JOHN OF DAMASCUS, CHAMPION OF IMAGES (A.D. 756).
The great champion who rose to defend image worship against Leo, the iconoclast, was John of Damascus, the most learned man in the East, and a subject of the Sultan. The ancestors of John, when that city was taken by the Mohammedans, had remained faithful Christians; but, being wealthy and respectable, were employed by the Sultan in high judicial posts. One day, when John’s father was a judge, a Christian monk, named Cosmas, was about to be executed, and was weeping and bewailing so much that he was asked why he, a monk, should so earnestly plead for his life. The monk answered that he did not weep so much for losing life as for the treasures of knowledge that would be buried with him, for he knew nearly everything under the sun—rhetoric, logic, philosophy, geometry, music, astronomy, theology. All he wanted was some heir who could inherit this vast patrimony of knowledge, so that he might not go down to the tomb an unprofitable servant. John’s father saw at once that this was a remarkable monk, begged his life, and made him tutor to his son; and in due course the son John became, under such tuition, the greatest master of knowledge extant, as the monk took care to assure the grateful father. With these accomplishments John of Damascus entered the lists in due course, and composed three immortal orations in favour of image worship, in which all the learning of the world was brought to bear upon that delicate subject. The Emperor being indignant at John’s oration, procured a letter to be forged in a similar handwriting, containing a proposal to betray his native city of Damascus to the Christians, and purporting to be signed by John. This letter was sent by the Emperor to the Sultan with specious friendly comments. The result was that John’s right hand was cut off for his wicked treason. John, however, entreated the Virgin to restore his hand; and after kneeling before her image and praying fervently, he fell asleep, and when he woke his hand was restored and was as well as ever. This astonished and convinced the Sultan, who reinstated John at once in all his honours. These orations, while containing some puerile matter, are distinguished for zeal and ingenuity. John of Damascus maintained that pictures were great standing memorials of triumph over the devil; that whoever destroys these memorials is a friend of the devil; that to reprove material images is Manicheism, as betraying the hatred of matter, which is the first tenet of that odious heresy; and that it was a kind of Docetism too, asserting the unreality of the body of the Saviour. In support of his doctrine John concluded by citing a copious list of miracles wrought by certain images. This question of images was so serious a disturbance that a council met, called the Third Council of Constantinople, in 746; and three hundred and forty-eight bishops attended, and all these united in condemning images and excommunicating those who set them up. The Empress Irene, however, afterwards favoured the image worshippers; and in 787 another council, called the Second Council of Nicæa, again considered the subject; and three hundred and eighty-seven bishops and monks came to a decision the reverse of the decision of the former council. Succeeding emperors, however, again favoured the iconoclasts, till the Empress Theodora, in 842, at last restored the images and made the clergy happy. They all then met and held a solemn festival, marching with processions of crosses, torches, and incense to the church of St. Sophia, in Constantinople. They made the circuit of the church, and bowed to every statue and picture; and the heresy of the iconoclasts was extinguished for ever from that time.
JOHN OF DAMASCUS AND HIS TAUNTS.
John of Damascus, the champion of image worship, in his many eloquent discourses in support of it, sneered at Leo’s arbitrary decrees against what was noticed to be a rising influence among the nations of the West. “You have only to go,” said John, “into the schools where the children are learning to read and write, and tell them you are the persecutor of images, and they would instantly throw their tablets at your head. Even the ignorant would teach you what you would not learn from the wise.” “Men,” he further said, “spent their estates to have these sacred stories represented in paintings. Husbands and wives took their children by the hand, others led youths and strangers from Pagan lands, to these paintings, where they could point out to them the sacred stories with the finger, and so edify them as to lift their hearts and minds to God; but you hinder poor people from doing all this, and teach them to find their amusements in harp-playing and flute-playing, in carousals and buffoonery.”
CLAUDIUS OF TURIN AGAINST IMAGES AND PILGRIMAGES.
Claudius of Turin, a bishop who flourished about 795-839, was great in censuring the gross superstition attaching to the use of the cross and pilgrimages. Though a chaplain of King Louis I. of France, who became emperor, he devoted himself to purifying the ritual of the Church by writing commentaries on the Scriptures and exposing the abuses of image worship. He said those who worship the images of the saints have not forsaken idols, but changed their names. Whether the walls of churches are painted with figures of St. Peter and St. Paul or of Jupiter and Saturn, the latter are not gods, and the former are not apostles. Better worship the living than the dead. If the works of God’s hands, the stars of heaven, are not to be worshipped, much less ought the works of human hands to be worshipped. Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth the salvation which he should seek from God alone is an idolater. Those who pretend to honour the memory of Christ’s passion forget His resurrection. If one must worship every piece of wood bearing the image of the cross because Christ hung on the cross, for the same reason one should worship many other things with which Christ came in contact while living in the flesh. God has commanded us to bear the cross, not to adore it. Those are not adoring it who are unwilling to bear it either spiritually or bodily. In like manner it is foolish in people, and an undervaluing of spiritual instruction, to be always striving to go to Rome in order to obtain everlasting life. It is vain to ascribe so much merit to pilgrimages, and forget the seal of true penitence in the soul. One gets no nearer to St. Peter by finding himself on the spot where his body was buried, for the soul is the real man. In this manner Claudius displayed his aversion to the monastic life as misleading. It was thought that he must soon be proceeded against as a heretic; but after publishing works which made a great impression on his age, the bishop died.
TRYING TO CONVERT THE IMAGE WORSHIPPERS.
When Leo the Isaurian had secured his empire against foreign enemies, he set himself resolutely to convert heretics. He issued a decree that Jews and Montanists should be forcibly baptised. In 724 he issued his first decree against the superstitious use of images, which made the monks and John of Damascus so furious. When Leo died in 741, his son, Constantine Copronymus, so called from his having polluted the baptismal font, succeeded him, and reigned thirty-four years. He was also a resolute enemy of image worship. He procured a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops to sit in 754, and resolve unanimously that all pictures and sculptures of sacred subjects were Pagan and idolatrous, and that all images must be removed out of churches. They pronounced anathemas against John of Damascus and other champions of images. Constantine, on the strength of this council, ordered paintings on church walls to be effaced, and paintings of birds and fruits to be substituted. The monks were furious; and he ordered, in retaliation, monasteries to be destroyed and turned into barracks. One of his governors, named Lachanadraco, put many rebellious monks to death. He anointed the beards of some of these with oil and wax, and set them on fire; he burnt the monasteries, the books, and the relics. The relics of St. Euphemia at Chalcedon, which used to exude a fragrant balsam, were thrown into the sea, though the monks afterwards narrated that these were miraculously preserved. One monk, named Stephen, exasperated by these brutalities, boldly defied the Emperor, and to show his contempt produced a coin stamped with the Emperor’s head, threw it on the ground, and trod on it. The Emperor ordered him to prison; but noticing that some sympathy seemed to be shown by his attendants, exclaimed, “Am I or is this monk emperor of the world?” The courtiers in turn, in their zeal to defend the Emperor, rushed to the prison where Stephen was kept, brought him out, and, tying a rope round his neck, dragged the body through the streets, and then tore it to pieces. The patriarch being also charged with abetting the monks, was stripped of his robes, set upon an ass with his face towards the tail, led through the streets, jeered by the mob, and then beheaded. Constantine died in 775, a resolute enemy of images to the last.
THE EMPRESS IRENE RESTORING IMAGES (A.D. 780).