THE POPES

REVOLT OF ITALY AND ROME. TEMPORAL DOMINION CONQUEST OF ITALY BY THE FRANKS. ESTABLISHMENT OF IMAGES. -CHARACTER AND CORONATION RESTORATION AND DECAY OF THE

OF

CHARLEMAGNE.

ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST.

INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. CONSTITUTION OF THE GERMANIC BODY.

IN the connection of the church and state, I have considered the former as subservient only, and relative, to the latter; a salutary maxim, if in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever been held sacred. The Oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the dark abyss of predestination and grace, and the strange transformation of the Eucharist from the sign to the substance of Christ's body,' I have purposely abandoned to the curiosity of speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence and pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which

The learned Selden has given the history of transubstantiation in a comprehensive and pithy sentence: "This opinion is only rhetoric turned into logic," (his Works, vol. iii. p. 2073, in his Table-Talk.)

the decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected, the propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic church, the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the mysterious controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation. At the head of this class, we may justly rank the worship of images, so fiercely disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries; since a question of popular superstition pro duced the revolt of Italy, the temporal power of the popes, and the restoration of the Roman empire in the West.

The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquer uble repugnance to the use and abuse of images; and this aversion may be ascribed to their descent from the Jews, and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic law had severely proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that precept was firmly established in the principles and practice of the chosen people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their own hands; the images of brass and marble, which, had they been endowed with sense and motion, should have started rather from the pedestal to adore the cre ative powers of the artist.2 Perhaps some recent and imperfect converts of the Gnostic tribe might crown the statues of Christ and St. Paul with the profane honors which they paid to those of Aristotle and Pythagoras; 3 but the public religion. of the Catholics was uniformly simple and spiritual; and the first notice of the use of pictures is in the censure of the council of Ulliberis, three hundred years after the Christian æra. der the successors of Constantine, in the peace and luxury of the triumphant church, the more prudent bishops condescended to indulge a visible superstition, for the benefit of the multitude, and, after the ruin of Paganism, they were no longer restrained by the apprehension of an odious parallel. The first introduction of a symbolic worship was in the veneration of the cross, and of relics. The saints and martyrs, whose inter

Un.

Nec intelligunt homines ineptissimi, quôd si sentire simulacra et moveri possent, adoratura hominem fuissent à quo sunt expolita. [Divin. Institut. 1. ii. c. 2.) Lactantius is the last, as well as the most eloquent, of the Latin apologists. Their raillery of idols attacks not only the object, but the form and matter.

See Irenæus, Epiphanius, and Augustin, (Basnage, Hist. des Eglises Reformées, tom. ii. p. 1313.) This Gnostic practice has a singular affinity with the private worship of Alexander Severus, (Lampridius, 29. Lardr er, Heathen Testimonies, vol. iii. p. 34.)

cession was implored, were seated on the right hand of Go? ; but the gracious and often supernatural favors, which, in the popular belief, were showered round their tomb, conveyed an unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims, who visited, and touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, the memorials of their merits and sufferings. But a memorial, more inter esting than the skull or the sandals of a departed worthy, is the faithful copy of his person and features, delineated by the arts of painting or sculpture. In every age, such copies, so congenial to human feelings, have been cherished by the zeal of private friendship, or public esteem: the images of the Roman emperors were adored with civil, and almost religious honors; a reverence less ostentatious, but more sincere, was applied to the statues of sages and patriots; and these profane virtues, these splendid sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men, who had died for their celestial and everlasting country. At first, the experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the venerable pictures were discreetly allowed o instruct the ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to gratify the rejudices of the heathen proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression, the honors of the original were transferred to the copy the devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint; and the Pagan rites of genuflection, luminaries, and incense, again stole into the Catholic church. The scruples of reason, or piety, were silenced by the strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the pictures which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a divine energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of religious adoration. The most audacious pencil might tremble in the rash attempt of defining, by forms and colors, the infinite Spirit, the eter nal Father, who pervades and sustains the universe.5 Bu the superstitious mind was more easily reconciled to paint and to worship the angels, and, above all, the Son of God, under the human shape, which, on earth, they have condescended to

See this History, vol. ii. p. 261; vol. ii. p. 434; vol. iii. p. 158-163. * Οὐ γὰρ τὸ Θεῖον ἁπλοῦν ὑπαρχον καὶ ἄληπτον μορφαῖς τισι καὶ σχή μασιν ἀπεικάζομεν, ουτε κηρῷ καὶ ξύλοις τὴν ὑπερούσιον καὶ προάναρχος οὐσίαν τιμῶν ἡμεις διεγνώκαμεν. (Concilium Nicenum, ii. in Collect Labb. tom. viii. p. 1025, edit. Venet.) Il seroit peut-être à-propos de ne point souffrir d'images de la Trinité ou de la Divirité; les defenscurs les plus zelés des images ayant condamné celles-ci, et le concile de Trente ne pariant que des images de Jesus Christ et des Saints (Dupin, Bibliot. Ecclés. tom. vi. p. 154.)

assume. The second person of the Trinity had been clothed with a real and mortal body; but that body had ascended into heaven and, had not some similitude been presented to the eyes of his disciples, the spiritual worship of Christ might have been obliterated by the visible relics and représentations of the saints. A similar indulgence was requisite and propitious for the Virgin Mary: the place of her burial was unknown; and the assumption of her soul and body into heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks and Latins. The use, and even the worship, of images was firmly established before the end of the sixth century: they were fondly cherished by the warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics: the Pantheon and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of a new superstition; but this semblance of idolatry was more coldly entertained by the rude Barbarians and the Arian clergy of the West. The bolder forms of sculpture, in brass or marble, which peopled the temples of antiquity, were offensive to the fancy or conscience of the Christian Greeks: and a smooth surface of colors has ever been esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of imitation.6

The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance with the original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of the genuine features of the Son of God, his mother, and his apostles: the statue of Christ at Paneas in Palestine 7 was more probably that of some temporal savior; the Gnostics and their profane monuments were reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian artists could only be guided by the clandes

This general history of images is drawn from the xxiid book of the Hist. des Eglises Réformées of Basnage, tom. ii. n. 1310-1337. He was a Protestant, but of a manly spirit; and on this head the Protestants are so notoriously in the right, that they can venture to be impartial. See the perplexity of poor Friar Pagi, Critica, tom. i. p. 42.

7 After removing some rubbish of miracle and inconsistency, it may be allowed, that as late as the year 300, Paneas in Palestine was decorated with a bronze statue, representing a grave personage wrapped in a cloak, with a grateful or suppliant female kneeling before him, and that an inscription — τῷ Σωτήρι, τῷ εὐεργέτη — was perhaps inscribed on the pedestal. By the Christians, this group was foolishly explained of their founder and the poor woman whom he had cured of the bloody flux, (Euseb. vii. 18, Philostorg. vii. 3, &c.) M. de Beausobre more reasonably conjectures the philosopher Apollonius, or the em peror Vespasian: in the latter supposition, the female is a city, a province, or perhaps the queen Berenice, (Bibliothèque Germanique, toru xiii. p. 1-92.)

tine imitation of some heathen model. In this distress, & bold and dexterous invention assured at once the likeness of

the image and the innocence of the worship. A new super. structure of fable was raised on the popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of Christ and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly deserted by our modern advocates. The bishop of Cæsarea records the epistle, but he most strangely forgets the picture of Christ; 10 the perfect impression of his face on a linen, with which he gratified the faith of the royal stranger who had invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city of Edessa to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The ignorance of the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the image in a riche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms of Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge of the divine promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a foreign enemy. It is true, indeed, that the text of Procopius scribes the double deliverance of Edessa to the wealth and valor of her citizens, who purchased the absence and repelled the assaults of the Persian

Euseb. Hist. Ecclés. 1. i. c. 13. The learned Assemannus has brought up the collateral aid of three Syrians, St. Ephrem, Josua Stylites, and James bishop of Sarng; but I do not find any notice of the Syriac original or the archives of Edessa, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 318, 420, 554 ;) their vague belief is probably derived from the Greeks.

• The evidence for these epistles is stated and rejected by the candid Lardner, (Heataen Testimonies, vol. i. p. 297-309.) Among the herd of bigots who are forcibly driven from this convenient, but untenable, post, I am ashamed, with the Grabes, Caves, Tillemonts &c., to discover Mr. Addison, an English gentleman, (his Works, vol. i. p. 528, Baskerville's edition;) but his superficial tract on the Christian religion owes its credit to his name, his style, and the interested applause of our clergy.

io From the silence of James of Sarug, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. 289, 318,) and the testimony of Evagrius, (Hist. Eccles. 1. iv. c. 27.) conclude that this fable was invented between the years 521 and 594, most probably after the siege of Edessa in 540, (Asseman. tom. i. p. 416. Procopius, de Bell. Persic. 1. ii.) It is the sword and buckler of Gregory II., (in Epist. i. ad Leon. Isaur. Concil. tom. viii. p. 656, 657,) of John Damascenus, (Opera, tom. i. p. 281, edit. Lequien,) and of the second Nicene Council, (Actio v. p. 1930.) The most perfect edition may be found in Cedrenus, (Compend. p 175-178.)