It was about the year 727, the twelfth year of his own pontificate, and ten years after the accession of Leo III., when the acts of the eastern emperor caused St. Gregory II. to address the following letter to him.[167]
“The letter of your God-protected majesty and fraternity we have received by the augustal officer of the Guards, and we likewise keep it securely in the holy church close to the confession of the holy and glorious Peter, prince of the apostles, where likewise are kept the letters of your predecessors who reigned in the love of Christ. In this letter you well and piously, as befits a Christian emperor, professed that you would keep without fail the injunctions of our holy fathers and teachers. It is first, and remarkable, that the letter is yours and not another's, sealed with the imperial seal, and subscribed within in vermilion, by your own hand, as is the wont of emperors to subscribe. Therein you professed with the clearest piety our blameless and orthodox faith. You wrote, ‘he who moves and pulls down the boundaries of the fathers is execrable’. On receiving this we uttered hymns of thanksgiving to God, for God assuredly has given you the throne. You were running well. Who [pg 303] then has rung an alarum in your ears, and perverted your heart like a twisted bowstring, and turned your eyes backwards? During ten years by the grace of God you went well. You never spoke of the holy images. Now you say they take the place of idols, and that those who worship them are idolaters. And you are bent on sweeping them away, and clearing the land of them. And you fear not the judgment of God in bringing scandals into the hearts of men, not of the faithful only, but of the faithless too. Christ charges you not to scandalise one of the little ones, and for a small offence to depart into everlasting fire, and you have scandalised the whole world, as if you could not endure death, nor make an evil confession. You have written that ‘we should not worship things made with hands, nor any kind of likeness, as God said, neither in heaven nor on earth; and show me, if you please, who has charged us to reverence and worship things made with hands. Then I will confess that is God's command’. And why, you that are emperor and head of Christians, did you not enquire of those who had the knowledge of experience? You might have been satisfied by them concerning what things made by hands God spoke, before stirring up, confounding, and disturbing humble people. But you thrust away, and denied, and cast out our holy fathers and teachers whom, with your own hand and in writing, you professed to obey and follow. The holy and inspired fathers and teachers are our scripture, our light and our salvation. The six Councils held in Christ have commanded us, and you do not accept their testimony. [pg 304] We are compelled to write to you in rude uncultured words, since uncultured and rude you are. But truly they carry the power and the truth of God. We entreat you in God's name to cast aside the haughtiness and pride which beset you, and gently and humbly give us your attention. May God lead you to the truth of what He has said. He was speaking of idolaters who had possession of the promised land. They worshipped animals in gold and silver and wood; they worshipped the whole creation, and all winged birds. Their cry was, ‘These are our gods and other god there is not’. It was for these devilish things, made by the hand, injurious and execrable, that God condemned their worship. For since there are things made with hands to the service and glory of God, whose will it was to introduce His own holy people of the Hebrews, as He foretold to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give them the land of promise, and to make the Israelites possessors and inheritors of the possessions of idolaters, and to crush and utterly wipe out those generations because they had polluted the land and the air by their transgressions, God warned His people beforehand not to fall into their modes of worship. He selected two men of the Israelite people, blessed and hallowed them for the execution of works wrought by the hand, but for the glory and service of God, as a memorial to those generations, Bezaleel and Eliab, of the first tribe of Dan. God said to Moses, ‘Cut out two tables of stone and bring them to Me’. He brought them, and God, with His own finger, wrote upon them the ten life-giving and immortal words. Then God said: ‘Make cherubim and seraphim, [pg 305] and a table, and cover it within and without with gold: and mark an ark of incorruptible wood, and put thy testimonies into the ark for a memorial to your generations, that is, the tablets, the urn, the rod, the manna’. Are these fashions and resemblances made by hand, or are they not? But they are for the glory and service of God. That great Moses, full of fear, in his desire to see a likeness and resemblance, not to be deceived, besought God, saying, ‘Lord, show me Thyself manifestly, that I may see Thee’. And the Lord answered, ‘If thou seest Me, thou wilt die. But pass into the hole of the rock, and thou shalt see My hind parts.’ God showed to him in a vision the mystery hidden from the beginning of the world. But in our generations, in the last days, He showed Himself to us manifestly, both His front and His hind part, entire. When God saw the race of men perishing to the end, taking pity on His own creation, He sent forth His Son, begotten before time. And, coming down from heaven, He entered the womb of the holy Virgin Mary. The true Light shone forth in her womb, and, instead of human generation, the Light became flesh. And He was baptised in the River Jordan, and us also He baptised. He began to give us pledges of knowledge, that we might not be deceived. And, entering into Jerusalem, into the Upper Chamber of holy and glorious Sion, to the mystical supper, He delivered to us His holy Body, and gave us to drink His precious Blood. There also He washed our feet; we drank with Him, and we ate with Him, and our hands felt Him, and He became our companion. [pg 306] And the Truth was manifested to us, and the error and the mist which encompassed us fled away and vanished. And their ‘voice went forth into all the world, and their words to the end of the earth’. Then men from the whole world came flying as eagles to Jerusalem, as the Lord said in the gospels, ‘wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together’. Christ is the Body: the high flying eagles are men who worship God and love Christ. Those who saw the Lord, as they saw Him, drew His portrait. Those who saw James, the Lord's brother, as they saw him, drew his portrait. Those who saw the proto-martyr, Stephen, as they saw him, drew his portrait. In a word, those who saw the faces of the martyrs who poured forth their blood for Christ, drew them. And men in all the world, beholding, gave up the worshipping of the devil, and worshipped these not with absolute, but with relative, worship. Which of the two seems to you, O emperor, right, to worship: these images, or those of the devil's error? When Christ was present at Jerusalem, Augar, then king of the Edessenes, hearing of His wonderful works, wrote to Christ: and Christ, with His own hand, sent him an answer, and His own holy and glorious face. Send to that not made with hands, and behold it. Multitudes of eastern peoples flock thither, and worship. Many other such things not made with hands exist, which the hosts of Christian pilgrims possess, whose daily worship you overlook.[168] Why do we not examine and depict the [pg 307] Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Because we know Him not, and it is impossible to examine and depict the nature of God. Had we beheld and known Him as we did His Son, Him also we might have examined and depicted, and you might call His image, too, an idol.
“We entreat you, as brethren in Christ, enter again into the truth, which you have left. Cast aside pride, destroy your self-assurance, write to all and everywhere, raise up again those whom you have scandalised and blinded, though, insensible as you are, you hold this for nothing. The charity of Christ knows that, when we enter the church of the holy Prince of the Apostles, and behold his portrait, compunction comes on us, and, like rain from heaven, a flood of tears comes down. Christ made the blind to see; you have blinded those who saw well, and have made them stumble, little as you think of it. You have reduced men to ignorance, stopped their fair running, deprived them of their prayers. Instead of vigils, prayerfulness, and zeal to God, you have dissolved the poor population in sleepiness, slumbering, and carelessness. They have lost their head. And you say that we worship stones, and walls, and boards. Not so, O emperor. But to rouse memory and feeling, to raise up the dull, rude, and untaught mind, by their names, their invocation, their features. Not as gods, as you assert: far from it: for we do not place our hopes in these things. If it be a picture of our Lord, we say, ‘O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, help us and save us’. If it be of His holy [pg 308] Mother, we say, ‘Holy bearer of God, Mother of the Lord, intercede with thy Son, our true God, to save our souls’. If it be of a martyr, ‘Saint Stephen, who didst shed thy blood for Christ, by thy confidence as proto-martyr, intercede for us’. So we say, in the case of every martyr who suffered martyrdom. Suchlike are the prayers which we address through them. It is not, as you assert, O emperor, that we call the martyrs gods. Put away those evil thoughts of yours. I charge you, save your own soul from the scandals and the imprecations which you receive from all the world: for even the little children make a mock of you. Go to the children's schools, and say, ‘I am he who pull down and drive away pictures’. They will answer by throwing their slates at your head: and what you have failed to learn from the wise, you will be taught by the simple.
“You write, ‘Ozias, the Jewish king, took out of the temple, after eight hundred years, the brazen serpent: so have I, after eight hundred years, expelled the idols from the churches’. Truly, Ozias was your brother, and had your self-conceit, and tyrannised over the priests of that day, just as you do. For holy David carried that serpent into the temple with the sacred ark. What was it but a brazen work consecrated by God for those who were then suffering from the bite of serpents: that an image might be shown to the people of the prime suggester of sin to the first creature formed by God, Adam and Eve, this was set up for the healing of sins. But you, as you boast, after eight hundred years, have [pg 309] cast out from the churches the blessing and consecration of the martyrs, and, as you fairly confessed at first, of set purpose and without necessity, and, lastly, by the subscription of your own hand, put upon your own head their curse.
“Now we, as holding supreme and undoubted authority from St. Peter the chief, were minded to rebuke you, but since you have brought the curse upon yourself, keep it and share it with your advisers. See to what extent you have broken in upon the edification and good course of others. The charity of Christ knows this. When we enter a church ourselves and behold the picture of our Lord Jesus Christ's wonderful deeds and of His holy Mother bearing in her arms and nursing our Lord and our God, and the angels standing round them and chanting the Holy, Holy, Holy, we do not leave that church without compunction. And, again, who is not touched with compunction and moved to tears when he beholds the baptismal vessels and the circle of priests surrounding, and the mystical supper, and the blind recovering their sight, and the raising of Lazarus, and the healing of the leper and the paralytic, and the multitude reclining on the grass, the baskets and the remnants taken up, and the fragments, and the transfiguration on Mount Thabor, the Lord's crucifixion, His burial, His resurrection, His holy ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit? Who that beholds the history of Abraham, and the knife approaching the throat of his son, is not moved to compunction and tears? In a word, all the sufferings of our Lord. It [pg 310] were better for you, emperor, if the choice were offered you, to be called a heretic than the persecutor and destroyer of the histories, the pictures, the images, the sufferings of our Lord. Yet to be called a heretic would be thy misery and thy loss. Let me tell you the difference. The heretic is said to be known, when he is known only to few. The scandals he gives are dark, the thoughts perplexed and hard to discern. Those who enforce them and are destitute of humiliation soon fall by their own ignorance and confusion of mind. Their condemnation is not so great as yours. You have openly pursued things well observed and conspicuous as light. You have stripped naked the churches of God. As the holy fathers clothed and adorned them you have left them bare and tattered. And that, too, when you had no less a pontiff than the lord Germanus, our brother and fellow priest. You should have taken his counsel as that of a father and teacher, as aged and experienced in matters both of Church and State. He is ninety-five years old: he has served one after another patriarch and emperor. He was never dispensed with, for his utility in both these services. You disregarded him and called to your side that transgressing fool the Ephesian, the son of Apsimar, and his like. For the lord Germanus and the then patriarch George, having informed and persuaded Constantine, the son of Constans, the father of Justinian, to write to us at Rome, he wrote to us under sanction of an oath, and proposed to us fitting men that there should be an ecumenical Council. ‘Nor will I,’ said he, ‘sit with them as emperor, nor speak as having control, but [pg 311] as one of them; and as the pontiffs enact I will execute. And those who hold the right we will receive, and those who hold the wrong we will cast out and banish. If my father perverted anything in the pure and blameless faith, I will be the first to lay him under anathema. For it was by the grace of God that we sent to you; and the Sixth Council was held in peace.’ O emperor, you know that the dogmas of holy church belong not to kings but to pontiffs, and require to be infallibly determined. For this reason pontiffs have been set over the churches, who abstain from secular matters, and kings equally abstain from matters of the Church and take charge of what is in their hands. The agreement of Christ-loving kings and of faithful pontiffs is one power when their administration is ruled by peace and charity.
“You have written in favour of an ecumenical Council being held. To us it seems unadvisable. You are he who prosecutes, insults and destroys the images. Give way, and grant us silence, and the world will be at peace, and scandals will cease. Suppose that we listen to you, that bishops have met together from all the world, that the Senate and Council have sat. Where is the devoted Christian emperor who is wont by custom to sit at the Council, to honour those who speak on the right side, to reject those who err from the truth, when you, the emperor, waver, and speak with the tongue of barbarians? Know you not that your attack upon the holy images is a work of contention, arrogance, and pride? At a moment when the churches of God enjoyed unbroken peace you raised up dissensions, enmities, and scandals. [pg 312] Be quiet, rest, and there is no need of a Council. Write to every one and everywhere throughout the world which you have scandalised by saying that Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, and Gregory, Pope of Rome, have erred respecting the images, and we will bear you scatheless for the sin of your mistake, as having received from God authority to loose things in heaven and things on earth. God is our witness that we have presented all the letters which you have written to us to the ears and hearts of the kings of the West, pacifying them in respect of your soul, praising and magnifying you in respects of your former government. Hence they welcomed your imperial letters with the honour due from kings when they had not yet heard of your evil attack upon the images. When they heard and were assured of this, that you had sent Jovinus, your officer of the guards, to destroy the statue of our Saviour, called the Witness, by which many miracles have been worked, many women of fervent zeal, such as the ointment-sellers, were present, beseeching the guardsman not to do it. He heard them not, but planted a a ladder, and mounted it, and with three blows of his axe shivered the face of the Saviour. The women could not bear that impious act. They drew away the ladder, clubbed him, and put him to death on the spot. You, zealous for evil, sent and slew there I know not how many women, in the presence of competent witnesses from Rome, from France, from the Vandals, from Mauritania, from Gothia, and generally from all the countries comprising the interior of the West. When these [pg 313] returned each to his own land and told the story of your revolutionary and childish deeds, they tore down your laurelled letters and defaced your countenance. Lombards and Sarmatians and other peoples towards the north overran unhappy Decapolis, they took your very metropolis, Ravenna, deposed your magistrates, and appointed their own. And they are minded so to do to imperial possessions adjoining us, and to Rome, while you are not able to defend us. These are the results of senseless folly. Yet you frighten us and say ‘I will send to Rome and break in pieces the image of St. Peter, nay, and bring up in fetters their bishop Gregory, as Constans did to Martin’. And yet you should know and be assured that the pontiffs who in series sit at Rome for the sake of peace are as a middle wall and a fence to the East and to the West, the arbitrators of concord. And the emperors, your predecessors, struggled hard to maintain this peace. And if you bluster and threaten us, we have no need to fight you. Let the Bishop of Rome retreat twenty-four stades into Campania and go you, pursue the winds. Our predecessor, the pontiff Martin, sat for peace-sake exhorting. Thus it was that the evil Constans, erroneous in his belief as to the Holy Trinity, and throwing in his aid to the then heretical pontiffs, Sergius and Paul and Pyrrhus, sent and kidnapped him and tyrannously brought him up to Byzantium. After many cruelties inflicted he banished him, as he inflicted many on Maximus the monk also, and his disciple Anastasius, and banished them to Lazika. And Constans, their banisher, [pg 314] was murdered, and died in his sin. And the count, who was the chief of his household, being assured by the bishops of Sicily that he was a heretic, buried him secretly in the church, and his course was ended in his sin. But for the blessed Martin, the city in which he was banished bears witness to him, Cherson, and the Bosphorus, and all the North, and the dwellers in the North, by flocking to his tomb and receiving cures.
“May the Lord think us worthy to go the way of Martin, but for the help of the many we are willing to live, and live on. For all the West has its eyes fixed upon our humility, if we be not such, but they have a great faith in us, and upon him whose statue you threaten to destroy and sweep away, the blessed Peter, whom all the kingdoms of the West look upon as a god upon earth. And if you venture to try the truth of this, the kings of the West are ready even to avenge the easterns whom you have wronged. But, we beseech you in the Lord, turn away from these revolutionary, childish actions. You know that you are not able to defend Rome, the very head of your royalty, unless perhaps the mere city from its nearness to the sea and a fleet. As I said before, if the Pope go two miles and a half out of Rome, he fears nothing from you. One thing is our grief: savages and barbarians are civilised; you that are civilised become savage and barbarous. In full assurance of faith the whole West makes its offering to the holy Prince of the Apostles. And if you send to pull down the statue of St. Peter, look, we tell you beforehand, not on us be the bloodshed which will follow. On [pg 315] thy neck and head let it fall. We have just received an entreaty from the far West, from one called Septetus, desiring by the grace of God to see our face, that we may give him holy baptism. To avoid the reproach of neglect and slackness we are preparing for the journey.
“May God cast his fear into your heart and bring you back to the truth after the evils which you have inflicted upon the world. Let me receive your letter announcing your conversion. May the God who came down from heaven, and entered into the womb of the holy Virgin, the Mother of God, for the salvation of men, dwell in thy heart and cast out at once those who dwell in thee and have put in scandals; and may He bestow peace upon the Church of all Christians for ever and ever. Amen.”
To this letter of Pope Gregory II. to Leo the Isaurian must be added a second, written at some time between the date of the first, in 727, and the date of the Pope's death in 731. Indeed from some expressions in the second we may infer that it was sent very shortly after the first.[169]
“We have received by our legate Rufinus the letter of your God-defended Majesty and Brotherhood in Christ. Indeed it is a burden to my life that you have not changed, but persist in the same evils—not having a Christian mind, nor being a follower and imitator of our holy and glorious wonder-working fathers and teachers. Indeed, foreign teachers I do not bring into the field, but those of your own city and country. Are there [pg 316] wiser than Gregory the wonder-worker, and Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory the theologian, and Basil of Cappadocia, and John Chrysostom? not to speak of thousands upon thousands like to them of our holy fathers and teachers inspired by God. But you have rather followed your self-assurance, and the passions of your own heart, when you wrote, ‘I am priest as well as emperor’. This indeed, the emperors before you showed both in word and deed by planting and caring for the churches; in conjunction with the bishops seeking out the truth with the desire and zeal of orthodoxy. Such were the great Constantine, the great Theodosius, the great Valentinian, and Constantine the father of Justinian II., the man of the Sixth Council. Those emperors governed in the spirit of religion, assembling councils in unity of mind and purpose with the bishops, searching out truth of doctrine, and so establishing and adorning the holy churches. These are priests and emperors; they showed it by their action. But you from the time you took the empire have not kept to the end the boundaries set by the Fathers. You found the churches arrayed in embroidered robes, fringed with gold; you stripped off their ornaments and left them in nakedness. For what are our churches? Are they not things made with hands—stones, wood, straw, at best? But they were adorned by pictures and histories, portraying the wonders of the saints, the sufferings of our Lord, and of His holy and glorious Mother, and of the holy Apostles. On these histories and pictures men spend their substance.