The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 1/Division 2/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE ICONOCLASTIC REFORMS
Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire centred at Constantinople than its repeated revival after what may well have appeared to be hopeless decay and ruinous devastation. We shall make a great mistake if we think of it as simply characterised by Gibbon's classic title. This is by no means merely the story of a "Decline and Fall." First we have Constantine founding his new city on the Bosphorus and going far to make it the centre of the civilised world. Then, although the Germanic tribes repeatedly sacked and desolated Old Rome, they could do little more in the East than make raids into Greece, leaving Constantinople on one side as beyond their reach. Two hundred years after the founding of this city which stood for all that was most splendid and powerful in Eastern Europe, in a time of revival, while the great General Belisarius was regaining the lost territory of the empire in Africa and the southwest, his master Justinian was beautifying Constantinople and other Greek cities with unparalleled architectural splendour. Another hundred years passes, and we see the Eastern Empire ravaged by Persia and brought to the brink of ruin. Then the gifted Heraclius turns the tide of victory, wrests the stolen provinces from the hands of the invader, and presses far into his enemy's territory with crushing effect. No sooner has this military miracle been achieved than a new and totally unexpected enemy comes up from the desert and defeats the victorious Byzantine power, to the amazement and dismay of the empire. The Arabs, tired by the new creed of Islam, tear off Syria, Egypt, and southern regions farther West, leaving only a mutilated torso to represent the ancient Roman Empire. Yet in vain does the mighty flood gather to sweep this remnant away. Constantinople still remains a virgin fortress, impregnable. Miserable times follow. The Mohammedans raid Asia Minor; tribes from the Danubian countries pour over Macedonia and Greece; the empire is virtually reduced to the limits of the one city of Constantinople. Now indeed it might appear as though the ancient Roman dominion in the East were approaching final dissolution. But that is not to be its fate. It has been called "effete," but still it displays marvellous vitality.
What is the explanation of this remarkable vitality? In part, the persistence of the empire through all the vicissitudes of fortune is to be attributed to its just judicature and skilful administration of government. The Roman law was well applied all through these changing times, and the machinery of government was worked with scientific exactness. Nowhere else in the world was the art of government so ably practised. Constantinople was the centre of civilisation in politics as well as in art and letters. Still, civilisation cannot be self-supporting. If the vigour of the "early caliphs had been preserved by their successors no human power could have saved the world from the overthrow of the Christian religion as well as the destruction of European culture. Even after the ardour of missionary zeal among the Mohammedans had cooled they were still formidable, and when reinforced by the Turks, almost invincible. Then deliverance came from one of the most powerful men of history. It has been pointed out that while Charles Martel has been immortalised for having checked a Moorish raid in the West that had nearly spent its force, and that could never have resulted in the permanent subjection of Europe, a much greater man who achieved a much greater feat has missed his laurels, partly because his action as a heretic offended the Church, but no doubt partly also because his achievements were carried out in the East. This man was Leo the Isaurian—Leo iii.—the hero of Finlay's Byzantine history, a rough, uneducated peasant from a remote part of Asia Minor, who is said to have first attracted attention by bringing a present of sheep to the reigning emperor, but a man of genius, vigour, and character.
Leo founded a dynasty of able rulers who held the Eastern Empire together for generations, while the last relics of the Western Empire were in the melting-pot, out of which issued the nations of modern Europe. His own mighty task was to put an effectual and final stop to the Arab encroachments. Syria and Egypt were lost for ever; but Leo retained and strengthened all the empire north of the Mediterranean, remodelled the system of government, and established a military power that put an end to the danger of the swamping of Christianity by Islam. Here then is a man deserving of the highest honour by the Church, since in proving himself the saviour of the empire he became also the deliverer of the Church, with which it was to so great an extent conterminous. In spite of this fact, his own action in the Church called down on his head execrations instead of benedictions. Let us proceed to examine this remarkable phenomenon.
Leo seized the imperial power at a crisis of confusion in the year 716. Ten years later he issued an edict ordering the destruction of the sacred pictures. It has been commonly supposed that he first ordered them to be raised to a higher position on the walls so that the people could not reach up to kiss them. But the only authority for this opinion is the Latin translation of the life of the monk Stephen, on which Baronius bases his assertion of it. On the other hand, Hefele has demonstrated that this must be a mistake. For one thing, many of the pictures were frescoes that could not be moved. There is a letter from the pope protesting against the destruction of images which we must date earlier than the year 730; but that year is the date commonly assigned for a second edict which is taken to be the earliest order for the demolition of the pictures. The decree does not appear to have been widely operative. But one of the first actions, if not the very first, taken in execution of the emperor's orders led to serious trouble. It was a daring deed, for it was the destruction of the most conspicuous and in some respects the most sacred of all the pictures. This was a representation of Christ over the great brass gates at Constantinople, which was reputed to work miraculous cures. Officials mounted a ladder in spite of the screaming protests of a mob of women, and one of them rudely smashed his axe into the face. Thereupon the exasperated women seized the ladder, flung the sacrilegious officials to the ground, and murdered them on the spot. Other scenes of violence followed in various places.
Now the question is, What led Leo to take this step and so to come into conflict with his people's religion? The action was his own; if it was a reformation, it was an imperial, not a popular reformation. The author of the article on Leo iii. in Smith's Dictionary of Biography seems to sympathise with the old orthodox view of the case, according to which the emperor was a heretic denying the actual humanity of Christ, and therefore the possibility of representing our Lord by any picture. This was a charge frequently brought against the Iconoclasts by the defenders of images. It has been pointed out that Leo's old home in Isauria was a seat of Monophysitism. But we have no proof whatever of the existence of this subtle theological motive at the basis of Leo's policy, although it may be allowed that the atmosphere of the church of his youth would have predisposed him to turn with disgust from the materialism of the popular religion. We must look deeper into the history of the whole question in order to understand the emperor's reasons for his revolutionary policy. More than a century before this, Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, flung all the pictures out of his church, an act of vandalism which drew down upon his head a letter of mild rebuke from Gregory the Great. The pope then took occasion to explain the use of pictures and to guard against the idolatrous abuse of them. "You ought not to have broken what was put up in the churches, not for adoration," he says, "but merely for the promotion of reverence. It is one thing to worship an image, and another to learn represented in the image what we ought to worship. For what the Scriptures are for those who can read, that a picture is for those who are unable to read; for in this also the uneducated see in what way they have to walk. In it they read who are not acquainted with the Scriptures."[1]
No statement of the case could be more unexceptionable. The stiffest Puritan would be hard put to it to answer such an argument. Not only stained-glass windows, but illustrated Bibles and lantern services are justified to-day on similar grounds. But the pope's argument is one thing, and the people's practice another. In point of fact, throughout the East at the time of Leo the pictures were worshipped. The physical act of kissing them was called worship, and this act was made illegal by the iconoclastic emperors. But over and above that, pictures and relics were often treated as fetishes and venerated for their supposed miraculous cures. No doubt there would be all gradations from the aesthetic pursuit of art among the cultured and the simple contemplation of pictorial lessons on the part of the devout, to the grossest idolatry and magic-mongery among the more degraded and superstitious. It was against the popular adoration of the images that Leo was fighting.
We must remember that at this very time the emperor's great rival was the caliph, and the standing menace to Christianity the religion of Islam which made it the first duty of the faithful to extirpate idolatry. The case for Mohammedanism was strengthened by the existence of idolatry in the Christian Church, and a wise Christian ruler might well be anxious to remove that scandal from his cause. Only two years before Leo took action the caliph was vigorously engaged in destroying the pictures among the Christian churches in his dominion. Naturally enough this similarity of policy led the image worshippers to accuse their fellow Christian Iconoclasts of treasonable connections with the Mohammedans. At the seventh œcumenical council (II Nicæa, a.d. 787) the monk John accused Constantine, bishop of Nacolia in Phrygia, of collusion with the caliph. This bishop, who had been actively engaged in tearing down the images in his own district, came to Constantinople to consult the Patriarch Germanus on the subject. He got no encouragement in that quarter. Germanus was a staunch supporter of image worship, and in the case of this bold bishop we have a rare instance of independence on the part of the head ecclesiastic of the Greek Church at Constantinople in opposition to the emperor, which is in marked contrast to the too common subservience of the Constantinople patriarchs. But that fact makes it all the more remarkable that Leo should have so acted as to stir up a hornets' nest just when he was consolidating his power for the security of the empire. The fair and reasonable explanation is that which is also most simple and straightforward, namely, that we should accept the emperor's own declared motive as genuine. He regarded image worship as idolatry. He saw that Christianity as a spiritual faith was becoming swamped and drowned in the grossest superstition. The pictures were actually idols. The people were satisfied to kiss and adore them; in illness they resorted to them for miraculous cures; if they had any other religious practice to which they attached weight, it was the treasuring of relics. Perhaps the reason why Leo did not attack this also was that it was practised in private. The relics were the Christian Lares and Penates. They were, like Rachel's teraphim, survivals in the home of a kind of superstition not so openly observed in public. But the pictures were in the churches or out in the open air, and the adoration of them was public. Here was an overt public superstition which could be directly attacked. That this is not too harsh a verdict on the popular image worship is proved by the serious commotion that the emperor's policy aroused. If no more than Gregory the Great's didactic use of pictures had been in practice, people would not have been so profoundly stirred at the removal of their lesson illustrations. What roused them to fury was the idea that the emperor was taking away their idols, their gods. Thus this very passion of opposition justified Leo's theory of the system he was attacking. In a word, Leo was a reformer, a protestant, a man who saw the fatal character of the materialistic religion of his day, and endeavoured to alter it.
Nevertheless Leo made two serious mistakes. First, he acted solely on his own initiative and by force. His reformation was purely a State action; there was no popular movement supporting it. Such a reformation, coming on to the Church from without, does not stir up an internal revival of better things. Secondly, it was negative, only destructive; it did nothing to substitute a new living religion for the old superstition. Leo was no Luther. It is the positive revival of religion alone that can effect genuine reformation.
Still, while we must admit these two damaging factors of the case, we may hold that the emperor's motive was good and honest and enlightened. In point of fact, there was some revival of religion under the iconoclastic emperors, and it was accompanied by a betterment of morals. The period that followed Leo's reforms was a real improvement on that which preceded it. Mr. Bury holds that the Iconoclasts should not be regarded as Puritans; that it would be more correct to consider them to be Rationalists.[2] Certainly they did not anticipate the grim rigour which is associated with Puritanism in Sir Walter Scott's novels. The reverse was the case; they introduced fray living into court and city, and set their faces against the ascetic ideal cherished by the monks. Nevertheless they were not unlike the true English Puritans of Elizabeth's time, the men who discarded "vain traditions" in order to have the Church governed by "the pure word of God," and who opposed the more materialistic ritual in favour of inward religion.
It has been maintained that one aim of Leo and his successors in suppressing image worship was to oppose the influence of the monks. Now it is a fact that, while the parish priests for the most part submitted tamely to the imperial orders, as became government officials, the monks stoutly resisted them, for it was in the monasteries that the liberty of the Church was cherished.
Besides, while the monks opposed imperial interference in ecclesiastical affairs, they were out of favour with the authorities on other grounds also. Monasticism was the deadliest enemy of militarism, and that in two ways. The monks would not fight; and therefore the monasteries were draining the empire of a large part of its able-bodied citizens, and these especially the men of grit. At the same time their celibate life was keeping down the population, and so, as has been pointed out earlier in this book, rendering the provinces too weak to withstand the onrush of teeming multitudes of more prolific races that hovered on their borders.
While, however, all this is worthy of consideration, it will not account for Iconoclasm, for Leo could have found other means of opposing monasticism, and means which would not have enlisted the populace in its favour. It was bad policy to select a ground of attack which involved a direct assault on the religion of the people. Turn where we may for an explanation, we are driven back to the conclusion that the iconoclastic enterprise was a reformation movement, the aim of which was to save Christianity from degenerating into the merely mechanical performances of idolatry. It may be remarked as a further confirmation of this position that both Leo and his son Constantine opposed Maryolatry.[3]
The execution of Leo's orders met with violent opposition; but as this was combined with resistance to a harsh and burdensome system of taxation, it is difficult to apportion the relative forces of the two influences. There were risings in Italy and in Greece. The imperial fleet in the Cyclades mutinied, and was accompanied by one of the imperial armies in an attack on Constantinople, carrying with it a man named Cosmas, whom the rebels elected emperor. The expedition turned out to be a disastrous failure. Leo defeated the fleet on its approach to Constantinople by means of "Greek Fire." The commander Agallianos plunged fully armed into the sea and was drowned. Cosmas was taken alive and executed. So was another leader. But Leo treated the rest of the insurgents with leniency. His action throughout was milder than that of Constantine, his son and successor.
Writers of later times[4] have charged Leo with one act of inconceivable barbarity. Near the bronze bazaar at Constantinople was an imperial institution consisting of a library and a theological college, presided over by a scholar entitled the "Œcumenical Doctor," with whom twelve learned men were associated for the instruction of the students, the whole body being supported from the public funds. Leo was in the habit of consulting these professors, and he naturally turned to them to join him in his policy of reform. It would have been a great point to have gained a verdict of theological science from such an authority. That however was refused him. Then, according to the incredible story of the later writers, the emperor had faggots heaped against the building, set them on fire, and so burnt the library and with it the "Œcumenical Doctor" and his twelve colleagues. No contemporary writer mentions any such atrocity. Theophanes merely remarks curtly that Leo put an end to "pious education" and shut up the educational institutions.[5]
In other matters Leo now proceeded further towards what we know as Protestantism. He gave up the intercession of the saints and the worship of relics.[6] At first he had only interfered with pictures outside the churches; subsequently he carried on his Iconoclasm within their walls. A later decree forbade anybody even to make a picture of a saint, martyr, or angel; all these things were accursed. This was a condemnation of sacred art in itself.
It was a great annoyance to Leo that Germanus the patriarch of Constantinople stoutly opposed his reforming action, and quite contrary to precedent for this man to be showing a spirit of independence more like that of his brother at Rome than anything the Eastern Empire was accustomed to. The emperor sent for Germanus (a.d. 729) and expostulated with him, but in vain. Leo even appears to have tried to entangle the intrepid old man in a charge of treason; but this unworthy device also failed.[7] In January, a.d. 730, Leo held a Silentium[8] in support of his policy. This was a civil council that had no authority over the Church. Nevertheless it was impossible for the patriarch to retain his office in face of the government's disapproval, and therefore he quietly retired. Here we sec the difference between the East and the West. A Roman pontiff would have held his ground and defied the emperor to do his worst. Germanus was as intrepid as any pope. But it is one thing to be defiant to a distant potentate when supported by enthusiastic followers in a position of virtual independence, which was the case with the pope in the West; and quite another thing to show independence under the very shadow of the imperial palace in the East, where for generations the Church has meekly submitted to the patronage of the State. Germanus never wavered from his convinced policy. When, at last, a venerable man ninety years old, he saw that he could never hope to give effect to that policy, he resigned his office.
Gregory iii. was now pope at Rome. He had sent to Leo for the emperor's confirmation of his election, and he had not been consecrated till it had arrived. This was the last occasion on which a pope solicited approval of his appointment from Constantinople. Now Leo's action in the iconoclastic crusade greatly angered Gregory, who assembled a council at Rome which excommunicated the Iconoclasts. The emperor replied by confiscating all the pope's estates in the Eastern provinces, and by separating the ecclesiastical government of south Italy, Sicily, and other parts farther east from the jurisdiction of Rome, and transferring it to the patriarch of Constantinople. Gregory wrote to Germanus saying that if anybody misuses the words of the Old Testament, which were only directed against idolatry, "we can only hold him to a barking dog." This was before the Silentium. After that council had been followed by the resignation of Germanus, the pope wrote to the emperor explaining his views and justifying the use of images. He urged that this did not involve idolatry. The Israelites were commanded to make images of cherubim. Leo had compared himself to Uzziah—he meant Hezekiah, who destroyed the brazen serpent. "Yes," says Gregory, "Uzziah was your brother, and like you he did violence to the priests."[9]
Leo iii. died in the year 741 and was succeeded by his son Constantine v., nicknamed "Copronymus," after an infantile misdemeanour which occurred when the patriarch was plunging him into the baptismal font.[10] The name clung to him in later years and was used as an encouragement for the foulest calumnies concerning his conduct. No emperor was ever bespattered with more disgusting accusations, but seeing that these were flung at him by bitter enemies in the fury of the iconoclastic contest no historical value can be attached to them. The devastating plague which swept over the empire and reached Constantinople in 747 was regarded by the populace as a judgment of heaven on the sin of Iconoclasm. Unfortunately Constantine cannot be exonerated from the charge of cruelty. He went to greater lengths than his father in the suppression of image worship, and even carried on a severe persecution to the extent of torture. The protestant spirit of the iconoclastic movement which appeared in Leo was also seen in Constantine, for he was accused of rejecting the intercession of the Virgin Mary, though it was allowed that he called her the mother of God—as would be expected if there was any connection between Iconoclasm and Monophysitism; and, further, he was charged with denying the transference of the merits of the martyrs.
Constantine was superseded for a time by his brother-in-law Artavasdos, who was acknowledged by the pope and who restored the pictures to the churches. On recovering his power, Constantine had the eyes of Artavasdos and his two sons put out and then exhibited the miserable men in triumph at the chariot races, after which they were imprisoned in a monastery.
Constantine now consolidated his government and proved himself to be a vigorous ruler in Church as well as in State affairs. More than ever the ecclesiastical discipline of the East came to be concentrated at Constantinople and controlled by the emperor. He ordered the metropolitans and provincials to hold provincial synods, and convoked a general council which met at Constantinople in the year 754, and was attended by 338 bishops.[11] But though this was probably the largest Church council that had ever been held, the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem—being now in the Saracen dominions—were unable to attend it; nor were any bishops from the Western Church present. It could not therefore be taken as an œcumenical council. This council forbade the employment of images and pictures in churches as a pagan practice, condemned the use of the crucifix, proscribed "the godless art of painting," and ordered all who made crucifixes or pictures for worship in the churches to be excommunicated by the Church and punished by the State. Two years later image worship was proscribed with greater severity than ever, and so were both the use of relics and the practice of praying to the saints. Many monks and clergy were banished for their disobedience to these orders; some were flogged, tortured, and mutilated.
The most popular defender of image worship was the abbot Stephen, who has been so highly honoured in the Greek Church as a saint and martyr that he bears the name of "Stephen the younger" by comparison with the protomartyr. According to the story of his life written half a century later, in the year 763 Constantine Copronicus sent an order to this monk, who was resident at Mount St. Auxentius, to sign the decree of the Constantinople council. On his refusal he was dragged by soldiers from his cave and imprisoned with some other monks for six days without food. Liberated for a time, he was seized again on libellous charges, dragged once more from his cave, beaten, tortured, and banished to the island of Proconnesus in the Propontis. Here a number of monks, driven from their cells by the persecution, gathered round their hero and leader. Thus his place of exile was becoming a rallying point for the forces of opposition to the government policy, or, as it would be regarded at headquarters, a nest of sedition. So Stephen was arrested a third time, bound hand and foot, and carried off to Constantinople, where he was flung into the great prison of the Prætorium, together with 342 mutilated monks, some of whom had had their ears, noses, or hands cut off, their eyes gouged out, or their beards smeared with pitch and fired. The saint turned the prison into a monastery for worship and meditation. He was put on his trial and condemned to death. A saying attributed to Constantine may help to account for the vindictive fury with which Stephen was treated. Seeing how popular the monk was and how obstinately he maintained his cause, Constantine is reported to have declared that Stephen was emperor and that it was only this man who was obeyed. Thereupon—as in the case of Henry ii.'s impatient exclamation about Thomas à Becket—obsequious attendants took action. The imperial bodyguard dashed into the prison, dragged the bold monk out into the street, and there battered him to death with clubs and stones.[12]
Ruthless conduct such as this provoked fierce opposition on the part of the image worshippers. The patriarch of Constantinople was suspected of taking part in a conspiracy against the emperor. He was deposed, tried, and condemned to death. Thereupon he confessed himself an Iconoclast; but no mercy was shown him. He was set on an ass with his face towards the tail and conducted in this insulting way to the amphitheatre, where he was beheaded. The persecution had now become much more than an iconoclastic reformation. It had developed into a brutal attack on monasticism. The victims were no longer painted pictures; they were living men. As at the English Reformation, there was a "dissolution of monasteries." But this was less general, and more cruel. "Where the monks were turned out of their monasteries, these buildings were converted into taverns. Constantine degraded himself in his attempt to degrade his ecclesiastical enemies. He compelled a number of monks to march round the circus at Constaninople hand in hand with women—either nuns or persons of less respectable character;[13] it is not clear which.
- ↑ Lib. ix. Ep. 9.
- ↑ Bury, History of Later Roman Empire, vol. ii. p. 429.
- ↑ For proofs see authorities cited in Bury, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 428, note 1.
- ↑ e.g. Zonaras and George the Sinner.
- ↑ Theophanes, i. 623.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 625.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 626 ff.
- ↑ i.e. A consultative assembly.
- ↑ Mansi, xii. p. 959 ff.; Hardouin, iv. p. 1 ff.
- ↑ Theophanes, p. 616.
- ↑ Theophanes, p. 654.
- ↑ in Analecta, pp. 546 ff. Hefele admits that this is largely legendary (Hist. of Councils, v. p. 323).
- ↑ Theophanes, p. 676; Nicephorus, p. 83; Zonaras, xv. 5.