Feast of St. Pius V - "The Cardinal of God"

S A I N T    P I U S    V

In 1563, Pope Pius IV, on the anniversary of his Coronation, gave a great banquet to the Cardinals and ambassadors who had come to congratulate him. As they were rising from table the Holy Father declared his intention of raising to the purple Ferdinand de Medici, a boy of thirteen, and Frederic di Gonzaga, a youth of twenty. Taken by surprise, the assembled Cardinals weakly assented. … All but Cardinal Alexandrin [the future Pius V]: “Most Holy Father,” he cried earnestly, “after the Council of Trent has taken such pains to reform abuses, especially among the clergy, and to establish discipline, hitherto so miserably relaxed, what will be thought, if the Vicar of Jesus Christ ignores one of its most important decrees, that of admitting to ecclesiastical dignities only those subjects of suitable age and worth? With all humility I declare to your Holiness that I for one will not wound my conscience by subscribing to this promotion! The Church does not want children in her Councils, she wants strong men. … Let them enter Holy Orders in the usual way, and with their birth and gifts it will surely not be long before they become Cardinals! Your Holiness must also permit me to say that this banquet is not a Consistory, at which alone such claims can be properly decided!”

This electrifying speech, no less remarkable for its courage than its sterling common sense, so impressed those present that the Cardinal of St. Angelo said afterwards: “I would have given all I possessed to have had the courage to speak like that!” The Pope, though startled, was not angry, but the negotiations were too far advanced for him to withdraw, and shortly after the two boys were created Cardinals. When the Florentine ambassador came, as was customary, to thank Cardinal Alexandrin [the future Pius V] for having with his fellows opened the Sacred College to his master, the intrepid answered: “Do not thank me! The promotion was absolutely against my desires! On the contrary, I opposed it with all my might, not out of hostility to the Medici family, but because my conscience would not allow me to approve of a child of thirteen becoming a Cardinal.” The father of the young Prince, when these words were repeated to him, instead of showing anger, exclaimed: “Cardinal Alexandrin [the future Pius V] is in very truth a Cardinal of God!”

Shield given to Juan of Austria by Pius V for the Battle of Lepanto

He exhorted to justice and holiness all grades of magistrates and rulers, and personally supervised their appointment. Numerous were the laws he made for the improvement of public morals —men and women of bad character, and Jewish usurers, being remorselessly banished— and for purity of life. Some of these laws, which sound curious to modern ears, were directed against innkeepers (who were forbidden to sell drink to their fellow citizens at what were houses of entertainment only for travelers and strangers); against brigands, wreckers, and pirates. ... The measures taken against blasphemy in any form were particularly strong.

These laws, at once put into force, were eminently successful. In less than a year the aspect of affairs had changed. Even three months after the Saint’s accession a German nobleman writes of the edifying piety of the whole city of Rome during Lent, and especially in Holy Week, when the churches could not contain the penitents, who slept on the bare ground and fasted rigorously. “As long as I live I shall witness, to the shame of Satan and all his ministers, that I saw in Rome at this time the most marvelous works of penitence and piety. . . . But nothing can astonish me under such-a Pope. His fasts, his humility, his innocence, his holiness, his zeal for the faith, shine so brilliantly that he seems a second St. Leo, or St. Gregory the Great. . . . I do not hesitate to say that had Calvin himself been raised from the tomb on Easter Day, and seen the holy Pope . . . blessing his kneeling people . . . in spite of himself he would have recognized and venerated the true representative of Jesus Christ!”

The Pope’s measures for the reform of the Church were drastic. All bishops were bidden on pain of deprivation to return to their sees within one month; to live there, and to become true Fathers of their people. Seminaries were everywhere established, and at Fribourg a great college. The Decrees of the Council of Trent were to be rigorously observed by all grades of clergy. The most severe laws were passed against the detestable practice of simony. In France, great benefices and even bishoprics were actually held by women, who received all revenues, and paid an ecclesiastic to perform all necessary functions. This terrible state of things was sternly swept away. Strict regulations were made for all religious houses; perpetual enclosure being enjoined upon all convents of nuns, “except in cases of fire, leprosy, or pestilence.” The recital of the Divine Office was strictly enforced in every church, and the strongest measures were taken against irreverence in church. Conversations of any kind, whispering, jokes and laughter were sternly prohibited, as offending Almighty God in the Blessed Sacrament, and most severely punished, in the first instance by a heavy fine; in the second, by prison or exile. Priests, sacristans and officials were charged to enforce this decree. The crowds of beggars which assembled within the churches were no longer allowed to pass beyond the porch, except to pray.

 

If sinners trembled, the saints were jubilant as they witnessed the edifying example of Pius V and the purifying of civic life in the papal domain. They saw in him the patriarchal majesty of the Hebrew prophets from whose penetrating eyes no sins could be hid. Like the old Biblical seers, he inveighed against wickedness in high places; and men of good will recognized in him the Sword of Saint Michael, his namesake and protector, who should “drive into hell Satan and the other evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.” In him, the Church Militant had once again found a leader. God had raised him up for no other purpose. That he was a saint was evident as he went about doing good, washing the feet of the poor, embracing lepers, and visiting the afflicted.

When he died, he was sixty-six years of age and had filled Peter’s Chair with unfailing trust and patience and rigorous discipline for six years, seven months, and twenty-three days. He had fought the heresy of Luther and all its multitudinous off-shoots, the apostasy of England, the recalcitrance of France, the lethargy of Maximilian II, and the laxity of Sigismund Augustus of Poland. The seeds of missionary labor he planted have never ceased to bring forth abundant harvest for the Church. With holy zeal Pius V had dared to beard the Turk in his own lair on the sea. He broke the power of the Ottoman tyrants. He freed Christian slaves. He had, in fact, accomplished the impossible. For no matter how much acclaim Colonna and Don Juan received for their splendid exploits, nor what glory Venier, Doria, and Barbarigo had justly won, it was the indomitable will of Pius V that, in the face of a mountain of opposition, had made all these brave men’s achievements possible! Truly a great statesman and a mighty pontiff departed this earth when Pius V died!

“The great triumph of Lepanto,” says a French writer, “would alone have immortalized St. Pius V.” Its importance will be better realized when it is remembered the Turk had never hitherto been conquered by sea. “The Battle of Lepanto arrested for ever the danger of Mohammedan invasion in the South of Europe.” And Lepanto had been won by prayer! That he was a saint was conceded even by his enemies. It needed only the Church’s official recognition to proclaim his sainthood. … when this valiant soldier of Jesus Christ finally sheathed the sword of Saint Michael which he had wielded so gallantly all his life in defense of Christendom, he might well have uttered the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the Faith.”

Indulgences

THE PROFIT OF INDULGENCES

 

The question of Indulgences — their meaning, their value — suffers from a two-fold disadvantage. To those outside the Church probably no Catholic dogma is responsible for so much misunderstanding, the fruitful source of a theological hatred that it would be hard to equal. The very name “indulgence” conjures up to the Protestant imagination dark spectres of the past — Tetzel selling barefaced licenses to commit, absolutions to pardon, every sin; the wealthy salving their consciences by strips of parchment purchased by their gold; the poor handing over their little all, with the credulity of superstition, to the greedy vendors of spiritual wares, in the fond hope that Heaven’s gates will open to their happy possessors; Luther, in “words that are half-battles,” denouncing this hellish traffic in pardons that drowned men’s souls in perdition, as he nailed to the church door at Wittenberg his thesis of defiance against a power that professed to forgive sins without repentance of the sinner or amendment of his life, and damned men’s souls while it promised to save them.

But even among Catholics, who know better than to be led astray by such distorted phantoms of the imagination, there is a tendency to put in the background, at least of thought, if not of devotional life, the whole subject of indulgences as an abstruse and almost esoteric part of the Christian belief, with little practical bearing on the everyday life of the soul. We have before now come across converts who told us that their instructors had assured them that, provided they gave their assent to the teaching of the Church of God on that particular point, they need not trouble their heads further about it. To all intents and purposes, it was relegated to an academic atmosphere, remote from the living circle of the great dogmas that mould the Catholic life from the cradle to the grave. This lack of true perspective can only arise from a want of consideration of what the Church actually teaches as regards indulgences. The difficulties that at first sight seem to enshroud the dogma with an impenetrable gloom, disappear almost imperceptibly when its real meaning and spiritual importance become apparent. For, in truth, no doctrine perhaps is more luminous in its bearing upon Catholic belief and conduct than that which links the Church of the twentieth century with the Church of the third and fourth centuries by an identical formula. 

If it is the proud boast of the Catholic and Roman Church that she is semper eadem — teaching today what she taught at the beginning — an identity of type characterizing her doctrine (all development being from within, like the increase in stature of a growing child); this note of sameness is nowhere more prominent than in the doctrine, so much misunderstood and withal so fiercely attacked, of indulgences. The name itself should be sufficient to prove this; it brings us back to the early days of the Church’s history, when persecution tried the faith of her children, and discipline in reconciling the lapsed was correspondingly severe. Here is a confessor in prison, awaiting death for the love he bore to Christ — a love stronger than the ties of life; here is a poor sinner, perchance one who had been regarded as a light for his holiness, perchance a priest of the altar, who through cowardice had burnt a few grains of incense before a statue of the Emperor, and thereby perjured his soul. Remorse seizes him; he can have no peace until he has been reconciled to God and restored to the communion of the Church, which he had forfeited by his sin. What, then, does he do? He knows that he will have to undergo a lengthy penance before the Church will receive him, and he dreads the probation and the disgrace. So he goes to the holy confessor bound with chains in his dreary dungeon, and prays him to intercede in his stead, giving him a letter to present to the bishop in which to ask him, for the sake of his imprisonment and approaching death — in other words, through the application of his merits — to remove in whole or in part the canonical penalty which was the Church’s equivalent for the temporal punishment due to his sin of apostasy. And the bishop recognized the confessor’s plea, and, as the representative of the whole Christian Society, readmitted the penitent to the privileges of communion, without making him undergo the long months or years of penitential humiliation.

There we have in a nutshell the full doctrine of indulgences. The Communion of Saints; the belief that what one member of the body does is shared by all the other members, or, as St. Paul expresses it, “If one member glory, all the members rejoice with it;”  the application, by virtue of that vital fellowship, of the merits, whether of the Head, Christ Jesus, or of His saints (for the confessor in his dungeon, or the martyr burning in the cruel flame, could have no merit apart from the Lord, to whom they were united by the joints and bands of divine grace), to the penitent sinner for the remission of the temporal punishment due to his sin, represented by the canonical penance, whose only raison d’etre was the Church’s conviction that by it the temporal penalty could be expiated; these three elements of an indulgence were as much present in the days of Tertullian and St. Cyprian in the third century, as in those of Leo XIII in the twentieth. For by an indulgence the Church teaches to-day the identical doctrine that she taught then. She claims now, as in the days of persecution, the power of remitting, in whole or in part, the debt of temporal punishment for sin (or its substitute in the canonical penalty imposed by the Church in satisfaction to God), that survives after its guilt and eternal punishment have been forgiven; — and this by the application of the merits of Christ and His saints. Even at the present day, after some 1600 years, the Catholic Church uses the same language in her indulgences. When we read of 100 days’, 200 days’, 300 days’ indulgence, our memory is perforce recalled to the time when canonical penance, lasting for various lengths of time, was wont to be exacted from the excommunicated seeking reconciliation. The indulgence corresponds to the canonical penance, being substituted for it even in the amount of the temporal chastisement which is remitted by it.

But the doctrine of indulgences is not only a support to faith, in that it is a striking witness to the purity of the Catholic faith, which remains unchanged, in spite of all the fluctuations of time; it has also a distinct place of importance in the spiritual life of conflict against temptation and sin. As defined by theologians, an indulgence is declared to be “the remission of temporal punishment still due from the sinner after the guilt of his sin has been washed away, — which remission is binding at the tribunal of God in heaven, since its force lies in the application of the treasure of the Church made by a lawful superior.” To understand fully the spiritual benefits conferred by an indulgence it is necessary to consider the precise meaning of that “temporal,” or non-eternal, “punishment” which is cancelled by the application of the merits stored in the treasure-house of the Catholic Church.

 

Every sin committed has a two-fold effect: it stains the soul with guilt, and it leaves behind it a severe penalty of pain. It need scarcely be said that an indulgence is only concerned with the latter consequence. The stain of crime cannot be washed away by anything short of the Blood of Jesus Christ: it needed the death of God to destroy the mark of sin stamped on the sinner’s soul. No indulgence can purge the foulness of the smallest sin. The sinner must find peace through the way of penitence, by the strength of an abiding contrition. An indulgence is valueless unless its recipient is united by grace to Christ, from whom the merits on which it rests flow to every member of His Body. It is only granted to those who are already reconciled to God — the stain of their sin washed away, their souls purified, by the cleansing waters of Baptism, by the fire of perfect contrition, or by the application of the Precious Blood in the Sacrament of Penance. 

It is true that sometimes in ancient forms of indulgences we find reference made to the forgiveness of sins, e.g., “Concedimus indulgentiam omnium peccatorum;” “Relaxamus tertiam partem peccatorum;” “Absolvimus a culpa et a poena,” etc. But in the first place, it must be remembered that we have Scriptural authority for including the punishment due to sin under the general term “sin,” as, e. g., in I Peter 2 : 24, “Who (Himself) bore our sins in His body upon the tree;” — so that the true meaning of the words in question is, “We relax or grant indulgence for the whole temporal punishment still to be expiated for sins committed and pardoned ... or for its third part.” In the second place, if, as we have seen, sacramental confession is the usual prerequisite condition for an indulgence to be gained, it is plain that both the culpa and the poena — the guilt and the pain of sin — are remitted by indulgences: the one indirectly by previous confession and absolution (or by an act of contrition), the other directly by the bestowal of the indulgence. 

But apart altogether from the blot of guilt that stains the immaculate purity of the soul, each sin entails a penalty, rivets a fetter of pain upon the sinner, which he has to bear in order to satisfy the just demands of the outraged majesty of God. The guilt, the crime, the culpa of sin is not touched by the grant of any indulgence, however great; but the punishment, the temporal effect of sin still remaining to be expiated, after the sin itself has been forgiven and its eternal punishment escaped, — this secondary consequence can be remitted wholly or partially by the officers of Christ’s Church — the Supreme Pontiff (the successor of him to whom the promise was made, “Whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven”) and the bishops throughout the world in communion with him who can echo the words of St. Paul, “What we have pardoned for your sakes we have done it in the person of Christ.”

This temporal punishment which survives the forgiveness of the actual sin is manifold. It comprises such effects of transgression as loss of money, of friends, of one’s good name; disease of body, failure of mental power, remorse of soul, destroying, like a canker worm, all happiness and peace. It enters even into the sphere of the after-life. Punishment unexpiated here has to be undergone in purgatory, where the “penal waters” finally obliterate the last traces of sinful rebellion. But more terrible, because spiritual in their consequences, than these obvious results of sin, are the evil habits contracted, the links of the long chain of evil influences, that weigh down and hold back the penitent, as he tries painfully to rise after his sad and disgraceful fall. Each separate act of sin tends to make resistance to the temptation more difficult. The habit formed does not vanish with the forgiven sin; it abides with us as a reminder of our ingratitude, a mute witness to the awful sanctity of God whose law we have so lightly set at naught. 

This branch of temporal punishment is often lost sight of, although its bearing on the spiritual profit of indulgences makes it of the utmost importance. An indulgence is too often regarded as a mechanical balancing of the books, so that the credit side of the soul's account with God may equal the debit, whereas it positively aids us in our struggle against sin. It only needs for us to look into ourselves to realize the fact of the advantage to be gained by a greater or less freedom from the thralldom of evil memories, evil propensities, which sinful actions inevitably bear in their train as by a natural law. The guilt of our sin has been destroyed; the absolving words said over us, and we have felt to the centre of our being that we have been truly forgiven by God. And yet in spite of this, we are sadly conscious that our life is different from what it was before we sinned. Sin has thrown its bewitching glamor around us, and once having yielded to its fatal charm we find it hard to resist when it allures us a second time. 

Experience corroborates this truth. Can the sensualist who has for years given over his body to every lustful disordered passion, turn over a new leaf at once in spite of his weakened body, enfeebled mind, perverted will, and live in innocent purity as in the far-off days of his happy childhood? Can the besotted drunkard, who has tasted the delights of wild confused pleasure, be the same man after he has signed the pledge as he was before he first yielded to the temptation, and drank to his ruin the fruit of the grape? 

We know that such is not the case. As we have sown, so do we reap. Each sin bears its fruit as surely as the tree its blossoms. The evil habits contracted in youth, of carelessness, sloth, self-indulgence, undisciplined speech, unbridled desire — habits that increase in our riper years — are hardly broken. Our sins may be blotted out, but their chastisement remains. We carry ever about with us a diseased imagination, a knowledge of evil, penetrating our every thought, from which we cannot shake ourselves free. The weight of the heavy chains of evil habit and inclination, forged by us so tightly when we sinned, bows us down to this lower earth, keeping us back from spiritual progress. 

It is to destroy this secondary effect of sin, this accumulation of evil habits, this temporal penalty in its many ramifications, that indulgences are granted us by the Church. The sinner must pay the debt of punishment, or another must pay it in his stead. In the Catholic Church, as in some palace of kings, there is a treasury wherein is contained wealth, infinite, inexhaustible — even the satisfactions of Christ and the super-abounding merits of His saints. This boundless sea of satisfaction can be applied to individual members of the Body of Christ, because they are His members — bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh — and the power and virtue flowing from the Head reaches to each least part of the organism vitally united to Him. And this application of indulgences cancels the debt, unloosens the bands of the sinner’s pain, and sets him free from the captivity of evil. The evil habit that cloaks the soul, driving out the air and sunshine of every holy impulse; the heavy chain that clanks drearily as the sinner tries to enter the house of peace; the searching punishment that falls with heavy weight upon his shoulders; the temporal misfortunes that God’s sanctity demands in reparation for repeated acts of rebellion — all are set aside by the gracious act of the Redeemer Who from the Cross granted the first indulgence to the penitent thief: “Today shalt thou, freed by My royal word from every bond of sin, today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.” 

Thus, an indulgence is of real advantage to the soul. If it is no relic of a far-distant past, possessing only an antiquarian interest, but an important witness to the identity of the Catholic Faith of the twentieth century with that of the primitive age, it is doubly true that besides its evidential value, it is of solid profit to us in the spiritual life of toil and battle. Each indulgence that we gain releases us from the effects of sin — effects that hinder us in our struggles against evil —, strengthens our resolutions, and brings us nearer to God. We cannot see here the full extent of the benefits thereby conferred upon us. We can only know from inward experience how the seductions of sin become less powerful, the influence of evil habit decreases, the sad memories of past falls fade away, presaging the glad day when, through the virtue of indulgences powerful even beyond the veil, we enter the gates of the City of everlasting peace.

W. R. Carson.

Shefford, England

 Taken from The Dolphin, Vol. 1, 1902

Saint John Mary Vianney

“The reputation of sanctity which surrounds the name of M. Vianney makes all commendation superfluous. A common consent seems to have numbered him, even while living, among the servants of God… It would seem as if God were dealing with us now as He dealt with the world in the beginning of the Gospel.

 

To the corrupt intellectual refinement of Greece and Rome, He opposed the illiterate sanctity of the Apostles; to the spiritual miseries of this age He opposes the simplicity of a man who in learning hardly complied with the conditions required for Holy Orders, but, like the B. John Colombini and St. Francis of Assisi, drew the souls of men to him by the irresistible power of a supernatural life. It is a wholesome rebuke to the intellectual pride of this age, inflated by science, that God has chosen from the midst of the learned, as His instrument of surpassing works of grace upon the hearts of men, one of the least cultivated of the pastors of His Church.” ~Abbé Monnin

 

“You cannot begin to speak of St. John Mary Vianney without automatically calling to mind the picture of a priest who was outstanding in a unique way in voluntary affliction of his body; his only motives were the love of God and the desire for the salvation of the souls of his neighbors, and this led him to abstain almost completely from food and from sleep, to carry out the harshest kinds of penances, and to deny himself with great strength of soul. Of course, not all of the faithful are expected to adopt this kind of life; and yet divine providence has seen to it that there has never been a time when the Church did not have some pastors of souls of this kind who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, did not hesitate for a moment to enter on this path, most of all because this way of life is particularly successful in bringing many men who have been drawn away by the allurement of error and vice back to the path of good living.” ~John XXIII

 

 

 

“In a word, the one great truth taught us by the whole history of the Curé of Ars is the all-sufficiency of supernatural sanctity. A soul inhabited by the Holy Ghost becomes His instrument and His organ in the salvation of men. To such a sanctity the smallness of natural gifts is no hindrance, and the greatest intellectual power without it does little in the order of grace; for souls are to be won to God, as God created and redeemed them – by love and by compassion; and it was this which shone forth with a surpassing splendor in all the life of this great servant of Jesus, and concealed even the wonderful gifts of discernment and supernatural power with which he was endowed.” ~Abbé Monnin

 

 

 

 

 

“The Spirit of God had been pleased to engrave on the heart of this holy priest all that he was to know and to teach to others; and it was the more deeply engraved, as that heart was the more pure, the more detached, and empty of the vain science of men; like a clean and polished block of marble, ready for the tool of the sculptor. The faith of the Curé of Ars was his whole science; his book was Our Lord Jesus Christ. He sought for wisdom nowhere but in Jesus Christ, in His death and in His cross. To him no other wisdom was true, no other wisdom useful.” ~Abbé Monnin

 

 

 

Iconoclasm by Fr. Adrian Fortescue -- Part III

 

Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): Iconoclasm

For Part II

For Part I

IV. ICONOCLASM IN THE WEST

 

There was an echo of these troubles in the Frankish kingdom, chiefly through misunderstanding of the meaning of Greek expressions used by the Second Council of Nicaea. As early as 767, Constantine V had tried to secure the sympathy of the Frankish bishops for his campaign against images this time without success. A synod at Gentilly sent a declaration to Pope Paul I (757-67) which quite satisfied him. The trouble began when Adrian I (772-95) sent a very imperfect translation of the Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea to Charles the Great (Charlemagne, 768-8l4). The errors of this Latin version are obvious from the quotations made from it by the Frankish bishops. For instance, in the third session of the council Constantine, Bishop of Constantia, in Cyprus had said: “I receive the holy and venerable images; and I give worship which is according to real adoration [kata latreian] only to the consubstantial and life-giving Trinity” (Mansi, XII, 1148). This phrase had been translated: “I receive the holy and venerable images with the adoration which I give to the consubstantial and life- giving Trinity” (“Libri Carolini”, III, 17, P. L. XCVIII, 1148). There were other reasons why these Frankish bishops objected to the decrees of the council. Their people had only just been converted from idolatry, and so they were suspicious of anything that might seem like a return to it. Germans knew nothing of Byzantine elaborate forms of respect; prostrations, kisses, incense and such signs that Greeks used constantly towards their emperors, even towards the emperor’s statues, and therefore applied naturally to holy pictures, seemed to these Franks servile, degrading, even idolatrous.   The Franks say the word proskynesis (which meant worship only in the sense of reverence and veneration) translated to adoratio and understood it as meaning the homage due only to God. Lastly, there was their indignation against the political conduct of the Empress Irene, the state of friction that led to the coronation of Charlemagne at Rome and the establishment of a rival empire. Suspicion of everything done by the Greeks, dislike of all their customs, led to the rejection of the council, but did not mean that the Frankish bishops and Charlemagne sided with the Iconoclasts. If they refused to accept the Nicene Council, they equally rejected the Iconoclast synod of 754. They had holy images and kept them: but they thought that the Fathers of Nicaea had gone too far, had encouraged what would be real idolatry.

The answer to the decrees of the second Council of Nicaea sent in this faulty translation by Adrian I was a refutation in eighty-five chapters brought to the pope in 790 by a Frankish abbot, Angilbert. This refutation later expanded and fortified with quotations from the fathers and other arguments became the famous “Libri Carolini” or “Capitulare de Imaginibus” in which Charlemagne is represented as declaring his convictions (first published at Paris by Jean du Tillet, Bishop of St-Brieux, 1549, in P. L. XCVIII, 990-1248). The authenticity of this work, sometime disputed, is now established. In it, the bishops reject the synods both of 787 and of 754. They admit that pictures of saints should be kept as ornaments in churches and as well as relics and the saints themselves should receive a certain proper veneration (opportuna veneratio); but they declare that God only can receive adoration (meaning adoratio, proskynesis); pictures are in themselves indifferent, have no necessary connexion with the Faith, are in any case inferior to relics, the Cross, and the Bible.

The pope, in 794, answered these eighty-five chapters by a long exposition and defence of the cult of images (Hadriani ep. ad Carol. Reg., P. L., XCVIII, 1247-92), in which he mentions, among other points, that twelve Frankish bishops were present at, and had agreed to, the Roman synod of 731. Before the letter arrived the Frankish bishop; held the synod of Frankfort (794) in the presence of two papal legates, Theophylactus and Stephen, who do not seem to have done anything to clear up the misunderstanding. This Synod formally condemns the Second Council of Nicaea, showing, at the same time, that it altogether misunderstands the decision of Nicaea. The essence of the decree at Frankfort is its second canon: “A question has been brought forward concerning the next synod of the Greeks which they held at Constantinople [the Franks do not even know where the synod they condemn was held] in connexion with the adoration of images, in which synod it was written that those who do not give service and adoration to pictures of saints just as much as to the Divine Trinity are to be anathematized. But our most holy Fathers whose names are above, refusing this adoration and serve despise and condemn that synod.” Charlemagne sent these Acts to Rome and demanded the condemnation of Irene and Constantine VI. The pope of course refused to do so, and matters remained for a time as they were, the second Council of Nicaea being rejected in the Frankish Kingdom.

During the second iconoclastic persecution, in 824, the Emperor Michael II wrote to Louis the Pious the letter which, besides demanding that the Byzantine monks who had escaped to the West should be handed over to him, entered into the whole question of image-worship at length and contained vehement accusations against its defenders. Part of the letter is quoted in Leclercq-Hefele, “Histoire des conciles”, III, 1, p. 612. Louis begged the pope (Eugene II, 824-27) to receive a document to be drawn up by the Frankish bishops in which texts of the Fathers bearing on the subject should be collected. Eugene agreed, and the bishops met in 825 at Paris. This meeting followed the example of the Synod of Frankfort exactly. The bishops try to propose a middle way, but decidedly lean toward the Iconoclasts. They produce some texts against these, many more against image-worship. Pictures may be tolerated only as mere ornaments. Adrian I is blamed for his assent to Nicaea II. Two bishops, Jeremias of Sens and Jonas of Orléns, are sent to Rome with this document; they are especially warned to treat the pope with every possible reverence and humility, and to efface any passages that might offend him. Louis, also, wrote to the pope, protesting that he only proposed to help him with some useful quotations in his discussions with the Byzantine Court; that he had no idea of dictating to the Holy See (Hefele, 1. c.). Nothing is known of Eugene’s answer or of the further developments of this incident. The correspondence about images continued for some time between the Holy See and the Frankish Church; gradually the decrees of the second Council of Nicaea were accepted throughout the Western Empire. Pope John VIII (872-82) sent a better translation of the Acts of the council, which helped very much to remove misunderstanding.

There are a few more isolated cases of Iconoclasm in the West. Claudius, Bishop of Turin (d. 840), in 824 destroyed all pictures and crosses in his diocese forbade pilgrimages, recourse to intercession of saints, veneration of relics, even lighted candles, except for practical purposes. Many bishops of the empire and a Frankish abbot, Theodomir, wrote against him (P. L. CV); he was condemned by a local synod. Agobard of Lyons at the same time thought that no external signs of reverence should be paid to images; but he had few followers. Walafrid Strabo (“De. eccles. rerum exordiis et incrementis” in P. L., CXIV, 916-66) and Hincmar of Reims (“Opusc. c. Hincmarum Lauden.”, xx, in P. L. CXXVI) defended the Catholic practice and contributed to put an end to the exceptional principles of Frankish bishops. But as late as the eleventh century Bishop Jocelin of Bordeaux still had Iconoclast ideas for which he was severely reprimanded by Pope Alexander II.

 

~ADRIAN FORTESCUE

Iconoclasm by Fr. Adrian Fortescue -- Part II

For Part III
For Part I

Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): Iconoclasm

II. THE SECOND GENERAL COUNCIL (NICEA II, 787)

 

The Empress Irene was regent for her son Constantine VI (780-97), who was nine years old when his father died. She immediately set about undoing the work of the Iconoclast emperors. Pictures and relics were restored to the churches; monasteries were reopened. Fear of the army, now fanatically Iconoclast, kept her for a time from repealing the laws; but she only waited for an opportunity to do so and to restore the broken communion with Rome and the other patriarchates. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Paul IV, resigned and retired to a monastery, giving openly as his reason repentance for his former concessions to the Iconoclast Government. He was succeeded by a pronounced image-worshipper, Tarasius. Tarasius and the empress now opened negotiations with Rome. They sent an embassy to Pope Adrian I (772-95) acknowledging the primacy and begging him to come himself, or at least to send legates to a council that should undo the work of the Iconoclast synod of 754. The pope answered by two letters, one for the empress and one for the patriarch. In these, he repeats the arguments for the worship of images, agrees to the proposed council, insists on the authority of the Holy See, and demands the restitution of the property confiscated by Leo III. He blames the sudden elevation of Tarasius (who from being a layman had suddenly become patriarch), and rejects his title of Ecumenical Patriarch, but he praises his orthodoxy and zeal for the holy images. Finally, he commits all these matters to the judgment of his legates. These legates were an archpriest Peter and the abbot Peter of St. Saba near Rome. The other three patriarchs were unable to answer, they did not even receive Tarasius’s letters because of the disturbance at that time in the Moslem state. But two monks, Thomas (abbot of an Egyptian monastery) and John (Syncellus of Antioch), appeared with letters from their communities explaining the state of things and showing that the patriarchs had always remained faithful to the images. These two seem to have acted in some sort as legates for Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.

Tarasius opened the synod in the church of the Apostles at Constantinople in August of 786; but it was at once dispersed by the Iconoclast soldiers. The empress disbanded those troops and replaced them by others; it was arranged that the synod should meet at Nicaea in Bithynia, the place of the first general council. The bishops met here in the summer of 787, about 300 in number. The council lasted from 24 September to 23 October. The Roman legates were present; they signed the Acts first and always had the first place in the list of members, but Tarasius conducted the proceeding, apparently because the legates could not speak Greek. In the first three sessions Tarasius gave an account of the events that had led up to the Council, the papal and other letters were read out, and many repentant Iconoclast bishops were reconciled. The fathers accepted the pope’s letters as true formulas of the Catholic Faith. Tarasius, when he read the letters, left out the passages about the restitution of the confiscated papal properties, the reproaches against his own sudden elevation and use of the title Ecumenical Patriarch, and modified (but not essentially) the assertions of the primacy.

The fourth session established the reasons for which the use of holy images is lawful, quoting from the Old Testament passages about images in the temple (Ex., xxv, 18-22; Num., vii, 89; Ezech., xli, 18-19; Hebr., ix, 5), and also citing a great number of the Fathers. Euthymius of Sardes at the end of the session read a profession of faith in this sense. In the fifth session Tarasius explained that Iconoclasm came from Jews, Saracens, and heretics; some Iconoclast misquotations were exposed, their books burnt, and an icon set up in the hall in the midst of the fathers. The sixth session was occupied with the Iconoclast synod of 754; its claim to be a general council was denied, because neither the pope nor the three other patriarchs had a share in it. The decree of that synod was refuted clause by clause. The seventh session drew up the symbol (horos) of the council, in which, after repeating the Nicene Creed and renewing the condemnation of all manner of former heretics, from Arians to Monothelites, the fathers make their definition. Images are to receive veneration (proskynesis), not adoration (latreia); the honour paid to them is only relative (schetike), for the sake of their prototype (for the text of this, the essential definition of the council, see IMAGES, VENERATION OF). Anathemas are pronounced against the Iconoclast leaders; Germanus, John Damascene, and George of Cyprus are praised. In opposition to the formula of the Iconoclast synod, the fathers declare: “The Trinity has made these three glorious” (he Trias tous treis edoxasen). A deputation was sent to the empress with the Acts of the synod; a letter to the clergy of Constantinople acquainted them with its decision. Twenty-two canons were drawn up, of which these are the chief:

 

·       canons 1 and 2 confirm the canons of all former general councils;

·       canon 3 forbids the appointment of ecclesiastical persons by the State; only bishops may elect other bishops;

·       canons 4 and 5 are against simony;

·       canon 6 insists on yearly provincial synods;

·       canon 7 forbids bishops, under penalty of deposition, to consecrate churches without relics;

·       canon 10 forbids priests to change their parishes without their bishops consent;

·       canon 13 commands all desecrated monasteries to be restored;

·       canons 18-20 regulate abuses in monasteries.

 

An eighth and last session was held on 23 October at Constantinople in the presence of Irene and her son. After a discourse by Tarasius, the Acts were read out and signed by all, including the empress and the emperor. The synod was closed with the usual Polychronia or formal acclamation, and Epiphanius, a deacon of Catania in Sicily, preached a sermon to the assembled fathers. Tarasius sent to Pope Adrian an account of all that had happened, and Adrian approved the Acts (letter to Charles the Great) and had them translated into Latin. But the question of the property of the Holy See in Southern Italy and the friendship of the pope towards the Franks still caused hard feeling between East and West; moreover an Iconoclast party still existed at Constantinople, especially in the army.

 

III. THE SECOND ICONOCLAST PERSECUTION

 

Twenty-seven years after the Synod of Nicaea, Iconoclasm broke out again. Again, the holy pictures were destroyed, and their defenders fiercely persecuted. For twenty-eight years, the former story was repeated with wonderful exactness. The places of Leo III, Constantine V, and Leo IV are taken by a new line of Iconoclast emperors — Leo V, Michael II, Theophilus. Pope Paschal I acts just as did Gregory II, the faithful Patriarch Nicephorus stands for Germanus I, St. John Damascene lives again in St. Theodore the Studite. Again, one synod rejects icons, and another, following it, defends them. Again, an empress, regent for her young son, puts an end to the storm and restores the old custom — this time finally.

The origin of this second outbreak is not far to seek. There had remained, especially in the army, a considerable Iconoclast party. Constantine V, their hero had been a valiant and successful general against the Moslems, Michael I (811-13), who kept the Faith of the Second Council of Nicaea, was singularly unfortunate in his attempt to defend the empire. The Iconoclasts looked back regretfully to the glorious campaigns of his predecessor, they evolved the amazing conception of Constantine as a saint, they went in pilgrimage to his grave and cried out to him: “Arise, come back, and save the perishing empire”. When Michael I, in June 813, was utterly defeated by the Bulgars and fled to his capital, the soldiers forced him to resign his crown and set up one of the generals, Leo the Armenian (Leo V, 813-20), in his place. An officer (Theodotus Cassiteras) and a monk (the Abbot John Grammaticus) persuaded the new emperor that all the misfortunes of the empire were a judgment of God on the idolatry of image-worship. Leo, once persuaded, used all his power to put down the icons, and so all the trouble began again.

In 814, the Iconoclasts assembled at the palace and prepared an elaborate attack against images, repeating almost exactly the arguments of the synod of 754. The Patriarch of Constantinople was Nicephorus I (806-15), who became one of the chief defenders of images in this second persecution. The emperor invited him to a discussion of the question with the Iconoclasts; he refused since it had been already settled by the Seventh General Council. The work of demolishing images began again. The picture of Christ restored by Irene over the iron door of the palace was again removed. In 815, the patriarch was summoned to the emperor’s presence. He came surrounded by bishops, abbots, and monks, and held a long discussion with Leo and his Iconoclast followers. In the same year, the emperor summoned a synod of bishops, who, obeying his orders, deposed the patriarch and elected Theodotus Cassiteras (Theodotus I, 815-21) to succeed him. Nicephorus was banished across the Bosporus. Till his death in 829, he defended the cause of the images by controversial writings (the “Lesser Apology”, “Antirrhetikoi”, “Greater Apology”, etc. in P. G., C, 201-850; Pitra, “Spicileg. Solesm.”, I, 302-503; IV, 233, 380), wrote a history of his own time (Historia syntomos, P. G., C, 876-994) and a general chronography from Adam (chronographikon syntomon, in P. G., C, 995-1060). Among the monks who accompanied Nicephorus to the emperor’s presence in 815 was Theodore, Abbot of the Studium monastery at Constantinople (d. 826).

Throughout this second Iconoclast persecution, St. Theodore (Theodorus Studita) was the leader of the faithful monks, the chief defender of the icons. He comforted and encouraged Nicephorus in his resistance to the emperor, was three times banished by the Government, wrote a great number of treatises controversial letters, and apologies in various forms for the images. His chief point is that Iconoclasts are Christological heretics, since they deny an essential element of Christ’s human nature, namely, that it can be represented graphically. This amounts to a denial of its reality and material quality, whereby Iconoclasts revive the old Monophysite heresy. Ehrhard judges St. Theodore to be “perhaps the most ingenious [der scharfsinnigste] of the defenders of the cult of images” (in Krumbacher's “Byz. Litt.” p. 150). In any case, his position can be rivalled only by that of St. John Damascene. (See his work in P. G., XCIX; for an account of them see Krumbacher, op. cit., 147-151, 712-715; his life by a contemporary monk, P. G., XCIX, 9 sq.) His feast is on 11 Nov. in the Byzantine Rite, 12 Nov. in the Roman Martyrology.

The first thing the new patriarch Theodotus did was to hold a synod which condemned the council of 787 (the Second Nicene) and declared its adherence to that of 754. Bishops, abbots, clergy, and even officers of the Government who would not accept its decree were deposed, banished, tortured. Theodore of Studium refused communion with the Iconoclast patriarch, and went into exile. A number of persons of all ranks were put to death at this time, and his references; pictures of all kinds were destroyed everywhere. Theodore appealed to the pope (Paschal I, 817-824) in the name of the persecuted Eastern image-worshippers. At the same time Theodotus the Iconoclast patriarch, sent legates to Rome, who were, however not admitted by the pope, since Theodotus was a schismatical intruder in the see of which Nicephorus was still lawful bishop. But Paschal received the monks sent by Theodoret and gave up the monastery of St. Praxedes to them and others who had fled from the persecution in the East. In 818, the pope sent legates to the emperor with a letter defending the icons and once more refuting the Iconoclast accusation of idolatry. In this letter, he insists chiefly on our need of exterior signs for invisible things: sacraments, words, the sign of the Cross, and all tangible signs of this kind; how, then, can people who admit these reject images? (The fragment of this letter that has been preserved is published in Pitra, “Spicileg. Solesm.”. II, p. xi sq.).

The letter did not have any effect on the emperor; but it is from this time especially that the Catholics in the East turn with more loyalty than ever to Rome as their leader, their last refuge in the persecution. The well-known texts of St. Theodore in which he defends the primacy in the strongest possible language — e. g., “Whatever novelty is brought into the Church by those who wander from the truth must certainly be referred to Peter or to his successor ... Save us, chief pastor of the Church under heaven” (Ep. i, 33, P. G.., XCIX, 1018); “Arrange that a decision be received from old Rome as the custom has been handed down from the beginning by the tradition of our fathers” (Ep. ii, 36; ibid., 1331 —were written during this persecution).

The protestations of loyalty to old Rome made by the Orthodox and Catholic Christians of the Byzantine Church at the time are her last witness immediately before the Great Schism. There were then two separate parties in the East having no communion with each other: the Iconoclast persecutors under the emperor with their anti-patriarch Theodotus, and the Catholics led by Theodore the Studite acknowledging the lawful patriarch Nicephorus and above him the distant Latin bishop who was to them the “chief pastor of the Church under heaven”. On Christmas Day, 820, Leo V ended his tyrannical reign by being murdered in a palace revolution that set up one of his generals, Michael II (the Stammerer, 820-29) as emperor. Michael was also an Iconoclast and continued his predecessor’s policy, though at first he was anxious not to persecute but to conciliate every one. But he changed nothing of the Iconoclast law and when Theodotus the anti-patriarch died (821) he refused to restore Nicephorus and set up another usurper, Antony, formerly Bishop of Sylaeum (Antony I, 321-32).

In 822, a certain general of Slav race, Thomas, set up a dangerous revolution with the help of the Arabs. It does not seem that this revolution had anything to do with the question of images. Thomas represented rather the party of the murdered emperor, Leo V. But after it was put down, in 824, Michael became much more severe towards the image-worshippers. A great number of monks fled to the West, and Michael wrote a famous letter full of bitter accusations of their idolatry to his rival Louis the Pious (814-20) to persuade him to hand over these exiles to Byzantine justice (in Manse, XIV, 417-22). Other Catholics who had not escaped were imprisoned and tortured, among whom were Methodius of Syracuse and Euthymius, Metropolitan of Sardes. The deaths of St. Theodore the Studite (11 Nov., 826) and of the lawful patriarch Nicephorus (2 June, 828) were a great loss to the orthodox at this time. Michael’s son and successor, Theophilus, (829-42), continued the persecution still more fiercely. A monk, Lazarus, was scourged till he nearly died; another monk, Methodius, was shut up in prison with common ruffians for seven years; Michael, Syncellus of Jerusalem, and Joseph, a famous writer of hymns, were tortured. The two brothers Theophanes and Theodore were scourged with 200 strokes and branded in the face with hot irons as idolaters (Martyrol. Rom., 27 December). By this time, all images had been removed from the churches and public places, the prisons were filled with their defenders, the faithful Catholics were reduced to a sect hiding about the empire, and a crowd of exiles in the West. But the emperor’s wife, Theodora, and her mother, Theoctista, were faithful to the Second Nicene Synod and waited for better times.

Those times came as soon as Theophilus died (20 January, 842). He left a son, three years old, Michael III (the Drunkard, who lived to cause the Great Schism of Photius, 842-67), and the regent was Michael’s mother, Theodora. Like Irene at the end of the first persecution, Theodora at once began to change the situation. She opened the prisons, let out the confessors who were shut up for defending images, and recalled the exiles. For a time she hesitated to revoke the Iconoclast laws, but soon she made up her mind and everything was brought back to the conditions of the Second Council of Nicea. The patriarch John VII (832-42), who had succeeded Antony I, was given his choice between restoring the images and retiring. He preferred to retire and his place was taken by Methodius, the monk who had already suffered years of imprisonment for the cause of the icons (Methodius I, 842- 46). In the same year (842) a synod at Constantinople approved of John VII’s deposition, renewed the decree of the Second Council of Nicaea and excommunicated Iconoclasts. This is the last act in the story of this heresy.

On the first Sunday of Lent (19 February, 842) the icons were brought back to the churches in solemn procession. That day (the first Sunday of Lent) was made into a perpetual memory of the triumph of orthodoxy at the end of the long Iconoclast persecution. It is the “Feast of Orthodoxy” of the Byzantine Church still kept very solemnly by both Uniats and Orthodox. Twenty years later, the Great Schism began. So large has this, the last of the old heresies, loomed in the eyes of Eastern Christians that the Byzantine Church looks upon it as a kind of type of heresy in general that the Feast of Orthodoxy, founded to commemorate the defeat of Iconoclasm, has become a feast of the triumph of the Church over all heresies. It is in this sense that it is now kept. The great Synodikon read out on that day anathematizes all heretics (in Russia, rebels and nihilists also) among whom the Iconoclasts appear only as one fraction of a large and varied class. After the restoration of the icons in 842, there still remained an Iconoclast party in the East, but it never again got the ear of an emperor, and so gradually dwindled and eventually died out.