The sources are nearly all on the orthodox side. The seventh oecumenical council (787) ordered in the fifth session that all the books against images should be destroyed.

The literature on the image-controversy is much colored by the doctrinal stand-point of the writers. Gibbon treats it with cold philosophical indifference, and chiefly in its bearing on the political fortunes of the Byzantine empire.

With the worship of saints is closely, connected a subordinate worship of their images and relics. The latter is the legitimate application of the former. But while the mediaeval churches of the East and West with the exception of a few protesting voices were agreed on the worship of saints, there was a violent controversy about the images which kept the Eastern church in commotion for more than a century (a.d. 724-842), and hastened the decline of the Byzantine empire.

The abstract question of the use of images is connected with the general subject of the relation of art to worship. Christianity claims to be the perfect and universal religion; it pervades with its leavening power all the faculties of man and all departments of life. It is foreign to nothing which God has made. It is in harmony with all that is true, and beautiful, and good. It is friendly to philosophy, science, and art, and takes them into its service. Poetry, music, and architecture achieve their highest mission as handmaids of religion, and have derived the inspiration for their noblest works from the Bible. Why then should painting or sculpture or any other art which comes from God, be excluded from the use of the Church? Why should not Bible history as well as all other history admit of pictorial and sculptured representation for the instruction and enjoyment of children and adults who have a taste for beauty? Whatever proceeds from God must return to God and spread his glory.

But from the use of images for ornament, instruction and enjoyment there is a vast step to the worship of images, and experience proves that the former can exist without a trace of the latter. In the middle ages, however, owing to the prevailing saint-worship, the two were inseparable. The pictures were introduced into churches not as works of art, but as aids and objects of devotion. The image-controversy was therefore a, purely practical question of worship, and not a philosophical or artistic question. To a rude imagination an ugly and revolting picture served the devotional purpose even better than one of beauty and grace. It was only towards the close of the middle ages that the art of Christian painting began to produce works of high merit. Moreover the image-controversy was complicated with the second commandment of the decalogue which clearly and wisely forbids, if not all kinds of figurative representations of the Deity, at all events every idolatrous and superstitious use of pictures. It was also beset by the difficulty that we have no authentic pictures of Christ, the Madonna and the Apostles or any other biblical character.

We have traced in previous volumes the gradual introduction of sacred images from the Roman Catacombs to the close of the sixth century. The use of symbols and pictures was at first quite innocent and spread imperceptibly with the growth of the worship of saints. The East which inherited a love for art from the old Greeks, was chiefly devoted to images, the Western barbarians who could not appreciate works of art, cared more for relics.

We may distinguish three theories, of which two came into open conflict and disputed the ground till the year 842.

1. The theory of Image-Worship. It is the orthodox theory, denounced by the opponents as a species of idolatry, but strongly supported by the people, the monks, the poets, the women, the Empresses Irene and Theodora, sanctioned by the seventh oecumenical Council (787) and by the popes (Gregory II., Gregory III. and Hadrian I). It maintained the right and duty of using and worshipping images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, but indignantly rejected the charge of idolatry, and made a distinction (often disregarded in practice) between a limited worship due to pictures, and adoration proper due to God alone. Images are a pictorial Bible, and speak to the eye even more eloquently than the word speaks to the ear. They are of special value to the common people who cannot read the Holy Scriptures. The honors of the living originals in heaven were gradually transferred to their wooden pictures on earth; the pictures were reverently kissed and surrounded by the pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense; and prayers were thought to be more effective if said before them. Enthusiasm for pictures went hand in hand with the worship of saints, and was almost inseparable from it. It kindled a poetic inspiration which enriched the service books of the Greek church. The chief hymnists, John of Damascus, Cosmas of Jerusalem, Germanus, Theophanes, Theodore of the Studium, were all patrons of images, and some of them suffered deposition, imprisonment, and mutilation for their zeal; but the Iconoclasts did not furnish a single poet.

The chief argument against this theory was the second commandment. It was answered in various ways. The prohibition was understood to be merely temporary till the appearance of Christ, or to apply only to graven images, or to the making of images for idolatrous purposes.

On the other hand, the cherubim over the ark, and the brazen serpent in the wilderness were appealed to as examples of visible symbols in the Mosaic worship. The incarnation of the Son of God furnished the divine warrant for pictures of Christ. Since Christ revealed himself in human form it can be no sin to represent him in that form. The significant silence of the Gospels concerning his personal appearance was supplied by fictitious pictures ascribed to St. Luke, and St. Veronica, and that of Edessa. A superstitious fancy even invented stories of wonder-working pictures, and ascribed to them motion, speech, and action.

It should be added that the Eastern church confines images to colored representations on a plane surface, and mosaics, but excludes sculptures and statues from objects of worship. The Roman church makes no such restriction.

2. The Iconoclastic theory occupies the opposite extreme. Its advocates were called image-breakers. It was maintained by the energetic Greek emperors, Leo III. and his son Constantine, who saved the tottering empire against the invasion of the Saracens; it was popular in the army, and received the sanction of the Constantinopolitan Synod of 754. It appealed first and last to the second commandment in the decalogue in its strict sense as understood by the Jews and the primitive Christians. It was considerably strengthened by the successes of the Mohammedans who, like the Jews, charged the Christians with the great sin of idolatry, and conquered the cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in spite of the sacred images which were relied on for protection and miraculous interposition. The iconoclastic Synod of 754 denounced image-worship as a relapse into heathen idolatry, which the devil had smuggled into the church in the place of the worship of God alone in spirit and in truth.

The iconoclastic party, however, was not consistent; for it adhered to saint-worship which is the root of image-worship, and instead of sweeping away all religious symbols, it retained the sign of the cross with all its superstitious uses, and justified this exception by the Scripture passages on the efficacy of the cross, though these refer to the sacrifice of the cross, and not to the sign.

The chief defect of iconoclasm and the cause of its failure was its negative character. It furnished no substitute for image-worship, and left nothing but empty walls which could not satisfy the religious wants of the Greek race. It was very different from the iconoclasm of the evangelical Reformation, which put in the place of images the richer intellectual and spiritual instruction from the Word of God.

3. The Moderate theory sought a via media between image-worship and image-hatred, by distinguishing between the sign and the thing, the use and the abuse. It allowed the representation of Christ and the saints as aids to devotion by calling to remembrance the persons and facts set forth to the eye. Pope Gregory I. presented to a hermit at his wish a picture of Christ, of Mary, and of St. Peter and St. Paul, with a letter in which he approves of the natural desire to have a visible reminder of an object of reverence and love, but at the same time warned him against superstitious use. We do not, he says, kneel down before the picture as a divinity, but we adore Him whose birth or passion or sitting on the throne of majesty is brought to our remembrance by the picture. The same pope commended Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, for his zeal against the adoration of pictures, but disapproved of his excess in that direction, and reminded him of the usefulness of such aids for the people who had just emerged from pagan barbarism and could not instruct themselves out of the Holy Scriptures. The Frankish church in the eighth and ninth centuries took a more decided stand against the abuse, without, however, going to the extent of the iconoclasts in the East.

In the course of time the Latin church went just as far if not further in practical image-worship as the Eastern church after the seventh oecumenical council. Gregory II. stoutly resisted the iconoclastic decrees of the Emperor Leo, and made capital out of the controversy for the independence of the papal throne. Gregory III. followed in the same steps, and Hadrian sanctioned the decree of the second council of Nicaea. Image-worship cannot be consistently opposed without surrendering the worship of saints.

The same theories and parties reappeared again in the age of the Reformation: the Roman as well as the Greek church adhered to image-worship with an occasional feeble protest against its abuses, and encouraged the development of fine arts, especially in Italy; the radical Reformers (Carlstadt, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox) renewed the iconoclastic theory and removed, in an orderly way, the pictures from the churches, as favoring a refined species of idolatry and hindering a spiritual worship; the Lutheran church (after the example set by Luther and his friend Lucas Kranach), retained the old pictures, or replaced them by new and better ones, but freed from former superstition. The modern progress of art, and the increased mechanical facilities for the multiplication of pictures have produced a change in Protestant countries. Sunday School books and other works for old and young abound in pictorial illustrations from Bible history for instruction; and the masterpieces of the great religious painters have become household ornaments, but will never be again objects of worship, which is due to God alone.

Notes.

The Council of Trent, Sess. XXV. held Dec. 1563, sanctions, together with the worship of saints and relics, also the legitimate use of images in the following terms: Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints, are to be had and retained particularly in temples, and that due honor and veneration are to be given them; not that any divinity, or virtue, is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be worshiped; or that anything is to be asked of them; or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the Gentiles, who placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ, and we venerate the saints, whose similitude they bear: as, by the decrees of Councils, and especially of the second Synod of Nicaea, has been defined against the opponents of images. The Profession of the Tridentine Faith teaches the same in art. IX. (See Schaff, Creeds, II. p. 201, 209).

The modern standards of the Eastern Church reiterate the decision of the seventh (Ecumenical Council. The Synod of Jerusalem, or the Confession of Dositheus, includes pictures of Christ, the mother of God, the saints and the holy angels who appeared to some of the patriarchs and prophets, also the symbolic representation of the Holy Spirit under the form of a dove, among the objects of worship (proskunou'men kai; timw'men kai; ajspazovmeqa). See Schaff, l.c. II. 436. The Longer Russian Catechism, in the exposition of the second commandment (Schaff, II. 527), thus speaks of this subject:

What is an icon (eijkwvn)?

The word is Greek, and means an image or representation. In the Orthodox Church this name designates sacred representations of our Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate, his immaculate Mother, and his saints.

Is the use of holy icons agreeable to the second commandment?

It would then, and then only, be otherwise, if any one were to make gods of them; but it is not in the least contrary to this commandment to honor icons as sacred representations, and to use them for the religious remembrance of God's works and of his saints; for when thus used icons are books, writen(sic) with the forms of persons and things instead of letters. (See Greg. Magn. lib. ix. Ep. 9, ad Seren. Epis.).

What disposition of mind should we have when we reverence icons?

While we look on them with our eyes, we should mentally look to God and to the saints, who are represented on them.

The history of the image-controversy embraces three periods: 1) The war upon images and the abolition of image-worship by the Council of Constantinople, a.d. 726-754. 2) The reaction in favor of image-worship, and its solemn sanction by the second Council of Nicaea, a.d. 754-787. 3) The renewed conflict of the two parties and the final triumph of image-worship, a.d. 842.

Image-worship had spread with the worship of saints, and become a general habit among the people in the Eastern church to such an extent that the Christian apologists had great difficulty to maintain their ground against the charge of idolatry constantly raised against them, not only by the Jews, but also by the followers of Islam, who could point to their rapid successes in support of their abhorrence of every species of idolatry. Churches and church-books, palaces and private houses, dresses and articles of furniture were adorned with religious pictures. They took among the artistic Greeks the place of the relics among the rude Western nations. Images were made to do service as sponsors in the name of the saints whom they represented. Fabulous stories of their wonder-working power were circulated and readily believed. Such excesses naturally called forth a reaction.

Leo III., called the Isaurian (716-741), a sober and energetic, but illiterate and despotic emperor, who by his military talents and successes had risen from the condition of a peasant in the mountains of Isauria to the throne of the Caesars, and delivered his subjects from the fear of the Arabs by the new invention of the Greek fire, felt himself called, as a second Josiah, to use his authority for the destruction of idolatry. The Byzantine emperors did not scruple to interfere with the internal affairs of the church, and to use their despotic power for the purpose. Leo was influenced by a certain bishop Constantinus of Nakolia in Phrygia, and by a desire to break the force of the Mohammedan charge against the Christians. In the sixth year of his reign he ordered the forcible baptism of Jews and Montanists (or Manichaeans); the former submitted hypocritically and mocked at the ceremony; the latter preferred to set fire to their meeting-houses and to perish in the flames. Then, in the tenth year (726), he began his war upon the images. At first he only prohibited their worship, and declared in the face of the rising opposition that he intended to protect the images against profanation by removing them beyond the reach of touch and kiss. But in a second edict (730), he commanded the removal or destruction of all the images. The pictured walls were to be whitewashed. He replaced the magnificent picture of Christ over the gate of the imperial palace by a plain cross. He removed the aged Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, and put the iconoclastic Anastasius in his place.

These edicts roused the violent opposition of the clergy, the monks, and the people, who saw in it an attack upon religion itself. The servants who took down the picture from the palace gate were killed by the mob. John of Damascus and Germanus, already known to us as hymnists, were the chief opponents. The former was beyond the reach of Leo, and wrote three eloquent orations, one before, two after the forced resignation of Germanus, in defence of image-worship, and exhausted the argument. The islanders of the Archipelago under the control of monks rose in open rebellion, and set up a pretender to the throne; but they were defeated, and their leaders put to death. Leo enforced obedience within the limits of the Eastern empire, but had no power among the Christian subjects of the Saracens, nor in Rome and Ravenna, where his authority was openly set at defiance. Pope Gregory II. told him, in an insulting letter (about 729), that the children of the grammar-school would throw their tablets at his head if he avowed himself a destroyer of images, and the unwise would teach him what he refused to learn from the wise. Seventy years afterwards the West set up an empire of its own in close connection with the bishop of Rome.

Constantine V., surnamed Copronymos, during his long reign of thirty-four years (741-775), kept up his father's policy with great ability, vigor and cruelty, against popular clamor, sedition and conspiracy. His character is very differently judged according to the doctrinal views of the writers. His enemies charge him with monstrous vices, heretical opinions, and the practice of magical arts; while the iconoclasts praise him highly for his virtues, and forty years after his death still prayed at his tomb. His administrative and military talents and successes against the Saracens, Bulgarians, and other enemies, as well as his despotism and cruelty (which he shares with other Byzantine emperors) are beyond dispute.

He called an iconoclastic council in Constantinople in 754, which was to be the seventh oecumenical, but was afterwards disowned as a pseudo-synod of heretics. It numbered three hundred and thirty subservient bishops under the presidency of Archbishop Theodosius of Ephesus (the son of a former emperor), and lasted six months (from Feb. 10th to Aug. 27th); but the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, being under Moslem rule, could not attend, the see of Constantinople was vacant, and Pope Stephen III. disregarded the imperial summons. The council, appealing to the second commandment and other Scripture passages denouncing idolatry (Rom. 1:23, 25; John 4:24), and opinions of the Fathers (Epiphanius, Eusebius, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, etc.), condemned and forbade the public and private worship of sacred images on pain of deposition and excommunication, but (inconsistently) ordered at the same time that no one should deface or meddle with sacred vessels or vestments ornamented with figures, and formally declared its agreement with the six oecumenical councils, and the lawfulness of invoking the blessed Virgin and saints. It denounced all religious representations by painter or sculptor as presumptuous, pagan and idolatrous. Those who make pictures of the Saviour, who is God as well as man in one inseparable person, either limit the incomprehensible Godhead to the bounds of created flesh, or confound his two natures, like Eutyches, or separate them, like Nestorius, or deny his Godhead, like Arius; and those who worship such a picture are guilty of the same heresy and blasphemy. The eucharist alone is the proper image of Christ. A three-fold anathema was pronounced on the advocates of image-worship, even the great John of Damascus under the name of Mansur, who is called a traitor of Christ, an enemy of the empire, a teacher of impiety, and a perverter of the Scriptures. The acts of the Synod were destroyed except the decision (o{ro ) and a brief introduction, which are embodied and condemned in the acts of the second Nicene Council.

The emperor carried out the decree with great rigor as far as his power extended. The sacred images were ruthlessly destroyed and replaced by white-wash or pictures of trees, birds, and animals. The bishops and clergy submitted; but the monks who manufactured the pictures, denounced the emperor as a second Mohammed and heresiarch, and all the iconoclasts as heretics, atheists and blasphemers, and were subjected to imprisonment, flagellation, mutilation, and all sorts of indignities, even death. The principal martyrs of images during this reign (from 761-775) are Petrus Kalabites (i.e. the inhabitant of a hut, kaluvbh), Johannes, Abbot of Monagria, and Stephanus, Abbot of Auxentius, opposite Constantinople (called the new Stephanus, to distinguish him from the proto-martyr). The emperor made even an attempt to abolish the convents.

Leo IV., called Chazarus (775-780), kept up the laws against images, though with more moderation. But his wife Irene of Athens distinguished for beauty, talent, ambition and intrigue, was at heart devoted to image-worship, and after his death and during the minority of her son Constantine VI. Porphyrogenitus, labored with shrewdness and perseverance for its restoration (780-802). At first she proclaimed toleration to both parties, which she afterwards denied to the iconoclasts. She raised the persecuted monks to the highest dignities, and her secretary, Tarasius, to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, with the consent of Pope Hadrian, who was willing to overlook the irregularity of the sudden election of a layman in prospect of his services to orthodoxy. She removed the iconoclastic imperial guard, and replaced it by one friendly to her views.

But the crowning measure was an oecumenical council, which alone could set aside the authority of the iconoclastic council of 754. Her first attempt to hold such a council at Constantinople in 786 completely failed. The second attempt, owing to more careful preparations, succeeded.

Irene convened the seventh oecumenical council in the year 787, at Nicaea, which was less liable to iconoclastic disturbances than Constantinople, yet within easy reach of the court, and famous as the seat of the first and weightiest oecumenical council. It was attended by about three hundred and fifty bishops, under the presidency of Tarasius, and held only eight sessions from September 24 to October 23, the last in the imperial palace of Constantinople. Pope Hadrian I. sent two priests, both called Peter, whose names stand first in the Acts. The three Eastern patriarchs, who were subject to the despotic rule of the Saracens, could not safely leave their homes; but two Eastern monks, John, and Thomas, who professed to be syncelli of two of these patriarchs and to have an accurate knowledge of the prevailing orthodoxy of Egypt and Syria, were allowed to sit and vote in the place of those dignitaries, although they had no authority from them, and were sent simply by a number of their fellow-monks.

The Nicene Council nullified the decrees of the iconoclastic Synod of Constantinople, and solemnly sanctioned a limited worship (proskynesis) of images.

Under images were understood the sign of the cross, and pictures of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, of angels and saints. They may be drawn in color or composed of Mosaic or formed of other suitable materials, and placed in churches, in houses, and in the street, or made on walls and tables, sacred vessels and vestments. Homage may be paid to them by kissing, bowing, strewing of incense, burning of lights, saying prayers before them; such honor to be intended for the living objects in heaven which the images represented. The Gospel book and the relics of martyrs were also mentioned among the objects of veneration.

The decree was fortified by a few Scripture passages about the Cherubim (Ex. 25:17-22; Ezek. 41:1, 15, 19; Heb. 9:1-5), and a large number of patristic testimonies, genuine and forged, and alleged miracles performed by images. A presbyter testified that he was cured from a severe sickness by a picture of Christ. Bishop after bishop, even those who had been members of the Synod of 754, renounced his iconoclastic opinions, and large numbers exclaimed together: We all have sinned, we all have erred, we all beg forgiveness. Some professed conscientious scruples, but were quieted when the Synod resolved that the violation of an oath which was contrary to the law of God, was no perjury. At the request of one of the Roman delegates, an image was brought into the assembly, and reverently kissed by all. At the conclusion, the assembled bishops exclaimed unanimously: Thus we believe. This is the doctrine of the apostles. Anathema upon all who do not adhere to it, who do not salute the images, who call them idols, and who charge the Christians with idolatry. Long life to the emperors! Eternal memory to the new Constantine and the new Helena! God protect their reign! Anathema upon all heretics! Anathema especially upon Theodosius, the false bishop of Ephesus, as also upon Sisinnius and Basilius! The Holy Trinity has rejected their doctrines. Then follows an anathema upon other distinguished iconoclasts, and all who do not confess that Christ's humanity has a circumscribed form, who do not greet the images, who reject the ecclesiastical traditions, written or unwritten; while eternal memory is given to the chief champions of image-worship, Germanus of Constantinople, John of Damascus, and George of Cyprus, the heralds of truth.

The decrees of the Synod were publicly proclaimed in an eighth session at Constantinople in the presence of Irene and her son, and, signed by them; whereupon the bishops, with the people and soldiers, shouted in the usual form: Long live the Orthodox queen-regent. The empress sent the bishops home with rich presents.

The second Council of Nicaea stands far below the first in moral dignity and doctrinal importance, and occupies the lowest grade among the seven oecumenical synods; but it determined the character of worship in the oriental church for all time to come, and herein lies its significance. Its decision is binding also upon the Roman church, which took part in it by two papal legates, and defended it by a letter of Pope Hadrian to Charlemagne in answer to the Libri Carolini. Protestant churches disregard the council because they condemn image-worship as a refined form of idolatry and as a fruitful source of superstition; and this theory is supported by the plain sense of the second commandment, the views of the primitive Christians, and, negatively, by the superstitions which have accompanied the history of image-worship down to the miracle-working Madonnas of the nineteenth century. At the same time it may be readily conceded that the decree of Nicaea has furnished aid and comfort to a low and crude order of piety which needs visible supports, and has stimulated the development of Christian art. Iconoclasm would have killed it. It is, however, a remarkable fact that the Catholic Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the Protestant Lucas Kranach and Albrecht Duerer, were contemporaries of the Reformers, and that the art of painting reached its highest perfection at the period when image-worship for a great part of Christendom was superseded by the spiritual worship of God alone.

A few months after the Nicene Council, Irene dissolved the betrothal of her son, the Emperor Constantine, to Rotrude, a daughter of Charlemagne, which she herself had brought about, and forced him to marry an Armenian lady whom he afterward cast off and sent to a convent. From this time dates her rupture with Constantine. In her ambition for despotic power, she rendered him odious by encouraging his bad habits, and at last incapable of the throne by causing his eyes to be plucked out, while he was asleep, with such violence that he died of it (797). It is a humiliating fact that Constantine the Great, the convener of the first Nicene Council, and Irene, the convener of the second and last, are alike stained with the blood of their own offspring, and yet honored as saints in the Eastern church, in whose estimate orthodoxy covers a multitude of sins. She enjoyed for five years the fruit of unnatural cruelty to her only child. As she passed through the streets of Constantinople, four patricians marched on foot before her golden chariot, holding the reins of four milk-white steeds. But these patricians conspired against their queen and raised the treasurer Nicephorus to the throne, who was crowned at St. Sophia by the venal patriarch. Irene was sent into exile on the Isle of Lesbos, and had to earn her bread by the labors of her distaff as she had done in the days of her youth as an Athenian virgin. She died of grief in 803. With her perished the Isaurian dynasty. Startling changes of fortune were not uncommon among princes and patriarchs of the Byzantine empire.

During the five reigns which succeeded that of Irene, a period of thirty-eight years, the image-war was continued with varying fortunes. The soldiers were largely iconoclastic, the monks and the people in favor of image-worship. Among these Theodore of the Studium was distinguished by his fearless advocacy and cruel sufferings under Leo V., the Armenian (813-820), who was slain at the foot of the altar. Theophilus (829-842) was the last and the most cruel of the iconoclastic emperors. He persecuted the monks by imprisonment, corporal punishment, and mutilation.

But his widow, Theodora, a second Irene, without her vices, in the thirteenth year of her regency during the minority of Michael the Drunkard, achieved by prudent and decisive measures the final and permanent victory of image-worship. She secured absolution for her deceased husband by the fiction of a death-bed repentance, although she had promised him to make no change. The iconoclastic patriarch, John the Grammarian, was banished and condemned to two hundred lashes; the monk Methodius of opposite tendency (honored as a confessor and saint) was put in his place; the bishops trembled and changed or were deposed; the monks and the people were delighted. A Synod at Constantinople (the acts of it are lost) reEnacted the decrees of the seven oecumenical Councils, restored the worship of images, pronounced the anathema upon all iconoclasts, and decided that the event should be hereafter commemorated on the first Sunday in Lent by a solemn procession and a renewal of the anathema on the iconoclastic heretics.

On the 19th of February, 842, the images were again introduced into the churches of Constantinople. It was the first celebration of the Sunday of Orthodoxy, which afterwards assumed a wider meaning, as a celebration of victory over all heresies. It is one of the most characteristic festivals of the Eastern church. The old oecumenical Councils are dramatically represented, and a threefold anathema is pronounced upon all sorts of heretics such as atheists, antitrinitarians, upon those who deny the virginity of Mary before or after the birth of Christ, the inspiration of the Scriptures, or the immortality of the soul, who reject the mysteries (sacraments), the traditions and councils, who deny that orthodox princes rule by divine appointment and receive at their unction the Holy Ghost, and upon all iconoclasts. After this anathema follows the grateful commemoration of the orthodox confessors and all who have fought for the orthodox faith by their words, writings, teaching, sufferings, and godly example, as also of all the protectors and defenders of the Church of Christ. In conclusion the bishops, archimandrites and priests kiss the sacred icons.

The church of Rome, under the lead of the popes, accepted and supported the seventh oecumenical council, and ultimately even went further than the Eastern church in allowing the worship of graven as well as painted images. But the church in the empire of Charlemagne, who was not on good terms with the Empress Irene, took a position between image-worship and iconoclasm.

The question of images was first discussed in France under Pepin in a synod at Gentilly near Paris, 767, but we do not know with what result. Pope Hadrian sent to Charlemagne a Latin version of the acts of the Nicene Council; but it was so incorrect and unintelligible that a few decades later the Roman librarian Anastasius charged the translator with ignorance of both Greek and Latin, and superseded it by a better one.

Charlemagne, with the aid of his chaplains, especially Alcuin, prepared and published, three years after the Nicene Council, an important work on image-worship under the title Quatuor Libri Carolini (790). He dissents both from the iconoclastic synod of 754 and the anti-iconoclastic synod of 787, but more from the latter, which he treats very disrespectfully. He decidedly rejects image-worship, but allows the use of images for ornament and devotion, and supports his view with Scripture passages and patristic quotations. The spirit and aim of the book is almost Protestant. The chief thoughts are these: God alone is the object of worship and adoration (colondus et adorandus). Saints are only to be revered (venerandi). Images can in no sense be worshipped. To bow or kneel before them, to salute or kiss them, to strew incense and to light candles before them, is idolatrous and superstitious. It is far better to search the Scriptures, which know nothing of such practices. The tales of miracles wrought by images are inventions of the imagination, or deceptions of the evil spirit. On the other hand, the iconoclasts, in their honest zeal against idolatry, went too far in rejecting the images altogether. The legitimate and proper use of images is to adorn the churches and to perpetuate and popularize the memory of the persons and events which they represent. Yet even this is not necessary; for a Christian should be able without sensual means to rise to the contemplation of the virtues of the saints and to ascend to the fountain of eternal light. Man is made in the image of God, and hence capable of receiving Christ into his soul. God should ever be present and adored in our hearts. O unfortunate memory, which can realize the presence of Christ only by means of a picture drawn in sensuous colors. The Council of Nicaea committed a great wrong in condemning those who do not worship images.

The author of the Caroline books, however, falls into the same inconsistency as the Eastern iconoclasts, by making an exception in favor of the sign of the cross and the relics of saints. The cross is called a banner which puts the enemy to flight, and the honoring of the relics is declared to be a great means of promoting piety, since the saints reign with Christ in heaven, and their bones will be raised to glory; while images are made by men's hands and return to dust.

A Synod in Frankfort, a.d. 794, the most important held during the reign of Charlemagne, and representing the churches of France and Germany, in the presence of two papal legates (Theophylactus and Stephanus), endorsed the doctrine of the Libri Carolini, unanimously condemned the worship of images in any form, and rejected the seventh oecumenical council. According to an old tradition, the English church agreed with this decision.

Charlemagne sent a copy of his book, or more probably an extract from it (85 Capitula or Capitulare de Imaginibus) through Angilbert, his son-in-law, to his friend Pope Hadrian, who in a long answer tried to defend the Eastern orthodoxy of Nicaea with due respect for his Western protector, but failed to satisfy the Frankish church, and died soon afterwards (Dec. 25, 795).

A Synod of Paris, held under the reign of Charlemagne's son and successor, Louis the Pious, in the year 825, renewed the protest of the Frankfort Synod against image-worship and the authority of the second council of Nicaea, in reply to an embassy of the Emperor Michael Balbus, and added a slight rebuke to the pope.

Notes.

The Caroline Books, if not written by Charlemagne, are at all events issued in his name; for the author repeatedly calls Pepin his father, and speaks of having undertaken the work with the consent of the priests in his dominion (conniventia sacerdotum in regno a Deo nobis concesso). The book is first mentioned by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims in the ninth century as directed against the pseudo-Synodus Graecorum (the second Nicene Council), and he quotes a passage from a copy which he saw in the royal palace. The second mention and quotation was made by the papal librarian Augustine Steuchus (d. 1550) from a very old copy in the Bibliotheca Palatina. As soon as it appeared in print, Flavius and other Protestant polemics used it against Rome. Baronius, Bellarmin, and other Romanists denied the genuineness, and ascribed the book to certain heretics in the age of Charlemagne, who sent it to Rome to be condemned; some declared it even a fabrication of the radical reformer Carlstadt! But Sirmond and Natalis Alexander convincingly proved the genuineness. More recently Dr. Floss (R. C.) of Bonn, revived the doubts (1860), but they are permanently removed since Professor Reifferscheid (1866) discovered a new MS. from the tenth century in the Vatican library which differs from the one of Steuchus, and was probably made in the Cistercian Convent at Marienfeld in Westphalia. Therefore, writes Bishop Hefele in 1877 (III. 698), the genuineness of the Libri Carolini is hereafter no longer to be questioned (nicht mehr zu beanstanden).

I. Agobardus: Contra eorum superstitionem qui picturis et imaginibus SS. adorationis obsequium deferendum putant. Opera ed. Baluzius Par. 1666, 2 vols., and Migne, Patrol. Lat. vol. 104, fol. 29-351. Histoire litter. de la France, IV. 567 sqq. C. B. Hundeshagen: De Agobardi vita et scriptis. Pars I. Giessae 1831; and his article in Herzog² I. 212 sq. Baehr: Gesch. der roem. Lit. in Karoliny. Zeitalter, p. 383-393. Bluegel: De Agobardi archiep. Lugd. vita et scriptis. Hal. 1865. Simson: Jahrbuecher des fraenkischen Reichs unter Ludwig dem Frommen. Leipz. 1874 and '76. C. Deedes in Smith and Wace, I. 63-64. Lichtenberger, I. 119.

II. Claudius: Opera in Migne's Patrol. Lat. vol. 104, fol. 609-927. Commentaries on Kings, Gal., Ephes., etc., Eulogium Augustini, and Apologeticum. Some of his works are still unpublished. Rudelbach: Claudii Tur. Ep. ineditorum operum specimina, praemissa de ejus doctrina scriptisque dissert. Havniae 1824. C. Schmidt: Claudius v. Turin in Illgen's Zeitschrift f. die Hist. Theol. 1843. II. 39; and his art. in Herzog², III. 243-245.

III. Neander, III. 428-439 (very full and discriminating on Claudius); Gieseler, II. 69-73 (with judicious extracts); Reuter: Geschichte der Aufklaerung im Mittelalter, vol. I. (Berlin 1875), 16-20 and 24-41.

The opposition to image-worship and other superstitious practices continued in the Frankish church during the ninth century.

Two eminent bishops took the lead in the advocacy of a more spiritual and evangelical type of religion. In this they differed from the rationalistic and destructive iconoclasts of the East. They were influenced by the writings of Paul and Augustine, those inspirers of all evangelical movements in church history; with this difference, however, that Paul stands high above parties and schools, and that Augustine, with all his anti-Pelagian principles, was a strong advocate of the Catholic theory of the church and church-order.

Agobard (in Lyonese dialect Agobaud or Aguebaud), a native of Spain, but of Gallic parents, and archbishop of Lyons (816-841), figures prominently in the political and ecclesiastical history of France during the reign of Louis the Pious. He is known to us already as an opponent of the ordeal, the judicial duel and other heathen customs. His character presents singular contrasts. He was a rigid ecclesiastic and sacerdotalist, and thoroughly orthodox in dogma (except that he denied the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures); but, on the other hand, a sworn enemy of all superstition, and advocate of liberal views in matters of worship. He took part in the rebellion of Lothaire against his father Louis in 833, which deprived him of his bishopric and left a serious stain on his character, but he was afterwards reconciled to Louis and recovered the bishopric. He opposed Adoptionism as a milder form of the Nestorian heresy. He attacked the Jews, who flocked to Lyons in large numbers, and charges them with insolent conduct towards the Christians. In this he shared the intolerance of his age. But, on the other hand, he wrote a book against image-worship. He goes back to the root of the difficulty, the worship of saints. He can find no authority for such worship. The saints themselves decline it. It is a cunning device of Satan to smuggle heathen idolatry, into the church under pretext of showing honor to saints. He thus draws men away from a spiritual to a sensual worship. God alone should be adored; to him alone must we present the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart. Angels and holy men who are crowned with victory, and help us by their intercessions, may be loved and honored, but not worshiped. Cursed be the man that trusteth in man (Jer. 17:5). We may look with pleasure on their pictures, but it is better to be satisfied with the simple symbol of the cross (as if this were not liable to the same abuse). Agobart approves the canon of Elvira, which forbade images altogether. He says in conclusion: Since no man is essentially God, save Jesus our Saviour, so we, as the Scripture commands, shall bow our knees to his name alone, lest by giving this honor to another we may be estranged from God, and left to follow the doctrines and traditions of men according to the inclinations of our hearts.

Agobard was not disturbed in his position, and even honored as a saint in Lyons after his death, though his saintship is disputed. His works were lost, until Papirius Masson discovered a MS. copy and rescued it from a bookbinder's hands in Lyons (1605).

Claudius, bishop of Turin (814-839), was a native of Spain, but spent three years as chaplain at the court of Louis the Pious and was sent by him to the diocese of Turin. He wrote practical commentaries on nearly all the books of the Bible, at the request of the emperor, for the education of the clergy. They were mostly extracted from the writings of Augustine, Jerome, and other Latin fathers. Only fragments remain. He was a great admirer of Augustine, but destitute of his wisdom and moderation.

He found the Italian churches full of pictures and picture-worshipers. He was told that the people did not mean to worship the images, but the saints. He replied that the heathen on the same ground defend the worship of their idols, and may become Christians by merely changing the name. He traced image-worship and saint-worship to a Pelagian tendency, and met it with the Augustinian view of the sovereignty of divine grace. Paul, he says, overthrows human merits, in which the monks now most glory, and exalts the grace of God. We are saved by grace, not by works. We must worship the Creator, not the creature. Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth the salvation which he should seek from God alone, is an idolater. The departed saints themselves do not wish to be worshipped by us, and cannot help us. While we live, we may aid each other by prayers, but not after death. He attacked also the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, going beyond Charlemagne and Agobard. He met the defence by carrying it to absurd conclusions. If we worship the cross, he says, because Christ suffered on it, we might also worship every virgin because he was born of a virgin, every manger because he was laid in a manger, every ship because he taught from a ship, yea, every ass because he rode on an ass into Jerusalem. We should bear the cross, not adore it. He banished the pictures, crosses and crucifixes from the churches, as the only way to kill superstition. He also strongly opposed the pilgrimages. He had no appreciation of religious symbolism, and went in his Puritanic zeal to a fanatical extreme.

Claudius was not disturbed in his seat; but, as he says himself, he found no sympathy with the people, and became an object of scorn to his neighbors, who pointed at him as a frightful spectre. He was censured by Pope Paschalis I. (817-824), and opposed by his old friend, the Abbot Theodemir of the diocese of Nismes, to whom he had dedicated his lost commentary on Leviticus (823), by Dungal (of Scotland or Ireland, about 827), and by Bishop Jonas of Orleans (840), who unjustly charged him with the Adoptionist and even the Arian heresy. Some writers have endeavored, without proof, to trace a connection between him and the Waldenses in Piedmont, who are of much later date.

Jonas of Orleans, Hincmar of Rheims, and Wallafrid Strabo still maintained substantially the moderate attitude of the Caroline books between the extremes of iconoclasm and image-worship. But the all-powerful influence of the popes, the sensuous tendency and credulity of the age, the ignorance of the clergy, and the grosser ignorance of the people combined to secure the ultimate triumph of image-worship even in France. The rising sun of the Carolingian age was obscured by the darkness of the tenth century.

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,

And lighten with celestial fire.

You the anointing Spirit art,

Who do your sevenfold gift, impart.

It was introduced into the Prayer Book after the Restoration, 1662. The alternate ordination hymn, Come, Holy Ghost, eternal God, appeared in 1549, and was altered in 1662.

Comp. vol. III. 96-101 and the liturgical Lit. there quoted; also the works on Christian and Ecclesiastical Antiquities, e.g. Siegel III. 361-411.

The public worship centered in the celebration of the mass as an actual, though unbloody, repetition of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world. In this respect the Eastern and Western churches are fully agreed to this day. They surround this ordinance with all the solemnity of a mysterious symbolism. They differ only in minor details.

Pope Gregory I. improved the Latin liturgy, and gave it that shape which it substantially retains in the Roman church. He was filled with the idea that the eucharist embodies the reconciliation of heaven and earth, of eternity and time, and is fraught with spiritual benefit for the living and the pious dead in one unbroken communion. When the priest offers the unbloody sacrifice to God, the heavens are opened, the angel are present, and the visible and invisible worlds united.

Gregory introduced masses for the dead, in connection with the doctrine of purgatory which he developed and popularized. They were based upon the older custom of praying for the departed, and were intended to alleviate and abridge the penal sufferings of those who died in the Catholic faith, but in need of purification from remaining infirmities. Very few Catholics are supposed to be prepared for heaven; and hence such masses were often ordered beforehand by the dying, or provided by friends. They furnished a large income to priests. The Oriental church has no clearly defined doctrine of purgatory, but likewise holds that the departed are benefited by prayers of the living, especially such as are offered in union with the oblation of the bloodless sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, and by works of mercy done in faith for their memory.

The high estimate of the efficacy of the sacrament led also to the abuse of solitary masses, where the priest celebrates without attendants. This destroys the original character of the institution as a feast of communion with the Redeemer and the redeemed. Several synods in the age of Charlemagne protested against the practice. The Synod of Mainz in 813 decreed: No presbyter, as it seems to us, can sing masses alone rightly, for how will he say sursum corda! or Dominus vobiscum! when there is no one with him? A reformatory Synod of Paris, 829, prohibits these masses, and calls them a reprehensible practice, which has crept in partly through neglect, partly through avarice.

The mysterious character of the eucharist was changed into the miraculous and even the magical with the spread of the belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation. But the doctrine was contested in two controversies before it triumphed in the eleventh century.

The language of the mass was Greek in the Eastern, Latin in the Western church. The Latin was an unknown tongue to the barbarian races of Europe. It gradually went out of use among the descendants of the Romans, and gave place to the Romanic languages. But the papal church, sacrificing the interests of the people to the priesthood, and rational or spiritual worship to external unity, retained the Latin language in the celebration of the mass to this day, as the sacred language of the church. The Council of Trent went so far as to put even the uninspired Latin Vulgate practically on an equality with the inspired Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.

As the chief part of divine service was unintelligible to the people, it was all the more important to supplement it by preaching and catechetical instruction in the vernacular tongues. But this is the weak spot in the church of the middle ages.

Pope Gregory I. preached occasionally with great earnestness, but few popes followed his example. It was the duty of bishops to preach, but they often neglected it. The Council of Clovesho, near London, which met in 747 under Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, for the reformation of abuses, decreed that the bishops should annually visit their parishes, instruct and exhort the abbots and monks, and that all presbyters should be able to explain the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the mass, and the office of baptism to the people in the vernacular. A Synod of Tours, held in the year 813, and a Synod of Mainz, held under Rabanus Maurus in 847, decreed that every bishop should have a collection of homilies and translate them clearly in rusticam Romanam linguam aut Theotiscam, i.e. into French (Romance) or German, in order that all may understand them.

The great majority of priests were too ignorant to prepare a sermon, and barely understood the Latin liturgical forms. A Synod of Aix, 802, prescribed that they should learn the Athanasian and Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer with exposition, the Sacramentarium or canon of the mass, the formula of exorcism, the commendatio animae, the Penitential, the Calendar and the Roman cantus; they should learn to understand the homilies for Sundays and holy days as models of preaching, and read the pastoral theology of Pope Gregory. This was the sum and substance of clerical learning. The study of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures was out of the question, and there was hardly a Western bishop or pope in the middle ages who was able to study the divine oracles in the original.

The best, therefore, that the priests and deacons, and even most of the bishops could do was to read the sermons of the fathers. Augustine had given this advice to those who were not skilled in composition. It became a recognized practice in France and England. Hence the collection of homilies, called Homiliaria, for the Gospels and Epistles of Sundays and holy days. They are mostly patristic compilations. Bede's collection, called Homilice de Tempore, contains thirty-three homilies for the summer, fifteen for the winter, twenty-two for Lent, besides sermons on saints' days. Charlemagne commissioned Paulus Diaconus or Paul Warnefrid (a monk of Monte Cassino and one of his chaplains, the historian of the Lombards, and writer of poems on saints) to prepare a Homiliarium (or Omiliarius) about a.d. 780, and recommended it for adoption in the churches of France. It follows the order of Sundays and festivals, is based on the text of the Vulgate, and continued in use more or less for several centuries. Other collections were made in later times, and even the Reformed church of England under Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth found it necessary to provide ignorant clergymen with two Books of Homilies adapted to the doctrines of the Reformation.

In this connection we must allude again to the poetic reproductions of the Bible history, namely, the divine epos of Caedmon, the Northumbrian monk (680), the Saxon Heliand (Heiland, i.e. Saviour, about 880), and the Christ or Gospel Harmony of Otfrid (a pupil of Rabanus Maurus, about 870). These works were effective popular sermons on the history of redemption, and are at the same time the most valuable remains of the Anglo-Saxon and old high German dialects of the Teutonic language.

It was, however, not till the Reformation of the sixteenth century that the sermon and the didactic element were restored and fully recognized in their dignity and importance as regular and essential parts of public worship. I say, worship, for to expound the oracles of God, and devoutly to listen to such exposition is or ought to be worship both on the part of the preacher and on the part of the hearer, as well as praying and singing.

See the Lit. in vol. III. 113 (p. 575 sq.) and 114 (p. 578), and add the following:

Cardinal Pitra: Hymnographie de l' glise grecque. Rome 1867. By the same: Analecta Sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata, T. I. Par. 1876.

Wilhelm Christ et M. Paranikas: Anthologia Graeca carminum Christianorum. Lips. 1871. CXLIV and 268 pages. The Greek text with learned Prolegomena in Latin. Christ was aided by Paranikas, a member of the Greek church. Comp. Christ: Beitraege zur kirchlichen Literatur der Byzantiner. Muenchen 1870.

[?]. L. Jacobi (Prof. of Church Hist. in Halle): Zur Geschichte der griechischen Kirchenliedes (a review of Pitra's Analecta), in Brieger's Zeitschrift fuer Kirchengesch., vol. V. Heft 2, p. 177-250 (Gotha 1881).

For a small selection of Greek hymns in the original see the third volume of Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus (1855), and Baessler's Auswahl altchristlicher Lieder (1858), p. 153-166.

For English versions see especially J. M. Neale: Hymns of the Eastern Church (Lond. 1862, third ed. 1866, 159 pages; new ed. 1876, in larger print 250 pages); also Schaff: Christ in Song (1869), which gives versions of 14 Greek (and 73 Latin) hymns. German translations in Baessler, l.c. p. 3-25.

[Syrian Hymnology. To the lit. mentioned vol. III. 580 add: Gust. Bickell: S. Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena, additis prolegomenis et supplemento lexicorum syriacorum edidit, vertit, explicavit. Lips.] 1866. Carl Macke: Hymnen aus dem Zweistroemeland. Dichtungen des heil. Ephrem des Syrers aus dem syr. Urtext in's Deutsche uebertragen, etc. Mainz 1882. 270 pages. Macke is a pupil of Bickell and a successor of Zingerle as translator of Syrian church poetry.]

The general church histories mostly neglect or ignore hymnology, which is the best reflection of Christian life and worship.

The classical period of Greek church poetry extends from about 650 to 820, and nearly coincides with the iconoclastic controversy. The enthusiasm for the worship of saints and images kindled a poetic inspiration, and the chief advocates of that worship were also the chief hymnists. Their memory is kept sacred in the Eastern church. Their works are incorporated in the ritual books, especially the Menaea, which contain in twelve volumes (one for each month) the daily devotions and correspond to the Latin Breviary. Many are still unpublished and preserved in convent libraries. They celebrate the holy Trinity and the Incarnation, the great festivals, and especially also the Virgin Mary, the saints and martyrs, and sacred icons.

The Greek church poetry is not metrical and rhymed, but written in rhythmical prose for chanting, like the Psalms, the hymns of the New Testament, the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum. The older hymnists were also melodists and composed the music. The stanzas are called troparia; the first troparion is named hirmos, because it strikes the tune and draws the others after it. Three or more stanzas form an ode; three little odes are a triodion; nine odes or three triodia form a canon. The odes usually end with a doxology (doxa) and a stanza in praise of Mary the Mother of God (theotokion). A hymn with a tune of its own is called an idiomelon.

This poetry fills, according to Neale, more than nine tenths or four fifths of the Greek service books. It has been heretofore very little known and appreciated in the West, but is now made accessible. It contains some precious gems of genuine Christian hymns, buried in a vast mass of monotonous, bombastic and tasteless laudations of unknown confessors and martyrs, and wonder-working images.

The Greek church poetry begins properly with the anonymous but universally accepted and truly immortal Gloria in Excelsis of the third century. The poems of Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390), and Synesius of Cyrene (d. about 414), who used the ordinary classical measures, are not adapted and were not intended for public worship.

The first hymnist of the Byzantine period, is Anatolius patriarch of Constantinople (d. about 458). He struck out the new path of harmonious prose, and may be compared to Venantius Fortunatus in the West.

We now proceed to the classical period of Greek church poetry.

In the front rank of Greek hymnists stands St. John Of Damascus, surnamed Mansur (d. in extreme old age about 780). He is the greatest systematic theologian of the Eastern church and chief champion of image-worship against iconoclasm under the reigns of Leo the Isaurian (717-741), and Constantinus Copronymus (741-775). He spent a part of his life in the convent of Mar S ba (or St. Sabas) in the desolate valley of the Kedron, between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. He was thought to have been especially inspired by the Virgin Mary, the patron of that Convent, to consecrate his muse to the praise of Christ. He wrote a great part of the Octoechus, which contains the Sunday services of the Eastern church. His canon for Easter Day is called the golden Canon or the queen of Canons, and is sung at midnight before Easter, beginning with the shout of joy, Christ is risen, and the response, Christ is risen indeed. His memory is celebrated December 4.

Next to him, and as melodist even above him in the estimation of the Byzantine writers, is St. Cosmas Of Jerusalem, called the Melodist. He is, as Neale says, the most learned of the Greek poets, and the Oriental Adam of St. Victor. Cosmas and John of Damascus were foster-brothers, friends and fellow-monks at Mar S ba, and corrected each other's compositions. Cosmas was against his will consecrated bishop of Maiuma near Gaza in Southern Palestine, by John, patriarch of Jerusalem. He died about 760 and is commemorated on the 14th of October. The stichos prefixed to his life says:

Where perfect sweetness dwells, is Cosmas gone;

But his sweet lays to cheer the church live on.

The third rank is occupied by St. Theophanes, surnamed the Branded, one of the most fruitful poets. He attended the second Council of Nicaea (787). During the reign of Leo the Arminian (813) he suffered imprisonment, banishment and mutilation for his devotion to the Icons, and died about 820. His Chronography is one of the chief sources for the history of the image-controversy.

The following specimen from Adam's lament of his fall is interesting:

Adam sat right against the Eastern gate,

By many a storm of sad remembrance tost:

O me! so ruined by the serpent's hate!

O me! so glorious once, and now so lost!

So mad that bitter lot to choose!

Beguil'd of all I had to lose!

Must I then, gladness of my eyes, -

Must I then leave you, Paradise,

And as an exile go?

And must I never cease to grieve

How once my God, at cool of eve,

Came down to walk below?

O Merciful! on You I call:

O Pitiful! forgive my fall!

The other Byzantine hymnists who preceded or succeeded those three masters, are the following. Their chronology is mostly uncertain or disputed.

Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Heracleus (610-641), figures in the beginning of the Monotheletic controversy, and probably suggested the union formula to that emperor. He is supposed by Christ to be the author of a famous and favorite hymn Akathistos, in praise of Mary as the deliverer of Constantinople from the siege of the Persians (630), but it is usually ascribed to Georgius Pisida.

Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem (629), celebrated in Anacreontic metres the praises of Christ, the apostles, and martyrs, and wrote idiomela with music for the church service

Maximus The Confessor (580-662), the leader and martyr of the orthodox dyotheletic doctrine in the Monotheletic controversy, one of the profoundest divines and mystics of the Eastern Church, wrote a few hymns.

Germanus (634-734), bishop of Cyzicus, then patriarch of Constantinople (715), was deposed, 730, for refusing to comply with the iconoclastic edicts of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741), and died in private life, aged about one hundred years. He is regarded by the Greeks as one of their most glorious Confessors (Neale). Among his few poetical compositions are stanzas on Symeon the Stylite, on the prophet Elijah, on the Decollation of John the Baptist, and a canon on the wonder-working Image in Edessa.

Andrew Of Crete (660-732) was born at Damascus, became monk at Jerusalem, deacon at Constantinople, archbishop of Crete, took part in the Monotheletic Synod of 712, but afterwards returned to orthodoxy. In view of this change and his advocacy of the images, he was numbered among the saints. He is regarded as the inventor of the Canons. His Great Canon is sung right through on the Thursday of Mid-Lent week, which is called from that hymn. It is a confession of sin and an invocation of divine mercy. It contains no less than two hundred and fifty (Neale says, three hundred) stanzas.

John of Damascus reduced the unreasonable length of the canons.

Another Andrew, called j Andreva Purov or Purrov, is credited with eight idiomela in the Menaea, from which Christ has selected the praise of Peter and Paul as the best.

Stephen The Sabaite (725-794) was a nephew of John of Damascus, and spent fifty-nine years in the convent of Mar S ba, which is pitched, like an eagle's nest, on the wild rocks of the Kedron valley. He is commemorated on the 13th of July. He struck the key-note of Neale's exquisite hymn of comfort, Are you weary, which is found in some editions of the Octoechus. He is the inspirer rather than the author of that hymn, which is worthy of a place in every book of devotional poetry.

Romanus, deacon in Berytus, afterwards priest in Constantinople, is one of the most original and fruitful among the older poets. Petra ascribes to him twenty-five hymns. He assigned him to the reign of Anastasius I. (491-518), but Christ to the reign of Anastasius II. (713-719), and Jacobi with greater probability to the time of Constantinus Pogonatus (681-685).

Theodore Of The Studium (a celebrated convent near Constantinople) is distinguished for his sufferings in the iconoclastic controversy, and died in exile, 826, on the eleventh of November. He wrote canons for Lent and odes for the festivals of saints. The spirited canon on Sunday of Orthodoxy in celebration of the final triumph of image-worship in 842, is ascribed to him, but must be of later date as he died before that victory.

Joseph Of The Studium, a brother of Theodore, and monk of that convent, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica (hence also called Thessalonicensis), died in prison in consequence of tortures inflicted on him by order of the Emperor Theophilus (829-842). He is sometimes confounded (even by Neale) with Joseph Hymnographus; but they are distinguished by Nicephorus and commemorated on different days.

Theoctistus Of The Studium (about 890) is the author of a Suppliant Canon to Jesus, the only thing known of him, but the sweetest Jesus-hymn of the Greek Church.

Joseph, called Hymnographus (880), is the most prolific, most bombastic, and most tedious of Greek hymn-writers. He was a Sicilian by birth, at last superintendent of sacred vessels in a church at Constantinople. He was a friend of Photius, and followed him into exile. He is credited with a very large number of canons in the Mencaea and the Octoechus.

Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople (784), was the chief mover in the restoration of Icons and the second Council of Nicaea (787). He died Feb. 25, 806. His hymns are Unimportant.

EUTHYMIUS, usually known as Syngelus or Syncellus (died about 910), is the author of a penitential canon to the Virgin Mary, which is much esteemed in the East.

Elias, bishop of Jerusalem about 761, and Orestes, bishop of the same city, 996-1012, have been brought to light as poets by the researches of Pitra from the libraries of Grotta Ferrata, and other convents.

In addition to these may be mentioned Methodius (846) Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople (d. 891), Metrophanes of Smyrna (900), Leo VI., or the Philosopher, who troubled the Eastern Church by a fourth marriage (886-917), Symeon Metaphrastes (Secretary and Chancellor of the Imperial Court at Constantinople, about 900), Kasias, Nilus Xanthopulus, Joannes Geometra, and Mauropus (1060). With the last the Greek hymnody well nigh ceased. A considerable number of hymns cannot be traced to a known author.

We give in conclusion the best specimens of Greek hymnody as reproduced and adapted to modern use by Dr. Neale.

'Tis the Day of Resurrection.

( j Anastavsew h Jmevra.)

By St. John of Damascus.

'Tis the Day of Resurrection,

Earth, tell it out abroad!

The Passover of gladness,

The Passover of God!

From death to life eternal,

From earth to the sky,

Our Christ has brought us over,

With hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil,

That we may see aright

The Lord in rays eternal

Of resurrection light:

And, listening to His accents,

May hear, so calm and plain,

His own All hail! and hearing,

May raise the victor strain.

Now let the heavens be!

Let earth her song begin!

Let the round world keep triumph,

And all that is therein:

In grateful exultation

Their notes let all things blend,

For Christ the Lord has risen,

Our joy that has no end.

Jesu, name all names above.

(!Ihsou' glukuvtate.)

By St. Theoctistus of the Studium.

Jesu, name all names above,

Jesu, best and dearest,

Jesu, Fount of perfect love,

Holiest, tenderest, nearest!

Jesu, source of grace completest,

Jesu truest, Jesu sweetest,

Jesu, Well of power divine,

Make me, keep me, seal me Your!

Jesu, open me the gate

Which the sinner entered,

Who in his last dying state

Wholly on You ventured.

You whose wounds are ever pleading,

And Your passion interceding,

From my misery let me rise

To a home in Paradise!

You didst call the prodigal;

You didst pardon Mary:

You whose words can never fall

Love can never vary,

Lord, amidst my lost condition

Give for You can give contrition!

You can pardon all mine ill

If You will: O say, I will!

Woe, that I have turned aside

After fleshly pleasure!

Woe, that I have never tried

For the heavenly treasure!

Treasure, safe in homes supernal;

Incorruptible, eternal!

Treasure no less price has won

Than the Passion of the Son!

Jesu, crowned with thorns for me,

Scourged for my transgression!

Witnessing, through agony,

That Your good confession;

Jesu, clad in purple raiment,

For my evils making payment;

Let not all your woe and pain,

Let not Calvary be in vain!

When I reach Death's bitter sea,

And its waves roll higher,

Help the more forsaking me,

As the storm draws nigher:

Jesu, leave me not to languish,

Helpless, hopeless, full of anguish!

Tell me, Verily, I say,

You will be with me to-day!

Are you weary?

(Kovpon te kai; kavmaton.)

By St. Stephen The Sabaite.

Are you weary, are you languid,

Are you sore distrest?

Come to me says One and coming

Be at rest!

Hath He marks to lead me to Him,

If He be my Guide?

In His feet and hands are wound-prints,

And His side.

Is there diadem, as Monarch,

That His brow adorns?

Yea, a crown in very surety,

But of thorns!

If I find Him, if I follow,

What His guerdon here?

Many a sorrow, many a labor,

Many a tear.

If I still hold closely to Him,

What has He at last?

Sorrow vanquished, labor ended,

Jordan past!

If I ask Him to receive me,

Will He say me nay?

Not till earth, and not till heaven

Pass away!

Finding, following, keeping, struggling

Is He sure to bless?

Angels, martyrs, prophets, virgins,

Answer, Yes!

The Latin church poetry of the middle ages is much better known than the Greek, and remains to this day a rich source of devotion in the Roman church and as far as poetic genius and religious fervor are appreciated. The best Latin hymns have passed into the Breviary and Missal (some with misimprovements), and have been often reproduced in modern languages. The number of truly classical hymns, however, which were inspired by pure love to Christ and can be used with profit by Christians of every name, is comparatively small. The poetry of the Latin church is as full of Mariolatry and hagiolatry as the poetry of the Greek church. It is astonishing what an amount of chivalrous and enthusiastic devotion the blessed Mother of our Lord absorbed in the middle ages. In Mone's collection the hymns to the Virgin fill a whole volume of 457 pages, the hymns to saints another volume of 579 pages, while the first volume of only 461 pages is divided between hymns to God and to the angels. The poets intended to glorify Christ through his mother, but the mother overshadows the child, as in the pictures of the Madonna. She was made the mediatrix of all divine grace, and was almost substituted for Christ, who was thought to occupy a throne of majesty too high for sinful man to reach without the aid of his mother and her tender human sympathies. She is addressed with every epithet of praise, as Mater Dei, Dei Genitrix, Mater summi Domini, Mater misericordiae, Mater bonitatis, Mater dolorosa, Mater jucundosa, Mater speciosa, Maris Stella, Mundi domina, Mundi spes, Porta paradisi, Regina coeli, Radix gratiae, Virgo virginum, Virgo regia Dei. Even the Te Deum was adapted to her by the distinguished St. Bonaventura so as to read Te Matrem laudamus, Te Virginem confitemur.

The Latin, as the Greek, hymnists were nearly all monks; but an emperor (Charlemagne?) and a king (Robert of France) claim a place of honor among them.

The sacred poetry of the Latin church may be divided into three periods: 1, The patristic period from Hilary (d. 368) and Ambrose (d. 397) to Venantius Fortunatus (d. about 609) and Gregory I. (d. 604); 2, the early mediaeval period to Peter Damiani (d. 1072); 3, the classical period to the thirteenth century. The first period we have considered in a previous volume. Its most precious legacy to the church universal is the Te Deum laudamus. It is popularly ascribed to Ambrose of Milan (or Ambrose and Augustine jointly), but in its present completed form does not appear before the first half of the sixth century, although portions of it may be traced to earlier Greek origin; it is, like the Apostles' Creed, and the Greek Gloria in Excelsis, a gradual growth of the church rather than the production of any individual. The third period embraces the greatest Latin hymnists, as Bernard of Morlaix (monk of Cluny about 1150), Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), Adam of St. Victor (d. 1192), Bonaventura (d. 1274), Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), Thomas a Celano (about 1250), Jacopone (d. 1306), and produced the last and the best Catholic hymns which can never die, as Hora Novisasima; Jesu dulcis memoria; Salve caput cruentatum; Stabat Mater; and Dies Irae. In this volume we are concerned with the second period.

Venantius Fortunatus, of Poitiers, and his cotemporary, Pope Gregory I., form the transition from the patristic poetry of Sedulius and Prudentius to the classic poetry of the middle ages.

Fortunatus (about 600) was the fashionable poet of his day. A native Italian, he emigrated to Gaul, travelled extensively, became intimate with St. Gregory of Tours, and the widowed queen Radegund when she lived in ascetic retirement, and died as bishop of Poitiers. He was the first master of the trochaic tetrameter, and author of three hundred poems, chief among which are the two famous passion hymns:

Vexilla regis prodeunt,"

The Royal Banners forward go; and Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis,"

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle.

Both have a place in the Roman Breviary.

Gregory I. (d. 604), though far inferior to Fortunatus in poetic genius, occupies a prominent rank both in church poetry and church music. He followed Ambrose in the metrical form, the prayer-like tone, and the churchly spirit, and wrote for practical use. He composed about a dozen hymns, several of which have found a place in the Roman Breviary. The best is his Sunday hymn:

Primo dierum omnium, On this first day when heaven on earth, or, as it has been changed in the Breviary:

The Venerable Bede (d. 735) wrote a beautiful ascension hymn

and a hymn for the Holy innocents,

Rabanus Maurus, a native of Mainz (Mayence) on the Rhine, a pupil of Alcuin, monk and abbot in the convent of Fulda, archbishop of Mainz from 847 to 856, was the chief Poet of the Carolingian age, and the first German who wrote Latin hymns. Some of them have passed into the Breviary.

He is probably the author of the pentecostal Veni, Creator Spiritus. It outweighs all his other poems. It is one of the classical Latin hymns, and still used in the Catholic church on the most solemn occasions, as the opening of Synods, the creating of popes and the crowning of kings. It was invested with a superstitious charm. It is the only Breviary hymn which passed into the Anglican liturgy as part of the office for ordaining priests and consecrating bishops. The authorship has been variously ascribed to Charlemagne, to Gregory the Great, also to Alcuin, and even to Ambrose, without any good reason. It appears first in 898, is found in the MS. containing the Poems of Rabanus Maurus, and in all the old German Breviaries; it was early and repeatedly translated into German and agrees very well in thought and expression with his treatise on the Holy Spirit.

We give the original with two translations.

Creator, Spirit, Lord of Grace,

O make our hearts Your dwelling-place,

And with Your might celestial aid

The souls of those whom You have made.

Come from the throne of God above,

O Paraclete, O Holy Dove,

Come, Oil of gladness, cleansing Fire,

And Living Spring of pure desire.

O Finger of the Hand Divine,

The sevenfold gifts of Grace are Your,

And touched by You the lips proclaim

All praise to God's most holy Name.

Then to our souls Your light impart,

And give Your Love to every heart

Turn all our weakness into might,

O You, the Source of Life and Light.

Protect us from the assailing foe,

And Peace, the fruit of Love, bestow;

Upheld by You, our Strength and Guide,

No evil can our steps betide.

Spirit of Faith, on us bestow

The Father and the Son to know;

And, of the Twain, the Spirit, You;

Eternal One, Eternal Three.

To God the Father let us sing;

To God the Son, our risen King;

And equally with These adore

The Spirit, God for evermore.

O Holy Ghost, Creator come!

Your people's minds pervade;

And fill, with Your supernatural grace,

The souls which You have made.

Kindle our senses to a flame,

And fill our hearts with love,

And, through our bdies' weakness, still

Pour valor from above!

You who are called the Paraclete,

The gift of God most high-

You living fount, and fire and love,

Our spirit's pure ally;

Drive further off our enemy,

And immediately give us peace;

That with Thyself as such a guide,

We may from evil cease.

You sevenfold giver of all good;

Finger of God's right hand;

You promise of the Father, rich

In words for every land;

Through You may we the Father know,

And thus confess the Son;

For You, from both the Holy Ghost,

We praise while time shall run.

In this connection we mention the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the other great pentecostal hymn of the middle ages. It is generally ascribed to King Robert of France (970-1031), the son and success or of Hugh Capet. He was distinguished for piety and charity, like his more famous successor, St. Louis IX., and better fitted for the cloister than the throne. He was disciplined by the pope (998) for marrying a distant cousin, and obeyed by effecting a divorce. He loved music and poetry, founded convents and churches, and supported three hundred paupers. His hymn reveals in terse and musical language an experimental knowledge of the gifts and operations of the Holy Spirit upon the heart. It is superior to the companion hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus. Trench calls it the loveliest of all the Latin hymns, but we would give this praise rather to St. Bernard's Jesu dulcis memoria ( Jesus, the very thought of You ). The hymn contains ten half-stanzas of three lines each with a refrain in ium. Each line has seven syllables, and ends with a double or triple rhyme; the third line rhymes with the third line of the following half-stanza. Neale has reproduced the double ending of each third line (as brilliancy radiancy ).