PART 11. be engaged by mild and gentle proceedings to CENT. VIII. abandon this superstitious practice, he had recourse to the coercive influence of penal laws. XIII. A cup of poison, administered by the im- Under Irene. pious counsel of a perfidious spouse, deprived Leo IV. of his life, A. D. 780, and rendered the idolatrous cause of images triumphant. The profligate Irene, after having thus accomplished the death of her husband, held the reins of empire during the minority of her son Constantine; and to establish her authority on more solid foundations, entered into an alliance with Adrian, bishop of Rome, a. D. 786, and summoned a council at Nice in Bythinia, which is known by the title of the second nicene council. In this assembly the imperial laws concerning the new idolatry were abrogated, the decrees of the council of Constantinople reversed, the worship of images and of the cross restored, and severe punishments denounced against such as maintained that God was the only object of religious adoration. It is impossible to imagine any thing more ridiculous and trifling than the arguments upon which the bishops, assembled in this council, founded their decrees. The authority however of these decrees was held sacred by the Romans, and the Greeks considered in the light of parricides and traitors all such as refused to submit to them. The other enormities of the flagitious Irene and her deserved fate, cannot with propriety be treated of here. W XIV. In these violent contests, the most of the Latins, such as the Britons, Germans, and Gauls, seemed to steer a middle way between the opposite tenets of the contending parties. They were of opinion that images might be lawfully preserved, and even placed in the churches, but at the same w Mart. Chemnitius, Examen Concilii Tridentini, part iv. loc. ii. cap. v. p. 52. Lenfant, Preservatif contre la Reunion avec le Siege de la Rome, part iii. lettre xyii. p. 446. 'The council of Francfort. PART 11 CENT. VIIL time they looked upon all worship of them as highly injurious and offensive to the Supreme Being.* Such particularly were the sentiments of Charlemagne, who distinguished himself in this important controversy. By the advice of the French bishops who were no friends to this second council of Nice, he ordered some learned and judicious divine to compose Four Books concerning images, which he sent, in the year 790, to Adrian, the Roman pontiff, with a view to engage him to withdraw his approbation of the decrees of that council. In this performance the reasons alleged by the nicene bishops to justify the worship of images, are refuted with great accuracy and spirit." They were not however left without defence; Adrian, who was afraid of acknowledging even an emperor for his master, composed an answer to the Four Books mentioned above, but neither his arguments, nor his authority, were sufficient to support the superstition he endeavoured to maintain; for, in the year 794, Charlemagne assembled, at Francfort on the Maine, a council of three hundred bishops, in order to re-examine this important question; in * The aversion the Britons had to the worship of images may be seen in Spelman ad Concilia Magne Britanniæ, tom. i. p. 73. y The books of Charlemagne concerning images, which deserve an attentive perusal, are yet extant; and when they were become extremely scarce, were republished at Hanover, in 8vo. in 1731, by the ce ebrated Christopher. Aug. Heuman, who enriched this edition with a learned preface. These books are adorned with the venerable name of Charlemagne; but it is easy to perceive that they are the production of a scholastic divine, and not of an emperor. Several learned men have conjectured, that Charlemagne composed these books with the assistance of his preceptor Alcuin; see Heumanni Præf. p. 51, and Bunau Historia Imperii German, tom. i. p. 490. This conjecture, though far from being contemptible, cannot be admitted without hesitation; since Alcuin was in England when these books were composed. We learn from the history of his life, that he went into England, a. D. 789, and did not retura from thence before 792, PART II. which the opinion contained in the Four Books CENT. VIII. was solemnly confirmed, and the worship of images unanimously condemned. From hence we may conclude, that in this century the Latins deemed it neither impious, nor unlawful, to dissent from the opinion of the Roman pontiff, and even to charge that prelate with error. a versy about of the Holy Ghost. xv. While the controversy concerning images was at its height, a new contest arose among the The contro Latins and Greeks about the source from whence the derivation the Holy Ghost proceeded. The Latins affirmed, that this divine spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son; the Greeks, on the contrary, asserted, that it proceeded from the Father only. The origin of this controversy is covered with perplexity and doubt. It is however certain, that it was agitated in the council of Gentilli, near Paris, A. D. 767, in presence of the emperor's legates, and from this we may conclude, with a high degree of probability, that it arose in Greece at that time when the contest about images was carried on with the greatest vehemence. In this controversy the Latins alleged, in favour of their opinion, the creed of Constantinople, which the Spaniards and French had successively corrupted, upon what occasion is not well known, by adding the word filioque in that part of it which contained the doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost. The Greeks, on the other hand, made loud complaints of this criminal attempt of the Latins to corrupt by a manifest interpolation, a creed which served as a rule of doctrine for the church universal, and declared this attempt impudent and sacrilegious. Thus the dis This event is treated with a degree of candour not more laudable See Le Cointe Annales Eccles Francorum, tom. v. p. 698. PARTI 1. CENT. VIII. pute changed at length its object, and was transferred from the matter to the interpolated word abovementioned; in the following century it was carried on with still greater vehemence, and added new fuel to the dissensions which already portend. ed a schism between the eastern and western churches.c b Learned men generally imagine that this controversy began about the word filioque, which some of the Latins had added to the creed that had been drawn up by the council of Constantinople, and that from the word the dispute proceeded to the doctrine itself; see Mabillon, Act. Sanctor. Ord. Bened. Sæc. iv. part i. Præf. p. iv. who is followed by many in this opinion. But this opinion is certainly erroneous. The doctrine was the first subject of controversy, which afterward extended to the word filioque, considered by the Greeks as a manifest interpolation. Among other proofs of this, the council of Gentilli shows evidently, that the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit had been, for a considerable time, the subject of controversy, when the dispute arose about the word now mentioned. Pagi, in his Critica in Baronium, tom. iii. p. 323, is of opinion, that this controversy had both its date and its occasion from the dispute concerning images; for when the Latins treated the Greeks as heretics, on account of their opposition to image worship, the Greeks, in their turn, charged the Latins also with heresy, on account of their maintaining that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son. The learned critic has however advanced this opinion without sufficient proof, and we must therefore consider it as no more than a probable conjecture. • See Pithoei Hist. controv. de processione Spiritus S. at the end of his Codex Canon. Eccles, Roman, p. 355. Le Quien, Oriens Christian. tom. iii. p. 354. Ger. J. Vossius, De Tribus Symbolis, Diss. iii. p. 65 ; and above all, Jo. Georg. Walchius, Histor. Controv. de Processione Spiritus S. published in 8vo. at Jena, in 1751. CHAPTER IV. CONCERNING THE RITES AND CEREMONIES USED IN THE CHURCH PART II. L. THE religion of this century consisted almost CENT. VIII, entirely in a motley round of external rites and ceremonies. We are not therefore to wonder that Ceremonies multiplied. more zeal and diligence were employed in multiplying and regulating these outward marks of a superstitious devotion, than in correcting the vices and follies of men, in enlightening their understandings, and forming their hearts. The administration of the sacrament of the Lord's supper, which was deemed the most solemn and important branch of divine worship, was now every where embellished, or rather deformed, with a variety of senseless fopperies, which destroyed the beautiful simplicity of that affecting and salutary institution. We also find manifest traces in this century, of that superstitious custom of celebrating what were called solitary masses, though it be difficult to decide whether they were instituted by a public law, d Solitary or private masses were those that were celebrated by the priest alone in behalf of souls detained in purgatory, as well as upon some other particular occasions. These masses were prohibited by the laws of the church, but they were a rich source of profit to the clergy. They were condemned by the canons of a synod assembled at Metz under Charlemagne, as criminal innovations, and as the fruits of avarice and sloth. |