The and folly. I shall only notice the judgment of the bishops on the comparative merit of image-worship and morality A mork had concluded a truce with the dæmon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his daily prayers to a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples prompted him to consult the abbot. "Rather than abstain 'from adoring Christ and his Mother in their holy images, it would be better for you," replied the casuist, "to enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute, in the city." 80 For the honor of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman church, it is somewhat unfortunate, that the two princes who convened the two councils of Nice are both stained with the blood of their sons. second of these assemblies was approved and rigorously executed by the despotism of Irene, and she refused her adversaries the toleration which at first she had granted to her friends. During the five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight years, the contest was maintained, with unabated rage and various success, between the worshippers and the breakers of the images; but I am not inclined to pursue with minute diligence the repetition of the same events. Nicephorus allowed a general liberty of speech and practice; and the only virtue of his reign is accused by the monks as the cause of his temporal and eternal perdition. Superstition and weakness formed the character of Michael the First, but the saints and images were incapable of supporting their votary on the throne. In the purple, Leo the Fifth asserted the name and religion of an Armenian; and the idols, with their seditious adherents, were condemned to a second exile. Their applause would have sanctified the murder of an impious tyrant, but his assassin and successor, the second Michael, was tainted from his birth with the Phrygian heresics he attempted to mediate between the contending parties; and the intractable spirit of the Catholics insensibly cast him into the opposite scale. His moderation was, guarded by timidity; but his son Theophilus, alike ignorant of fear and pity, was the last and most cruel of the Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against them; and the 8) Συμφέρει δέ σοι μὴ καταλίπειν ἐν τῇ πόλει ταύτῃ πορνείον εἰς ὁ μὲ εἰσέλθης, ἢ ἵνα ἀρνήσῃ τὸ προσκύνειν τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν καὶ θεὸν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν μετὰ τῆς ἰδίας αὐτοῦ μήτρος ἐν εἴκονι. These visits could not be innocent, since the Aui nooreias (the dæmon of fornication ἐπολεμεῖ δὲ αὐτὸν ἐν μίᾳ οὔ· ὡς ἐπέκειτο αὐτῷ σφόδρα. &c. Acua iv. p. 901, Actio v. p 1031. emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by the public hatred. After the death of Theophi lus, the final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, his widow Theodora, whom he left the guardian of the empire. Her measures were bold and decisive. The fiction of a tardy repentance absolve the fame and the soul of her deceased husband; the sentence of the Iconoclast patriArch was commuted from the loss of his eyes to a whipping of two hundred lashes: the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. A single question yet remained, whether they are endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity; it was agitated by the Greeks of the eleventh century;81 and as this opinion has the strongest recommendation of absurdity, I am surprised that it was not more explicitly decided in the affirmative. In the West, Pope Adrian the First accepted and announced the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the Catholics as the seventh in rank of the general councils. Rome and Italy were docile to the voice of their father; but the greatest part of the Latin Christians were far behind in the race of superstition. The churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they admitted into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. An angry book of controversy was composed and published in the name of Charlemagne : 82 under his authority a synod of three hundred bishops was assembled at Frankfort: 83 they blamed the fury of the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe cen 81 See an account of this controversy in the Alexius of Anna Comnena, (1. v. p. 129,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 371, 372.) 82 The Libri Carolini, (Spanheim, p. 443—529,) composed in the palace or winter quarters of Charlemagne, at Worms, A. D. 790, and sent by Engebert to Pope Hadrian I., who answered them by a grandia et verbosa epistola, (Concil. tom. viii. p. 1553.) The Carolines pro pose 120 objections against the Nicene synod, and such words as thes are the flowers of their rhetoric Dementiam .. priscæ Gentilitatis obsoletum errorem . . . . argumenta insanissima et absurdissima . . . . derisione dignas nænias, &c., &c. - .... The assemblies of Charlemagne were political, as well as ecclesiastical; and the three hundred members, (Nat. Alexander, sec. viii 53,) who sat and voted at Frankfort, must include not only the bishops, but the abbots, and even the principal laymen. sure against the superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their pretended council, which was long despised by the Barbarians of the West.84 Among them the worship of images advanced with a silent and insensible progress; but a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the reformation, and of the countries, both in Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of superstition. It was after the Nicene synod, and under the reign of the pious Irene, that the popes consummated the separation of Rome and Italy, by the translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. They were compelled to choose between the rival nations: religion was not the sole motive of their choice; and while they dissembled the failings of their friends, they beheld, with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic virtues of their foes. The difference of language and manners had perpetuated the enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from each other by the hostile oppositior of seventy years. In that schism the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty: their submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a jealous tyrant; and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as well as the tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored the images, but they had not restored the Calabrian estates 85 and the Illyrian diocese,86 which the Icono 84 Qui supra sanctissima patres nostri (episcopi et sacerdotes) omnimodis servitium et adorationem imaginum renuentes contempserunt, atque consentientes condemnaverunt, (Concil. tom. ix. p. 101, Canon. ii. Franckfurd.) A polemic must be hard-hearted indeed, who does not pity the efforts of Baronius, Pagi, Alexander, Maimbourg, &c., to elude this unlucky sentence. 85 Theophanes (p. 343) specifies those of Sicily and Calabria, which yielded an annual rent of three talents and a half of gold, (perhaps 7000l. sterling.) Liutprand more pompously enumerates the patrimonies of the Roman church in Greece, Judæa, Persia, Mesopotamia. Babylonia, Egypt, and Libya, which were detained by the injustice of the Greek emperor, (Legat. ad Nicephorum, in Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. ii. pars i. p. 481.) 86 The great diocese of the Eastern Illyricum, with Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, (Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 145 :) by the confession of the Greeks, the patriarch of Constantinople had detached from Rome the metropolitans of Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Nicopolis, and Patræ, (Luc. Holsten. Geograph. Sacra, p. 22;) and his spiritual conquests extended to Naples and Amalphi, (Giannone, Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. i. p. 517–524, Pagi, A. L 730. No. 11.) ciasts had torn away from the successors of St. Peter, and Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy.87 The Greeks were now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the breath of the reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious; but a discerning eye might discern their approaching conversion, from the use, to the adoration, of images. The name of Charlemagne was stained by the polemic acrimony of his scribes; but the conqueror himself conformed, with the temper of a statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy. In his four pilgrimages of visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes in the commu nion of friendship and piety; knelt before the tomb, and con sequently before the image, of the apostle; and joined, without scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman liturgy. Would prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to renounce their benefactor? Had they a right to alienate his gift of the Exarchate ? Had they power to ahal. ish his government of Rome? The title of patrician was below the merit and greatness of Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the Western empire that they could pay their obligations or secure their establishment. By this decisive measure they would finally eradicate the claims of the Greeks; from the debasement of a provincial town, the majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin Christians would be united, under a supreme head, in their ancient metropolis, and the conquerors of the West would receive their crown from the successors of St. Peter. The Roman church would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and, under the shadow of the Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise, with honor and safety, the government of the city.88 87 In hoc ostenditur, quia ex uno capitulo ab errore reversis, in aliis duobus, in eodem (was it the same?) permaneant errore . . . . de diocessi S. R. E. seu de patrimoniis iterum increpantes commonemus, ut si ea restituere noluerit hereticum eum pro hujusmodi errore perseverantia decernemus, (Epist. Hadrian. Papæ ad Carolum Magnum, in Concil. tom. viii. p. 1598;) to which he adds a reason, most directly opposite to his conduct, that he preferred the salvation of souls and rule of faith to the goods of this transitory world. 88 Fontanini considers the emperors as no more than the advocates of the church, (advocatus et defensor S. R. E. See Ducange, Gloss. Lat tom. i. p. 297) His antagonist Muratori reduces the popes to oe no more than the exarchs of the emperor. In the more equitable view of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 264, 265,) they held Rome Before the uin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a wealthy bishopric had often been productive of tumult and bloodshed. The people was less numerous, but the times were more savage, the prize more important, and the chair of St. Peter was fiercely disputed by the leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the rank of sovereign. The reign of Adrian the First 89 surpasses the measure of past or succeeding ages; 90 the walls of Rome, the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he secretly edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow space the virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the next elec tion, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was preferred to the nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first dignities of the church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised, above four years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the unarmed multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred person of the pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed, perhaps by their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of blood, he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event was improved to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had been deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins.91 From his prison he under the empire as the most honorable species of fief or benefice premuntur nocte caliginosâ ! ́ 89 His merits and hopes are summed up in an epitaph of thirtyeight-verses, of which Charlemagne declares himself the author, (Concil. tom. viii. p. 520.) Post patrem lacrymans Carolus hæc carmina scripsi. The poetry might be supplied by Alcuin; but the tears, the most glorious tribute, can only belong to Charlemagne. Every new pope is admonished - "Sancte Pater, non videbis ennos Petri," twenty-five years. On the whole series the average is about eight years - a short hope for an ambitious cardinal. 91 The assurance of Anastasius (tom. iii. pars i. p. 197, 198) is supported by the credulity of some French annalists; but ginhard, and other writers of the same age, are more natural and sincere. "Unas ei oculus paullulum est læsus," says John the deacon of Naples, (Vit. Episcop. Napol. in Scriptures Muratori, tom. i. pars ii. p. 312.) Then |