Though Leo the Isaurian and his son Constantine had for thirty years worked so energetically in stamping out image worship, yet at the death of the latter a reaction was brought about. The Emperor Leo, grandson of the Isaurian, married an Athenian wife, Irene, who was constitutionally devoted to image worship and sensuous art, and her devotion to these so worked on her irresolute husband as to baffle the labour of years. She took care to procure all the important vacancies in the Church to be filled by monks. Her household officers were encouraged to practise in secret the adoration of images, and there were concealed some figures under her pillow; and though the Emperor, on discovering this petty treason, ordered the chief actors to be scourged, yet on his death in 780 Irene assumed the government and changed everything. She took care to get a patriarch appointed who was of her way of thinking, and for that purpose first induced the then holder of the office to resign and retire into a monastery. She then spread the report that this change was due to remorse of conscience; and the new patriarch, acting in concert with her, professed his inability to assume the high office unless she would convoke a council to review the late heresy of the iconoclasts. After great manœuvring on the part of the monks, and secret meetings to canvas the chief men of the assembly, and by the Empress deciding to attend in person and with great state, she so managed affairs that a council of three hundred and fifty bishops met, and they all in her presence returned to the old traditions, declaring the worship of images agreeable to Scripture and reason, and shouted their approval and ended with the enthusiastic exclamation, “Long live the orthodox Queen Regent!”
EMPRESS THEODORA CONQUERING FOR THE IMAGES (A.D. 842).
The Empress Irene having in 780 so skilfully turned the tide in favour of images, the contest was still maintained during the five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight years between the worshippers of images and the iconoclasts. The final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, the widow Theodora, after the death of the Emperor Theophilus in 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She sentenced the iconoclast patriarch to a whipping of two hundred lashes instead of the loss of his eyes. At this stroke of power the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. The only point left unsettled was, whether images were endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity, and this continued to be discussed in the eleventh century. The Churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain had steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they professed to admit into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. Charlemagne had used his authority in assembling a synod of three hundred bishops at Frankfort in 794, who professed to blame the superstition of the Greeks. But the worship of images advanced with silent progress, and reached to the idolatry of the ages which preceded the Reformation. Theodora skilfully gained over many bishops by representing that her husband the Emperor on his deathbed repented of his errors, and that her young son at the same time had also registered a vow to restore images.
IMAGE WORSHIP IN SPAIN.
In Spain image worship reached a height hardly attained in any other part of Christendom. Besides the most holy effigies heaven-descended, like the Black Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, and the Christ of the Vine Stock at Valladolid, there were many sacred images, which, even before the hands which fashioned them were cold, began to make the blind see, the lame walk, and friars flourish and grow powerful. St. Bernard was modelled and clothed like a brother of the order in his own white robes; St. Dominic scourged himself in effigy till the red blood flowed from his painted shoulders; and the Virgin, copied from the loveliest models, was presented to her adorers gloriously apparelled in clothing of wrought gold. Many of these figures not only presided in their chapels throughout the year, but, decked with garlands and illuminated by tapers, were carried by brotherhoods or guilds instituted in their honour in the religious processions. The colouring was sometimes laid on canvas, with which the figure was covered as with a skin. The effects and gradation of tints were studied as carefully as in paintings on canvas. The imitation of rich stuffs for draperies was a nice and difficult branch of the art. For single figures real draperies were sometimes used, especially for those of the Madonnas, which possessed large and magnificent wardrobes and caskets of jewels worthy of the queens of the Mogul.
THE AMBITIOUS POPE HILDEBRAND (1046-1085).
During the time that Hildebrand, son of a carpenter of Soan in Tuscany, became noted and acquired an ascendency with the Popes, he advocated certain reforms. The first was to make the Popes independent of the Emperor: this he achieved by procuring a decree that the Pope should be chosen by the cardinals, bishops, and priests assembled in college. He also put a stop to the immorality of the clergy by enforcing celibacy of priests. He also procured more stringent laws against simony. He succeeded to the popedom in 1073 as Gregory VII., and in carrying out his ambitious schemes he summoned the German king, Henry IV., and ultimately excommunicated him, in retaliation for Henry having procured a sentence of deposition by the Synod of Worms against himself as Pope. These two potentates exchanged some defiant and insulting letters. Henry at last was reduced to such difficulties that he had to go in the guise of a penitent, clad in a thin white dress, while the ground was deep in snow, and he waited humbly at the outer gate of the Castle of Canossa three days before he was received into the presence of his Holiness, who gave him absolution, but under most humiliating circumstances. Gregory, however, at last was punished in his turn in 1080, and he had to become an exile, in which condition he died friendless and deserted in 1085, and muttering the words: “I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die an exile.”
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, THE ANGELIC DOCTOR (A.D. 1227).
St. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1227, and became the greatest theologian and master of logic and powerful reasoner of his age. He was at first thought dull at school, and used to be called the great dumb Sicilian ox; but his genius soon broke forth, and he came to be called the angelical doctor. His versatility, power of abstraction, and memory astonished everybody. Louis IX. of France (St. Louis) made him a privy councillor, and often consulted him. Once at dinner with the king, after a long silence, Thomas thumped the table energetically, muttering to himself, “That is an overwhelming argument against the Manicheans!” and the king, curious to know what sudden thought it was, begged him to explain it, which was done, and committed to writing by clerks. While praying one day in the church at Naples, his friend Romanus, who had died some time before, appeared to Thomas and spoke to him, and said that his works pleased God, and that he (Romanus) was now in eternal bliss. Thomas then asked whether the habits which are acquired in this life remain to us in heaven. Romanus answered, “Brother Thomas, I see God, and do not ask for more.” He then vanished. One day Thomas was writing a treatise on the Sacrament, and was praying, when the figure on the crucifix turned towards him and said, “Thomas, thou hast written well of Me: what reward desirest thou?” “Nought, save Thyself, Lord,” was the saint’s immediate reply. Another time Thomas, while celebrating Mass, was seized with a sudden rapture, owing to a vision which appeared to him, and which he said was so glorious that all he had written appeared worthless compared with what he had just seen. In his last illness the monks of Fossa Nuova, near Maienza, waited on him with unceasing devotion, and begged of him to expound to them the Canticle of Canticles, as St. Bernard did. The saint replied, “Get me Bernard’s spirit, and I will do your bidding.” He yielded to their wish. The saint, growing feebler, died; and while a corpse, a blind man begged to approach and pay his last tribute of respect, when the man’s sight was restored that moment.