The authors of the Caroline Books richly deserved this castigation. They went so far as to declare that the Synod of A.D. 754, which ordered images to be broken, as well as the Synod of A.D. 787, which commanded them to be worshipped, were infamae and ineptissimae. God alone is, according to them, to be adored and worshipped, and the saints may be venerated; but no kind of adoration or veneration may be paid to the images of the saints, because they are lifeless, and made by the hands of men. It is evident the Frankish theologians did not understand what is meant by relative worship. They admit, however, that the images of the saints may be retained for adorning churches, and also as memorials of the past; but it is not lawful to worship them even by such veneration as is paid to men, salutationis causâ. Such is the substance of the doctrine put forward by the authors of the Caroline Books.[310] Pope Hadrian died on Christmas Day A.D. 795, and the controversy concerning image worship seems to have been lulled for some years in the West. It broke out again, however, with greater warmth in A.D. 824. In the month of November of that year an Embassy arrived at Rouen, where Lothaire was then holding his court, bearing letters and presents from the Greek emperor, Michael the Stammerer, to his western brother.
Michael was an Iconoclast, but not an extreme one; and wrote a very plausible letter, in which he complains of the superstitious excesses of the image-worshippers at Constantinople. He represents himself as the friend of peace and harmony, anxious to repress the excesses of both the extreme parties; and he beseeches his brother Lothaire to lend him his aid, especially by his influence with the Pontiff of the old Rome, to whom he sends several presents with a view to gain his good will and co-operation for the same laudable purpose. Lothaire, ignorant of the real facts of the case, and misled by this most deceptive document, promised his assistance to the Greek ambassadors in Rome, and resolved to aid in the good work of reconciling the extreme parties in the East. He wrote to Pope Eugenius II. to that effect, and asked his permission to appoint a conference of the prelates of his empire, with a view to sift the question thoroughly. The Pope seems to have consented to this course; and the conference met at Paris on the 1st of November, A.D. 825.
These gentlemen issued a most elaborate production addressed to the emperor, by him to be forwarded to the Pope. They begin by attacking the letter of Hadrian to Constantine and Irene, in which letter, as they allege, he ordered images to be superstitiously adored—quod superstitiose eas adorari jussit. In support of his doctrine he cited the Fathers, but according to them it was valde absona what he cited, and ad rem non pertinentia.
Then they attack the Second Council of Nice which gravely erred by ordering images to be worshipped, as the Great Charles had clearly proved in the books sent to Rome by the Abbot Angilbert. And Hadrian, too, in his answer to this treatise, when defending the Synod, wrote what he liked, not what he ought—quae voluit, non tamen quae debuit.
This was not enough for this Paris Conference; they had the assurance to dictate to the Pope what he was to write in reply to the Greek emperor; and to Lothaire himself they recommended what he ought to write to the Pope. On the point of doctrine they declare that nothing made by the hands of man is to be adored or worshipped; and to prove their position they quote St. Augustine, who, according to them, says that image worship had its origin with Simon Magus, and a meretricula called Helen!
When the Emperor Lothaire received these precious documents from the two prelates, Halitgar and Amalarius, deputed to present them, and ascertained their contents, he told them, as might be expected from a sensible man, that the letter to the Pope especially contained some things that were superfluous and more that were impertinent. He therefore commissioned Jeremias of Sens, and Jonas of Orleans, to make extracts from the report which would be more to the point and less likely to give offence in Rome; telling them, at the same time, to show every respect to the Pope, as they were bound to do; that although much might be gained by deference, nothing could be effected by exasperating the Pontiff. If, he adds, the pertinacia Romana will make no concessions, but the Pope is prepared to send an embassy to Constantinople, then let them try at least to induce him to allow the emperor also to send an embassy in conjunction with that of the Pope.
The emperor himself wrote a respectful and plausible letter to the Pope, urging upon him to send ambassadors to the Greek court, adding that he might send with them the two bishops who bore the report of the Paris Conference to His Holiness; and that thus he might be instrumental in restoring peace to the distracted Churches of the East.
Things were at this pass when Dungal appears upon the scene. The prelates of France were, many of them at least, not quite sound on the question of image worship; but Claudius of Turin, just about this time, brought things to a crisis.
This Claudius was a Spaniard, educated in his youth by Felix, Bishop of Urgel, in Spain, one of the leaders of the Adoptionist heretics. The mind of Claudius was infected with this as well as several other errors; but especially with the most extreme form of Iconoclasm.
Like Dungal, he seems to have been in high favour at court; but he kept his errors at that time to himself, at least in their extreme form. When appointed to the See of Turin he threw off the mask. On his first or second visitation he removed the crosses from his cathedral, he broke the images of the saints, and the holy pictures on the walls; he declaimed from the pulpit even against the worship of the saints themselves, or their relics in any shape or form; and finally, heartily denounced the pilgrimage to Rome, which even then was customary with the faithful, as unnecessary and superstitious.