Chapter V: Difficulties with Pagans, Jews, Image Worshippers, and CIVIL Powers (3)

The Empress Irene having in 780 so skilfully turned the tide in favour of images, the contest was still maintained during the five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight years between the worshippers of images and the iconoclasts. The final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, the widow Theodora, after the death of the Emperor Theophilus in 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She sentenced the iconoclast patriarch to a whipping of two hundred lashes instead of the loss of his eyes. At this stroke of power the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. The only point left unsettled was, whether images were endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity, and this continued to be discussed in the eleventh century. The Churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain had steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they professed to admit into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. Charlemagne had used his authority in assembling a synod of three hundred bishops at Frankfort in 794, who professed to blame the superstition of the Greeks. But the worship of images advanced with silent progress, and reached to the idolatry of the ages which preceded the Reformation. Theodora skilfully gained over many bishops by representing that her husband the Emperor on his deathbed repented of his errors, and that her young son at the same time had also registered a vow to restore images.

IMAGE WORSHIP IN SPAIN.

In Spain image worship reached a height hardly attained in any other part of Christendom. Besides the most holy effigies heaven-descended, like the Black Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, and the Christ of the Vine Stock at Valladolid, there were many sacred images, which, even before the hands which fashioned them were cold, began to make the blind see, the lame walk, and friars flourish and grow powerful. St. Bernard was modelled and clothed like a brother of the order in his own white robes; St. Dominic scourged himself in effigy till the red blood flowed from his painted shoulders; and the Virgin, copied from the loveliest models, was presented to her adorers gloriously apparelled in clothing of wrought gold. Many of these figures not only presided in their chapels throughout the year, but, decked with garlands and illuminated by tapers, were carried by brotherhoods or guilds instituted in their honour in the religious processions. The colouring was sometimes laid on canvas, with which the figure was covered as with a skin. The effects and gradation of tints were studied as carefully as in paintings on canvas. The imitation of rich stuffs for draperies was a nice and difficult branch of the art. For single figures real draperies were sometimes used, especially for those of the Madonnas, which possessed large and magnificent wardrobes and caskets of jewels worthy of the queens of the Mogul.

THE AMBITIOUS POPE HILDEBRAND (1046-1085).

During the time that Hildebrand, son of a carpenter of Soan in Tuscany, became noted and acquired an ascendency with the Popes, he advocated certain reforms. The first was to make the Popes independent of the Emperor: this he achieved by procuring a decree that the Pope should be chosen by the cardinals, bishops, and priests assembled in college. He also put a stop to the immorality of the clergy by enforcing celibacy of priests. He also procured more stringent laws against simony. He succeeded to the popedom in 1073 as Gregory VII., and in carrying out his ambitious schemes he summoned the German king, Henry IV., and ultimately excommunicated him, in retaliation for Henry having procured a sentence of deposition by the Synod of Worms against himself as Pope. These two potentates exchanged some defiant and insulting letters. Henry at last was reduced to such difficulties that he had to go in the guise of a penitent, clad in a thin white dress, while the ground was deep in snow, and he waited humbly at the outer gate of the Castle of Canossa three days before he was received into the presence of his Holiness, who gave him absolution, but under most humiliating circumstances. Gregory, however, at last was punished in his turn in 1080, and he had to become an exile, in which condition he died friendless and deserted in 1085, and muttering the words: "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die an exile."

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, THE ANGELIC DOCTOR (A.D. 1227).

St. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1227, and became the greatest theologian and master of logic and powerful reasoner of his age. He was at first thought dull at school, and used to be called the great dumb Sicilian ox; but his genius soon broke forth, and he came to be called the angelical doctor. His versatility, power of abstraction, and memory astonished everybody. Louis IX. of France (St. Louis) made him a privy councillor, and often consulted him. Once at dinner with the king, after a long silence, Thomas thumped the table energetically, muttering to himself, "That is an overwhelming argument against the Manicheans!" and the king, curious to know what sudden thought it was, begged him to explain it, which was done, and committed to writing by clerks. While praying one day in the church at Naples, his friend Romanus, who had died some time before, appeared to Thomas and spoke to him, and said that his works pleased God, and that he (Romanus) was now in eternal bliss. Thomas then asked whether the habits which are acquired in this life remain to us in heaven. Romanus answered, "Brother Thomas, I see God, and do not ask for more." He then vanished. One day Thomas was writing a treatise on the Sacrament, and was praying, when the figure on the crucifix turned towards him and said, "Thomas, thou hast written well of Me: what reward desirest thou?" "Nought, save Thyself, Lord," was the saint's immediate reply. Another time Thomas, while celebrating Mass, was seized with a sudden rapture, owing to a vision which appeared to him, and which he said was so glorious that all he had written appeared worthless compared with what he had just seen. In his last illness the monks of Fossa Nuova, near Maienza, waited on him with unceasing devotion, and begged of him to expound to them the Canticle of Canticles, as St. Bernard did. The saint replied, "Get me Bernard's spirit, and I will do your bidding." He yielded to their wish. The saint, growing feebler, died; and while a corpse, a blind man begged to approach and pay his last tribute of respect, when the man's sight was restored that moment.

ATTITUDES OF POPES TO FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS.

Guizot thus sums up the attitude between Popes and foreign governments: "From the tenth century and the accession of the Capetians (989) the policy of the Holy See had been enterprising, bold, full of initiative, often even aggressive, and more often than not successful in the prosecution of its designs. Under Innocent III. (1198-1216) it had attained the apogee of its strength and fortune. At that point its motion forward and upward came to a stop. Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) had not the wit to recognise the changes which had taken place in European communities, and the decided progress which had been made by laic influences and civil powers. He was a stubborn preacher of maxims he could no longer practise. He was beaten in his enterprise; and the Papacy, even on recovering from his defeat, found itself no longer what it had been before him. Starting from the fourteenth century, we find no second Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Without expressly abandoning their principles, the policy of the Holy See became essentially defensive and conservative, more occupied in the maintenance than the aggrandisement of itself, and sometimes even more stationary and stagnant than was required by necessity or recommended by foresight. The posture assumed and the conduct adopted by the earliest successors of Boniface VIII. showed how far the situation of the Papacy was altered, and how deep had been the stab which, in the conflict between the two aspirants to absolute power, Philip the Fair (1283-1314) had inflicted on his rival."

THE POPES AS TEMPORAL PRINCES (1118-1185).

The feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines kept up constant irritation at Rome. In 1118, when Paschal II. was officiating at the altar on Holy Thursday, he was interrupted by a mob, who demanded that he should confirm the appointment of a favourite magistrate, and his silence only exasperated them. During the festival of Easter, while the bishop and clergy barefoot and in procession visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice assaulted with volleys of stones and darts. The houses of the Pope's friends were demolished, he escaped with difficulty, and his last days were embittered by the strife of civil war. His successor, Gelasius II., in 1118 was dragged by his hair along the ground, beaten and wounded, and bound with an iron chain in the house of a factious baron named Cencio Frangipani, who stripped and beat and trampled on the cardinals. An insurrection of the people delivered the Pope for a while; but a few days later he was again assaulted at the altar, and during a bloody encounter between the factions he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. He then shook the dust from his feet, and withdrew from a city where, as he described it, one emperor would be more tolerable than twenty. About a quarter of a century later, Pope Lucius II., as he ascended in battle-array to assault the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few days in 1145. Again in 1185 a body of priests were seized, and the eyes of all put out except those of one. They were crowned with mock mitres, mounted on asses with their faces to the tail, and paraded as a lesson to Pope Lucius III.

RIENZI AS TRIBUNE OF ROME (1353).

The Pope having lived long away from Rome, and the government of the city being impracticable, a youth named Rienzi, the son of a publican and a washerwoman, who was handsome and gifted with eloquence, aspired to raise the enthusiasm of the mob and revive the old glory of the first city of the world. He assumed the title of tribune, began to introduce order, and for a time he carried all before him. He was, however, soon intoxicated with his success, claimed a Divine mission, procured himself to be crowned as a successor of the Cæsars, imposed heavy taxes, and displayed great extravagance in dress and in vulgar exhibitions of grandeur. At last the Pope's legate anathematised him as a heretic, and enemies combined to crush him. He fled in 1308 to Prague; there he entered into wild schemes, was captured and imprisoned, but was spared from punishment as a heretic. He reappeared, and again obtained such favour with the Pope as to be made a senator in 1353, and encouraged to resume his influence over the mob in Rome. He was placed in high command, but again ruined his position with tyrannical and foolish schemes. His personal habits were gross and sensual; he became addicted to wine, and his body became bloated with his indulgences till he was likened to a fatted ox. In a sudden riot brought on by his own folly he attempted to escape, but the mob captured him and cut him to pieces.

LAST HOURS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1453).

When Mahomet II. in 1453 besieged Constantinople, the Greek Emperor implored the assistance of earth and Heaven to check the invaders and ward off the destruction of the Roman Empire. The celestial image of the Virgin was exposed in solemn procession, but no succour came. At last the houses and convents were deserted, and the inhabitants flocked together in the streets like a herd of timid animals, and poured into the church of St. Sophia, filling every corner. They placed no small confidence on some prophecy that had been circulated that an angel would descend from heaven and deliver the empire with some celestial weapon. While so wailing and confiding, the doors were broken in with axes, and the Turks seized the company, binding the males with cords, and the females with their veils and girdles. All ranks were mixed in groups--senators, slaves, plebeians and nobles, maids and children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altar and consigned to the usual fate of slavery, and worse. The monasteries and churches were profaned. The dome of St. Sophia itself, a throne of heavenly splendour, was despoiled of the oblations of ages, and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly perverted to the basest uses. After the divine images were stripped, the canvas and woodwork were torn or burnt or trodden under foot. The libraries, with a hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts, were sold as wastepaper. The Sultan passed in triumph through the wreck and plunder. He ordered the church to be converted into a mosque; the instruments of superstition to be removed; the crosses, images, and mosaics to be dismantled and washed and purified. The cathedral of St. Sophia was soon crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains for the devotion and refreshment of the Moslems. He took care, however, to leave the churches of Constantinople to be shared between the Mussulmans and the Christians.

ELECTION TO THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

The empire which Charlemagne founded over so many kingdoms, being a revival of the old Roman Empire and in imitation of the empire claimed by the Bishop of Rome over all other Churches, was commonly believed till the end of the sixteenth century to be elective, and the privilege of electing was confined by a decree of Gregory V. about 996 to seven persons. These were the archbishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne; the dukes of the Franks, Swabians, Saxons, and Bavarians. The Franks and Swabians were superseded respectively by the palatinate of the Rhine and the margravate of Brandenburg. A golden bull of Charles IV. in 1356 regulated the mode of election and fixed the place at Frankfort. A majority of votes carried the election. An eighth and ninth elector were added afterwards, the eighth being the elector of Brunswick, who succeeded to the English throne in 1714. An extravagant importance was attached to this titular potentate and his electors. Though he was only elected, yet he was thought to reign by a Divine right as a sort of Lord of the World. The sovereigns of Europe long continued to address the Emperor as a superior and as entitled to precedence, and it was even thought that he had the power of creating kings, though in actual resources he stood below the kings of France and England. The epithet "holy" was applied by Frederick I. (Barbarossa) in 1156. There was once a vague notion that the English kingdom was a vassal of the empire, but Edward I. and Edward III. notably disclaimed any such submissiveness. When Charles V. was elected, Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of England were competitors. Charles V. not succeeding in dragooning the Protestants into conformity to the Catholic Church, the influence of the empire declined. After long flickering, the Holy Roman Empire came to an end by the resignation of Francis II. in 1806, about a thousand years after the coronation of Charlemagne.