The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

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HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Edward Gibbon, Esq.

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Vol. 5

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.

Part I.

Introduction, Worship, And Persecution Of Images. - Revolt
Of Italy And Rome. - Temporal Dominion Of The Popes. - Conquest
Of Italy By The Franks. - Establishment Of Images. - Character
And Coronation Of Charlemagne. - Restoration And Decay Of The
Roman Empire In The West. - Independence Of Italy. - Constitution
Of The Germanic Body.

In the connection of the church and state, I have considered
the former as subservient only, and relative, to the latter; a
salutary maxim, if in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever
been held sacred. The Oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the
dark abyss of predestination and grace, and the strange
transformation of the Eucharist from the sign to the substance of
Christ's body, ^1 I have purposely abandoned to the curiosity of
speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence and
pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which the
decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected,
the propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic
church, the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the
mysterious controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation.
At the head of this class, we may justly rank the worship of
images, so fiercely disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries;
since a question of popular superstition produced the revolt of
Italy, the temporal power of the popes, and the restoration of
the Roman empire in the West.

[Footnote 1: The learned Selden has given the history of
transubstantiation in a comprehensive and pithy sentence: "This
opinion is only rhetoric turned into logic," (his Works, vol.
iii. p. 2037, in his Table-Talk.)]

The primitive Christians were possessed with an
unconquerable repugnance to the use and abuse of images; and this
aversion may be ascribed to their descent from the Jews, and
their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic law had severely
proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that precept was
firmly established in the principles and practice of the chosen
people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against
the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their
own hands; the images of brass and marble, which, had they been
endowed with sense and motion, should have started rather from
the pedestal to adore the creative powers of the artist. ^2
Perhaps some recent and imperfect converts of the Gnostic tribe
might crown the statues of Christ and St. Paul with the profane
honors which they paid to those of Aristotle and Pythagoras; ^3
but the public religion of the Catholics was uniformly simple and
spiritual; and the first notice of the use of pictures is in the
censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred years after
the Christian aera. Under the successors of Constantine, in the
peace and luxury of the triumphant church, the more prudent
bishops condescended to indulge a visible superstition, for the
benefit of the multitude; and, after the ruin of Paganism, they
were no longer restrained by the apprehension of an odious
parallel. The first introduction of a symbolic worship was in
the veneration of the cross, and of relics. The saints and
martyrs, whose intercession was implored, were seated on the
right hand if God; but the gracious and often supernatural
favors, which, in the popular belief, were showered round their
tomb, conveyed an unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims,
who visited, and touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, the
memorials of their merits and sufferings. ^4 But a memorial, more
interesting than the skull or the sandals of a departed worthy,
is the faithful copy of his person and features, delineated by
the arts of painting or sculpture. In every age, such copies, so
congenial to human feelings, have been cherished by the zeal of
private friendship, or public esteem: the images of the Roman
emperors were adored with civil, and almost religious, honors; a
reverence less ostentatious, but more sincere, was applied to the
statues of sages and patriots; and these profane virtues, these
splendid sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men, who
had died for their celestial and everlasting country. At first,
the experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the
venerable pictures were discreetly allowed to instruct the
ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to gratify the prejudices of
the heathen proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression,
the honors of the original were transferred to the copy: the
devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint; and the
Pagan rites of genuflection, luminaries, and incense, again stole
into the Catholic church. The scruples of reason, or piety, were
silenced by the strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the
pictures which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a
divine energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of
religious adoration. The most audacious pencil might tremble in
the rash attempt of defining, by forms and colors, the infinite
Spirit, the eternal Father, who pervades and sustains the
universe. ^5 But the superstitious mind was more easily
reconciled to paint and to worship the angels, and, above all,
the Son of God, under the human shape, which, on earth, they have
condescended to assume. The second person of the Trinity had
been clothed with a real and mortal body; but that body had
ascended into heaven: and, had not some similitude been presented
to the eyes of his disciples, the spiritual worship of Christ
might have been obliterated by the visible relics and
representations of the saints. A similar indulgence was
requisite and propitious for the Virgin Mary: the place of her
burial was unknown; and the assumption of her soul and body into
heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks and Latins.
The use, and even the worship, of images was firmly established
before the end of the sixth century: they were fondly cherished
by the warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics: the Pantheon
and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of a new superstition;
but this semblance of idolatry was more coldly entertained by the
rude Barbarians and the Arian clergy of the West. The bolder
forms of sculpture, in brass or marble, which peopled the temples
of antiquity, were offensive to the fancy or conscience of the
Christian Greeks: and a smooth surface of colors has ever been
esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of imitation. ^6

[Footnote 2: Nec intelligunt homines ineptissimi, quod si sentire
simulacra et moveri possent, adoratura hominem fuissent a quo
sunt expolita. (Divin. Institut. l. ii. c. 2.) Lactantius is the
last, as well as the most eloquent, of the Latin apologists.
Their raillery of idols attacks not only the object, but the form
and matter.]

[Footnote 3: See Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Augustin, (Basnage,
Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. p. 1313.) This Gnostic
practice has a singular affinity with the private worship of
Alexander Severus, (Lampridius, c. 29. Lardner, Heathen
Testimonies, vol. iii. p. 34.)]

[Footnote 4: See this History, vol. ii. p. 261; vol. ii. p. 434;
vol. iii. p. 158 - 163.]

[Footnote 5: (Concilium Nicenum, ii. in Collect. Labb. tom. viii.
p. 1025, edit. Venet.) Il seroit peut-etre a-propos de ne point
souffrir d'images de la Trinite ou de la Divinite; les defenseurs
les plus zeles des images ayant condamne celles-ci, et le concile
de Trente ne parlant que des images de Jesus Christ et des
Saints, (Dupin, Bibliot. Eccles. tom. vi. p. 154.)]

[Footnote 6: This general history of images is drawn from the
xxiid book of the Hist. des Eglises Reformees of Basnage, tom.
ii. p. 1310 - 1337. He was a Protestant, but of a manly spirit;
and on this head the Protestants are so notoriously in the right,
that they can venture to be impartial. See the perplexity of poor
Friar Pagi, Critica, tom. i. p. 42.]

The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance
with the original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of
the genuine features of the Son of God, his mother, and his
apostles: the statue of Christ at Paneas in Palestine ^7 was more
probably that of some temporal savior; the Gnostics and their
profane monuments were reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian
artists could only be guided by the clandestine imitation of some
heathen model. In this distress, a bold and dexterous invention
assured at once the likeness of the image and the innocence of
the worship. A new super structure of fable was raised on the
popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of Christ
and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly
deserted by our modern advocates. The bishop of Caesarea ^8
records the epistle, ^9 but he most strangely forgets the picture
of Christ; ^10 the perfect impression of his face on a linen,
with which he gratified the faith of the royal stranger who had
invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city of Edessa
to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The ignorance of
the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the
image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of
five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and
seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and
most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the
arms of Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge
of the divine promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a
foreign enemy. It is true, indeed, that the text of Procopius
ascribes the double deliverance of Edessa to the wealth and valor
of her citizens, who purchased the absence and repelled the
assaults of the Persian monarch. He was ignorant, the profane
historian, of the testimony which he is compelled to deliver in
the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium was
exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been
sprinkled on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel
to the flames of the besieged. After this important service, the
image of Edessa was preserved with respect and gratitude; and if
the Armenians rejected the legend, the more credulous Greeks
adored the similitude, which was not the work of any mortal
pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine original. The
style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how far
their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. "How can
we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial
splendor the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who
dwells in heaven, condescends this day to visit us by his
venerable image; He who is seated on the cherubim, visits us this
day by a picture, which the Father has delineated with his
immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and
which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love." Before the
end of the sixth century, these images, made without hands, (in
Greek it is a single word, ^11) were propagated in the camps and
cities of the Eastern empire: ^12 they were the objects of
worship, and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of
danger or tumult, their venerable presence could revive the hope,
rekindle the courage, or repress the fury, of the Roman legions.
Of these pictures, the far greater part, the transcripts of a
human pencil, could only pretend to a secondary likeness and
improper title: but there were some of higher descent, who
derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with the
original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miraculous and
prolific virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a
fraternal relation with the image of Edessa; and such is the
veronica of Rome, or Spain, or Jerusalem, which Christ in his
agony and bloody sweat applied to his face, and delivered to a
holy matron. The fruitful precedent was speedily transferred to
the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs. In the church of
Diospolis, in Palestine, the features of the Mother of God ^13
were deeply inscribed in a marble column; the East and West have
been decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the Evangelist, who
was perhaps a physician, has been forced to exercise the
occupation of a painter, so profane and odious in the eyes of the
primitive Christians. The Olympian Jove, created by the muse of
Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a philosophic mind
with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were faintly
and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy
of taste and genius. ^14

[Footnote 7: After removing some rubbish of miracle and
inconsistency, it may be allowed, that as late as the year 300,
Paneas in Palestine was decorated with a bronze statue,
representing a grave personage wrapped in a cloak, with a
grateful or suppliant female kneeling before him, and that an
inscription was perhaps inscribed on the pedestal. By the
Christians, this group was foolishly explained of their founder
and the poor woman whom he had cured of the bloody flux, (Euseb.
vii. 18, Philostorg. vii. 3, &c.) M. de Beausobre more reasonably
conjectures the philosopher Apollonius, or the emperor Vespasian:
in the latter supposition, the female is a city, a province, or
perhaps the queen Berenice, (Bibliotheque Germanique, tom. xiii.
p. 1 - 92.)]

[Footnote 8: Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. i. c. 13. The learned
Assemannus has brought up the collateral aid of three Syrians,
St. Ephrem, Josua Stylites, and James bishop of Sarug; but I do
not find any notice of the Syriac original or the archives of
Edessa, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 318, 420, 554;) their vague
belief is probably derived from the Greeks.]

[Footnote 9: The evidence for these epistles is stated and
rejected by the candid Lardner, (Heathen Testimonies, vol. i. p.
297 - 309.) Among the herd of bigots who are forcibly driven from
this convenient, but untenable, post, I am ashamed, with the
Grabes, Caves, Tillemonts, &c., to discover Mr. Addison, an
English gentleman, (his Works, vol. i. p. 528, Baskerville's
edition;) but his superficial tract on the Christian religion
owes its credit to his name, his style, and the interested
applause of our clergy.]

[Footnote 10: From the silence of James of Sarug, (Asseman.
Bibliot. Orient. p. 289, 318,) and the testimony of Evagrius,
(Hist. Eccles. l. iv. c. 27,) I conclude that this fable was
invented between the years 521 and 594, most probably after the
siege of Edessa in 540, (Asseman. tom. i. p. 416. Procopius, de
Bell. Persic. l. ii.) It is the sword and buckler of, Gregory
II., (in Epist. i. ad. Leon. Isaur. Concil. tom. viii. p. 656,
657,) of John Damascenus, (Opera, tom. i. p. 281, edit. Lequien,)
and of the second Nicene Council, (Actio v. p. 1030.) The most
perfect edition may be found in Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 175 -
178.)]

[Footnote 11: See Ducange, in Gloss. Graec. et Lat. The subject
is treated with equal learning and bigotry by the Jesuit Gretser,
(Syntagma de Imaginibus non Manu factis, ad calcem Codini de
Officiis, p. 289 - 330,) the ass, or rather the fox, of
Ingoldstadt, (see the Scaligerana;) with equal reason and wit by
the Protestant Beausobre, in the ironical controversy which he
has spread through many volumes of the Bibliotheque Germanique,
(tom. xviii. p. 1 - 50, xx. p. 27 - 68, xxv. p. 1 - 36, xxvii. p.
85 - 118, xxviii. p. 1 - 33, xxxi. p. 111 - 148, xxxii. p. 75 -
107, xxxiv. p. 67 - 96.)]

[Footnote 12: Theophylact Simocatta (l. ii. c. 3, p. 34, l. iii.
c. 1, p. 63) celebrates it; yet it was no more than a copy, since
he adds (of Edessa). See Pagi, tom. ii. A.D. 588 No. 11.]

[Footnote 13: See, in the genuine or supposed works of John
Damascenus, two passages on the Virgin and St. Luke, which have
not been noticed by Gretser, nor consequently by Beausobre,
(Opera Joh. Damascen. tom. i. p. 618, 631.)]

[Footnote 14: "Your scandalous figures stand quite out from the
canvass: they are as bad as a group of statues!" It was thus that
the ignorance and bigotry of a Greek priest applauded the
pictures of Titian, which he had ordered, and refused to accept.]

The worship of images had stolen into the church by
insensible degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the
superstitious mind, as productive of comfort, and innocent of
sin. But in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full
magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous Greeks were awakened by
an apprehension, that under the mask of Christianity, they had
restored the religion of their fathers: they heard, with grief
and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant charge of
the Jews and Mahometans, ^15 who derived from the Law and the
Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative
worship. The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal, and
depreciate their authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who
reigned at Damascus, and threatened Constantinople, cast into the
scale of reproach the accumulated weight of truth and victory.
The cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt had been fortified with
the images of Christ, his mother, and his saints; and each city
presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous defence. In a rapid
conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those cities and these
images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts pronounced a
decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of these
mute and inanimate idols. ^* For a while Edessa had braved the
Persian assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was
involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became
the slave and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three
hundred years, the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of
Constantinople, for a ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver,
the redemption of two hundred Mussulmans, and a perpetual truce
for the territory of Edessa. ^16 In this season of distress and
dismay, the eloquence of the monks was exercised in the defence
of images; and they attempted to prove, that the sin and schism
of the greatest part of the Orientals had forfeited the favor,
and annihilated the virtue, of these precious symbols. But they
were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational
Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and
of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of
the church. As the worship of images had never been established
by any general or positive law, its progress in the Eastern
empire had been retarded, or accelerated, by the differences of
men and manners, the local degrees of refinement, and the
personal characters of the bishops. The splendid devotion was
fondly cherished by the levity of the capital, and the inventive
genius of the Byzantine clergy; while the rude and remote
districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred
luxury. Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians
maintained, after their conversion, the simple worship which had
preceded their separation; and the Armenians, the most warlike
subjects of Rome, were not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to
the sight of images. ^17 These various denominations of men
afforded a fund of prejudice and aversion, of small account in
the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune of
a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be often connected with
the powers of the church and state.

[Footnote 15: By Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the
origin of the Aconoclcasts is imprinted to the caliph Yezid and
two Jews, who promised the empire to Leo; and the reproaches of
these hostile sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy for
restoring the purity of the Christian worship, (see Spanheim,
Hist. Imag. c. 2.)]

[Footnote *: Yezid, ninth caliph of the race of the Ommiadae,
caused all the images in Syria to be destroyed about the year
719; hence the orthodox reproaches the sectaries with following
the example of the Saracens and the Jews Fragm. Mon. Johan.
Jerosylym. Script. Byzant. vol. xvi. p. 235. Hist. des Repub.
Ital. par M. Sismondi, vol. i. p. 126. - G.]

[Footnote 16: See Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 267,)
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 201,) and Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p.
264,), and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iii. A.D. 944.) The
prudent Franciscan refuses to determine whether the image of
Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa; but its repose is
inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is no longer
famous or fashionable.]

[Footnote 17: (Nicetas, l. ii. p. 258.) The Armenian churches are
still content with the Cross, (Missions du Levant, tom. iii. p.
148;) but surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the
superstition of the Germans of the xiith century.]

Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo
the Third, ^18 who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the
throne of the East. He was ignorant of sacred and profane
letters; but his education, his reason, perhaps his intercourse
with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with a
hatred of images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to
impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But
in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and
danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before
the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with
the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the
reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and
cautious: he assembled a great council of senators and bishops,
and enacted, with their consent, that all the images should be
removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the
churches where they might be visible to the eyes, and
inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it was
impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse
impulse of veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position,
the sacred images still edified their votaries, and reproached
the tyrant. He was himself provoked by resistance and invective;
and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his
duty, and urged for his imitation the example of the Jewish king,
who had broken without scruple the brazen serpent of the temple.
By a second edict, he proscribed the existence as well as the use
of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople and the
provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the
Virgin, and the saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of
plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of
the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six
emperors, and the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict
of one hundred and twenty years. It was the design of Leo the
Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images as an article of
faith, and by the authority of a general council: but the
convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son
Constantine; ^19 and though it is stigmatized by triumphant
bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and
mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The
debates and decrees of many provincial synods introduced the
summons of the general council which met in the suburbs of
Constantinople, and was composed of the respectable number of
three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia;
for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were the slaves of
the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the churches of
Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This
Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh
general council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six
preceding assemblies, which had laboriously built the structure
of the Catholic faith. After a serious deliberation of six
months, the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops pronounced and
subscribed a unanimous decree, that all visible symbols of
Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either blasphemous or
heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of Christianity
and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry
should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to
deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of
disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor.
In their loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits
of their temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they
intrusted the execution of their spiritual censures. At
Constantinople, as in the former councils, the will of the prince
was the rule of episcopal faith; but on this occasion, I am
inclined to suspect that a large majority of the prelates
sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of hope and
fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had
wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel: nor was it
easy for them to discern the clew, and tread back the mazes, of
the labyrinth. The worship of images was inseparably blended, at
least to a pious fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints
and their relics; the holy ground was involved in a cloud of
miracles and visions; and the nerves of the mind, curiosity and
scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of obedience and belief.
Constantine himself is accused of indulging a royal license to
doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the Catholics, ^20 but
they were deeply inscribed in the public and private creed of his
bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast might assault with a secret
horror the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated
to the honor of his celestial patrons. In the reformation of the
sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the
faculties of man: the thirst of innovation superseded the
reverence of antiquity; and the vigor of Europe could disdain
those phantoms which terrified the sickly and servile weakness of
the Greeks.