In art she is represented with a flask of oil, on account of the miraculous and fragrant oil which distilled from her relics in the church of S. Cross, at Eichstadt; or with three ears of corn, with which she is said to have cured and satisfied a girl afflicted with a ravenous appetite.
Her relics were translated in 870, to Eichstadt, on Sept. 21st. A considerable part still remains there; another portion was carried by Baldwin the Bearded, Count of Flanders, in 1109, to the abbey of Furnes, near Ostend, where they are still preserved, and the festival of the translation is kept on May 1st. From Furnes, small portions have been distributed to churches in Antwerp, Brussels, Thiel, Arnheim, Zutphen, and Gröningen. Other relics of this saint are said to be preserved at Prague, Cologne, Augsburg, and Hanover, and many were anciently distributed over Lorraine, Alsace, and Burgundy.
There can be no doubt that S. Walburga has inherited the symbols and much of the cultus anciently devoted to Walborg, or Walburg, the Earth Mother.
S. TARASIUS, PATR. OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
(A.D. 806.)
[By Greeks and Latins on the same day. Authority:—His life by Ignatius, deacon and keeper of the sacred vessels at Constantinople, afterwards bishop of Nicæa, a disciple of Tarasius; also the Church historians of the period.]
The Incarnation of God was the descent of the Most High to the level of human necessity. Man had found a difficulty in believing in and loving the Infinite; human language failed to express the nature of God save by a multitude of abstractions and negations. He was not limited, had no localized habitation, was not comprehensible by man; so the philosophers taught, and so they strove to make men believe; men made the effort, believed, and in the effort, their devotion expired. The philosophers had lifted God into the region of an idea, and in so doing, had divested him of personality; and when His personality was lost, all interest in Him died away. God was to them an object of speculation, not an object of worship. God the Father, knowing man's natural incapacity for realizing the Godhead, sent His Son into the world clothed in flesh. Man had now a God-Man, whose nature and personality had been brought vividly before him to believe in and to love. God was "manifest in the flesh," the visible and the invisible, the spiritual and the material, the finite and the infinite, the local and the omnipresent were united in One. Thenceforth the law of God's dealings with man was to be in accordance with his natural capacities, the visible was to become the medium of the invisible, the material the vehicle of the spiritual, the omnipresent adorable through a local presence, the infinite discernible through the finite. In Jesus Christ men saw God and lived; and when He was withdrawn from the eyes of men, He did not leave them orphans, but perpetuated his presence in the Holy Eucharist, even unto the end of the world.
In the old heathen world men had been idolaters or philosophers. The idolater saw in the material image his God; the philosopher declared that God was everywhere present, and he despised the idol. Christianity combined in one the truth taught by the philosopher, and the craving felt by the idolater. Through the sacraments as outward and visible means, grace was conveyed to man, chiefly through the Holy Eucharist; and through sacred images and the holy cross, worship was addressed to God. Through the seen to the unseen, to God; from the unseen through the seen to man, is the law of the Incarnation.
At first, on account of the idolatry which surrounded them, the early Christians did not deem it prudent to introduce images into their churches. Idolatry was so prevalent, that the first lesson they had to insist upon to the heathen, was the omnipresence of God; but when heathenism was conquered, the danger of idolatry ceased, and the peril was in the other direction; men began to insist on the infinity of the essence of the Godhead, and to deny the possibility of His becoming local by incarnation. They were ready to admit that Christ was inspired with a divine afflatus, but not that He was very and eternal God. Then, at once, it became necessary for the Church to use her every effort to impress on men's minds and hearts the truth that God had become very man, of the substance of His mother. Then pictures and images were introduced into churches. We must remember that the Church, to defend the truth, had to assume successively opposite positions, for the truth was double,—if we are to understand how she first opposed images, and then defended them. She did not contradict herself, her attitude was forced upon her, to maintain a two-fold truth.
The use of images was commonly received in the east, when the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, resolved to abolish the practice. The contest began about the year 725. He was opposed by Pope Gregory II., Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, and S. John Damascene. The first wrote vehemently to him on this subject. He maintained that the Word by having rendered Himself visible in taking a human body, subjected Himself to all conditions of a man, and that as it was lawful to represent any man, emperor or prince, so it was lawful to make representations of Christ. But, said he, Christians do not worship the cloth on which the picture is painted, nor the stone out of which the statue is hewn, but they use these visible representations as means of renewing the memory of the saints, and of raising up the mind to God. He denied that images received divine honours, but if "Lord Jesus, save us," be said before an image of Christ, "Holy Mother of God, intercede with Thy Son for us," before one of the Virgin, and "Intercede for us," before one of a Martyr; these prayers are not addressed to the image, but to Christ, or the Holy Virgin, or the Saint whom the figure is designed to portray.
Constantine Copronymus, the son of Leo, followed in his father's steps, and for the better establishing his purpose, he called together a council (a.d. 754) at Constantinople, composed of 338 bishops. It began its sittings in February and ended in August. The Western Church, and the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, were not represented at this council, which was thus composed of prelates under the immediate control of the emperor, gathered together in his imperial city, surrounded by guards, and, unfortunately, the majority of these bishops partook of that time-serving and obsequious disposition which characterised and disgraced the episcopal order in the Eastern Empire for many centuries. This council decreed the destruction of images in churches, and the erasure of paintings on the walls.[70]