The iconoclastic party, however, was not consistent; for it adhered to saint-worship which
is the root of image-worship, and instead of sweeping away all religious symbols, it retained the
sign of the cross with all its superstitious uses, and justified this exception by the Scripture passages
on the efficacy of the cross, though these refer to the sacrifice of the cross, and not to the sign.
The chief defect of iconoclasm and the cause of its failure was its negative character. It
furnished no substitute for image-worship, and left nothing but empty walls which could not satisfy
the religious wants of the Greek race. It was very different from the iconoclasm of the evangelical
Reformation, which put in the place of images the richer intellectual and spiritual instruction from
the Word of God.
- The Moderate theory sought a via media between image-worship and image-hatred, by
distinguishing between the sign and the thing, the use and the abuse. It allowed the representation
of Christ and the saints as aids to devotion by calling to remembrance the persons and facts set
forth to the eye. Pope Gregory I. presented to a hermit at his wish a picture of Christ, of Mary, and
of St. Peter and St. Paul, with a letter in which he approves of the natural desire to have a visible
reminder of an object of reverence and love, but at the same time warned him against superstitious
use. "We do not," he says, "kneel down before the picture as a divinity, but we adore Him whose
birth or passion or sitting on the throne of majesty is brought to our remembrance by the picture."
The same pope commended Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, for his zeal against the adoration of
pictures, but disapproved of his excess in that direction, and reminded him of the usefulness of
such aids for the people who had just emerged from pagan barbarism and could not instruct
themselves out of the Holy Scriptures. The Frankish church in the eighth and ninth centuries took
a more decided stand against the abuse, without, however, going to the extent of the iconoclasts in
the East.
In the course of time the Latin church went just as far if not further in practical image-worship
as the Eastern church after the seventh oecumenical council. Gregory II. stoutly resisted the
iconoclastic decrees of the Emperor Leo, and made capital out of the controversy for the
independence of the papal throne. Gregory III. followed in the same steps, and Hadrian sanctioned
the decree of the second council of Nicaea. Image-worship cannot be consistently opposed without
surrendering the worship of saints.
The same theories and parties reappeared again in the age of the Reformation: the Roman
as well as the Greek church adhered to image-worship with an occasional feeble protest against its
abuses, and encouraged the development of fine arts, especially in Italy; the radical Reformers
(Carlstadt, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox) renewed the iconoclastic theory and removed, in an orderly
way, the pictures from the churches, as favoring a refined species of idolatry and hindering a spiritual
worship; the Lutheran church (after the example set by Luther and his friend Lucas Kranach),
retained the old pictures, or replaced them by new and better ones, but freed from former superstition.
The modern progress of art, and the increased mechanical facilities for the multiplication of pictures
have produced a change in Protestant countries. Sunday School books and other works for old and
young abound in pictorial illustrations from Bible history for instruction; and the masterpieces of
the great religious painters have become household ornaments, but will never be again objects of
worship, which is due to God alone.
Notes.
The Council of Trent, Sess. XXV. held Dec. 1563, sanctions, together with the worship of
saints and relics, also the "legitimate use of images" in the following terms: "Moreover, that the