2106. EVANGELICAL REFORMERS. 473
and other Latin fathers. Only fragments remain. lie was a great admirer of Augustin, but destitute of his wisdom and moderation.1
He found the Italian churches full of pictures and pictureworshipers. He was told that the people did not mean to wor ship 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 Crea tor, 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 be cause he was laid in a manger, every ship because he taught from a ship, yea, every ass because he rode on an ass into Jeru salem. We should bear the cross, not adore it. He banished the pictures, crosses and crucifixes from the churches, as the only
1 In his comments on Paul's Epistles (in Migne, 104 f. 927 sq.), he eulogizes Augustin as lt amantissimus Domini sanctissimus Augustiniis, calamus Trinitatis lingua Spiritus Sancti, terrenus homo, sed codestis angelus, in qucestionibus solvendi* acutus, in rcvincendis hcereticis circumspectus, in explicandis Scripturis canonicis cautus." In the same place, he says of Paul that his epistles are wholly given to destroy man's merits and to exalt God's grace ("ui merita hominum (ollat, unde maxime nunc monachi (jloriantur, et gratiam Dei commendet''}. On his Auguptinianism, see the judicious remarks of Neander. Renter (I. 20) calls him both a biblical reformer and a critical rationalist.
474 FOURTH PEEIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
way to kill superstition. He also strongly opposed the pilgrim ages. 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 him self, 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 com mentary on Leviticus (823), by Dungal (of Scotland or Ire land, 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 Waldeuses in Piedmont, who are of much later date.1
Jonas of Orleans, Hincmar of Rheims, and Wallafrid Strabo still maintained substantially the moderate attitude of the Caro line books between the extremes of iconoclasm and image- wor ship. 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.
1 C. Schmidt in Herzog a III. 245 says of thia view : *' Diese, sehr spat, in dogmatischem Interesse aufgenommene Ansicht, die sich bei Leger und andern, ja selbst noch bei Hahn findet, hat keinen historischen Grund und ist von alien grundlichen Kennern der Waldensergeschichte Uingst aufgegeben. Dabei soil nicht geleugnet werden, dass die Tendenzen des Claudius sich noch eine zeitlang in Italien erhalten haben; es ist soeben bemerkt worden, dass, nach dem Zeugniss des Jonas von Orleans, man um 840 versuchte, sie von neuem zu verbreiten. Dass sie sich aber bis zum Auftreten des Peter Waldus und speciell in den piemontesischen Thdlern fortgepflanzt, dawn ist nicht die geringste Spur vorhanden."