Chapter I: Origin and Rise of the Papacy (3)

For some new offence, real or supposed, the exiled patriarch was brought back to the capital, scourged so cruelly that he could not walk, and then carried in a litter, and exposed in the great church before all the people assembled to hear the public recital of the charges made against him, and to behold his degradation. At each charge the secretary of his successor smote him on the face. He was then set up in the pulpit, and while Nicetas read the sentence of excommunication, another bishop stripped him of his metropolitan pall, and calling him by the opprobrious name Scotiopsis, “face of darkness,” led him backwards out of the church. The next day his head, beard, eyebrows were shaved; and as we have already said, he was put upon an ass, and paraded through the circus (his own nephew, a hideous, deformed youth, leading the ass), while the populace jeered, shouted, spat upon him. He was then thrown down, trodden on, and in that state lay till the games were over. Some days after the emperor sent to demand a formal declaration of the orthodoxy of his own faith and of the authority of the council. The poor wretch acknowledged both in the amplest manner; as a reward he was beheaded, while still in a state of excommunication, and his remains treated with the utmost ignominy.

This odious scene, blackened it may be by the sectarian hatred of the later annalists, all of whom abhorred iconoclasm, has been related at length, in order to contrast more fully the position of the bishop of Rome. This was the second patriarch of Constantinople who had been thus barbarously treated, and seemingly without the sympathy of the people; and now, in violation of all canonical discipline, the imperial will had raised a eunuch to the patriarchate. What wonder that pontiffs like Gregory II and Gregory III should think themselves justified in throwing off the yoke of such a government, and look with hope to the sovereignty of the less barbarous barbarians of the north--barbarians who, at least, had more reverence for the dignity of the sacerdotal character.

If the Byzantine historians, all image-worshippers, have not greatly exaggerated the cruelties of their implacable enemy Constantine Copronymus, they have assuredly not done justice to his nobler qualities, his valour, incessant activity, military skill, and general administration of the sinking empire, which he maintained unviolated by any of its formidable enemies, and with imposing armies, during a reign of thirty-five years, not including the twenty preceding during which he ruled as the colleague of his father Leo. Constantine died, during a campaign against the Bulgarians, of a fever which, in the charitable judgment of his adversaries, gave him a foretaste of the pains of hell. His dying lips ordered prayers and hymns offered to the Virgin, for whom he had always professed the most profound veneration, utterly inconsistent, his enemies supposed, with his hostility to her sacred images.

HELENA AND IRENE

[Sidenote: [775-787 A.D.]]

A female had been the principal mover in the great change of Christianity from a purely spiritual worship to that paganising form of religion which grew up with such rapidity in the succeeding centuries; a female was the restorer of images in the East, which have since, with but slight interruption, maintained their sanctity. The first, Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, was a blameless and devout woman, who used the legitimate influence of her station, munificence, and authority over her imperial son, to give that splendour which to her piety appeared becoming to the new religion; to communicate to the world all those excitements of symbols, relics, and sacred memorials which she found so powerful in kindling her own devotion. The second, the empress Irene, wife to the son and heir of Constantine Copronymus, an ambitious, intriguing, haughty princess, never lost sight of political power in the height of her religious zeal, and was at length guilty of the most atrocious crime against God and womanhood.

Irene, during the reign of her husband Leo, surnamed the Khazar, did not openly betray her inclination to the image-worship which she had solemnly forsworn under her father-in-law Constantine. On his death (780) she at once seized the government in the name of her son Constantine, who was but ten years old. Her creature, Patriarch Tarasius, summoned a council on image-worship.

The council met in Constantinople (785), but with the army and a large part of the populace of Constantinople image-worship had lost its power. The soldiery, attached to the memory and tenets of Constantine Copronymus, broke into the assembly, and dispersed the affrighted monks and bishops.

SECOND COUNCIL OF NICÆA (787 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [787-842 A.D.]]

Nicæa was chosen for the session of the council, no doubt on account of the reverence which attached to that city, hallowed by the sittings of the first great council of Christendom. Decrees issued from Nicæa would possess peculiar force and authority; this smaller city, too, could be occupied by troops on whom the empress could depend, and in the meantime Irene managed to disband the more unruly soldiery. Thus, while the Bulgarians menaced one frontier and the Saracens another, she sacrificed the safety of the empire, by the dissolution of her best army, to the success of her religious designs.

The council met at Nicæa. The number of ecclesiastics is variously stated from 330 to 387. Among these were at least 130 monks or abbots, besides many bishops, who had been expelled as monks from their sees, and were now restored. They repudiated the so-called Council of Constantinople, as a synod of fools and madmen, who had dared to violate the established discipline of the church and impiously reviled the holy images. They showered their anathemas on all the acts, on all the words, on all the persons engaged in that unhallowed assembly.

The fathers of Nicæa impaired a doubtful cause by the monstrous fables which they adduced, the preposterous arguments which they used, their unmeasured invectives against their antagonists. With one voice they broke out into a long acclamation: “We all believe, we all assent, we all subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of all the world. We, who adore the Trinity, worship images. Whoever does not the like, anathema upon him! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema on all who communicate with them who do not worship images!”

Among the acclamations and the anathemas which closed the Second Council of Nicæa, echoed loud salutations and prayers for the peace and blessedness of the new Constantine and the new Helena. A few years passed and that Constantine was blinded, if not put to death, by his unnatural mother, whom religious faction had raised into a model of Christian virtue and devotion.

The controversy slept during the reign of Nicephorus, and that of Michael, surnamed Rhangabé. The monks throughout this period seem to form an independent power (a power no doubt arising out of and maintained by their championship of image-worship), and to dictate to the emperor, and even to the church. On the other hand, among the soldiery are heard some deep but suppressed murmurs of attachment to the memory of Constantine Copronymus. Leo the Armenian ascended the throne.

As Irene had promoted Tarasius, so Leo raised an officer of his household, Theodotus Cassiteras, to the patriarchal throne. Image-worship was again proscribed by an imperial edict. The worshippers are said to have been ruthlessly persecuted; and Leo, according to the phraseology of the day, is accused of showing all the blood-thirstiness without the generosity of the lion. Yet no violent popular tumult took place; nor does the conspiracy which afterwards cut short the days of Leo the Armenian appear to have been connected with the strife of religious factions. Whatever hopes the clergy, at least the image-worshippers, or the monks, might have conceived at the murder of Leo, which they scrupled not to allege as a sign of the divine disfavour towards the iconoclasts, were disappointed on the accession of Michael the Stammerer. He favoured the Jews in the exaction of tribute (perhaps he was guilty of the sin of treating them with justice), he fasted on the Jewish Sabbath, he doubted the resurrection of the dead, and the personality of the devil, as unauthorised by the religion of Moses. Image-worship he treated with contemptuous impartiality. In a great public assembly (assembled for the purpose), he proclaimed the worship of images a matter altogether indifferent.

Theophilus could not but perceive the failure, and disdained to imitate his father’s temporising policy, who endeavoured to tolerate the monks, while he discouraged image-worship. He avowed his determination to extirpate both at once. Leo the Armenian and Michael the Stammerer had attempted to restrict the honours paid to images; Theophilus prohibited the making of new ones, and ordered that in every church they should be effaced, and the walls covered with pictures of birds and beasts. The sacred vessels, adorned with figures, were profaned by unhallowed hands, sold in the public markets, and melted for their metal. The prisons were full of painters, of monks and ecclesiastics of all orders. The monks, driven from their convents, fled to desert places; some perished of cold and hunger, some threw off the proscribed dress, yet retained the sacred character and habits; others seized the opportunity of returning to the pleasures as to the dress of the world.

The history of iconoclasm has a remarkable uniformity: another female in power, another restoration of images. After the death of Theophilus his widow Theodora administered the empire in the name of her youthful son Michael, called afterwards the Drunkard. Theodora, like her own mother Theoctista, had always worshipped images in private. No sooner was Theophilus dead than the monks, no doubt in the secret of Theodora’s concealed attachment to images, poured into Constantinople from all quarters. She now ventured to send an officer of the palace to command the patriarch, Joannes the Grammarian, either to recant his iconoclastic opinions, or to withdraw from Constantinople. The patriarch is accused of a paltry artifice. He opened a vein in the region of his stomach, and showed himself wounded and bleeding to the people. The rumour spread that the empress had attempted to assassinate the patriarch. But the fraud was detected, exposed, acknowledged. The abashed patriarch withdrew, unpitied and despised, into the suburbs (842). Methodius was raised to the dignity of the patriarchate. The worshippers of images were in triumph.

But Theodora, still tenderly attached to the memory of her husband, demanded, as the price of her inestimable services in the restoration of images, absolution for the sin of his iconoclasm and his persecution of the image-worshippers.

All was now easy; the fanaticism of iconoclasm was exhausted or rebuked. A solemn festival was appointed for the restoration of images. The whole clergy of Constantinople, and all who could flock in from the neighbourhood, met in and before the palace of the archbishop, and marched in procession with crosses, torches, and incense, to the church of St. Sophia. There they were met by the empress and her infant son Michael, Feb. 19th, 842. They made the circuit of the church, with their burning torches, paying homage to every image and picture, which had been carefully restored, never again to be effaced till the days of later, more terrible iconoclasts, the Ottoman Turks.

The Greek church from that time has celebrated the anniversary of this festival with loyal fidelity. The successors of Methodius, particularly the learned Photius, were only zealous to consummate the work of his predecessors, and images have formed part of the recognised religious worship of the Eastern world.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[84] Felix III, if the anti-pope Felix (356 A.D.) is reckoned as Felix II.

[85] [The office to which Gregory I was suddenly elevated in the year 590, included under it the three following distinct dignities. First, it included the actual episcopal charge of the city of Rome; the church of St. John Lateran with its haughty inscription: _Omnium Urbis et Orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput_--being the cathedral church; and the adjoining Lateran palace, which tradition says was given by Constantine to Silvester I, being the place of residence. Secondly, it included the metropolitan or archiepiscopal superintendence of the Roman territory, with jurisdiction over the seven suffragan bishops, afterwards called cardinal bishops; the bishops of Ostia, Portus, Silva Candida, Sabina, Præneste, Tusculum, and Albanum. Thirdly, it included the patriarchal oversight of the suburban provinces, which were under the political jurisdiction of the _Vicarius Urbis_, viz., Campania, Tuscany with Umbria, Picenum, Valeria, Samnium, Apulia with Calabria, Lucania with Bruttium--in short, upper Italy, together with the three islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. As patriarch, the Roman bishop stood on the same footing as the four great patriarchs of the East, those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem; he enjoyed however the primacy of honour, and standing alone in the West, whereas four patriarchs divided the primacy of the East, his jurisdiction often seemed to extend to districts where he had no jurisdiction by right. For the vicariate of Rome was only one among four vicariates, into which the great prefecture of Italy was politically divided; the other vicariates being northern Italy, with its centre at Milan; western Illyricum, with its capital at Sirmium; and western Africa, with its capital at Carthage. So far were Gaul, Spain, and Britain from belonging to the vicariate of Rome, that they constituted together a separate prefecture, known as the prefecture of Gaul. Nevertheless, all these districts were in time drawn into the patriarchate of Rome, and indeed the whole of western Europe as it gradually came under the influence of Christianity.[e]]

[86] The absurd story about Gregory’s fish-ponds paved with the skulls of the drowned infants of the Roman clergy, is only memorable as an instance of what writers of history will believe, and persuade themselves they believe, when it suits party interests. But by whom, or when, was it invented? It is much older than the Reformation.

[87] [Monothelism or one-ness of will is the opposite of “dyothelism” or duality of will, as distinguishing the divine and the human aspects of Christ. Monothelism had its origin in Sergius.]

[88] [The council held in the _trullus_ or domed hall of the imperial palace in Constantinople. The council here referred to is the Quinisext Council of 692, called the Second Trullan Council, the first being that which condemned monothelite views (681).]

[89] [Gibbon[l] calls him the “founder of the papal monarchy.”]

[90] Leo died June, 741. Gregory III in the same year.