Archpriest of St. Peter's, and another Peter, Abbot of St. Sabas, who presided over the council, more than three hundred bishops, either in person or by representation, and a great number of monks and ecclesiastics not entitled to vote. The patriarch Tarasius, though occupying a position below the papal legates in the council, directed its proceedings. In accordance with the requirements of Pope Hadrian, the acts of the so-called council of 754 were rescinded. The teaching set forth in his letter relative to the proper respect to be paid to images was accepted, first by Tarasius, and afterward by the whole council. After a full discussion of the point at issue, the council declared that a rational use of images was perfectly lawful.

In the seventh session, a document was drawn up by Tarasius, specifying what objects were included under the term images, and defining the kind of reverence due to them, a report of which was also sent to Constantine and Irene.

It was here declared that not only the sign of the Cross, but also images of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, of angels, and of holy and devout men, drawn in color, composed of mosaic work, or made of other suitable material, might be placed in church, upon sacred vessels and vestments, on walls and tables, and be set up along the highways. The proper sense of the word пpozzʊveйy, as expressing the honor to be paid to men, was then fully stated and explained according to its biblical and patristic use. The council then went on to repudiate the imputation of idolatry in the use of images, in the following terms: "Bowing or prostrating oneself before an image (tyμytizh apozzúvy), which is simply a token of love and a relative honor (oyetizh tpozzúvy) rendered to the original, should not be confounded with the adoration (karpeia) which is due to God alone. Christians," it continued, "do not call images gods, neither do they serve them as gods, nor place their hopes of salvation in them, nor expect future judgment at their hands; but, while refusing to pay them the honor due to God, they salute them out of respect to the memory of those they represent, and as a token of the love they entertain for the originals."

At the close of the seventh session, the council was directed,

by an imperial order, to repair in a body to Constantinople, where the eighth and last session was held, on the twentythird day of October, in the imperial palace of Magnaura. The empress Irene and her son, Constantine, were in attendance, surrounded by a vast concourse of people. The empress ordered the decrees which had been passed to be publically read, and, after having asked the bishops if these expressed the sense of the whole council and received an affirmative answer, accompanied with repeated acclamations, she had them placed before herself and her son, both of whom signed them. The council was then solemnly

closed.

Constantine VI. came of age A. D. 791. The next six years were passed in a contest with his mother to obtain the reins of government. Irene finally gained the upper hand, and enjoyed five years of sole rule, when she was dethroned in a rebellion, headed by her secretary, Nicephoros, and banished to the island of Lesbos, where she died in the following year.

During his reign (A. D. 802-811) and that of his successor, Stauracius, which lasted only a few months, and of Michael I., surnamed Rhangabes (A. D. 811-813), the controversy was carried on with less vehemence and bitterness. But when Michael, feeling himself unequal to the task of governing an empire, resigned in favor of Leo V. (A. D. 813–820), surnamed the Armenian, and retired into a monastery, it again broke out with increased violence. This emperor, nicknamed the Chameleon, because at his coronation he refused to make any profession of faith, permitted a number of synods to be held, the most notable of which is that of the year 816, presided over by Theodorus Cassiteras, a layman of noble birth, but of iconoclastic antecedents, being a collateral descendant of Constantine Copronymus, and whom Leo had raised to the patriarchal throne. This synod annulled the decisions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (a. D. 787), and reasserted those of the synod held at Constantinople, A. D. 754. This action was followed by an imperial edict, said to have been inspired by John the Grammarian and Theodorus Cassiteras, the leaders of the Iconoclasts, who persuaded the emperor that the

unhappy condition of his empire should be ascribed to the idolatry of his subjects, and regarded as a punishment of God upon their infidelity. They also foretold that his reign would be long and glorious if he would follow out the policy pursued by his predecessor, Leo the Isaurian. The emperor, acting upon the faith of this prophecy, ordered many monks and ecclesiastics who favored the use of images, to quit the country. Some of these were received into the monastery of St. Praxedis, at Rome, by the reigning Pope, Pascal, and others were consoled in their exile by letters written from his prison by the intrepid Theodore the Studite.

Michael II., surnamed the Stammerer (A. D. 820-829), recalled the exiles in the early part of his reign, but, later on, adopted the persecuting policy of his predecessors. Theodore the Studite, who was allowed to return with the rest, still proving intractable, was again banished, and died in exile, a. D. 826.

Michael was succeeded by his son Theophilus (a. D. 829– 842), who had been educated by Theodorus Cassiteras, and had imbibed all his hatred against the use and veneration of images. He was the most bitter and cruel of all the iconoclastic emperors. He expressed his determination to sweep the whole tribe of monks from the face of the earth, and is said to have martyred the whole confraternity of Abrahamites on an island in the Euxine Sea. He scourged some, imprisoned others, and burnt the hands of Lazarus, a celebrated painter, with hot iron bars, to prevent him from ever again engaging in his hated art. He undertook a discussion with some of the Catholic party, among the most famous of whom were the two brothers, Theophanes the singer and Theodore the illuminator, upon whose faces he branded some offensive iambics composed by himself.

But if he despised, his wife, Theodora, secretly favored, the iconolaters. Upon the death of her husband, A. D. 842, Michael III., afterward known as The Drunkard, being still a minor, Theodora became regent. She recalled the banished monks, and summoned a synod to meet at Constantinople (A. D. 842), at which the decrees of the Second Council of

Nice (A. D. 787) were reaffirmed, and the Iconoclasts (ɛizovozhaora) anathematized.

On the nineteenth of February of the same year, a solemn procession, headed by the patriarch, the clergy, the empress and her son, moved around the Church of St. Sophia, and the day has ever since been observed in the Eastern Church as the Feast of Orthodoxy, or thanksgiving for the final overthrow of the iconoclastic heresy (ἡ κυριακὴ τῆς ὀρθοδοξίας).

The Eighth Ecumenical Council (A. D. 869) repeated the condemnation of the Iconoclasts.

From a theological point of view, there was an end of the controversy. The question, which had disturbed the Church for above one hundred and twenty years, had been set at rest forever by a clear and precise definition, after a thorough and candid examination of all the controverted points.

But from a political point of view, the case was very different. From the breaking out of the controversy, there had been a manifest and ever-growing alienation of the Western from the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, which ended in a complete separation of the two, under the respective names of the Byzantine and the Germano-Frankish Empires.

B.—THE ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY IN THE FRANKISH EMPIRE.

Augusta conc. Nicaeni II. censura seu libri Carolini, anno 790, ed. 1549. Eli Phili (pseudonymous; properly J. du Tillet, Bp. of St. Brieux, afterward of Meaux; he is suspected of Calvinism), according to the single Codex, now kept in the library of the Arsenal at Paris, which is either entirely or partly the work of a forger. The Codex, of which Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims availed himself, and the Codex Vaticanus, from which the Apostolic Librarian, Steuchus, made his quotations, have hitherto remained lost without a trace; ed. Heumann, Hanov. 1731; also in Goldasti Imperat. decret., p. 67 sq., and in Migne, ser. lat., T. 98, printed from Phili's text. Conf. Claudius Taurin., de cultu imaginum (fragmenta), and Dungali lib. respons. (Max. Bibl., T. XIV.; Bibl. Patrist. Colon., T. IX., Pt. II., p. 875 sq.) Acts in Mansi, T. XIII.-XIV., and Harduin, T. IV. Conf. Hefele, Hist. of Councils, Vol. III., p. 651–673.

Anterior to the breaking out of the present controversy, the Christians inhabiting the western provinces of the Roman Empire had possessed a clear and intelligent knowledge of the use of images, according to the mind of the Church. Images had been employed by them to adorn churches, to

enhance the solemnity of public worship, and to awaken and quicken faith and devotion. The liveliness of Oriental imagination, always liable to giddy flights and dangerous excesses, was less to be feared among the more phlegmatic populations of the West. The Germans, of all people, were the least in danger of being carried away by an unruly fancy, inasmuch as they had never worshiped their divinities under the form of pictorial representations, and but seldom as personified in the objects and phenomona of nature. No consid· erable trace of idolatrous worship appeared among them until much later; and when idolatry did make its appearance, it came associated with many other elements distinctively Pagan, and was difficult to root out. To banish it in the Frankish Empire required a vigorous and well-sustained effort. When the decrees of the Greek councils were made known in the West, they were but ill-received-1. Because the people had not yet acquired a taste for the fine arts, and did not feel the want of representing persons and events by images; 2. Because the Germans, who had now become idolaters, might excuse their own practice by appealing to the use of images among Christians; and, 3. Because the Germans, who, unlike the Orientals, never fell prostrate before their kings as a mark of reverence, and humbled themselves. to God alone, might not fully comprehend-nay, probably entirely misconceive-the meaning and import of the term προςκύνησις.

A defective translation of the acts of the Second Council of Nice had been sent to Charlemagne by Pope IIadrian I., which, after having been further mutilated by ignorant and blundering copyists, was submitted to a number of theologians. The worst apprehensions were verified.

The acts of the council were severely and unjustly censured in the so-called Caroline Books (Quatuor Libri Carolini), composed (A. D. 790) in part by Charlemagne, but chiefly by the English Alcuin and other ecclesiastics.1 The natural

1 The contents of these Books are, in substance, as follows: 1. Both Eastern. synods, the Iconoclastic of 754 and the Iconolatric of Nice (787), are equally "infames" and "ineptissimae," and both transgress the boundaries of truth. 2. Adoration and worship are due only to God-He alone is "adorandus" and