A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 03

by Voltaire

The seventh general council, or the second of Nice, was assembled in 787, by Constantine, son of Leo and Irene, to re-establish the worship of images. The reader must know that two Councils of Constantinople, the first in 730, under the emperor Leo, the other twenty-four years after, under Constantine Copronymus, had thought proper to proscribe images, conformably to the Mosaic law and to the usage of the early ages of Christianity. So, also, the Nicene decree, in which it is said that "whosoever shall not render service and adoration to the images of the saints as to the Trinity, shall be deemed anathematized," at first encountered some opposition. The bishops who introduced it, in a Council of Constantinople, held in 789, were turned out by soldiers. The same decree was also rejected with scorn by the Council of Frankfort in 794, and by the Caroline books, published by order of Charlemagne. But the second Council of Nice was at length confirmed at Constantinople under the emperor Michael and his mother Theodora, in the year 842, by a numerous council, which anathematized the enemies of holy images. Be it here observed, it was by two women, the empresses Irene and Theodora, that the images were protected.

We pass on to the eighth general council. Under the emperor Basilius, Photius, ordained patriarch of Constantinople in place of Ignatius, had the Latin church condemned for the "filioque" and other practices, by a council of the year 866: but Ignatius being recalled the following year, another council removed Photius; and in the year 869 the Latins, in their turn, condemned the Greek church in what they called the eighth general council—while those in the East gave this name to another council, which, ten years after, annulled what the preceding one had done, and restored Photius.

These four councils were held at Constantinople; the others, called general by the Latins, having been composed of the bishops of the West only, the popes, with the aid of false decretals, gradually arrogated the right of convoking them. The last of these which assembled at Trent, from 1545 to 1563, neither served to convert the enemies of papacy nor to subdue them. Its decrees, in discipline, have been scarcely admitted into any one Catholic nation: its only effect has been to verify these words of St. Gregory Nazianzen: "I have not seen one council that has acted with good faith, or that has not augmented the evils complained of rather than cured them. Ambition and the love of disputation, beyond the power of words to express, reign in every assembly of bishops."

However, the Council of Constance, in 1415, having decided that a council-general receives its authority immediately from Jesus Christ, which authority every person, of whatever rank or dignity, is bound to obey in all that concerns the faith; and the Council of Basel having afterwards confirmed this decree, which it holds to be an article of faith which cannot be neglected without renouncing salvation, it is clear how deeply every one is interested in paying submission to councils.

SECTION II.

Notice of the General Councils.

Assembly, council of state, parliament, states-general, formerly signified the same thing. In the primitive ages nothing was written in Celtic, nor in German, nor in Spanish. The little that was written was conceived in the Latin tongue by a few clerks, who expressed every meeting of lendes, herren, or ricohombres, by the word concilium. Hence it is that we find in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries so many councils which were nothing more than councils of state.

We shall here speak only of the great councils called general, whether by the Greek or by the Latin church. At Rome they were called synods, as they were in the East in the primitive ages—for the Latins borrowed names as well as things from the Greeks.

In 325 there was a great council in the city of Nicæa, convoked by Constantine. The form of its decision was this: "We believe that Jesus is of one substance with the Father, God of God, light of light, begotten, not made. We also believe in the Holy Ghost."

Nicephorus affirms that two bishops, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, who had died during the first sittings, rose again to sign the condemnation of Arius, and incontinently died again, as I have already observed. Baronius maintains this fact, but Fleury says nothing of it.