A powerful conspiracy was formed for the restoration of Irene; and the secret, though widely diffused, was faithfully kept above eight months, till the emperor, suspicious of his danger, escaped from Constantinople, with the design of appealing to the provinces and armies. By this hasty flight, the empress was left on the brink of the precipice; yet before she implored the mercy of her son, Irene addressed a private epistle to the friends whom she had placed about his person, with a menace that unless they accomplished, she would reveal, their treason. Their fear rendered them intrepid; they seized the emperor on the Asiatic shore, and he was transported to the porphyry apartment of the palace where he had first seen the light. In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every sentiment of humanity and nature; and it was decreed in her bloody council that Constantine should be rendered incapable of the throne. The blind son of Irene survived many years, oppressed by the court, and forgotten by the world; the Isaurian dynasty was silently extinguished; and the memory of Constantine was recalled only by the nuptials of his daughter Euphrosyne with the emperor Michael II.[g]
IRENE AND ICONOCLASM
The empress was known to favour image-worship. The national vanity of the Greeks and the religious feelings of the orthodox required the sanction of a constitutional public authority before the laws against image-worship could be openly repealed. The Byzantine Empire had at this time an ecclesiastical though not a political constitution. The will of the sovereign was alone insufficient to change an organic law, forming part of the ecclesiastical administration of the empire. It was necessary to convoke a general council to legalise image-worship; and to render such a council a fit instrument for the proposed revolution, much arrangement was necessary. No person was ever endued with greater talents for removing opposition and conciliating personal support than the empress. The patriarch Paul, a decided iconoclast, was induced to resign, and declare that he repented of his hostility to image-worship, because it had cut off the church of Constantinople from communion with the rest of the Christian world. This declaration pointed out the necessity of holding a general council in order to re-establish that communion.
The crisis required a new patriarch of stainless character, great ability, and perfect acquaintance with the party connections and individual characters of the leading bishops. No person could be selected from among the dignitaries of the church who had been generally appointed by iconoclast emperors. The choice of Irene fell on a civilian—Tarasius, the chief secretary of the imperial cabinet,—a man of noble birth, considerable popularity, and a high reputation for learning and probity.
The iconoclasts were still strong in the capital, and the opposition of the soldiery was excited by the determination of Tarasius to re-establish image-worship. They openly declared that they would not allow a council of the church to be held, nor permit the ecclesiastics of their party to be unjustly treated by the court. More than one tumult warned the empress that no council could be held at Constantinople. It required nearly three years to smooth the way for the meeting of the council, which was at length held at Nicæa in September, 787. Three hundred and sixty-seven members attended, of whom, however, not a few were abbots and monks, who assumed the title of confessors from having been ejected from their monasteries by the decrees of the iconoclast sovereigns. The secretary of the two commissioners who represented the imperial authority was Nicephorus the historian, subsequently patriarch of Constantinople. His sketch of the history of the empire, from the years 602 to 770, is a valuable work, and indicates that he was a man of judgment whenever his perceptions were not obscured by theological and ecclesiastical prejudices. Two other eminent Byzantine writers were also present. George, called Syncellus, from the office he held under the patriarch Tarasius. He has left us a chronological work which has preserved the knowledge of many important facts recorded by no other ancient authority. Theophanes, the friend and companion of the Syncellus, has continued this work; and his chronography of Roman and Byzantine history, with all its faults, forms the best picture of the condition of the empire that we possess for a long period. Theophanes enjoyed the honour of becoming, at a later day, a confessor in the cause of image-worship. He was exiled from a monastery which he had founded, and died in the island of Samothrace, in 817 A.D.
[754-787 A.D.]
The second council of Nicæa had no better title than the iconoclast council of Constantinople to be regarded as a general council of the church. The pope Adrian, indeed, sent deputies from the Latin church; but the churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, whose patriarchs were groaning under the government of the caliphs, did not dare to communicate with foreign authorities.
The second council of Nicæa authorised the worship of images as an orthodox practice. Forged passages, pretending to be extracts from the earlier fathers, and genuine quotations from the modern, were cited in favour of the practice. Simony was already a prevailing evil in the Greek church. Many of the bishops had purchased their sees, and most of these naturally preferred doing violence to their opinions rather than lose their revenues. From this cause, unanimity was easily obtained by court influence. The council decided, that not only was the cross an object of reverence, but also that the images of Christ, and the pictures of the Virgin Mary—of angels, saints, and holy men, whether painted in colours, or worked in embroidery in sacred ornaments, or formed in mosaic in the walls of churches—were all lawful objects of worship. At the same time, in order to guard against the accusation of idolatry, it was declared that the worship of an image, which is merely a sign of reverence, must not be confounded with the adoration due only to God. The council of Constantinople held in 754 was declared heretical, and all who maintained its doctrines, and condemned the use of images, were anathematised. The patriarchs Anastasius, Constantinus, and Nicetas were especially doomed to eternal condemnation.
The pope adopted the decrees of this council, but he refused to confirm them officially, because the empress delayed restoring the estates of St. Peter’s patrimony. In the countries of western Europe which had formed parts of the Western Empire, the superstitions of the image-worshippers were viewed with as much dissatisfaction as the fanaticism of the iconoclasts; and the council of Nicæa was as much condemned as that of Constantinople by a large body of enlightened ecclesiastics. The public mind in the West was almost as much divided as in the East; and if a general council of the Latin church had been assembled, its unbiassed decisions would probably have been at variance with those supported by the pope and the council of Nicæa.
Charlemagne published a refutation of the doctrines of this council on the subject of image-worship. His work, called the Caroline Books, consists of four parts, and was certainly composed under his immediate personal superintendence, though he was doubtless incapable of writing it himself.