IMAGES AND IMAGE-WORSHIP.

I. Among the Hebrews.
Legislation and Prophecy (§ 1).
Image-worship in History (§ 2).
Terms and Their Meaning (§ 3).
Effects upon Hebrew Art (§ 4).

II. In the Church.
Variant Opinions up to 400 (§ 1).
Eastern Abuses Lead to Iconoclasm (§ 2).
Iconoclasm under Leo the Isaurian and Later (§ 3).
Growth of Cult after 850 (§ 4).
Modern Ecclesiastical Usage (§ 5).

I. Among the Hebrews:

1. Legislation and Prophecy. Tacitus (Hist., v. 4-5) points out as a characteristic of the Mosaic religion opposition to a portrayal of the deity. This is in accord with the Old Testament. All strata of the law bear witness to this opposition. The first two commandments of the decalogue expressly put the prohibition of image-worship beside the prohibition to worship any other god than Yahweh (Ex. xx. 1 sqq.; Deut. v. 7-8; Lev. xix. 4). The narrators of the patriarchal stories knew no worship of the god of the patriarchs in the form of an image, and there is no mention of images of God at the central sanctuaries in Shiloh and Jerusalem. The Certainty that Yahweh was ever present with his people found its expression in the ark of the covenant (q.v.), but that contained no image of God. Scripture-prophecy manifested an uncompromising hostility to image-worship, without indicating that it was prevalent, and attempted to establish and confirm popular opposition to the same. An image in a work of man (Amos v. 26; Hos. xiii. 2; Isa. ii. 8), an imitation of creatures (Deut. iv. 16 sqq.) out of dead and created matter (Hos. iv. 12; Isa. xliv. 9-10; Ps. cxv.); therefore its worship is folly, since God, who alone is to be worshiped, is a living creator, a spirit who can not be pictured.

2. Image-Worship in History. But, on the other hand, there is nothing in the primitive history of this people to prove that this peculiarity of imageless worship was an inborn inheritance or the result of a natural development of the people. The ancestors of the people beyond the Euphrates had idol-worship (Josh. xxiv. 2, 14); Jacob's wives carried religious images with them from their Syrian home (Gen. xxxi. 19, 34, xxxv. 2 sqq.). The recollection of the struggle between the imageless worship of Yahweh as the God of revelation and the representation of Yahweh as the national God go back as far as the wandering through the wilderness. For the golden calf of Ex. xxxii. is not an image suggested by the Egyptian religion, since the Egyptian Apis was not an image, but a living animal (see Calf, the Golden). On the contrary, Aaron proclaimed a feast of Yahweh, and the rejoicing of the people proves that with the image it received nothing new and strange, but something that it expected (Ex. xxxii. 4-5, 18); in that way the shepherd people had been accustomed to think of its god. And from the tenacity of habit it is intelligible that after the disruption of the kingdom, in order to destroy the attraction of the central sanctuary at Jerusalem, Jeroboam set up calves representing Yahweh at the sacred places in the northern kingdom (I Kings xii. 27 sqq.). The "calves" of Bethel, Dan, Gilgal outlasted not only the Phenician cults favored by later kings in the northern kingdom, but even the powerful assault of prophecy (Amos v. 4 sqq., viii. 14; Hos. vi. 10, viii. 4 sqq., ix. 15; II Kings x. 25 sqq.; Judges xviii. 34). Even after the carrying away of the ten tribes the cult of Bethel survived (II Kings xvii. 27), and it was left for Josiah to abolish the last traces (II Kings xxiii. 15).

3. Terms and Their Meaning. The more general term for image is pesel (Ex. xx. 4), which includes images of stone and wood, whereas the term for metallic images is massekha, i.e., a cast, then the molten image itself (Hos. xiii. 2; Deut. ix. 12). It must, however, not be understood of the massive molten image, but of the molten golden or silver coating with which a wooden core is covered (Ex. xxxii. 20; Hos. viii. 6; Isa. xxx. 22). There are several other terms (as `azabbim, nesekh, nasikh, semel, elilim) and opprobrious names (ahikkuzim, gillulim, to'ebhot), as well as general terms like zelem, "image," tabnith, "figure," maskith, "form," all of which proves how important a part idol-worship played at times in the life of Israel. These names, however, mark no difference between images of Yahweh and idols. The mantic use of ephod and teraphim (see Ephod; Teraphim; cf. Judges xvii., xviii.; Hos. iii. 4; Zech.

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x. 2; I Sam. xv. 23) appears to be Hebraic and not imported with a foreign religion; and for the image of the brazen serpent (see Serpent, Brazen), which was abolished in the time of Hezekiah (II Kings xviii. 4; cf. Num. xxi. 4 sqq.), an Israelitic origin is positively attested. With this epoch the prophetic opposition to Yahweh images became determined, and the whole energy of the prophetic attack was concentrated upon Idolatry (q.v.).

4.Effects Upon Hebrew Art. In freeing the deity from the fetters with which sensual limitations chain man's inclination to worship images made by himself, art was not rejected by the spirit of the Old Testament. There may be discovered working in it a mental impulse of divine origin (Ex. xxxi. 1 sqq.; cf. II Kings xvi. 11 with Isa. viii. 2). But the exclusion of plastic art from the highest spheres which employed it in heathenism denied to it that powerful development among the people of God which it obtained elsewhere by illustrating divine ideal forms (see Art, Hebrew). With emphasis the narrator in I Kings vii. 13 sqq. points out that the artistic outfit of the buildings of Solomon was mainly due to Phenician art. So far as it did not serve idolatrous purposes, the art of the Old Testament did not go essentially beyond the purposes of ornamentation and decoration. Imitations of flowers, garlands, fruits, trees, whether of beaten work (Num. viii. 4), or carving (I Kings vi. 18), or graven work (I Kings vii. 36), or in wool, formed the adornment of buildings for sacred and secular uses (Ex. xxv. 31 sqq., xxviii. 33 sqq.; I Kings vi. 18, 29, 32, 35, vii. 18 sqq.; Ezek. xli. 185 sqq.; Ps. cxliv. 12). Even the animal world, in distinguished types, was laid under contribution. Lions appeared as throne-keepers of the earthly king (I Kings x. 19 sqq.); lions and oxen were beneath the bases of the lavers of the temple; the latter carried also the brazen sea (I Kings vii. 29, 36, 25). That in later times profane art applied itself to mural painting and advanced so far that it portrayed men can be seen from Ezek. xxiii. 14. In a very peculiar manner there entered into the older art an object which was not intended as an imitation of nature, but represented a religious conception, viz., the images of the bearers and keepers of the divine majesty, the cherubim (see Angels), which found frequent employment as images in the Holy of Holies, as ornaments on the folding-doors, bases, and curtains of the sanctuary. In the post-exilic period there is discernible an increasing tendency to oppose the employment of art. The stricter exposition of legal enactments narrowed the original life of the nation, as when, because of the abuse of the name of Yahweh, it prohibited employment of that name, as, in connection with the prohibition to worship images, it rejected the portraiture of living creatures, and by the influence of classical art after the time of the Seleucidae (Josephus, Ant. XII., iv. 9, XV., ii. 6, XIX., ix. 1; Life, 12) this prohibition was rather intensified than diminished. In Herodian times it was regarded as a law, and was supported by the authority of prominent scribes, that images of living creatures might not be erected in the Holy Land (Josephus, War, I. xxxiii. 2; Ant. XVII, vi. 2). With a death-defying courage the observers of the law knew how to elicit a promise from a Pilate, a Vitellius, or a Petronius, not to bring the standards adorned with the emperor's image into the holy city, or to carry them through Jewish territory (Ant. XVIII., iii. 1, v. 3; War, II., ix. 2-3, x. 4). In describing the ancient sanctuaries, Josephus, who refers to this rigor, attempted to post-date it, but not without disingenuousness (Ant. III., vi. 2, VIII., vii. 5). Classic heathenism avenged itself on the nobility of the early Mosaic opposition to its gods by the malicious invention that Pompey, when he entered the Holy of Holies of the temple, found an ass under the golden vine, the only and the main idol of the Jewish worship of God (Florus, i. 40; Petronius, Fragmentum 35).

P. Kleinert.

II. In the Church:

1. Variant Opinions 100-400. Although the primitive. Church was not averse to art, yet it had no images of Christ, and Irenæus reproached the Carpocratians (Hær. I., xxv. 6) for Opinions possessing such figures. In the Acts of John, the apostle sharply reproved an artist who had made a portrait of himself (Zahn, Acta Joannis, 223 sqq.). The prohibition of images by the thirty-sixth canon of the Synod of Elvira (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, i. 170) aimed to forestall any hindrance to the spiritual worship of God, thus showing that this danger already existed. Eusebius also opposed images of the apostles and of Christ (Hist. eccl. vii. 18), and exhorted Constantia, the widow of Licinius, to seek the image of Christ in the Scripture. It is a wellknown fact that Epiphanius once tore in pieces a curtain on which an image of Christ or of a saint was painted (ed. Dindorf, IV., ii. 85), although Ambrose and Jerome state that there were portraits of the apostles, while Augustine mentions pictures of the Savior and the worship of images. Gregory the Great had but faint disapproval for a bishop who destroyed images in his church because of the adoration shown them (Epist. xi. 13).

2. Eastern Abuses Lead to Iconoclasm. The use and adoration of images were especially popular in the East, this tendency being increased both by the assimilation of pagan conscepts, customs, and forms of worship, and by the Alexandrian Christology with its emphasis on the permeation of the earthly nature by the divine. The pseudo-Areopagite writings which made the symbols the actual representation of things invisible thus laid the theological foundation for a religious veneration of images, and consequently for their. adoration. The word of Basil (De spiritu sancto, xlv.), "the honor paid to the image passes on to the prototype," became the classical phrase in justification of this adoration. The extravagance of this worship was emphasized by the iconoclasts (cf. the letter of Michael the Stammerer, Mansi, xiv. 417 sqq.), who state, among other things, that images were asked to act as sponsors, that coloring-matter scraped from them was mixed with the bread and wine of the sacrament, and that the Eucharist was received from the hands of images.. The opposition to image-worship became acute in the iconoclastic controversies,

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which were caused by factors not yet clearly known, but it is certain, at all events, that the spiritual atmosphere produced by the development of Mohammedanism increased the opposition to images. In a church which believed that the mystery of the redemption was present in the image, every movement for reform naturally assailed iconolatry.

3. Iconoclasm under Leo the Isaurian and Later. This is plain both from the religious opposition of the Paulicians and from the political antagonism of Leo the Isaurian, so that a mutual influence is not improbable. Leo's prohibition forms a part of his reformatory efforts to give new vitality to his empire, which he felt authorized to undertake in his double capacity of king and priest. In 726 he seems to have begun at once with the removal of images (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, iii. 378), while the council of state and the new patriarch were in harmony with the second edict, which was issued in 730. Leo was opposed, however, by John of Damascus in three orations and by the popes Gregory II., who harshly reproved him, and Gregory III., who condemned the enemies of the images, even at the cost of forfeiting valuable ecclesiastical provinces. Still more reckless in his measures against the image-worshipers was Leo's son, Constantine V. The Council of Constantinople (754), which was intended to be ecumenical, denounced image-worship as heresy and idolatry. The monks still resisted, but had to feel the severity of the imperial wrath. Ecclesiastical goods were confiscated, and relics were thrown into the sea. In 766 Constantine undertook to impose an oath against the worship of images on all his subjects, and even had the matter brought before a synod at Gentilly, near Paris. But the Lateran synod of 769 anathematized the synod of 754, and after the death of Leo IV., the regency of his widow, Irene, caused an entire change. Tarasius, an advocate of images, was made patriarch in 784, and after the abortive attempt to hold an ecumenical council at Constantinople two years later, the synod at Nicaea was held in 787, and ascribed to the images a "respectful reverence," but reserved "true worship" for God alone. The Caroline Books (q.v.), however, explicitly denied all religious value of the images, and the same decision was reached by the synod convoked by Charlemagne at Frankfort in 794 (see Frankfort, Synod of, 794). In the East, Leo V., the Armenian, emphatically reaffirmed the prohibition of images, and Theodore the Studite, the advocate of images and ecclesiastical liberty, was again exiled. Michael the Stammerer opposed the public worship of images, at least after 823, and a synod held at Paris in 825 again expressed a view in harmony with the Caroline Books. During the reign of Theophilus the persecution of images and of monasticism reappeared as in the days of Constantine V., but the early death of the emperor changed the condition.

4. Growth of Cult after 850. During the reign of his widow, Theodora, the worship was restored, probably Mar. 11, 843 (cf. de Boer, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, iv. 445 sqq.). The basal doctrines of the advocates of iconolatry were developed especially by John of Damascus, the patriarch Nicephorus, and Theodore the Studite. They draw their arguments both from the Bible and tradition, and from the nature and the attested miracles of the images. Over against the prohibition of images in the Old Testament attention was called to the difference between "reverence of worship" and "reverence of respect," and the progress of the plan of salvation, as well as the more perfect knowledge of God on the part of the Christian, was pointed out. Since and because the divine Logos has become manifest in the phenomenal world, he, may also be represented pictorially. Hence the significance of the image is not restricted to him who can not read, but it is the real bearer of the prototype, differing from it only as to substance. Every virtue of the prototype belongs relatively to the copy, so that which happens to the one has reference to the other (MPG, xcix. 425 D, 1184 A). A rejection of images is a denial of the incarnation of God (1188 D), and Theodore even declares that "Christ is not Christ unless he be graven" (1225 D). By the image the eyes of the spirit are to be raised to the spiritual essence of God. This latter distinction between prototype and copy was, however, lost in lower types of Christianity. It was thought that idolatry might be avoided in merely making a copy and confining it mainly to painting.

5. Modern Ecclesiastical Usage. The ordinary Russian is in the habit of designating the icon as his God, and those "not made with hands" enjoy great veneration. To the image of the "mother of God at Kasan" is ascribed Russia's deliverance in 1812; the same trust in icons showed itself in the Japanese Russian war of 1905; while the Iberian icon of the Virgin is the most celebrated healer of Moscow, and Russia is richer in wonder-working images than Italy and Spain. In general iconolatry has never been so prominent in the West as in the East, yet even Thomas Aquinas has declared that an image of Christ claims the same veneration as Christ himself (Summa III., qu. 25, art. 3-4). The Council of Trent in its twenty-fifth session expressed itself with caution and justified the worship of the image from its relation to the prototype. In religious practise, however, the line here drawn is not observed.

N. Bonwetsch.

Bibliography: For sources: J. Selden, De diis Syris, with A. Beyer's additions, Amsterdam, 1672, Eng. transl., The Fabulous Gods denounced in the Bible, Philadelphia, 1880; Schrader, KAT. For discussions: M. de Vogué, Mélanges d'archéologie orientale, Paris, 1888; W. Baudissin, Jahve et Moloch, Leipsic, 1874; idem, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, Leipsic, 1878; E. Nestle, Die israelitischen Eigennamen in ihrer religionsgeschichtlichen Bedeutung, Leipsic, 1876; P. Scholz, Götzendienst und Zauberwesen bei den alten Hebräern und den benachbarten Völkern, Regensburg, 1877; F. Baethgen, Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte. Der Gott Israels und die Götter der Heiden, Berlin, 1889; Nowack, Archäologie, vol. ii.; Smith, Rel. of Sem.; F. Weber, Jüdische Theologie, index "Götzendienst," Leipsic,1897; A. von Gall, Altisraelitische Kultusstätten, Giessen, 1898; R Smend, Alttestamentliche Religionsgeschichte, Freiburg, 1899; DB, ii. 445-449; BB, ii. 2152 sqq.; JE, xii. 568-569. For studies of ethnic idolatry, E. B. Tylor, Early History of Mankind, chap. vi., London, 1878; idem, Primitive Culture, London, 1903 (authoritative); J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough, 3 vols.,

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London, 1900; especially Frazer's edition of Fausanius's Greece, London, 1898 (a monumental work).

IL The sources of the history of the iconoclastic movements are given in M. $ Goidmt, Imperiaiia deaata de cultu imaginum, Frankfort, 1808; Manek Concilia, vols. mi.-uv.; VPG, xoviii-c.; in the writings of John of Damascus (St. John Damascene on Holy Images, En& travel. by Mary H. Allies, London. 1898), Nioephorus, Theodore the Studite, and the Byzantine ohronographers, especially Theophanes, whose works are to be found in CSHB. Consult: L. Maimbourg, Hist. de 1'h&esie des iconoclaAm 2 vols., Paris, 1879-83; F. Span heim, Historia imapinum restitufa, Antwerp, 1888 (combats Maimbourg); C. w. F. watch, Hi.torie der %etzereien, vols. x., xi., 11 vols., Leipsic, 1782-Bb; J. E. Tyler, Image Worship of the Church of, Rome, London, 1847; J. M. Neale, Hitt. of the Holy EChurch, 5 vols., ibt, 1850-73; J. Hergenröther, Photius, f. 228 sqq., Regensburg, 1887; J. H. Blunt, Dictionary o1 Seda, Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties, pp 215-221, Philadelphia, 1874; K. Schanck, Kaiser Leon III. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Bilderatreits, Halle, 1880; F. W. J. H. Gaze, Symbolik der grischischen Kirche, i. 315 sqq., ,Berlin, 1881; .K. Schwarsloee, Der Bilderatrsit sin %ampf der priechizchen Hirche um Are Eigenart und ihre PreihcA Gotha, 1890; F. W. F. Kattenbuaeh, Lehrbuch der . . . Honfessionew kunde, i . 458 sqq., Freiburg, 1892; C. Thomas, Theodor von Studion und sein Zeitalkr, Leipsic, 1892; R. Seeberg, Dagmengeschichte, f. 247 sqq., Leipsic, 1895; Dobechilta, Christwbilder, in TU, xviii. 1, 2, 1899; A. H. Hore, Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek Church, pp. 18, 41, 42, 285, 335-338 et passim, New York, 1899; J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, pp. 38-39, 48, 85, 154, 341, New York, 1904; Hefele, CmicWengeschichte. iii. 388 sqq., Eng. transl., v. 280 zqq.; Neander, Christian Church, i. 71, 291-293, ii. 322-331, iii. 197-243, 532-553; Schaff, Christian Church, iv . 447-474; Harnack, Dogma, iii. 159-180, iv. passim, v. 304-309; DCB, iii. 198-2D5; and in general, the works on church history.