monarch. He was ignorant, the profane historian, of the testimony which he is compelled to deliver in the ecclesiasti cal page of Evagrus, that the Palladium was exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been, sprinkled on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel to the flames of the besieged. After this important service, the image of Edessa was preserved with respect and gratitude; and if the Armenians rejected the legend, the more credulous Greeks adored the similitude, which was not the work of any mortal pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine original. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how far their worship was removed from the grossest idola. try. "How can we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor the host of heaven presumes not to behold? HE who dwells in heaven, condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image; HE who is seated on the cherubim, visits us this day by a picture, which the Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love.” Before the end of the sixth century, these images, made without hands, (in Greek it is a single word,11) were propagated in the camps and cities of the Eastern empire: 12 they were the objects of worship, ana the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger o tumult, their venerable presence could revive the hope, rekindle the courage, or repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of these pictus, the far greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil, could only pretend to a secondary likeness and improper title: but there were some of higher descent, who derived their resemblance from an immediate contact

11 › Αχειροποίητος. See Ducange, in Gloss. Græc et Lat. The subject is treated with equal learning and bigotry by the Jesuit Gretser, (Syntagma de Imaginibus non Manû factis, ad calcem Codini de Officiis, p. 289-330,) the ass, or rather the fox, of Ingoldstadt, (see the Scaligerana ;) with equal reason and wit by the Protestant Beausobre, in the ironical controversy which he has spread through many volumes of the Bibliothèque Germanique, tom. xviii. p. 1-50, xx. p. 27-68, xxv. p. 1—36, xxvii. p. 85—118, xxviii. p. 1—33, xxxi. p. 111 --148, xxxii. p. 75-107, xxxiv. p. 67—96.)

"Theophylact Simocatta (1. ii. c. 3, p. 34, 1. iii. c. 1. p. 63) cele brates the Θεανδρικον είκασμα, which he styles ἀχειροποίητον set is was no more than a copy, since he adds αρχέτυπον τὸ ἔκεινον οι Ρώ Moto (of Edessa) Jenozevovoi ti äggov. See Pagi, tom. ii. A. D. 586, No. 11.

with the original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miracuious and prolific virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation with the image of Edessa; and such is the veronica of Rome, or Spain, or Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony and bloody sweat applied to his face, and delivered to a holy matron. The fruitful precedent was speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs. In the church of Diospolis, in Palestine, the features of the Mother of God 13 were deeply inscribed in a marble column; the East and West have been decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the Evangelist, who was perhaps a physician, has been forced to exercise the occupation of a painter, so profane and odious in the eyes of the primitive Christians. The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy of taste and genius.14

The worship of images had stolen into the church by insensible degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as productive of comfort, and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous Greeks were awakened by an apprehension, that under the mask of Chris. ianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers: they heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the Incessant charge of the Jews and Mahometans,15 who derived from the Law and the Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative worship. The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal, and depreciate their authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who reigned at Damascus, and

13 See, in the genuine or supposed works of John Damascenus, two passages on the Virgin and St. Luke, which have not been noticed by Gretser, nor consequently by Beausobre, (Opera Joh. Damascen. tom. i. p. 618, 631.)

14 Your scandalous figures stand quite out from the canvas: they are as bad as a group of statues!" It was thus that the ignorance and bigotry of a Greek priest applauded the pictures of Titian, which he had ordered, and refused to accept.

15 By Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the origin of the Iconoclasts is imputed to the caliph Yezid and two Jews, whe prom ised he empire to Leo; and the reproaches of these hostile sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy for restoring the purity of the Christian warshin, (see Spanheim, Hist. Imag. c. 2.)

threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the accumulated weight of truth and victory. The cities of Syria Palestine, and Egypt had been fortified with the images of Christ, his mother, and his saints; and each city presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous defence. In a rapid con quest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those cities and these images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of these mute and inanimate idols.* For a while Edessa had Draved the Persian assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became the slave and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three hundred years, the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of Constantinople, for a ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver, the redemption of two hun dred Mussulmans, and a perpetual truce for the territory of Edessa. 16 In this season of distress and dismay, the eloquence of the monks was exercised in the defence of images; and they attempted to prove that the sin and schism of the greatest part of the Orientals had forfeited the favor, and annihilated the virtue, of these precious symbols. But they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church. As the worship of images had never been estab lished by any general or positive law, its progress in the Eastern empire had been retarded, or accelerated, by the differences of men and manners, the local degrees of refinement, and the personal characters of the bishops. The splendid devotion was fondly cherished by the levity of the capital, and the inventive genius of the Byzantine clergy; while the rude and remote districts of Asia were strangers to this

16 See Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 267,)Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p 201,) and Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 264,) and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iii. A. D. 944.) The prudent Franciscan refuses to deter mine whether the image of Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa; but its repose is inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is ne longer famous or fashionable.

Yezid, math caliph of the race of the Ommiadæ, caused all the images in Syria to be destroyed about the year 719; hence the orthodox reproached the sectarians with following the example of the Saracens and the Jews. Fragm. Mcn Johan Jerosylym. Script. Byzant. vol. xvi. p. Hist. des Répub. Ital. par M. Sismondi, vol. i p. 128. —G

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innovation of sacred luxury. Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians maintained, after their conversion, the simple worship which had preceded their separation; and the Armenians, the most warlike subjects of Rome, were not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to the sight of images." These various denominations of men afforded a fund of preju dice and aversion, of small account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune of a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be often connected with the powers of the church and state.

Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo the Third,18 who, from the mountains 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 a 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 sano

17 > Αρμενίαις καὶ ̓Αλαμανοῖς ἐπίσης ἡ τῶν ἁγίων εἰκόνων προσκύνησις annyópetα, (kicetas, l. ii. p. 258.) The Armenian churches are still content with the Cross, (Missions du Levant, tom. iii. p. 148;) but surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the superstition of the Germans of the xiith century.

18 Our original, but not impartial, monuments of the Iconoclasts must be drawn from the Acts of the Councils, tom. viii. and ix. Collect. Labbé, edit. Venet. and the historical writings of Theophanes, Nicephorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonaras, &c. Of the modern Catholics, Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Eccles. Seculum viii. and ix.,) and Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclasts,) have treated the subject with learning, passion, and credulity. The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and Jan es Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformées, tom. ii. 1. xxiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite endency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indif. ference.*

Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-stürmender Kaiser, Frank fart-am-Main, 1812; a book of research and impartiality -M.

tuary and altar to a proper height in the thurches, 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 emple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence as well as the use of religious pictures; the churches of Con tantinople and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry he images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, were demolshed, 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; 19 and though it is stigmatized by triumphant bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partia and mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The debates and decrees of many provincial synods introduced the summons of the general council which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, 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. This Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general council : yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding

18 Some flowers of rhetoric are Σύνοδον παράνομον καὶ ἄθεον, and the bishops τοῖς ματαιόφροσιν. By Damascenus it is styled ἄκυρος καὶ ἄδοκTos, (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, &e.) The witty John of Damascus converts ἐπισκόπους into ἐπισκότους; makes them xordiodovious, slaves of their belly &c. Opera, tor. i. p.