churches disregard the council because they condemn image-worship as a refined form of idolatry
and as a fruitful source of superstition; and this theory is supported by the plain sense of the second
commandment, the views of the primitive Christians, and, negatively, by the superstitions which
have accompanied the history of image-worship down to the miracle-working Madonnas of the
nineteenth century. At the same time it may be readily conceded that the decree of Nicaea has
furnished aid and comfort to a low and crude order of piety which needs visible supports, and has
stimulated the development of Christian art. Iconoclasm would have killed it. It is, however, a
remarkable fact that the Catholic Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the Protestant Lucas Kranach
and Albrecht Dürer, were contemporaries of the Reformers, and that the art of painting reached its
highest perfection at the period when image-worship for a great part of Christendom was superseded
by the spiritual worship of God alone.
A few months after the Nicene Council, Irene dissolved the betrothal of her son, the Emperor
Constantine, to Rotrude, a daughter of Charlemagne, which she herself had brought about, and
forced him to marry an Armenian lady whom he afterward cast off and sent to a convent.^548 From
this time dates her rupture with Constantine. In her ambition for despotic power, she rendered him
odious by encouraging his bad habits, and at last incapable of the throne by causing his eyes to be
plucked out, while he was asleep, with such violence that he died of it (797). It is a humiliating fact
that Constantine the Great, the convener of the first Nicene Council, and Irene, the convener of the
second and last, are alike stained with the blood of their own offspring, and yet honored as saints
in the Eastern church, in whose estimate orthodoxy covers a multitude of sins.^549 She enjoyed for
five years the fruit of unnatural cruelty to her only child. As she passed through the streets of
Constantinople, four patricians marched on foot before her golden chariot, holding the reins of four
milk-white steeds. But these patricians conspired against their queen and raised the treasurer
Nicephorus to the throne, who was crowned at St. Sophia by the venal patriarch. Irene was sent
into exile on the Isle of Lesbos, and had to earn her bread by the labors of her distaff as she had
done in the days of her youth as an Athenian virgin. She died of grief in 803. With her perished the
Isaurian dynasty. Startling changes of fortune were not uncommon among princes and patriarchs
of the Byzantine empire.
§ 103. Iconoclastic Reaction, and Final Triumph of Image-Worship, a.d. 842.
Walch, X. 592–828. Hefele, IV. 1–6; 38–47; 104–109.
During the five reigns which succeeded that of Irene, a period of thirty-eight years, the image-war
was continued with varying fortunes. The soldiers were largely iconoclastic, the monks and the
people in favor of image-worship. Among these Theodore of the Studium was distinguished by his
fearless advocacy and cruel sufferings under Leo V., the Armenian (813–820), who was slain at
(^548) Charlemagne afterwards offered Irene his hand with a view to unite the Eastern and Western empires, and she accepted
the offer; but her prime-minister, Aëtius, who wished to raise his own brother, Leo, to the throne, prevented the marriage.
(^549) The memory of Irene is celebrated by the Greeks on the 15th of August. Her patriarch, Tarasius (d. 806), is canonized
in the Roman as well as the Greek Church.