The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 1/Division 2/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE RESTORATION OF IMAGE WORSHIP
The war of the Byzantine emperors against image worship falls into two periods, being broken by an interval of a generation during which the practice was revived and encouraged by the government. The first period, consisting of the reigns of Leo the Isaurian and his son Constantine Copronicus, lasted for nearly half a century (from Leo's first decree in a.d. 726 to the death of Constantine in 775). This was followed by thirty-eight years of peace to the image worshippers, when the custom so dear to the hearts of the monks and the populace flourished again under the favour of the court as well as with the unvarying approval of the Church. Then another strong emperor, Leo the Armenian, returned to the example of his namesake from Isauria and renewed the attack on the pictures, and his policy was continued by his two successors; but this second iconoclastic campaign only lasted for twenty-nine years (a.d. 813-842), during most of which it was carried on very mildly; and in the end image worship was effectually restored. It has since continued for more than a thousand years down to our own time, and it is now one of the chief characteristics of the Greek Church. In other words, the premature reformation, twice attempted, and each time successful as a government measure, never laid hold of the Church, and ultimately it failed entirely, the old order re-establishing itself as completely as though nothing had ever happened to interfere with it. Therefore we must regard Iconoclasm as an episode, not as a stage in the development of Church history. Nevertheless it is extremely suggestive, for both the attack on image worship and the defence are symptomatic; by means of them we can learn much about the actual condition of Christendom in the East during a little-studied period. The iconoclastic emperors, for the most part, were strong rulers who successfully defended the empire against the encroachment of foreign powers and who maintained good order within its borders. During their reigns the law was justly administered; security of life and property—except in the case of the persecuted monks—was well guarded; and the morals of the people were higher than at any other time in the history of the Eastern Church. On the other hand—and here we come to the paradox of the situation—the defence of image worship was carried on with genuine religious motives on the part of the ecclesiastical leaders. The most cultivated and devoted Churchmen of the day were champions of what the Iconoclasts stigmatised as "idolatry." Further, it is a curious fact that, while each of the two reforming campaigns was initiated by a powerful emperor—the first by Leo the Isaurian and the second by Leo the Armenian, each of the reactionary movements sprang from the energy of a woman—the first from that of the Empress Irene and the second from that of the Empress Theodora. Unhappily we cannot ascribe to these ladies very lofty motives, at all events not to the first of them.
Leo iv., the son and successor of Constantine Copronicus (a.d. 775), was in delicate health during his short reign, and when he died leaving as his heir his son Constantine vi., Porphyrogenitus—(born in the purple, i.e. the purple chamber at the palace), then only ten years old, the regency devolved on one of the many remarkable women who figure so conspicuously in the history of the Byzantine Empire. This was the cultivated and brilliant Athenian beauty, Irene, who was only twenty-eight years of age when she became a widow. Of Greek blood, she found in her own people the sympathy and support she wanted in order to maintain her independence against her late husband's family and racial connections. The iconoclastic emperors were of Asiatic origin—Isaurian and Armenian; the chief supporters of image worship were found among the Greeks. It was good policy therefore for Irene to favour the icons. She was a woman of illimitable ambition, an ambition that smothered the instincts of motherhood. Discovering a conspiracy against her power instigated by her brother-in-law, Cæsar Nicephorus, she forced Leo's five brothers into the priesthood and compelled them to officiate at the high altar of St. Sophia during the Christmas ceremonies. Meanwhile Irene was actively engaged in the restoration of image worship. With this end in view she was just as Erastian as the iconoclastic emperors had been. It was all government action and forcible interference with ecclesiastical affairs. Irene deposed the patriarch Paul who was an Iconoclast, and nominated for the head of the Greek Church Tarasius, a man of high reputation for learning and character, but a civilian, the secretary of the imperial cabinet. The assembly of citizens to whom the empress proposed her candidate elected him by acclamation. He was a popular personage and the empress's policy was also popular. But had the case been otherwise resistance to the court would have been regarded as preposterous. Tarasius was reluctant to take office, and he refused to do so till his election had been confirmed by a council—consisting, of course, of image worshippers. The newly appointed patriarch then revived the intercourse between Constantinople and the other patriarchates which had been broken off during the dominance of the iconoclastic emperors. Thus the schism was brought to an end, and the Roman Pope Hadrian wrote a joyful letter at the return of the empire to the fold of orthodoxy, in the course of which he defended the practice of image worship by an appeal to Scripture, quoting, among other instances, the case of Jacob kissing the top of his staff.[1]
Tarasius desired to have the matter finally settled by an œcumenical council. The empress agreed, and the council assembled first at Constantinople, where it was violently broken up, and then at Nicæa, in the year 787. This was the so-called "seventh general council," and the second council of Nicæa. Neither Irene nor her young son were present in person; but they were represented by high officers of State. Nicephorus, the historian, who afterwards became patriarch of Constantinople, was the secretary. There were two delegates from Rome, and to them was assigned the first place of honour as representing the pope. Next came Tarasius as the bishop of "New Rome." Two Oriental monks named John and Thomas were supposed to represent the absent patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The virtual imprisonment of these patriarchs within the dominions of the Saracens would have prevented their coming even if they had been summoned; but as things turned out they were not even communicated with, the messengers finding that they could not get safely through to them.[2] All the other members of the council were subjects of the Byzantine Empire. Therefore, with the all-important exception of the presence of the Roman delegates, this second council of Nicæa was no more œcumenical than the iconoclastic council of Constantinople in the reign of Constantine Copronicus. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that it registered the prevalent opinion of the Church. The enlightened iconoclastics had proved themselves to be a minority with no popular power; they had only succeeded for a time by means of the strong arm of the State. The second council of Nicæa carried the people with it when deciding positively in favour of the pictures. It argued that "the oftener one gazed on these representations, the more would the gazer be stirred to the resemblance of the originals and the imitation of them, and to offer his greeting and reverent homage to them,[3] not the actual worship,[4] which belonged to the godhead alone," … for "whosoever does reverence[5] to an image does reverence to the person represented by it."[6]
The pope adopted the decrees of the council, and thus Irene had her ecclesiastical policy justified by the Church voting at a great council and speaking through its chief pontiff. Her personal history is an ugly commentary on these transactions. She was so greedy of her authority that she was unwilling for her son Constantine to take up the government when he came of age. For five years he succeeded in having the upper hand. Then he misused his opportunity by putting out the eyes of one of his uncles, Nicephorus the Cæsar, and cutting out the tongues of four other uncles. These crimes might have been condoned by the cruel custom of the times. But when Constantine divorced the Empress Maria, whom his tyrannical mother had forced upon him, and married Theodota, one of his mother's maids of honour, that ecclesiastical offence alienated the Church authorities and destroyed his popularity. Irene came back into power. Thereupon she showed her vindictiveness, or at least her unappeasable ambition, by having Constantine's eyes put out. This unnatural mother who blinded her own son has been canonised by the Greek Church for her restoration of image worship. She was more reasonably appreciated in her lifetime. Dethroned by a court conspiracy (a.d. 802), she was exiled to the island of Lesbos, where she died a few months later; and Nicephorus, the imperial treasurer, who had led the conspiracy, succeeded to the empire. He proved to be a man of moderate ideas, who wished to maintain image worship without persecuting its opponents; but, like Zeno and Justinian, he tried to bring about peace by forcibly silencing discussion. Where two strong men had failed it is not surprising that this weaker ruler did not succeed. In pursuit of his policy of encouraging image worship, on the death of Tarasius, Nicephorus appointed his namesake, known to us as Nicephorus the historian, to be patriarch of Constantinople, a man of principle and a conscientious supporter of the orthodox position at the return of Iconoclasm (a.d. 806).
A disastrous war with the Bulgarians, in which the Emperor Nicephorus was slain, led to a revolution, in consequence of which his son Staviacius, after having been acknowledged by the soldiers for two months, was sent to a monastery, there to die of his wounds; and the previous emperor's son-in-law Michael i. was set on the throne. This revolution was carried out by the bigoted party of the image worshippers who had resented the comprehensive policy of the late emperor. But Michael turned out to be a weak ruler. He was regarded as pious, and undoubtedly he pleased the Church by granting out of the State funds lavish doles to her charities and to leading clergy; but since he made similar grants to high-placed court functionaries and chief officers of the army, such action was remarkably like bribery. Another of his pious deeds was to cover the tomb of Tarasius with silver, in grateful acknowledgment of the kindness of the dead patriarch—now prayed to as a saint—for causing a severe epidemic to spread among the invading Bulgarians. But best of all, he won the admiration of the orthodox by yielding to their persuasion in abandoning his liberal policy and persecuting the supporters of Iconoclasm. This fact shows that the movement which Leo the Isaurian had commenced as a piece of high-handed imperial policy, despotically forced on the Church, was not so entirely without popular support as its opponents contended; or, at all events, that it had gained some friends in the course of the eighty years that had intervened. A number of Iconoclasts together with Paulicians and other heretics were persecuted, some even being put to death.
Then came the reaction, originated on other grounds. Michael was quite incompetent to sustain the war with the Bulgarians, and in order to save the empire the soldiers elected one of their generals, Leo the Armenian, as its head (a.d. 813), sending Michael like his predecessor into a monastery. The new emperor proved his strength at once by refusing the patriarch's demand that he should follow his predecessor's example and sign a declaration of orthodoxy—which, under the circumstances, meant image worship. In course of time he brought about an effective reorganisation of civil government, and throughout his reign he maintained good order and the regular administration of justice in the law courts. Thus in the second iconoclastic period, as in the first, we see under the reforming emperors both good government and respectable morals. Leo appears to have been in sympathy with Iconoclasm from the first, although as a calm, statesman-like ruler, he desired to act with moderation and to maintain the peace of the Church. But he was urged to take stronger measures against the image worshippers by a remarkable man known as John the Grammarian.
We have now reached the period of Alfred and Alcuin in the West, when a temporary revival of letters seemed to promise an end to the intellectual slumber that was settling down over Europe—a promise doomed to miserable disappointment. At this very time in the Eastern Church we have John the Grammarian, a scholar, versed in the science of his day, which he appears to have acquired from the Arabians. Of course he was accused of magic by the orthodox. But John was an abbot and of an illustrious family. With him were associated other learned men who also repudiated the superstition of image worship. The reformers were numerically weak; but morally and intellectually they were worthy of respect—a small body of clear-sighted, cultivated men, who strove in vain to stem the tide of the popular religion, which consisted of materialistic ideas and sensuous ceremonies. These scholars persuaded Leo to have the pictures removed from the churches which were in possession of the clergy of their own party. Even that mild action—a trifle in comparison with the tyrannical persecution by Constantine Copronymus—provoked violent opposition on the part of the monks. The soldiers retaliated. A riotous body of men from the army broke into the patriarchal palace at Constantinople and destroyed the sacred pictures that adorned its walls. Passion was rising to fever-heat on both sides. Then, much against his inclination, Leo found it necessary to take action. He deposed the patriarch Nicephorus—a deed for which we may be selfishly grateful, since it gave this leading actor in the events of his times leisure to write his history. The emperor appointed a layman Theodotus Mellissenus to the vacant post; and he summoned what he wished to be regarded as a general council at Constantinople (a.d. 816), which confirmed the decision of the earlier iconoclastic council in the same city (that held a.d. 754), condemned image worship, and anathematised the patriarchs Tarasius and Nicephorus and all image worshippers. Recalcitrant clergy were to be deposed; but there were few such, for most submitted. We have seen that this was the normal practice in the Byzantine Empire. Now again, as on previous occasions, the stubborn opposition came from the independent monks, not from the demure State-endowed and State-regulated clergy.
Leo was rewarded for his vigorous reforms in the civil service by assassination, and was succeeded by one of the conspirators, a trusted friend—Michael ii., nicknamed "the Stammerer" (a.d. 820). This emperor was tolerant towards both parties, since he wished to be conciliatory, although he leaned towards the iconoclastic policy. He died in the year 829, and was succeeded by Theophilus, who at first followed the same line of policy, but three years after his accession issued a decree prohibiting image worship, which was executed in some instances with much harshness.[7] Lazarus, a famous painter, was imprisoned and scourged, and two monks, Theophanes the Singer and Theodore Graptus, were tortured—the latter receiving his surname from the fact that some verses were branded on his forehead. A little later John the Grammarian was elected patriarch and was induced to summon a synod which condemned image worship.
On the death of Theophilus (a.d. 842), his widow Theodora, as regent to her son Michael iii., surnamed "The Drunkard," restored the image worship and so put an end to the second iconoclastic campaign. Within a few months of her accession to power she summoned a council, which confirmed the decision of the second council of Nicæa. Still, the fires of the controversy were only smouldering; for in the year 860 the patriarch Photius proposed to Pope Nicholas another council against the Iconoclasts, which met in the following year. But, though this council deposed Ignatius, who had supplanted Photius, we have no record of any reference to images during the course of its proceedings. Eight years later (a.d. 869) yet another synod denounced the Iconoclasts and upheld the pictures as useful for the "instruction" of the people. Henceforth they have hung on the walls of Greek churches, undisturbed except by the ravages of war and time, and adored by successive generations of the devout.
Although the iconoclastic movement sprang from the enlightened policy of two dynasties of strong emperors, while the practice of image worship was maintained by the ignorant populace and the fanatical monks, it must not be supposed that the latter lacked capable and high-minded defenders. On the contrary, the ablest theologian in each of the two periods of Iconoclasm was a champion of image worship. To the first period belongs John of Damascus, and to the second Theodore of Studium, the only churchmen of permanent fame who appeared in the Eastern Church during the eighth and ninth centuries.
John of Damascus is known as the last of the Fathers. He it was who summed up the results of the previous centuries of controversy and gave to his Church the dogmas of orthodoxy in the stereotyped form which has characterised them during all subsequent ages. There is much that is mythical in the story of his life. We cannot fix the date of his birth; but it is clear that he was ordained before the year 735. His death occurred sometime between the years 759 and 767. Thus his active life coincides with the period of the great iconoclastic persecution beginning in the reign of Leo the Isaurian and extending through the greater part of that of Constantine Copronymus. John came from a Christian family in the city of Damascus bearing the Arabic name of Mansour, and he held for a time an honourable post in the court of the caliph. From this place of shelter he launched his attacks on Leo the Isaurian with impunity, when that emperor was engaged in putting down picture worship. Unable to get at him directly, Leo is said to have sent the caliph a forged letter in the handwriting of John offering to let the emperor into Damascus. Thereupon, we are told, the caliph had John's right hand cut off. It was restored to him in response to his prayer to the Virgin, Subsequently John retired to the famous monastery of Mar Saba, still overhanging the gorge of the Kidron in the wilderness of Judæa. The monks were afraid to receive so important a personage from the court till they had tested his humility. This they did by sending him back to Damascus with a load of baskets manufactured at the monastery. There is no reason to question the second story simply because we must regard the earlier narrative as legendary, for truth and fiction are always mixed up in these lives of saints, and the ordeal was quite characteristic. John stood this and every other test that was devised to try him, after which he was duly accepted. He lived the rest of his days in his out of the world retreat, composing hymns and theological works.
The most important of the works of John of Damascus is the De Fide Orthodoxa.[8] What the Summa of Thomas Aquinas is for the Roman Church and what Calvin's Institutes is for the Reformed Church, that is this work for the Greek Church—the most orderly and systematic exposition of the accepted theology. It is divided into four books: Book I. discusses the doctrine of God and the Trinity; Book II. is concerned with Creation and the Nature of Man; Book III. states the doctrine of Christ and the Incarnation, including the relation of the two natures and the two wills, Mary as the mother of God, the death of our Lord and His descent into Hades; Book IV. carries on the doctrine of Christ to His resurrection and reign; but it is chiefly occupied with a number of miscellaneous subjects—such as faith, worship, images, Scripture, sin, virginity, resurrection, etc. Like Augustine, who gave its character to Latin theology, especially in so far as he was followed by Gregory the Great—the last of the Western Fathers and the first mediæval theologian—John of Damascus, the last of the Eastern Fathers, sets before us the essence of Greek theology. It is interesting to see where these Fathers differ. The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Spirit, on which the two churches divided, really belongs to a later period, although John anticipates the Greek position. The following are his chief points of distinction from Augustine and Gregory:—His assertion of free will—a marked feature of Greek theology throughout in contradistinction from Latin; his silence as to original sin; his distinction between foreknowledge and predestination; his denial of the physical fire of hell—so prominent in the lurid horrors of the mediæval inferno from Gregory to Dante; and his moderate views of the sacraments, which he holds to be only two—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
The other important theologian of the iconoclastic period is Theodore of Studium, who comes in the second and milder time of imperial attacks on image worship as the champion of the pictures. He may be said to have pronounced the final word of orthodoxy on the subject. Theodore was born in the year 759 in a family of high social position at Constantinople. Thus he was a youth sixteen years old when Irene restored the worship of pictures, and the greater part of his life was spent in the subsequent period of image worship. Under the influence of his uncle Paul, who renounced the gay society of Constantinople and retired to a cave, a wave of enthusiasm for monasticism swept over the whole family. Theodore, with his father, his remaining uncles and his brothers, went into a monastic retreat under the direction of Paul, while his mother took her one little daughter to live with her "in cellular fashion." It would seem that the mother was the dominant influence in this scattering of her family, for when her youngest son, breaking down at the piteous moment of parting, clung to her neck begging her to let him stay with her, the determined woman answered, "If you do not go willingly, my child, I will drag you with my own hand on board ship."
For thirteen years Theodore lived in the monastery of Saccudio under his uncle Paul, who ordained him to the priesthood and then insisted on consecrating him abbot in place of himself—a singular act of self-abnegation, which, while it does honour to the devotion and humility of the senior, and helps us to understand the spell he had cast on his family, also testifies to the high qualities that had been revealed in the junior. Practically they lived as joint abbots—for Theodore would not let his uncle retire—first at Saccudio and then at Studium, a monastery situated within the walls of Constantinople. Constantine Porphyrogenitus had broken up the establishment at Saccudio in a rage because the monks would not give their consent to his second marriage. This incident, revealing the emperor's desire to have an endorsement of his conduct from the monks, followed by the refusal of the monks to grant it, shows how powerful the monastery was as an independent body. On her return to power Irene had reinstated the scattered monks. But a raid of the Saracens afterwards made it necessary for them to retreat across the Bosphorus; and then it was that Theodore was appointed abbot of tbe great monastery of Studium. The monks in this monastery were of the order of Acœmeti (the Sleepless), so named because they took turns in a continuous chanting of the praise of God in their chapel that never ceased day or night all through the twenty-four hours the whole year round. This monastery was also a famous centre for the copying of manuscripts, and the beautiful handwriting here developed became famous.
When Leo the Armenian revived the iconoclastic movement, Theodore appeared as the champion of the pictures. In defiance of the imperial commands, he arranged a procession of sacred icons borne aloft through the streets of Constantinople on Palm Sunday in the year 815. It is in Theodore's writings that we get the clearest understanding of the case for image worship. We can understand the popular idolatry. But what we want to see is how men of intelligence, culture, and genuine religious earnestness, like John of Damascus and Theodore of Studium, could support what the reforming emperors were endeavouring to suppress as childish superstition and rank idolatry. There must have been some intellectual reason and some high religious motive in the strenuous opposition of these men to what strikes us as an enlightened and elevated policy. Our best answer to this question is to be found in the writings of Theodore—his Antirrhetica Adversus Iconomachos and his letters. His arguments amount in the main to three: (1) Theodore insists on the impiety of the secular government in interfering with the affairs of the Church. It was late in the day to raise such a point, at Constantinople of all places. But although people had tamely submitted to interference which only affected bishops and theologians, in appointing and deposing ecclesiastics, and in dictating doctrinal statements, it was another matter when emperors ventured to lay their finger on the popular worship in the churches. Besides, the monks had always stood for the independence of the Church, even when the bishops had meekly bowed to the yoke of the State. (2) Theodore thought he detected an attack on the doctrine of the incarnation. Here the discussion enters the region of theological controversy. The Iconoclasts were suspected of monophysitism. They had come from the home of the Monophysites in Asia Minor—the instigator of the first attack from Isauria, the leader of the second from Armenia. Then the controversy was diverted from its original question. It was no longer merely supposed to be the contention of the Iconoclasts that the worship of images was idolatry; they were charged with denying that any true picture of Christ could be made, because as God He had no longer a circumscribed bodily form. The contention of the image worshippers, on the other hand, was that this line of argument destroyed the permanence of the incarnation. The humanity of Christ is lost if He is not such that He can be represented in a picture. (3) The dreadful charge of Manichæism—so often revived in heresy controversies—was raised against the Iconoclasts. Their aversion to a representation of the bodily appearence of Christ was taken by the image worshippers as a sign of their reprobation of matter as evil in itself. So was their objection to kissing the pictures.
We must admit that there was some ground for Theodore's contentions. The iconoclastic emperors may have had a good cause; but they spoilt it by their tyranny. They did not go the way to effect a genuine reformation of religion. Then there was a real danger lest the incarnation itself should be lost in theories about it. A picture of Christ was a wholesome antidote to the abstractions of metaphysical theology in relation to the Second Person of the Trinity. Possibly, too, some truly religious influence was exercised by the contemplation of the pictures. They were thought to have a sacramental efficacy. Whatever may be said of the mysticism or materialism of this view, we must acknowledge that the aim of devout defenders of the popular worship was high and pure. They maintained that the picture of Christ brought Him near to those who gazed on it reverently. Theodore writes in the spirit of St. Francis and Thomas à Kempis: "The true Christian is nothing but a copy or impression of Christ,"[9] and he quotes Dionysius the Areopagite when he says, "The archetype appears in the image."[10] Unfortunately this line of argument would almost justify idolatry per se, when distinguished from fetishism.
- ↑ "Adoravit fastigium virgæ ejus," Heb. xi. 21 (Vulg.).
- ↑ Nevertheless Hefele considers that the two monks had a right to represent the absent patriarchs, because they "represented in fact the faith of the three patriarchs in regard to images and the veneration of them" (Hist. Councils, vol. v. p. 361).
- ↑ ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν.
- ↑ τὴν ἀληθινὴν λατρείαν.
- ↑ προσκυνεῖ.
- ↑ Mansi, 374, et seq.
- ↑ Continuator, 62; Cedrenus, 514. We now have to part company with our two chief authorities for the iconoclastic period—Theophanes and Nicephorus.
- ↑ Ἔνδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως.
- ↑ Lib. ii. Ep. 22.
- ↑ Lib. ii. Ep. 38.