What occurred at the Second Council of Nicea?

Gregory died soon after, but he was succeeded by another Gregory; a man of equal zeal and wickedness, who summoned a council of bishops, at which the arrogant pretensions of his predecessor were confirmed. Ninety-three bishops and all the clergy of the city were present on this occasion and signed a decree, that, "If any person should hereafter, in contempt of the ancient and faithful customs of all Christians, and of the apostolic church in particular, stand forth as a destroyer, defamer, or blasphemer of the sacred images of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and of His mother, the immaculate ever-Virgin Mary, of the blessed apostles, and all other saints, he be excluded from the body and blood of the Lord, and from the communion of the universal church."

Roused by the insolence of this pope, Leo fitted out a fleet, and dispatched it to the coast of Italy, but it was disabled during a storm in the Adriatic and had to put back to port. Both pope and emperor died soon after in the year 741, and it might have been expected that the matter would now rest. But no. The iconoclastic views of Leo, as well as his crown, descended to his son, and the crusade against image-worship was continued with unabated vigour during his long reign of thirty-four years. The emperor who succeeded him in the year 775 was also guided by the same principles and policy, but his reign was of short duration, and, in the year 780, the reins of empire fell into the hands of his wife, the empress Irene, who held them in the name of their son* a child of ten. This was the signal for a change of policy; and the empress uniting with the pope, immediately took measures for the restoration of image-worship; a step which was warmly welcomed both by priests and people. A council was summoned at Nice (the seventh and last general council according to the Greek church), and it was resolved, that "with the venerable and life-giving cross shall be set up the venerable and holy images. . . . . The images, that is to say, of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ; of the immaculate mother of God; of the honoured angels; of all saints and holy men — these images shall be treated as holy memorials, worshipped, kissed, only without that peculiar adoration which is reserved for the Invisible, Incomprehensible God. All who shall violate this, as is asserted, immemorial tradition of the church, and endeavour, forcibly or by craft, to remove any image, if ecclesiastics, are to be deposed and excommunicated; if monks or laymen, to be excommunicated." A curse was afterwards pronounced on all who refused obedience to this blasphemous decree, and the assembled clergy exclaimed with one voice, "Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema on all who communicate with them who do not worship images. Everlasting glory to the orthodox Romans, to John of Damascus! to Gregory of Rome everlasting glory! Everlasting glory to all the preachers of truth!" "This seventh and last council," says Dean Waddington, "established idolatry as the law of the christian church: and thus was completed the structure of oriental orthodoxy. It rose from the most solid and substantial foundation; it advanced, by the labours of a busy and unwise generation, through the mid-air and mist of metaphysics, and terminated in a still blinder age, in clear and manifest superstition."

Irene, wife to the son and heir of Constantine, an ambitious, intriguing, haughty princess, seized the government on the death of her feeble husband, in the name of her son, who was only ten years old. She dissembled for a time her designs for the restoration of images. Policy and idolatry took counsel together in her heart. She was jealous, crafty and cruel. Her history is the record of inward hatred and treachery with an outward appearance of courtesy. But we have only to do with the religious part of her reign.

The Second Council of Nicaea

Decrees were issued for a council to be held at Nicaea — a city, hallowed by the sittings of the first great council of Christendom — to decide the question of image-worship. The number of ecclesiastics present was about 350. Her chosen men took the lead; everything was, no doubt, pre-arranged. Among the preliminary acts of the council, it was debated to what class of heretics the Iconoclasts were to be ascribed. Tarasius, president of the assembly, asserted that it was worse than the worst heresy, being an absolute denial of Christ. The whole proceedings of the council were characterized by the same condemnatory tone towards the adversaries of image-worship. After assenting to the decrees of the first six councils, and to the anathemas against the heretics denounced therein, they passed — acting, as they declared, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit — the following canon:

"With the venerable and life-giving cross shall be set up the venerable and holy images, whether in colours, in mosaic work, or any other material, within the consecrated churches of God, on the sacred vessels and vestments, on the walls and on tablets, in houses and in highways. The images, that is to say, of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of the immaculate mother of God; of the honoured angels; of all saints and holy men — these images shall be treated as holy memorials, worshipped, kissed, only without that peculiar adoration which is reserved for the Invisible, Incomprehensible, God. All who shall violate this, as is asserted, immemorial tradition of the church, and endeavour, forcibly or by craft to remove any image, if ecclesiastics, are to be deposed and excommunicated; if monks or laymen, to be excommunicated."

The council was not content with this formal and solemn subscription. With one voice they broke out into a long acclamation. "We all believe, we all assert, we all subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of all the world. We who adore the Trinity worship images. Whoever do not the like, anathema upon them! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema on all who communicate with those who do not worship images.... Everlasting glory to the orthodox Romans, to John of Damascus! To Gregory of Rome, everlasting glory! Everlasting glory to all the preachers of truth!"

Surely this was all solemn trifling: but worse was to follow. The legates of Rome proposed that an image should be brought into the council and receive the adoration of the assembly. This was done the next day! They then proceeded to read the canons of the council of A.D. 754, and one by one they were said to be refuted, in words declared to be dictated by the Holy Ghost!

In conclusion it was decreed that even as the figure on the cross was honoured, so images of the Saviour and blessed Virgin, of angels and of saints, whether painted or mosaic, or any other suitable material, are to be set up for kissing and honourable reverence (proskunesin); but not for real worship (latreian) which belongs to divine nature alone. Incense and lights are to be offered to them, as to the cross, the Gospels, and other holy memorials; "forasmuch as the honour paid to the image passes on to the original, and he who adores an image, adores in it the person of him whom it represents."

This council has been admitted by both the Greeks and the Latins to be the Seventh General Council. It is to be observed that the canon refers only to pictures or flat representations, not images; and to this the Greek church has limited itself to this day.

In A.D. 741 Constantine Copronymus succeeded Leo as emperor, and he determined to call a council to settle the question of images. The see of Constantinople was then vacant, and other patriarchs of the East were now under Mahometan rule, so the emperor had to be content with a smaller council of bishops. It met on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus; 338 attended.

The council professed to rest their judgment on the authority of the Fathers, and, relying upon these, they declared all representations made for religious purposes by the art of the painter or sculptor to be presumptuous, pagan, and idolatrous. They, however, declared the lawfulness of invoking the blessed Virgin and the saints.

How strange that so many bishops could meet together on such a subject and not take scripture for their guide! This would have set them right as to invoking the saints, as well as the images. But this was in the dark ages, though, alas! the same thing is done � yea, and images restored in the age that is called enlightened!

We thus see how the worship of images was solemnly ordained in a council of the church. It is in vain that we are now told that images are not worshipped. An image was adored in the council itself, and the council itself declared that the veneration paid to an image passed to the person represented. Alas, that scripture should be thus utterly rejected, and men's thoughts set up in place thereof. We also see to how low a standard that which is called worship had fallen in those days. It could be given to a picture of our Lord, or even to one of the saints!

The reader will be interested to learn that the word chosen by the council to designate the sort of worship to be given to images is the word used in Matthew 4:10: "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." It is also used in John 4, when our Lord was speaking to the woman of Samaria. Also in Revelation 19:10: "Worship God;" and in other places.

I will now go on to the Seventh General Council, if we can find out which it is. An Emperor, Leo the Isaurian, who had long known the Arabs, and seen them despise the idolatry of Christendom, had a strong desire to reform the abuses of image worship. He issued a decree in 726, forbidding them to be worshipped, and the pictures and images were directed to be put high up, but were not ordered to be taken away; but Germanus, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and Pope Gregory II opposed vehemently; the Greeks rose in insurrection, and, advancing to Constantinople, were defeated. The Emperor now went farther, and in 730 had the images and pictures destroyed; thence tumults, murder, and reprisals by the Government. Germanus and the popes sustained their cause by appealing to the most ridiculous fables, which no one believes now, that Christ sent a miraculous picture of Himself to Abgarus, King of Edessa; insulted the Emperor in the grossest possible language; and Gregory the pope says that Uzziah profanely removed the brazen serpent which David had sanctified, and put with the ark into the temple — a confusion a child could have avoided who had read a little scripture. Hezekiah is commended for doing it. He says, where it is said, "Where the carcase is there are the eagles gathered together," the carcase meant Christ and pious Christians, living men flocking to see Him at Jerusalem, and that so strong was the impression of the figure of Christ on their minds, that at once they made portraits of Him, and carried them about to convert people with. However, he says they did not of the Father and the Holy Spirit. But now even that is done.

148 Strange to say, however, he looked for the Emperor to preside in a council. The Emperor had called, he says, for one, but where was a God-fearing Emperor to preside? However the Emperor persevered, and the new patriarch went with him. His son Constantine called a council in 754 of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of the East, and they condemned images; they called themselves a general council. This went on till one, Irene, a widow of his son, remained with a young child. She wheeled round; and now three hundred and seventy-seven bishops and the pope's legates authorized image-worship. This was at Nice in 787. There were no Western bishops, but the pope ratified it. But the West were not, after all, such image-worshippers as the pope. They held to what the great Pope Gregory had written to Serenus of Marseilles, when he had broken images there, which were then coming in, that all worship of them was wrong, but that they might be useful for the ignorant to recall the mind to those represented by them. Here then superstition had made progress, and the popes had changed with the times, but it seems the West had not.

149 In the Western empire, under Charlemagne, the Council of Nice was rejected. First of all this great founder of the new Western empire assembled his bishops, and put forth a book in his own name, in which he condemned the Council of Constantinople, which suppressed all pictures and images, and equally the Council of Nice, which allowed them to be reverenced and worshipped. He went through scripture and the Fathers, and proved that this worship and reverence was all wrong. But the Emperor's and bishops' book goes farther. Pope Adrian had sent them the decisions of the Council of Nicaea (or Nice), to which they had never been called, and they say, "We receive the Six General Councils, but we reject with contempt novelties, as also the Council held in Bithynia (that is, the so-called Seventh General Council of Nice), to authorize the worship of images, the Acts of which, destitute of style and sense, have come to us"; and then they refute seriously all that the pope had said to the Eastern Emperor. They declare that the Council of Nice is not a general one, because it was not gathered from all parts of the church, and appeal to Gregory the Great's letter to Serenus. But this work of the bishops of France and Germany, then one empire, issued in Charlemagne's name, was not all. In 794 he had a council at Frankfort-on-the-Main, at which were the pope's legates and 300 prelates of Germany, France, and Spain. This council refers to the Council of Nice as the council of the Greeks, and rejects entirely, unanimously, and with contempt its doctrine and decision. All this was sent to the pope. He replies in a long letter on the doctrines, and adds, "We have received the Council of Nice because conformed to the doctrine of St. Gregory [Gregory the Great, which it was not], fearing the Greeks might return to their error. However, we have yet given no answer to the Emperor as to the council."

63 Let us look a little into these cases, for this is the true epoch of the establishment of the doctrine by Rome. I may first mention the second Council of Constantinople of three hundred and thirty-eight prelates (Hard. Conc. 4, 367; 2nd Conc. of this Action 6) in 754. The Council was against images, but they say, "you could not bring the divine infiniteness of Christ in glory into a painted finite image," and adds, "he chose no other form under heaven or type to give the image (eikonisai) of His incarnation than the Eucharist which "He gave to His initiated (mustais) for a type and effectual remembrance … He ordained the substance of bread to be offered having no way the form of a man that idolatry might not be brought in." They call "the bread of the Eucharist" a true image (apseude eikona) of his natural flesh (phusikes sarkos). And a good deal more; but this suffices. His flippant respondent Epiphanius objects to calling it an image after it has been consecrated, saying it has never been so called; a statement so notoriously false that the Roman Catholic annotators have corrected it and cited instances in the margin.

64 The second of Nice (787) brought in images again under the influence of Irene; put down under Leo, they were set up again under Theodora his widow, and a festival established in commemoration. In England (792) and at Frankfort under Charlemagne (794), where some eight hundred prelates were assembled, the second Council of Nice was condemned. So was the doctrine in the Council of Illiberis in Spain at the same epoch, noticed here to shew the dates of these questions. Up to 824 purity as to this was maintained. In the middle of the ninth century Paschasius Radbert introduced transubstantiation in the West, as John of Damascus some few years before the Council of Constantinople (654) in the East, just a century before Radbert. Sirmondi, in a short life prefixed to Radbert's works in the Bib. Max. Pat. says (14, 353), "He first so explained the genuine sense of the Catholic church, that he opened the way to others who in numbers wrote afterwards on the same subject." And Bellarmine says he was the first author who wrote seriously and copiously concerning the verity of the body and blood of the Lord in the Eucharist.

These books boldly called in question the authority of the council, saying it was not universal. They blamed the council for listening to stories of a fabulous character, and refuted in detail all the statements put forth. Still the conclusion went no further than that the worship of images was not to be enforced: images were to be allowed and were not to be broken. A council was now called by Charlemagne, to meet at Frankfort in 794, at which, among other things, the enforced worship of images was condemned; but, as the images were not removed, it is easy to see that the clergy, where so disposed, could encourage their worship.

In the East, however, the question of the restoration of images was not finally settled, notwithstanding that the council of Nice had decided in their favour. Leo V., the Armenian, became emperor in 813, and was opposed to images. He requested the attendance of Nicephorus the patriarch to hear all he had to say in their favour. Nicephorus introduced one, Theodore, an abbot of a famous monastery, who argued that images were not merely for the unlearned, but were necessary for the most advanced Christian; and that a reverence for them was necessary for the right faith in the Incarnation; impiously adding that if images were suppressed "our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain."

Nothing convinced the emperor, and images were again broken, burnt, or covered with dirt. Many who refused to obey were banished. At Christmas, A.D. 814, the emperor went to St. Sophia's church, and all proceeded quietly until a prophecy was read in the lessons for the day from Isaiah 40 against idolatry, when one of the clergy stood forth, and told the emperor that God commanded him, by the prophet's words, to proceed against image-worship.

VII. Second Nicene Council in 787, against image breakers.

Chapter 8. The Worship of Images. � Miracles ascribed to images. � Leo the Isaurian emperor. � John of Damascus and the reported miracle of the restoration of his hand. � Constantine Copronymus emperor. � He calls a council, which condemns images. � Leo. IV. emperor opposes images, but dies soon. � His wife Irene calls a council to restore the worship of images. � Difference between worship and adoration. � An image was adored by the council. � Charlemagne opposes the worship of images. � The Caroline Books. � Leo V. the Armenian emperor opposes images amid opposition. � Michael the Stammerer, emperor. � He allows images, but not to be worshipped. � Theophilus emperor, also against images. � All countries eventually agree with Rome in the adoration of images.