\ 100. THE WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 449
them into its service. Poetry, music, and architecture achieve their highest mission as handmaids of religion, and have de rived 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 prevail ing 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 re volting 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 bar-
450 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
barians 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,1 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,2 and adoration proper due to God alone.3 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 deposi tion, imprisonment, and mutilation for their zeal ; but the Iconoclasts did not furnish a single poet.4
The chief argument against this theory was the second com-
1 Its advocates were called eluovoMrpai, gvAoMrpai, ei
2 TijUTjTiKrj TrpocKvvjjcii;. For this word the Latin has no precise equivalent. The English word " worship" is used in different senses.
8 ^arpeia, adoratio. * See \ 94, p. 403 sqq.