In reality, these wild doctrines were connected with Pantheism, which was secretly believed in everywhere; for, though, in a coarse mode of expression, a distinction seemed thus to be made between matter and spirit, or body and soul, it was held by the initiated that matter itself is a mere shadow of the spirit, and the body a delusive semblance of the soul.

In the eighth century, many natural facts of a surprising and unaccountable description, well calculated to make a profound impression upon those who witnessed them, had accumulated. They were such as are now familiar to chemists. Vessels tightly closed were burst open when tormented in the fire, apparently by some invisible agency; intangible vapours condensed into solids; from colourless liquids gaudy precipitates were suddenly called into existence; flames were disengaged without any adequate cause; explosions took place spontaneously. So much that was unexpected and unaccountable justified the title of "the occult science," "the black art." From being isolated marvels unconnected with one another, these facts had been united. The Chaldee notions of a soul of the world, and of indwelling spirits, had furnished a thread on which all these pearls, for such they proved to be, might be strung.

With avidity—for there is ever a charm in the supernatural—did the Arabs receive from their Nestorian and Jewish medical instructors these mystical interpretations along with true knowledge. And far from resting satisfied with what their masters had thus delivered, they proceeded forthwith to improve and extend it for themselves. They submitted all kinds of substances to all kinds of operations, greatly improving the experimental process they had been taught. By exposing various bodies to the fire, they found it possible to extract from them more refined portions, which seemed to concentrate in themselves the qualities pertaining in a more diffuse way to the substances from which they had been drawn. These, since they were often invisible at their first disengagement, yet capable of bursting open the strongest vessels, and sometimes of disappearing in explosions and flames, they concluded must be the indwelling spirit or soul of the body, from which the fire had driven them forth. It was the Chaldee doctrine realized. Thus they obtained the spirit of wine, the spirit of salt, the spirit of nitre. We still retain in commerce these designations, though their significance is lost. When first introduced they had a strictly literal meaning. Alchemy, with its essences, quintessences, and spirits, was Pantheism materialized. God was seen to be in everything, in the abstract as well as the concrete, in numbers as well as realities.

Anticipating what will have hereafter to be considered in detail, I may here remark that it was not the Mohammedan alone who delivered himself up to these mystic delusions; Christendom was prepared for them also. In its opinion, the earth, the air, the sea, were full of invisible forms. With more faith than even by paganism itself was the supernatural power of the images of the gods accepted, only it was imputed to the influence of devils. The lunatic was troubled by a like possession. If a spring discharged its waters with a periodical gushing of carbonic acid gas, it was agitated by an angel; if an unfortunate descended into a pit and was suffocated by the mephitic air, it was by some dæmon who was secreted; if the miner's torch produced an explosion, it was owing to the wrath of some malignant spirit guarding a treasure, and whose solitude had been disturbed. There was no end to the stories, duly authenticated by the best human testimony, of the occasional appearance of such spirits under visible forms; there was no grotto or cool thicket in which angels and genii had not been seen, no cavern without its dæmons. Though the names were not yet given, it was well understood that the air had its sylphs, the earth its gnomes, the fire its salamanders, the water its undines; to the day belonged its apparitions, to the night its fairies. The foul air of stagnant places assumed the visible form of dæmons of abominable aspect; the explosive gases of mines took on the shape of pale-faced, malicious dwarfs, with leathery ears hanging down to their shoulders, and garments of grey cloth. Philosophical conceptions can never be disentangled from social ideas; the thoughts of man will always gather a tincture from the intellectual medium in which he lives.

In Christendom, however, the chief application of these doctrines was to the relics of martyrs and saints. As with the amulets and talismans of Mesopotamia, these were regarded as possessing supernatural powers. They were a sure safeguard against evil spirits, and an unfailing relief in sickness.

A singular force was given to these mystic ideas by the peculiar direction they happened to take. As there are veins of water in the earth, and apertures through which the air can gain access, an analogy was inferred between its structure and that of an animal, leading to an inference of a similarity of functions. From this came the theory of the development of metals in its womb under the influence of the planets, the pregnant earth spontaneously producing gold and silver from baser things after a definite number of lunations. Already, however, in the doctrine of the transmutation of metals, it was perceived that to Nature the lapse of time is nothing—to man it is everything. To Nature, when she is transmuting a worthless into a better metal, what signify a thousand years? To man, half a century embraces the period of his intellectual activity. The aim of the cultivator of the sacred art should be to shorten the natural term; and, since we observe the influence of heat in hastening the ripening of fruits, may we not reasonably expect that duly regulated degrees of fire will answer the purpose? by an exposure of Philosopher's stone. base material in the furnace for a proper season, may we not anticipate the wished for event? The Emperor Caligula, who had formerly tried to make gold from orpiment by the force of fire, was only one of a thousand adepts pursuing a similar scheme. Some trusted to the addition of a material substance in aiding the fire to purge away the dross of the base body submitted to it. From this arose the doctrine of the powder of projection and the philosopher's stone.

This doctrine of the possibility of transmuting things into forms essentially different steadily made its way, leading, in the material direction, to alchemy, the art of making gold and silver out of baser metals, and in theology to transubstantiation. Transmutation and transubstantiation were twin sisters, destined for a world-wide celebrity; one became allied to the science of Mecca, the other to the theology of Rome.

While thus the Arabs joined in the pursuit of alchemy, their medical tendencies led them simultaneously to cultivate another ancient delusion, the discovery of a universal panacea or elixir which could cure all diseases and prolong life for ever. Mystical experimenters for centuries had been ransacking all nature, from the yellow flowers which are sacred to the sun, and gold his emblem and representative on earth, down to the vilest excrements of the human body. As to gold, there had been gathered round that metal many fictitious excellences in addition to its real values; it was believed that in some Potable gold. preparation of it would be found the elixir vitæ. This is the explanation of the unwearied attempts at making potable gold, for it was universally thought that if that metal could be obtained in a dissolved state, it would constitute the long-sought panacea. Nor did it seem impossible so to increase the power of water, as to impart to it new virtues, and thereby enable it to accomplish the desired solution. Were there not natural waters of very different properties? were there not some that could fortify the memory, others destroy it; some re-enforce the spirits, some impart dulness, and some, which were highly prized, that could secure a return of love? It had been long known that both natural and artificial waters can Chemical waters. permanently affect the health, and that instruments may be made to ascertain their qualities. Zosimus, the Panopolitan, had described in former times the operation of distillation, by which water may be purified; the Arabs called the apparatus for conducting that experiment an alembic. His treatise on the virtues and composition of waters was conveyed under the form of a dream, in which there flit before us fantastically white-haired priests sacrificing before the altar; cauldrons of boiling water, in which there are walking about men a span long; brazen-clad warriors in silence reading leaden books, and sphinxes with wings. In such incomprehensible fictions knowledge was purposely, and ignorance conveniently concealed.

The practical Arabs had not long been engaged in these fascinating but wild pursuits, when results of very great importance began to appear. In a scientific point of view, the discovery of the strong acids laid the true foundation of chemistry; in a political point of view, the invention of gunpowder revolutionized the world.

There were several explosive mixtures. Automatic fire was made from equal parts of sulphur, saltpetre, and sulphide of antimony, finely pulverized and mixed into a paste, with equal parts of juice of the black sycamore and liquid asphaltum, a little quick-lime being added. It was directed to keep the material from the rays of the sun, which would set it on fire.

Of liquid or Greek fire we have not a precise description, since the knowledge of it was kept at Constantinople as a state secret. There is reason, however, to believe that it contained sulphur and nitrate of potash mixed with naphtha. Of gunpowder, Marcus Græcus, whose date is probably to be referred to the close of the eighth century, gives the composition explicitly. He directs us to pulverize in a marble mortar one pound of sulphur, two of charcoal, and six of saltpetre. If some of this powder be tightly rammed in a long narrow tube closed at one end, and then set on fire, the tube will fly through the air: this is clearly the rocket. He says that thunder may be imitated by folding some of the powder in a cover and tying it up tightly: Incombustible men. this is the cracker. It thus appears that fireworks preceded fire-arms. To the same author we are indebted for prescriptions for making the skin incombustible, so that we may handle fire without being burnt. These, doubtless, were received as explanations of the legends of the times, which related how miracle-workers had washed their hands in melted copper, and sat at their ease in flaming straw.

Among the Saracen names that might be mentioned as cultivators of alchemy, we may recall El-Rasi, Ebid Durr, Djafar or Geber, Toghragé, who wrote an alchemical poem, and Dschildegi, one of whose works bears the significant title of "The Lantern." The definition of alchemy by some of these authors is very striking: the science of the balance, the science of weight, the science of combustion.

To one of these chemists, Djafar, our attention may for a moment be drawn. He lived toward the end of the eighth century, and is honoured by Rhazes, Avicenna, and Kalid, the great Arabic physicians, as their master. His name is memorable in chemistry, since it marks an epoch in that science of equal importance to that of Priestley and Lavoisier. He is the first to describe nitric acid and aqua regia. Before him no stronger acid was known than concentrated vinegar. We cannot conceive of chemistry as not possessing acids. Roger Bacon speaks of him as the magister magistrorum. He has perfectly just notions of the nature of spirits or gases, as we call them; thus he says, "O son of the doctrine, and that oxidation increases weight. when spirits fix themselves in bodies, they lose their form; in their nature they are no longer what they were. When you compel them to be disengaged again, this is what happens: either the spirit alone escapes with the air, and the body remains fixed in the alembic, or the spirit and body escape together at the same time." His doctrine respecting the nature of the metals, though erroneous, was not without a scientific value. A metal he considers to be a compound of sulphur, mercury, and arsenic, and hence he infers that transmutation is possible by varying the proportion of those ingredients. He knows that a metal, when calcined, increases in weight, a discovery of the greatest importance, as eventually brought to bear in the destruction of the doctrine of Phlogiston of Stahl, and which has been imputed to Europeans of a much later time. He describes the operations of distillation, sublimation, filtration, various chemical apparatus, water-baths, sand-baths, cupels of bone-earth, of the use of which he gives a singularly clear description. A chemist reads with interest Djafar's antique method of obtaining nitric He solves the problem of potable gold. acid by distilling in a retort Cyprus vitriol, alum, and saltpetre. He sets forth its corrosive power, and shows how it may be made to dissolve even gold itself, by adding a portion of sal ammoniac. Djafar may thus be considered as having solved the grand alchemical problem of obtaining gold in a potable state. Of course, many trials must have been made on the influence of this solution on the animal system, respecting which such extravagant anticipations had been entertained. The disappointment that ensued was doubtless the reason that the records of these trials have not descended to us.

With Djafar may be mentioned Rhazes, born A.D. 860, physician-in-chief to the great hospital at Bagdad. To him is due the first description of the preparation and properties of sulphuric acid. He obtained it, as the Nordhausen variety is still made, by the distillation of dried green vitriol. To him are also due the first indications of the preparation of absolute alcohol, by distilling spirit of wine from quick-lime. As a curious discovery made by the Saracens may be mentioned the experiment of Achild Bechil, who, by distilling together the extract of urine, clay, lime, and powdered charcoal, obtained an artificial carbuncle, which shone in the dark "like a good moon." This was phosphorus.

And now there arose among Arabian physicians a correctness of thought and breadth of view altogether surprising. It might almost be supposed that the following lines were written by one of our own contemporaries; they are, however, extracted from a chapter of Avicenna on the origin of mountains. This author was born in the tenth century. "Mountains may be due to two different causes. Either they are effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting for itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some soft, some hard. The winds and waters disintegrate the one, but leave the other intact. Most of the eminences of the earth have had this latter origin. It would require a long period of time for all such changes to be accomplished, during which the mountains themselves might be somewhat diminished in size. But that water has been the main cause of these effects is proved by the existence of fossil remains of aquatic and other animals on many mountains." Avicenna also explains the nature of petrifying or incrusting waters, and mentions ærolites, out of one of which a sword-blade was made, but he adds that the metal was too brittle to be of any use. A mere catalogue His works indicate the attainment of the times. of some of the works of Avicenna will indicate the condition of Arabian attainment. 1. On the Utility and Advantage of Science; 2. Of Health and Remedies; 3. Canons of Physic; 4. On Astronomical Observations; 5. Mathematical Theorems; 6. On the Arabic Language and its Properties; 7. On the Origin of the Soul and Resurrection of the Body; 8. Demonstration of Collateral Lines on the Sphere; 9. An Abridgment of Euclid; 10. On Finity and Infinity; 11. On Physics and Metaphysics; 12. An Encyclopædia of Human Knowledge, in 20 vols., etc., etc. The perusal of such a catalogue is sufficient to excite profound attention when we remember the contemporaneous state of Europe.

The pursuit of the elixir made a well-marked impression upon Arab experimental science, confirming it in its medical application. At the foundation of this application lay the principle that it is possible to relieve the diseases of the human body by purely material means. As the science advanced it gradually shook off its fetichisms, the spiritual receding into insignificance, the material coming into bolder relief. Not, however, without great difficulty was a way forced for the great doctrine that the influence of substances on the constitution of man is altogether of a material kind, and not at all due to any indwelling or animating spirit; that it is of no kind of use to practise incantations over drugs, or to repeat prayers over the mortar in which medicines are being compounded, since the effect will be the same, whether this has been done or not; that there is no kind of efficacy in amulets, no virtue in charms; and that, though saint-relics may serve to excite the imagination of the ignorant, they are altogether beneath the attention of the philosopher.

It was this last sentiment which brought Europe and Africa into intellectual collision. The Saracen and Hebrew physicians had become thoroughly materialized. Throughout Christendom the practice of medicine was altogether supernatural. It was in the hands of ecclesiastics; and saint relics, shrines, and miracle-cures were a source of boundless profit. On a subsequent page I shall have to describe the circumstances of the conflict that ensued between material philosophy on one side, and supernatural jugglery on the other; to show how the Arab system gained the victory, and how, out of that victory, the industrial life of Europe arose. The Byzantine policy inaugurated in Constantinople and Alexandria was, happily for the world, in the end overthrown. To that future page I must postpone the great achievements of the Arabians in the fulness of their Age of Reason. When Europe was hardly more enlightened than Caffraria is now, the Saracens were cultivating and even creating science. Their triumphs in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, proved to be more glorious, more durable, and therefore more important than their military actions had been.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST—(Continued).

IMAGE-WORSHIP AND THE MONKS.

The Arabian influence, allying itself to philosophy, was henceforth productive of other than military results. To the loss of Africa and Asia was now added a disturbance impressed on Europe itself, ending in the decomposition of Christianity into two forms, Greek and Latin, and in three great political events—the emancipation of the popes from the emperors of Constantinople, the usurpation of power by a new dynasty in France, the reconstruction of the Roman empire in the West.

The dispute respecting the worship of images led to those great events. The acts of the Mohammedan khalifs and of the iconoclastic or image-breaking emperors occasioned that dispute.

Nothing could be more deplorable than the condition of southern Europe when it first felt the intellectual influence of the Arabians. Its old Roman and Greek populations had altogether disappeared; the races of half-breeds and mongrels substituted for them were immersed in fetichism. An observance of certain ceremonials constituted a religious life. A chip of the true cross, some iron filings from the chain of St. Peter, a tooth or bone of a martyr, were held in adoration; the world was full of the stupendous miracles which these relics had performed. But especially were painted or graven images of holy personages supposed to be endowed with such powers. They had become objects of actual worship. The facility with which the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, had given an aristocratic fashion to this idolatry, showed that the old pagan ideas had never really died out, and that the degenerated populations received with approval the religious conceptions of their great predecessors. The early Christian fathers believed that painting and sculpture were forbidden by the Scriptures, and that they were therefore wicked arts; and, though the second Council of Nicea asserted that the use of images had always been adopted by the Church, there are abundant facts to prove that the actual worship of them was not indulged in until the fourth century, when, on the occasion of its occurrence in Spain, it was condemned by the Council of Illiberis. During the fifth century the practice of introducing images into Its rapid spread in Christendom. churches increased, and in the sixth it had become prevalent. The common people, who had never been able to comprehend doctrinal mysteries, found their religious wants satisfied in turning to these effigies. With singular obtuseness, they believed that the saint is present in his image, though hundreds of the same kind were in existence, each having an equal and exclusive right to the spiritual presence. The doctrine of invocation of departed saints, which assumed prominence in the fifth century, was greatly strengthened by these graphic forms. Pagan idolatry had reappeared.

At first the simple cross was used as a substitute for the amulets and charms of remoter times; it constituted a fetich able to expel evil spirits, even Satan himself. This Being, who had become singularly debased from what he was in the noble Oriental fictions, was an imbecile and malicious though not a malignant spirit, affrighted not only at pieces of wood framed in the shape of a cross, but at the form of it made by the finger in the air. A subordinate dæmon was supposed to possess every individual at his birth, but he was cast out by baptism. When, in the course of time, the cross became a crucifix, offering a representation of the dying Redeemer, it might be supposed to have gathered increased virtue; and soon, in addition to that adorable form, were introduced images of the Virgin, the apostles, saints, and martyrs. The ancient times seemed to have come again, when these pictures were approached with genuflexions, luminaries, and incense. The doctrine of the more intelligent was that these were aids to devotion, and that, among people to whom the art of reading was unknown, they served the useful purpose of recalling Bleeding and winking images. sacred events in a kind of hieroglyphic manner. But among the vulgar, and monks, and women, they were believed to be endowed with supernatural power. Of some, the wounds could bleed; of others, the eyes could wink; of others, the limbs could be raised. In ancient times, the statues of Minerva could brandish spears, and those of Venus could weep.

In truth, the populations of the Greek and Latin countries were no more than nominally converted and superficially Christianized. The old traditions and practices had never been forgotten. A tendency to idolatry seemed to be the necessary incident of the climate. Not without reason have the apologists of the clergy affirmed that image-worship was insisted on by the people, and that the Church had to admit ideas that she had never been able to eradicate. After seven hundred years of apostolic labour, it was found that the populace of Greece and Italy were apparently in their old state, and that actually nothing at all had been accomplished; the new-comers had passed into the track of their predecessors. It is often said that the restoration of image-worship was owing to the extinction of civilization by the Northern barbarians. But this is not true. In the blood of the German nations the taint of idolatry is but small. In their own countries they gave it little encouragement, and, indeed, hastened quickly to its total rejection. The sin lay not with them, but with the Mediterranean people.

Nor are those barbarians to be held accountable for the so-called extinction of civilization in Italy. The true Roman race had prematurely died; it came to an untimely end in consequence of its dissolute, its violent life. Its civilization would have spontaneously died with it had no barbarian been present; and, if these intruders produced a baneful effect at first, they compensated for it in the end. As, when fresh coal is added to a fire that is burning low, a still further diminution will ensue, perhaps there may be a risk of entirely putting it out; but in due season, if all goes well, the new material will join in the contagious blaze. The savages of Europe, thrown into the decaying foci of Greek and Roman light, did perhaps for a time reduce the general heat; but, by degrees, it spread throughout their mass, and the bright flame of modern civilization was the result. Let those who lament the intrusion of these men into the classical countries, reflect upon the result which must otherwise have ensued—the last spark would soon have died out, and nothing but ashes have remained.

Three causes gave rise to Iconoclasm, or the revolt against image-worship: 1st, the remonstrances and derision of the Mohammedans; 2nd, the good sense of a great sovereign, Leo the Isaurian, who had risen by his merit from obscurity, and had become the founder of a new dynasty at Constantinople; 3rd, the detected inability of these miracle-working idols and fetiches to protect their worshippers or themselves against an unbelieving enemy. Moreover, an impression was gradually making its way among the more intelligent classes that religion ought to free itself from such superstitions. So important were the consequences of Leo's actions, that some have been disposed to assign to his reign the first attempt at making policy depend on theology; and to this period, as I have elsewhere remarked, they therefore refer the commencement of the Byzantine empire. Through one hundred and twenty years, six emperors devoted themselves to this reformation. But it was premature. They were overpowered by the populace and the monks, by the bishops of Rome, and by a superstitious and wicked woman.

It had been a favourite argument against the pagans how little their gods could do for them when the hour of calamity came, when their statues and images were insulted and destroyed, and hence how vain was such worship, how imbecile such gods. When Africa and Asia, full of relics and crosses, pictures and images, fell before the Mohammedans, those conquerors retaliated the same logic with no little effect. There was hardly one of the fallen towns that had not some idol for its protector. Remembering the stern objurgations of the prophet against this deadly sin, prohibited at once by the commandment of God and repudiated by the reason of man, the Saracen khalifs had ordered all the Syrian images to be destroyed. Amid the derision of the Arab soldiery and the tears of the terror-stricken worshippers, these orders were remorselessly carried into effect, except in some cases where the temptation of an enormous ransom induced the avengers of the unity of God to swerve from their duty. Thus the piece of linen cloth on which it was feigned that our Saviour had impressed his countenance, and which was the palladium of Edessa, was carried off by the victors at the capture of that town, and subsequently sold to Constantinople at the profitable price of twelve thousand pounds of silver. This picture, and also some other celebrated ones, it was said, possessed the property of multiplying themselves by contact with other surfaces, as in modern times we multiply photographs. Such were the celebrated images "made without hands."

It was currently asserted that the immediate origin of Iconoclasm was due to the Khalif Yezed, who had completed the destruction of the Syrian images, and to two Jews, who stimulated Leo the Isaurian to his task. However that may be, Leo published an edict, A.D. 726, prohibiting the worship of images. This was followed by another directing their destruction, and the whitewashing of the walls of churches ornamented with them. Hereupon the clergy and the monks rebelled; the emperor was denounced as a Mohammedan and a Jew. He ordered that a statue of the Saviour in that part of the city called Chalcopratia should be removed, and a riot was the consequence. One of his officers mounted a ladder and struck the idol with an axe upon its face; it was an incident like that enacted centuries before in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria. The sacred image, which had often arrested the course of Nature and worked many miracles, was now found to be unable to protect or to avenge its own honour. A rabble of women interfered in its behalf; they threw down the The monks sustain it. ladder and killed the officer; nor was the riot ended until the troops were called in and a great massacre perpetrated. The monks spread the sedition in all parts of the empire; they even attempted to proclaim a new emperor. Leo was everywhere denounced as a Mohammedan infidel, an enemy of the Mother of God; but with inflexible resolution he persisted in his determination as long as he lived.

His son and successor, Constantine, pursued the same iconoclastic policy. From the circumstance of his accidentally defiling the font at which he was being baptized, he had received the suggestive name of Copronymus. His subsequent career was asserted by the monks to have been foreshadowed by his sacrilegious beginnings. It was publicly asserted that he was an atheist. In truth, his biography, in many respects, proves that the higher classes in Constantinople were largely infected with infidelity. The patriarch deposed upon oath that Copronymus had made the most irreligious confessions to him, as that our Saviour, far from being the Son of God, was, in his opinion, a mere man, born of his mother in the common way. The truth of these accusations was perhaps, in a measure, sustained by the revenge that the emperor took on the patriarch for his indiscreet revelations. He seized him, put out his eyes, caused him to be led through the city mounted on an ass, with his face to the tail, and then, as if to show his unutterable contempt for all religion, with an exquisite malice, appointed him to his office again.

If such was the religious condition of the emperor, the higher clergy were but little better. A council was summoned by Constantine, A.D. 754, at Constantinople, which was attended by 388 bishops. It asserted for itself the position of the seventh general council. It unanimously decreed that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, are blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship is a corruption of Christianity and a renewed form of paganism; it directed all statues and paintings to be removed from the churches and destroyed, it degraded every ecclesiastic and excommunicated every layman who should be concerned in setting them up again. It concluded its labours with prayers for the emperor who had extirpated idolatry and given peace to the Church.

But this decision was by no means quietly received. The monks rose in an uproar; some raised a clamour in their caves, some from the tops of their pillars; one, in the church of St. Mammas, insulted the emperor to his face, denouncing him as a second apostate Julian. Nor could he deliver himself from them by the scourging, strangling, and drowning of individuals. In his wrath, Copronymus, plainly discerning that it was the monks on one side and the government on the other, determined to strike at the root of the evil, and to destroy monasticism itself. He drove the holy men out of their cells and cloisters; made the consecrated virgins marry; gave up the buildings for civil uses; burnt pictures, idols, and all kinds of relics; degraded the patriarch from his office, scourged him, shaved off his eyebrows, set him for public derision in the circus in a sleeveless shirt, and then beheaded him. Already he had consecrated a eunuch in his stead. Doubtless these atrocities strengthened the bishops of Rome in their resolve to seek a protector from such a master among the barbarian kings of the West.

Constantine Copronymus was succeeded by his son, Leo the Chazar, who, during a short reign of five years, continued the iconoclastic policy. On his death his wife Irene seized the government, ostensibly in behalf of her son. This woman, pre-eminently wicked and superstitious beyond her times, undertook the restoration of images. She caused the patriarch to retire from his dignity, appointed one of her creatures, Tarasius, in his stead, and summoned another council. In this second Council of Nicea that of Constantinople was denounced as a synod of fools and atheists, the worship of images was pronounced agreeable to Scripture and reason, and in conformity to the usages and traditions of the Church.

Irene, saluted as the second Helena, and set forth by the monks as an exemplar of piety, thus accomplished the restoration of image-worship. In a few years this ambitious woman, refusing to surrender his rightful dignity to her son, caused him to be seized, and, in the porphyry chamber in which she had borne him, put out his eyes. Constantinople, long familiar with horrible crimes, was appalled at such an unnatural deed.

During the succeeding reigns to that of Leo the Armenian, matters remained without change; but that emperor resumed the policy of Leo the Isaurian. By an edict he prohibited image-worship, and banished the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had admonished him that the apostles had made images of the Saviour and the Virgin, and that there was at Rome a picture of the Transfiguration, painted by order of St. Peter. After the murder of Leo, his successor, Michael the Stammerer, showed no encouragement to either party. It was affirmed that he was given to profane jesting, was incredulous as to the resurrection of the dead, disbelieved the existence of the devil, was indifferent whether images were worshipped or not, and recommended the patriarch to bury the decrees of Constantinople and Nicea equally in Their Saracenic tastes. oblivion. His successor and son, however, observed no such impartiality. To Saracenic tastes, shown by his building a palace like that of the khalif; to a devotion for poetry, exemplified by branding some of his own stanzas on his image-worshipping enemies; to the composition of music and its singing by himself as an amateur in the choir; to mechanical knowledge, displayed by hydraulic contrivances, musical instruments, organs, automatic singing-birds sitting in golden trees, he added an abomination of monks and a determined iconoclasm. Instead of merely whitewashing the walls of the churches, he adorned them with pictures of beasts and birds. Iconoclasm had now become a struggle between the emperors and the monks.

Again, on the death of Theophilus, image-worship triumphed, and triumphed in the same manner as before. His widow, Theodora, alarmed by the monks for the safety of the soul of her husband, purchased absolution for him at the price of the restoration of images.

Such was the issue of Iconoclasm in the East. The monks proved stronger than the emperors, and, after a struggle of 120 years, the images were finally restored. In the West far more important consequences followed.

To image-worship Italy was devoutly attached. When the first edict of Leo was made known by the exarch, it produced a rebellion, of which Pope Gregory II. took advantage to suspend the tribute paid by Italy. In letters that he wrote to the emperor he defended the popular delusion, declaring that the first Christians had caused pictures to be made of our Lord, of his brother James, of Stephen, and all the martyrs, and had sent them throughout the world; the reason that God the Father had not been painted was that his countenance was not known. These letters display a most It is sustained by the pope, audacious presumption of the ignorance of the emperor respecting common Scripture incidents, and, as some have remarked, suggest a doubt of the pope's familiarity with the sacred volume. He points out the difference between the statues of antiquity, which are only the representations of phantoms, and the images of the Church, which have approved themselves, by numberless miracles, to be the genuine forms of the Saviour, his mother, and his saints. Referring to the statue of St. Peter, which the emperor had ordered to be broken to pieces, he declares that the Western nations regard that apostle as a god upon earth, and ominously threatens the vengeance of the pious barbarians if it should be destroyed. In this defence of images Gregory found an active coadjutor in a Syrian, John of Damascus, who had witnessed the rage of the khalifs against the images of his own country, and whose hand, having been cut off by those tyrants, had been miraculously rejoined to his body by an idol of the Virgin to which he prayed.

But Gregory was not alone in his policy, nor John of Damascus in his controversies. The King of the Lombards, Luitprand, also perceived the advantage of putting himself forth as the protector of images, and of appealing to the Italians, for their sake, to expel the Greeks from the country. The pope acted on the principle that heresy in a sovereign justifies withdrawal of allegiance, the Lombard that it excuses the seizure of possessions. Luitprand accordingly ventured on the capture of Ravenna. An immense booty, the accumulation of the emperors, the Gothic kings, and the exarchs, which was taken at the storming of the town, at once rewarded his piety, stimulated him to new enterprises of a like nature, and drew upon him the attention of his enemy the emperor, whom he had plundered, and of his confederate the pope, whom he had overreached.

This was the position of affairs. If the Lombards, who were Arians, and therefore heretics, should succeed in extending their sway all over Italy, the influence and prosperity of the papacy must come to an end; their action on the question of the images was altogether of an ephemeral and delusive kind, for all the northern nations preferred a simple worship like that of primitive times, and had never shown any attachment to the adoration of graven forms. If, on the other hand, the pope should continue his allegiance to Constantinople, he must be liable to the atrocious persecutions so often and so recently inflicted on the patriarchs of that city by their tyrannical master; and the breaking of that connexion in reality involved no surrender of any solid advantages, for The Saracens dominate in the Mediterranean. the emperor was too weak to give protection from the Lombards. Already had been experienced a portentous difficulty in sending relief from Constantinople, on account of the naval superiority of the Saracens in the Mediterranean. For the taxes paid to the sovereign no real equivalent was received; but Rome, in ignominy, was obliged to submit, like an obscure provincial town, to the mandates of the Eastern court. Moreover, in her eyes, the emperor, by reason of his iconoclasm, was a heretic. But if alliance with the Lombards and allegiance to the Greeks were Causes of the alliance of the popes and the Franks. equally inexpedient, a third course was possible. A mayor of the palace of the Frankish kings had successfully led his armies against the Arabs from Spain, and had gained the great victory of Tours. If the Franks, under the influence of their climate or the genius of their race, had thus far shown no encouragement to images, in all other respects they were orthodox, for they had been converted by Catholic missionaries; their kings, it was true, were mere phantoms, but Charles Martel had proved himself a great soldier; he was, therefore, an ambitious man. There was Scripture authority for raising a subordinate to sovereign power; the prophets of Israel had thus, of old, with oil anointed kings. And if the sword of France was gently removed from the kingly hand that was too weak to hold it, and given to the hero who had already shown that he could smite terribly with it—if this were done by the authority of the pope, acting as the representative of God, how great the gain to the papacy! A thousand years might not be enough to separate the monarchy of France from the theocracy of Italy.

The resistance which had sprung up to the imperial edict for the destruction of images determined the course of events. The pope rebelled, and attempts were made by the emperor to seize or assassinate him. A fear that the pontiff might be carried to Constantinople, and the preparations making to destroy the images in the churches, united all Italy. A council was held at Rome, which anathematized the Iconoclasts. In retaliation, the Sicilian and other estates of the Church were confiscated. Gregory III., who in the meantime succeeded to the papacy, continued the policy of his predecessor. The emperor was defied. A fleet, fitted out by him in support of the exarch, was lost in a storm. With this termination of the influence of Constantinople in Italy came the imminent danger that the pope must acknowledge the supremacy of the Lombards. In his distress Gregory Alliance of the pope and the Franks. turned to Charles Martel. He sent him the keys of the sepulchre of St. Peter, and implored his assistance. The die was cast. Papal Rome revolted from her sovereign, and became indissolubly bound to the barbarian kingdoms. To France a new dynasty was given, to the pope temporal power, and to the west of Europe a fictitious Roman empire.

The monks had thus overcome the image-breaking emperors, a result which proves them to have already become a formidable power in the state. It is necessary, for a proper understanding of the great events with which henceforth they were connected, to describe their origin and history.