BOOK IV.

FROM THE ELECTION OF GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE,

A.D. 590-814

CHAPTER VII.

THE EASTERN CHURCH — CONTROVERSIES OF CHARLERMAGNE’S AGE, A.D. 775-814.

 

 

Constantine Copronymus was succeeded in 775 by his son Leo IV, who, although opposed to the worship of images, was of gentler and more tolerant character than the earlier princes of the Isaurian line. Although the laws of the iconoclastic emperors remained unaltered, the monks who had been persecuted and banished were now allowed to return; and a great excitement was raised by the reappearance of these confessors in the cause of the popular religion. The empress, Irene, was of an Athenian family noted for its devotion to image; she herself cherished an enthusiastic reverence for them, and, although her father-in-law Constantine had compelled her to forswear them, she appears to have thought that in so sacred a cause her oath was not binding. She now exerted her influence as far as she dared, and by her means some monks and other friends of images were promoted to bishoprics, although for the time they were obliged to conceal their opinions. For notwithstanding the general mildness of Leo’s disposition, his feeling on the subject of images was strong; so that, when some of them had been found under Irene’s pillow, he ordered certain great officers, who had been concerned in introducing them into the palace, to be flogged and tonsured; he put one of these officers, who had especially provoked him, to death; and he separated from the empress, although she denied all concern in the affair.

After a reign of four years and a half Leo died,—more probably by a natural consequence of the illness with which he had long been afflicted, than either by a miracle of judgment on his impiety, or (as some modern writers have supposed) by poison; and Irene was left in possession of the government, as guardian of her son Constantine VI, a boy only ten years old. The empress, however, felt that it was necessary to proceed with caution in carrying out her wishes. She was, indeed, sure of the monks and of the populace : but the authority of a council which claimed the title of ecumenical was against her; the great body of the bishops was opposed to images; and although the well-tried pliancy of the eastern clergy gave reasons for hoping that these might be gained, there was a strong iconoclastic party among the laity, while the soldiery adhered to the principles of the late emperor Constantine, whose memory was cherished among them as that of a brave and successful general. At first, therefore, Irene ventured no further than to publish an edict for general liberty of conscience. The monks who were still in exile returned, images were again displayed, and many tales of past sufferings and of miracles swelled the popular enthusiasm.

In August 784, Paul, patriarch of Constantinople, suddenly resigned his dignity, and retired into a monastery, where he was visited by Irene and some high officers of the empire. When questioned as to the cause of his resignation, he professed deep remorse for having consented to accept the patriarchate on condition of opposing the restoration of images; he deplored the condition of his church, oppressed as it was by the tyranny of the state, and at variance with the rest of Christendom; and he declared that the only remedy for its evils would be to summon a general council for the purpose of reversing the decrees of the iconoclastic synod which had been held under Constantine V. We need not seek for an explanation of the patriarch’s motives in the supposition of collusion with the court. He may, like many others, have been sincerely attached to the cause of images, and, when seized with sickness, may have felt a real compunction for the compliances by which he had gained his elevation. And his death, which followed immediately after, is a strong confirmation of this view.

Irene summoned the people of the capital to elect a new patriarch. No one possessed of the requisite qualifications was to be found among the higher clergy, as the bishops were disaffected to the cause of images, while the abbots were too ignorant of the management of affairs to be fit for such promotion. The person selected by the court, (and, according to one writer, suggested by Paul himself,) was Tarasius, a secretary of state, a man of noble birth, of consular dignity, and of good personal reputation. The multitude, who had no doubt been carefully prompted, cried out for his election, and the few dissentient voices were overpowered. Tarasius with an appearance of modesty professed his reluctance to accept an office so foreign to his previous habits, and declared that he would only do so on condition that a general council should be forthwith summoned for the consideration of the all-engrossing subject. With this understanding he was consecrated; and Adrian of Rome, on receiving a statement of his faith, admitted him to communion, professing to consider the exigency of the case an excuse for the irregularity of his promotion.

A council was now summoned, and measures were taken to render it yet more imposing than the numerous synod by which images had been condemned under the last reign. The pope was invited to send representatives, if unable to attend in person. He deputed Peter, chief presbyter of his church, with Peter, abbot of St. Saba’s, and furnished them with a letter, in which he hailed the emperor and his mother as a new Constantine and a new Helena, and exhorted them to repair the misdeeds of their predecessors by restoring images in the church. Some things of a less agreeable kind were added:—a demand for the restoration of all that the iconoclastic emperors had taken from St. Peter, remarks on the irregularity of raising a layman to the patriarchate of Constantinople, and objections to the title of ecumenical, which had been given to the patriarch in the imperial letter

As the empire was at peace with the Saracens, invitations were also addressed to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. But the bearers of these letters fell in with some monks, who, on learning the object of their journey, earnestly implored them to proceed no further, since any such communication from the empire would be sure to exasperate the jealousy of the Mahometan tyrants, and to bring additional oppressions on the church. The monks offered to send to the council two of their own number, whom they proposed to invest with the character of secretaries to the patriarchs; these, they said, would sufficiently represent the faith of the eastern church, and the personal attendance of the patriarchs was no more requisite than that of the Roman bishop. To this strange proposal the messengers agreed, and they returned to Constantinople with two monks named John and Thomas.

The council was to meet at Constantinople in the beginning of August 786. But during the week before the appointed day, the opponents of images held meetings for the purpose of agitation, and, although Tarasius ordered them to leave the city, many of them still remained. On the eve of the opening, there was an outbreak of some imperial guards and other soldiers belonging to the iconoclastic party; and on the following day a still more serious tumult took place. When Tarasius and other members of the council were assembled in the church of the Apostles, a multitude of soldiers and others, abetted by some iconoclastic bishops, broke in on them, and compelled them to take refuge in the sanctuary. The soldiers who were summoned to quell the uproar refused to obey orders. Tarasius ordered the doors of the sanctuary to be shut. The iconoclasts forced them; but, without being dismayed by the threatening appearance, the patriarch opened the council, and conducted its proceedings until a message arrived from Irene, desiring her friends to give way; on which the iconoclastic bishops raised a shout of victory. The empress allowed the matter to rest until, having lulled suspicion, she was able quietly to disband the mutinous soldiers and to send them to their native places; and in September of the following year, a synod of about 350 bishops, with a number of monks and other clergy, met at Nicaea, a place at once safer from disturbance than the capital, and of especially venerable name, as having been the seat of the first general council.

The first places of dignity were given to the Roman envoys, who had been recalled, after having proceeded as far as Sicily on their way homeward. Next to these was Tarasius, the real president of the assembly; and after him were the two representatives (if they may be so styled) of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. A number of civil dignitaries were also presents The first session took place on the 24th of September, and the business proceeded with great rapidity. Six sessions were held within thirteen days, a seventh followed a week later, and the final meeting was held at Constantinople on the 23rd of October.

From the beginning it was assumed that the purpose of the council was not to discuss the question of images, but to re-establish them as objects of worship; bishops who were known to be opposed to this design had not been invited to attend. The pope’s letter was read at the second session, but with the omission of the reflections on Tarasius, and of the request that the rights of the Roman see might be restored. A number of bishops, who had taken part in the iconoclasm of the last reigns, came forward to acknowledge and anathematize their errors, and humbly sued for admission to communion. In answer to questions, some of them said that they had never until now had the means of rightly considering the subject; that they had been educated in error: that they had been deceived by forged and garbled authorities : or that they had been sealed up under a judicial blindness. Questions arose as to admitting them to communion, as to acknowledging them in offices to which they had been consecrated by heretics, and with respect to some, whether, as they had formerly been persecutors of the faithful, they ought not to be treated with special severity. The monks were throughout on the side of rigour; but the majority of the council, under the guidance of Tarasius, was in favour of a lenient course. The canons were searched for precedents; and a discussion ensued as to the application of these—with what class of heretics were the iconoclasts to be reckoned? Tarasius was for putting them on the footing of Manichaean’s, Marcionites, and monophysites, as these sects had also been opposed to images; all heresies, he said, were alike heinous, because all did away with the law of God. The monastic party declared that iconomachy was worse than the worst of heresies, because it denied the Saviour’s incarnation. But the majority was disposed to treat the penitents with indulgence, and they were received to communion. There were loud outcries against the iconoclasts, as atheists, Jews, and enemies of the truth; and when a proposal was made to call them Saracens, it was answered that the name was too good for them.

According to the usual practice of councils, authorities were cited in behalf of images, and the opposition to them was paralleled or connected with all sorts of heresies. The extracts produced from the earlier fathers are really irrelevant; for the images of which they speak were either scenes from sacred history, or memorial portraits (like that of Meletius of Antioch, which is mentioned by St. Chrysostom1), and they afford no sanction for the practices which were in question before the council. A large portion of the quotations consisted of extracts from legendary biographies, and of tales of miracles wrought by images, to which some of the bishops were able to add similar marvels from their own experience. From time to time the reading of these testimonies was interrupted by curious commentaries from the hearers. Thus, after a passage from Gregory of Nyssa, in which he spoke of himself as having been affected to tears by a picture of the sacrifice of Isaac, a bishop observed, “The father had often read the history, but perhaps without ever weeping; yet, as soon as he saw the picture, he wept”.

“If”, said another, “so great a doctor was edified and moved even to tears by a picture, how much more would it affect lay and unlearned people!”.

Many exclaimed that they had seen such pictures of Abraham as that which Gregory described, although it does not appear whether they had felt the same emotion at the sight.

“If Gregory wept at a painting of Abraham”, said Theodore, bishop of Catana, “what should we do at one of the incarnate Saviour?”.

“Should not we too weep," asked Tarasius, “if we saw a picture of the Crucifixion?” and his words were received with general applause.

A famous story, which had already served the uses both of controversial and of devotional writers, was twice read. An aged monk on the Mount of Olives, it was said, was greatly tempted by a spirit of uncleanness. One day the demon appeared to him, and, after having sworn him to secrecy, offered to discontinue his assaults if the monk would give up worshipping a picture of the blessed Virgin and the infant Saviour which hung in his cell. The old man asked time to consider the proposal, and, notwithstanding his oath, applied for advice to an abbot of renowned sanctity, who blamed him for having allowed himself to be so far deluded as to swear to the devil, but told him that he had yet done well in laying open the matter, and that it would be better to visit every brothel in Jerusalem than to refrain from adoring the Saviour and His mother in the picture. From this edifying tale a twofold moral was drawn with general consent,—that reverence for images would warrant not only unchastity, but breach of oaths; and that those who had formerly sworn to the iconoclast heresy were no longer bound by their obligations.

At the fifth session, the Roman legates proposed that an image should be brought in and should receive the adoration of the assembly. This was solemnly done next day; and at the same session the conclusions of the iconoclastic synod of 754 were read, each paragraph being followed by the corresponding part of a long refutation, which was declared to have been evidently dictated by the Holy Ghost.

At the seventh session, the decree of the council was read and subscribed. It determined that, even as the figure of the cross was honoured, so images of the Saviour and the blessed Virgin, of angels and of saints, whether painted or mosaic or of any other suitable material, are to be set up for kissing and honourable reverence, but not for that real service which belongs to the 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 passeth on to the original, and he who adoreth an image doth in it adore the person of him whom it doth represent”. An anathema was pronounced against all opponents of images, and the signing of the decree was followed by many acclamations in honour of the new Constantine and Helena, with curses against iconomachists and heretics of every kind.

These outcries were repeated at the eighth session, when the members of the council appeared at one of the palaces of Constantinople, and both the emperor and his mother subscribed the decree. The council, which after a time came to be regarded both by the Greeks and by the Latins as the seventh general council, also passed twenty-two canons, chiefly relating to ecclesiastical and monastic discipline. It is to be observed that the images sanctioned at Nicaea were not works of sculpture, but paintings and other representations on a flat surface —a limitation to which the Greek church has ever since adhered; and that there is as yet no mention of representing under visible forms the Trinity, the Almighty Father, or the Holy Spirit.

Constantine VI grew up in the society of women and eunuchs, and in entire subjection to his mother. With a view, perhaps, of cutting off from the iconoclasts the hope of assistance from the west, Irene had negotiated for him a marriage with one of Charlemagne’s daughters; but soon after the Nicene synod, as the iconoclasts were no longer formidable, while she may have feared that such a connexion might endanger her own ascendency, she broke off the engagement, greatly to the indignation of the Frankish king, and compelled her son against his will to marry an Armenian princess named Marina or Mary. Instigated, it is said, by some persons who professed to have discovered by magic that the empire was to be her own, she paved the way for a change by encouraging her son in cruelties and debaucheries which rendered him odious to his subjects, and especially to the powerful monastic party. At the age of twenty, Constantine resolved to throw off the yoke of his mother and her ministers; he succeeded in possessing himself of the government, and for some years the empire was distracted by revolutions, carried on with all the perfidy and atrocity which were characteristic of the later Greeks. Constantine was at length persuaded to readmit his mother to a share of power, and she pursued towards him the same policy as before. He fell in love with a lady of her court, Theodote, and resolved to divorce his wife and to marry the object of his new attachment. The patriarch Tarasius at first opposed the scheme, but Constantine, it is said, threatened that, if the Church refused to indulge him, he would restore idolatry; and Tarasius no longer ventured to resist. Marina was shut up in a convent, and the second nuptials were magnificently celebrated in September 795. Some monks who vehemently objected to these proceedings, and went so far as to excommunicate the emperor, were treated with great cruelty. It has been supposed that Irene even contrived the temptation to which her son yielded; she at least beheld his errors with malicious satisfaction, and fomented the general discontent which they produced. By degrees she secured to her own interest all the persons who were immediately around him; and at length, when her scheme appeared to be matured, he was by her command seized at his devotions, was carried into the purple chamber in which he had been born, and was deprived of his eyesight with such violence that the operation almost cost him his life. Immediately after this, a fog of extraordinary thickness obscured the air and hid the sun for seventeen days. By the people of Constantinople it was regarded as declaring the sympathy of heaven with the horror generally felt at the unnatural deed by which Irene obtained the empire.

Irene reigned five years after the dethronement of her son. According to the Greek writers (whose testimony, however, is unsupported by those of the west), she was engaged in a project for reuniting the empires by a marriage with Charlemagne, when, in October 802, she was deposed by the secretary Nicephorus, and was banished to Lesbos, where she died within a few months.

Nicephorus, who is described as having surpassed all his predecessors in rapacity, lust, and cruelty, was bent on subjecting the hierarchy to the imperial power. He forbade the patriarch to correspond with the pope, whom he considered as a tool of Charlemagne; and he earned the detestation of the clergy by heavily taxing monastic and ecclesiastical property, which had until then been exempt, by seizing the ornaments of churches, by stabling his horses in monasteries, and by extending a general toleration to iconoclasts and sectaries. In 811 Nicephorus was killed in a war with the Bulgarians, and his son Stauracius, after a reign of little more than two months, was thrust into a monastery, where he soon after died of wounds received before his accession. On the deposition of Stauracius, his brother-in-law, Michael Rhangabé, was compelled to accept the empire, and images were again restored to honour. The iconoclastic party, however, continued to exist. An attempt was made by some of its members to set a blinded son of Constantine Copronymus on the throne; and on the alarm of a Bulgarian invasion, soon after the elevation of Michael, a very remarkable display of its spirit took place. While the clergy, the monks, and vast numbers of the people were deprecating the danger by processions and prayers, some iconoclastic soldiers broke open the mausoleum of the emperors, prostrated themselves on the tomb of Copronymus, and entreated him to save the state; and they asserted that, in answer to their prayers, he had appeared to them on horseback, and had gone forth against the barbarians; “whereas”, says Theophanes, “he dwells in hell with devils”. Although the motive of these men was more probably fraud than fanaticism—(for, besides the story of the apparition, they pretended that the mausoleum had been opened by miracle)—we may infer the existence of a strong attachment to the memory of Constantine among the party to which such an imposture could have been addressed with any hope of finding believers

Michael, although a man of estimable character, proved unequal to the government of the empire, and after a reign of two years he was deposed and tonsured, while a general named Leo was raised to the throne. Michael, who by a clemency unusual in such cases was allowed to retain not only his life but his eyesight, survived his dethronement thirty-two years.

While the decree of the second council of Nicaea established a reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople, and was gladly confirmed by the Pope, it met with a less favourable reception north of the Alps. In the Frankish church a middle opinion on the subject of images had prevailed; as the eastern Christians had been led to cherish their images for the sake of contrast with their Mahometan neighbours, so the Franks were restrained from excess in this kind of devotion by the necessity of opposing the idolatry of the unconverted Germans. The question had been one of those discussed at a mixed assembly of clergy and laity which was held under Pipin at Gentilly in the presence of envoys from Pope Paul and of ambassadors from Constantine Copronymus; and, although their decision on this point is not recorded, there can be no reasonable doubt that it agreed with the general views of the national church.

Adrian, on receiving the acts of the Nicene council, sent a copy of them to Charlemagne, with an evident expectation that they would be accepted by the Franks. But the late rupture of the match between the king’s daughter and the son of Irene had not tended to bespeak from him any favourable consideration of the eastern decrees; and his own convictions were opposed to them. He sent them to Alcuin, who was then in England; and it is said that the English bishops joined in desiring their countryman to write against the council. Alcuin made some remarks on the Nicene acts, in the form of a letter; and out of these probably grew a treatise in four books, which was put forth in the name of Charlemagne, and is known by the title of the Caroline Books. It has been commonly supposed that Alcuin, who returned to France in 793, was the chief author, but that he was assisted by other ecclesiastics, and that the king himself took part in the revision of the work. The tone of this treatise is firm and dignified. Although great deference for the apostolic see is professed, the writer resolutely maintains the Frankish view as to images, and unsparingly criticises the grounds alleged for the doctrine which was held in common by the east and by Rome. While the iconoclasts and the Byzantine council of 754 are blamed for overlooking the distinction between images and idols, their mistake is declared to be much less than that committed by the Nicene synod in confounding the use of images with the worship of them; the one error is ascribed to ignorance, the other to wickedness. Much is said against the style of language officially employed by the Byzantine court, which is censured as trenching on the honour due to God. The synod is blamed for having allowed itself to be guided by a woman, contrary to St. Paul’s order that women should not be admitted to teach. Its pretension to be ecumenical is denied, on the ground that it neither was assembled from all churches, nor held the faith of the universal church; its claim to Divine sanction is also disallowed. It is said to be madness for one portion of the church to anathematise other portions in a matter as to which the apostles had not laid down any rule; and much more so when the opinions so branded are agreeable to the earlier councils and fathers. The passages which had been cited at Nicaea from Scripture and the fathers are examined, and are cleared from the abuse there made of them. The council is censured for having admitted many stories of a fabulous or apocryphal kind. The account of our Lord’s correspondence with Abgarus is questioned; the legend of the monk and the unclean devil is strongly reprobated; doubts are expressed as to the truth of many miraculous tales; and it is argued that, even if the miracles were really wrought by the images, they would not warrant the worship of these. Remarks are made on expressions used by individual bishops at the council. Among these there is the important misrepresentation that Constantius, of Constantia in Cyprus, is charged with having placed the adoration of images on the same level with that of the Trinity, and as having anathematized all who thought otherwise; whereas in reality he had distinguished between the devotion paid to images and that which was to be reserved for the Trinity alone. The arguments advanced in behalf of images are discussed and refuted. The honours paid in the east to the statues of emperors had been dwelt on by way of analogy; but it is denied that this is any warrant for the worship of images,—“for what madness it is to defend one unlawful thing by another!”—and the conduct of Daniel in Babylon is cited as proving the sinfulness of the eastern practice. It is derogatory to the holy mystery of the Eucharist—to the cross, the symbol of our salvation and the sign of our Christian profession —to the consecrated vessels, and to the sacred books,— that the veneration paid to these should be paralleled with the worship of images. The reverence due to relics, which had either been part of the bodies of saints or had been in some manner connected with them, is no ground for paying a like regard to images, which are the mere work of the artist, Christ and his saints desire no such worship as that in question; and, although the more learned may be able to practise it without idolatry, by directing their veneration to that which the images signify, the unlearned, who have no skill in subtle distinctions, will be drawn to worship that which they see, without thought of any object beyond it. The guilt of causing offence must rest, not on those who allow images and only refuse to worship them, but on those who force the worship on others. The only proper use of images is by way of ornament, or as historical memorials; it is absurd to say that they represent to us the merits of the saints, since these merits are not external. The right use of them for remembrance is strongly distinguished from the plea that it is impossible to remember God without them; those persons (it is said) must have very faulty memories who need to be reminded by an image—who are unable to raise their minds above the material creation except by the help of a material and created object. The king concludes by declaring to the pope that he adheres to the principles laid down by Gregory the Great in his letters to Serenus of Marseilles, and that he believes this to be the rule of the catholic church. Images are to be allowed, but the worship of them is not to be enforced; and it is forbidden to break or to destroy them.

These books (or perhaps the propositions which they were intended to enforce, rather than the treatise itself, were communicated to the pope, and drew forth from him a long reply. But the arguments of this attempt are feeble, and its tone appears to show that Adrian both felt the weakness of his cause, and was afraid to offend the great sovereign whose opinion he was labouring to controvert.

It is doubtful whether these communications took place before or after the council which was held, under the presidency of Charlemagne, at Frankfort, in 794. This council was both a diet of the empire and an ecclesiastical synod. Bishops were assembled from Lombardy and Germany as well as from France; some representatives of the English church, and two legates from Rome, were also present; and, at the king's suggestion, Alcuin was admitted to a place on account of the service which he might be able to render by his learning. The question of images was dealt with in a manner which showed that the council had no idea of any right on the part of Rome to prescribe to the Frankish church. The second canon adverts to “the late synod of the Greeks, in which it was said that those should be anathematized who should not bestow service or adoration on the images of the saints, even as on the Divine Trinity”. In opposition to this, the fathers of Frankfort refuse “both adoration and service of all kinds” to images; they express contempt for the eastern synod, and agree in condemning it. The passage especially censured by this canon is the speech wrongly ascribed in the Caroline Books to the Cyprian metropolitan Constantius, and the misrepresentation is probably to be charged on the defectiveness of the translation in which the Nicene acts were presented to the Frankish divines.0But whatever the reason of it may have been, and however the members of the Frankfort council may have misapprehended the opinions of the Orientals, there is no ground for arguing from this that they did not understand and plainly state their own judgment on the questions.

Notwithstanding the opposition to his views on the subject of images, Adrian continued to cultivate friendly relations with Charlemagne; the political interest which bound Rome to the Franks was more powerful than his sympathy with the Greeks as to doctrine. The retention of Calabria and Illyricum, which had been taken from the Roman see by the iconoclastic emperors in the earlier stage of the controversy, alienated the popes more and more from the Byzantine rule, until in 800 the connexion with the east was utterly severed by the coronation of Charlemagne as the sovereign of a new empire of Rome.

Before proceeding to the question of images, the council of Frankfort had been occupied with the doctrine of Felix, bishop of Urgel in Catalonia, on the relation of our Lord's humanity to the Almighty Father. The termadoption had been applied to the incarnation by some earlier writers and in the Spanish liturgy; it appears, however, not to have been used in its strict sense, but rather as equivalent to assumption. The passages which Felix and his party produced from the fathers, as favourable to their view, spoke of an adoption of nature, of flesh, or of manhood; whereas they themselves made an important variation from this language by speaking of an adoption of the Son.

The adoptionists were charged by their opponents with Nestorianism, and in spirit the two systems are unquestionably similar. Yet the adoptionists admitted the doctrine which had been settled as orthodoxy for three centuries and a half: they made no objection to the term Deipara (or Theotokos), as applied to the mother of the Saviour’s humanity; they allowed the union of natures in Him. The distinctive peculiarity of the party was, that, while they granted the communication of properties between the two natures, they insisted on distinguishing the manner in which the predicates of the one nature were given to the other; they regarded it as a confusion of the natures, and a virtual merging of the humanity, to say that Christ was proper and real Son of God, not only in his Godhead but in his whole person. He cannot, they said, be properly Son of God as to his human nature, unless it be supposed that the humanity and fleshly substance were derived from the very essence of God. The highest thing that can befall humanity is to be adopted into sonship with God: more than this would be a change of nature. Christ's humanity, then, is adopted to sonship; in one sense this adoption existed from the moment of his conception; in another, it began at his baptism, when he passed from the condition of a servant to that of a Son; and it was consummated in his resurrection. He cannot have two fathers in the same nature; in his humanity he is naturally the Son of David, and by adoption and grace the Son of God. By nature He is the “only-begotten” Son of God; by adoption and grace, the “first-begotten”. In the Son of God the Son of man becomes very Son of God; but it is only in a nuncupative way, as was the case with those of whom He himself said that the Scripture “called them gods to whom the word of God came”; his adoption is like that of the saints, although it is after a far more excellent fashion. The adoptionists also pressed into their service texts which were in truth meant to set forth the reality of our Lord's manhood, and its inferiority to, or dependence on, his Divinity.

Felix of Urgel, who became noted as a chief assertor of this doctrine, was a man of great acuteness and learning; his reputation was such that Alcuin sought his correspondence, and, even after the promulgation of his heresy, continued to speak with much respect of his sanctity. The other head of the party, Elipand, bishop of Toledo, and primate of Spain under the Mahometan dominion, was far advanced in life when the controversy broke out. He appears to have been a man of violent and excitable temper, and very jealous of his dignity. His style is described as more obscure than that of Felix, and it is therefore inferred that he was more profound.

The early history of the adoptionist doctrine is unknown. It is probable that Felix was the originator of it, and perhaps he may have been led into it by controversy with his Mahometan neighbours, to whom this view of our Lord's humanity would have been less repulsive than that which was generally taught by the church. At least, it appears certain that, whether Felix was the author of the doctrine or not, it was he who did most to reduce it to a system. A correspondence took place between him and Elipand; and the primate employed the influence of his position in favour of the new opinion, which soon gained many adherents. The first opponents who appeared against adoptionism were Beatus, an abbot, and Etherius, bishop of Osma, who had formerly been his pupil. Elipand, in a letter to an abbot named Fidelis, denounced the two very coarsely; he even carried his intolerance so far as to declare that all who should presume to differ from him were heretics and slaves of Antichrist, and that as such they must be rooted out. Etherius and Beatus rejoined at great length in a book which as to tone appears almost worthy of their antagonist. The pope, Adrian, now had his attention drawn to the controversy, and in 785 wrote a letter to the orthodox bishops of Spain, warning them against the new doctrine as an error such as no one since Nestorius had ventured on.

This letter, however, failed to appease the differences which had arisen. A council which is said to have been held against the adoptionists at Narbonne, in 788, is generally regarded as fictitious. In 792 Charlemagne summoned Felix (who was his subject) to appear before a council at Ratisbon, where the bishop abjured and anathematized his errors; but Charles, who in person presided at the council, appears to have doubted either the sincerity of his new profession, or his steadiness in adhering to it, and therefore sent him in chains to Rome, where he was imprisoned by order of the pope. Felix obtained his liberty by drawing up an orthodox confession of faith, to which he swore in the most solemn manner, laying it on the consecrated elements and on St. Peter’s tomb. But on returning to Urgel, he again vented his heresy, and, in fear of Charlemagne's resentment, he fled into the Mahometan part of Spain. Elipand and other Spanish bishops wrote to Charlemagne and to the bishops of France, requesting that Felix might be restored to his see, and that measures might be taken for suppressing the opinions of Beatus, who was charged in the letters with profligacy of life, and was also styled a false prophet, on account of some speculations as to the fulfilment of the Apocalypse, into which he had been led by the oppressed condition of the Spanish church. These letters were forwarded by Charlemagne to the pope, who thereupon despatched a second epistle into Spain, denouncing the doctrine of the adoptionists, and threatening to excommunicate them if they should persist in it.

The council of Frankfort was held between the time of Charlemagne’s application to Adrian and the receipt of the pope’s answer. No representative of the adoptionist party appeared; but Alcuin, who had been summoned from England to take part in the controversy, argued against their doctrine, and the council in its first canon unanimously condemned it as a heresy which “ought to be utterly rooted out of the church”. The Italian bishops gave their sanction to a treatise against adoptionism drawn up by Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia; and this was sent into Spain, together with a letter from the bishops of Gaul, Aquitaine, and Germany to the Spanish bishops, and with one from Charlemagne to Elipand and his brethren. Alcuin addressed a tract against the adoptionists to the bishops of the south of France and also wrote in a respectful tone to Felix himself, urging him to give up the term adoption, which he professed to consider as the only point in which the bishop of Urgel varied from the Catholic faith. In consequence of this letter, Felix addressed a defence of his doctrine to Charlemagne, who thereupon desired Alcuin to undertake a formal refutation of the adoptionists. The abbot accepted the task, but stipulated that time should be allowed him to examine their citations with the help of his pupils, and begged that the book of Felix might also be referred to the pope, to Paulinus of Aquileia, and to other eminent bishops; if, he said, all should agree in their judgment on the point in question, it might be concluded that they were all guided by the same Holy Spirit.

Alcuin then produced a treatise in seven books— “these five loaves and two little fishes”, as he styles them. The foundation on which he chiefly grounds his argument is the unity of the Saviour's person. Although Felix had not ventured to deny this, it is urged that in consistency he must do so, like Nestorius, since he divides Christ into two sons, the one real, the other nuncupative. The same person cannot be at once the proper and the adopted son of the same father; Christ alone has by nature that which we have through Him by adoption and grace. The Sonship is not founded on the nature, but on the person; the two natures do not form two sons, since they are themselves not separate, but inseparably united in the one Christ. The whole Christ is Son of God and Son of man; there is no room for an adoptive sonship. Christ was very God from the moment of his human conception. Felix, it is argued, had erred through supposing that a son cannot be proper unless he be of the same nature with the father; whereas the term proper does not necessarily imply identity of substance between that which is so styled and that to which it is ascribed; as may be seen by our speaking of “proper names” and “proper [i.e. own] possessions”. A man is the proper son of his parents both in body and in soul, although the body only be of their seed; and in like manner Christ in his whole person, in manhood as well as in Godhead, is proper Son of God. But moreover (says Alcuin), the whole matter, being supernatural, cannot be fitly measured by human analogies. Christ is Son of God the Father, although his flesh be not generated of God; and to deny the possibility of this is to impugn the Divine omnipotence.

The censure of Frankfort was followed up by a council held at Friuli, under Paulinus of Aquileia, in 796, and by one which met at Rome under Leo III in 799. At Friuli it was laid down that the Saviour is “one and the same Son of man and Son of God; not putative but real Son of God; not adoptive, but proper; proper and not adoptive in each of his natures, forasmuch as, after his assumption of manhood, one and the same person is inconfusibly and inseparably Son of God and of man”." The Roman council also condemned the adoptionists, but with so little knowledge of the matter as to accuse them of denying that the Saviour had any other than a nuncupative Godhead.

In the meantime Leidrad, archbishop of Lyons, Nefrid, bishop of Narbonne, and Benedict, abbot of Aniane, were sent into the district in which Felix had spread his opinions. They laboured with much success in confutation of adoptionism, and, having met Felix himself at Urgel, they persuaded him by an assurance of safety to proceed into France, in order that he might answer for himself before a council, which was to be held at Aix-la-Chapelle. At Aix the adoptionist was confronted by Alcuin, who had been drawn from his retirement at Tours for the purpose. The discussion lasted for six days, and Felix at length professed to be convinced by some passages from the fathers which had not before been known to him. He retracted his errors, condemned Nestorius, and exhorted his clergy and people to follow the true faith. As, however, his former changes suggested a suspicion of his constancy, he was not allowed to return into his diocese, but was committed to the care of the archbishop of Lyons. Leidrad and his brother commissioners went again into Catalonia for the purpose of rooting out the heresy; and it is said by Alcuin that during their two visits they made 20,000 converts—bishops, clergy, and laity.

Elipand, not being a subject of Charlemagne, was more difficult to deal with than his associate. He now entered into controversy with Alcuin, whom he treated with his usual rudeness, reproaching him as the chief persecutor of Felix, and taxing him (among other things) with having 20,000 slaves, and with being proud of his wealth. Alcuin replied in four books, and the death of Elipand (whom some writers improbably represent as having at last renounced his heresy), followed soon after. Felix remained at Lyons with Leidrad, and afterwards with his successor Agobard. He occasionally vented some of his old opinions, but, when Agobard argued with him, he professed to be convinced. After his death, however, which took place in 818, it was found that he had left a paper containing the chief points of his heresy in the form of question and answer; and Agobard found himself obliged to undertake a refutation of this, in order to counteract the mischief which it was likely to produce, as coming from a person who had been much revered for sanctity. Although the adoptionist doctrine has been revived or justified by some writers of later times, it never afterwards gained any considerable influence.

Towards the end of Charlemagne’s reign, a controversy arose as to the procession of the Holy Spirit. In the Latin church it had always been held that the Third Person of the Godhead proceeds from the Second as well as from the First. The same doctrine which the Latins thus expressed—that the Godhead of the Holy Spirit is communicated not only from the Father but from the Son—had also been held by the Greeks in general; but, as the word proceed is in Scripture used only of his relation to the Father, they had not applied it to express his relation to the Son. Thus the second general council, in the words which it added to the Nicene creed in opposition to the Macedonian heresy, defined only that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father. Theodoret, indeed, had used language which seems irreconcilable with the western belief; but it is not to be understood as expressing more than the private opinion of a writer whose orthodoxy was not unimpeached on other points; and as yet no controversy either of fact or of expression had arisen as to this subject between the two great divisions of the church.

In the west, the procession of the Spirit from the Son was in time introduced into creeds. It is found in the Athanasian creed, a form which was undoubtedly of western composition, but of which the date is much disputed. The first appearance of the doctrine in the Nicene or Constantinopolitan creed was at the third council of Toledo, in 589; and it was often enforced by later Spanish councils, under the sanction of an anathema. It would seem to have been from Spain that the definition made its way into France, where the truth of the double procession was not controverted, but some questions were raised as to the expediency or lawfulness of adding to the Nicene creed.

The origin of the differences on this subject in the period now before us is not clear. There was some discussion of it at the council of Gentilly, where the ambassadors of Constantine Copronymus were present; but (as has been already stated) the details of that council are unknown. At the council of Friuli, in 796, Paulinus maintained the expediency of the definition, on account of those heretics who whisper that the Holy Spirit is of the Father alone, and proceedeth from the Father alone; he defended it against the charge of novelty, as being not an addition to the Nicene creed, but an explanation of it; and the council adopted a profession of faith in which the double procession was laid down.

The matter came in a more pressing form before a synod held at Aix in 809, when a complaint was made that one John, a monk of St. Saba's at Jerusalem, had attacked the Frankish monks and pilgrims there on account of this doctrine, and had attempted to drive them away by force. The council approved of the addition to the creed, and Charlemagne sent two bishops, and Adelhard, abbot of Corbie, to Rome, with a request that the pope would confirm the judgment. Leo, at a conference with the envoys, of which a curious account is preserved, expressed his agreement in the doctrine of the double procession, but decidedly opposed the insertion of it into the creed. It would, he said, be wrong to insert it, since a council guided by wisdom from above had omitted it; and, moreover, the point was one of those which are not necessary to salvation for the mass of ordinary Christians.

It is said that he put up in St. Peter’s two silver shields engraved with the creed of Constantinople in Greek and in Latin, and that on both the words which express the procession of the Spirit from the Son were omitted. But, in order that there might be no doubt as to his opinion on the question of doctrine, he sent into the east a confession of faith in which the double procession was twice distinctly affirmed. We hear no more of the difference between the eastern and western churches on this subject until at a later time it was revived and led to important consequences.

It may be difficult to follow, and impossible to read with interest, the history of such controversies as those on monothelism and adoptionism; and the church has often been reproached with the agitation into which it was thrown by questions which never enter into the consideration of the great body of Christian believers. We ought, however, to remember that an error which is to agitate the church internally must not begin by setting at nought the decisions of former times; the spirit of speculation must fix on some point which is apparently within the limits already prescribed for orthodoxy. Hence, in the controversies which relate to the highest Christian doctrines, the ground is continually narrowed, as we proceed from Arianism to Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and from these to the errors which have lately come before us; while each question, as it arose, required to be discussed and decided by the lights of Scripture and of the judgments which had been before pronounced. It is not, therefore, the church that deserves to be blamed, if the opinions against which its solemn condemnations were directed became successively more and more subtle; and the reader must be content to bear with the writer, if their path should sometimes lie through intricacies which both must feel to be uninviting and wearisome.

 

 

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ORIENTAL SECTS.