XLIX.

CHA P. tains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the East. He was ignorant of sacred and profane letters ; but his education, his reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with an hatred of images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince, to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious; he assembled a great council of senators and bishops, and enacted, with their consent, that all the images should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the churches, where they might be visible to the eyes, and inaccessible to the superstition of the people. But it was impossible, on either side, to check the rapid, though adverse impulse of veneration and abhorrence: In their lofty position, the sacred images still edified their votaries and reproached the tyrant. He was himself provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation, the example of the Jewish king, who had broken, without scruple, the brazen serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence

(Historia Imaginarum Restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformées, tom. ii. 1. xxiii. p. 1339-1385.) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference.

existence as well as the use of religious pictures; c H A P. the churches of Constantinople and the provinces XLIX. were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images, as an article of faith, and by the authority of a general council; but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son Constantine *; and though it is stigmatised by triumphant bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The debates and decrees of many provincial sy- Their synods introduced the summons of the general council, which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, tinople, and was composed of the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were the slaves of the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the churches of Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks.

* Some flowers of rhetoric are Συνοδον παρανομον και αθεον, and the bishops τοις ματαιοφροςιν. By Damascenus it is stiled axvgos nai adextos, (Opera, tom. i. p. 623.) Spanheim's Apology for the Synod of Constantinople, (p. 171, &c.) is worked up with truth and ingenuity, from such materials as he could find in the Nicene Acts, (p. 1046, &c.) The witty John of Damascus converts επισκοπες into επισκοτες" makes them κοιλιοδελες, slaves of their belly, &c. Opera, tom, i. p. 306.

nod of

Constan

A. D. 754.

t

CHA P. Greeks. This Byzantine synod assumed the rank

and powers of the seventh general council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding assemblies which had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic faith. After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed an unanimous decree, that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical; that image worship was a corruption of Christianity, and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry should be broken or erazed; and that those who should refuse to deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor. In their loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits of their temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they entrusted the execution of their spiritual censures. At Constantinople, as in the former councils, the will of the prince was the rule of episcopal faith; but on this occasion, I am inclined to suspect that a large majority of the prelates sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of hope and fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel; nor was it easy for them to discern the clue, and tread back the mazes, of the labyrinth. The worship of images was inseparably blended, at least to a pious fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints, and their relics: The holy ground was in... yolyed in a cloud of miracles and visions; and

the

the nerves of the mind, curiosity and scepticism, c h a p. were benumbed by the habits of obedience and XLIX. belief. Constantine himself is accused of indulging a royal licence to doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the Catholics *, but they were deeply inscribed in the public and private creed of his bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast might assault with a secret horror, the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated to the honour of his celestial patrons. In the reformation of the sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the faculties of man; the thirst of innovation superseded the reverence of antiquity, and the vigour of Europe could disdain those phantoms which terrified the sickly and servile weakness of the Greeks.

of the

The scandal of an abstract heresy can be only Their perproclaimed to the people by the blast of the ec- secution. clesiastical trumpet; but the most ignorant can image perceive, the most torpid must feel, the profana- and monks, tion and downfal of their visible deities. The A. D. first hostilities of Leo were directed against a lofty 726-775. Christ on the vestibule, and above the gate, of the palace. A ladder had been planted for the assault, but it was furiously shaken by a crowd of zealots and women: They beheld, with pious transport, the ministers of sacrilege tumbling from on high, and dashed against the pavement; and the honours of the ancient martyrs were prostituted to these

*He is accused of proscribing the title of saint; stiling the Virgin, Mother of Christ; comparing her after her delivery to an empty purse of Arianism, Nestorianism, &c. In his defence, Spanheim (c. iv. p. 207.) is somewhat embarrassed between the interest of a Protestant and the duty of an orthodox divine.

XLIX.

CHA P. these criminals, who justly suffered for murder and rebellion *. The execution of the Imperial edict was resisted by frequent tumults in Constantinople and the provinces: The person of Leo was endangered, his officers were massacred, and the popular enthusiasm was quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and military power. Of the Archipelago, or Holy Sea, the numerous islands were filled with images and monks: Their votaries abjured, without scruple, the enemy of Christ; his mother, and the saints: They armed a fleet of boats and gallies, displayed their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the harbour of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favourite of God and the people. They depended on the succour of a miracle; but their miracles were inefficient against the Greek fire; and, after the defeat and conflagration of their fleet, the naked islands were abandoned to the clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of Leo, in the first year of his reign, had undertaken an expedition against the Saracens : During his absence, the capital, the palace, and the purple, were occupied by his kinsman Artavasdes, the ambitious champion of the orthodox faith. The worship of images was triumphantly restored: The patriarch renounced his dissimulation, or dissembled his sentiments; and the righteous claim of the usurper was acknowledged, both in the new, and in an

cient,

* The holy confessor Theophanes approves the principle of their rebellion, sy verev (q. (p. 339.) Gregory II. (in Epist. i. ad Imp. Leon. Concil. tom. viii. p. 661. 664.) ap. plauds the zeal of the Byzantine women who killed the Imperial officers.