fleet. This was destroy- ed by means of Greek fire, and a new impe- rial edict was issued in 730, forbidding the use of all images for religious purposes. Ger- manus now resigned his office and retired into solitude. Leo caused the statues in churches to be burned and the paintings on the walls to be effaced, and fearful riots and massacres oc- curred in consequence. Pope Gregory II. re- monstrated in vain with the emperor, and the Romans refused to comply with the imperial edict. In 732 a council assembled in Rome by Gregory III., condemned Leo and his abettors, and decreed the validity of the relative honor paid to images. The emperor pursued his pur- pose with relentless severity until his death in 741, when it was taken up with no less zeal by his son Constantine Copronymus. He was op- posed by his brother-in-law Artavasdes, who possessed himself of the throne and restored the worship of images. His death in Novem- ber, 743, restored Constantine to power, which he used to exterminate images and finish the work begun by his father. He assembled at Constantinople in 754 a council of 338 bishops, who after a deliberation of six months pro- nounced all visible symbols of Christ, except in the eucharist, to be either blasphemous or he- retical, and the use of images in churches to be a revival of paganism. This decision was car- ried out by Constantine, one of whose last acts was to compel every inhabitant of Constanti- nople to take an oath never again to worship an image. Leo IV., who succeeded him in 775, was no less energetic in putting down im- age worship ; but at his death in 780 the em- press regent Irene concerted measures with Pope Adrian I. for the restoration of images. In 787 the second oecumenical council of Nice decreed that " bowing to an image, which is simply the token of love and reverence, ought by no means to be confounded with the adora- tion which is due to God alone." The same was also true of the cross, the books of the evangelists, and other sacred objects. The con- test was prolonged in the East under successive emperors till Theodora assembled a council at Constantinople (842), which confirmed the de- cisions of the Nicene council, and established the veneration of images among the Greeks, though subsequently the Greek church took the position which it holds to this day that no carved, sculptured, or molten images of holy persons or things are allowable, but only pic- tures, which are held to be not images but rep- resentations. Rome and Italy had already ac- cepted the decree of the Nicene council, which the Latin church accounts the seventh of the general councils. The term iconoclasts is also applied in history to those Protestants of the Netherlands who at the commencement of the troubles in the reign of Philip II. tumultuous- ly assembled and destroyed the images in many Roman Catholic churches. These tumults he-