Adolf Harnack · 17 of 19

Chapter IV. The Mysteries and Kindred Subjects. · Part 3

This is the classical doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in the Greek Church up to the present day. By the Holy Ghost bread and wine are received into the body of Christ. The eucharistic body is that which was born of the virgin, not, however, by a transubstantiation, as if the body of Christ descended suddenly from heaven and took the place of the elements, but by transformation and assumption, just as in the Incarnation. The bread-body is received into the real body and is thus identical with it. That is the last word of the Greek Church—only now was the mystery perfect. Only now was the real presence of the true body originated, the doctrine which the Churches of to-day, except the Reformed, wrongly assign to antiquity, nay, to the Apostolic age itself. It is true that Scholastics and Mystics have taught much that was original on the Lord’s Supper in the Greek Churches since John; spiritualism also was not abolished; but the history of dogma can give no place to these individual pronouncements. The sacrificial character and the reference to the crucifixion, which are so strikingly neglected by John, were again made prominent in after times. The physical and liturgical miracle was never, however, so logically analysed or reduced to the categories of being and phenomenon, substance and accident, in the Greek Church as in the West. Attempts at this were made; but they never obtained any far-reaching importance in the official doctrine. The second Nicene Council of A.D. 787 took its stand on the conception of John. The last exclamations of the assembled Fathers were: “Whoever does not confess that Christ, on the side of his humanity, has an unlimited form, let him be anathema. May the memory of Germanus (of Constantinople) and of John (of Damascus) endure for ever.”

§ 2. Christianity of the Second Rank.

There existed in Christendom, ever since there was a doctrina publica, i.e., from the end of the second century, a kind of subsidiary religion, one of the second rank, as it were subterranean, different among different peoples, but everywhere alike in its crass superstition, naïve doketism, dualism, and polytheism. “When religions change, it is as if the mountains open. Among the great magic snakes, golden dragons and crystal spirits of the human soul, which ascend to the light, there come forth all sorts of hideous reptiles and a host of rats and mice.” Every new religion invigorates the products of the ancient one which it supersedes. In one aspect of it we know very little of the “Christianity” of the second rank, for it had no literary existence; in another we are thoroughly familiar with it; for we only need to set before us, and to provide with a few Christian reminiscences, the popular conditions and rites with which Christianity came in contact in different provinces, as also the tendencies, everywhere the same, of the superstitious mob, tendencies inert in the moral sphere, exuberant in the realm of fancy. Then we have this second-class Christianity. It consisted in worship of angels—demigods and demons, reverence for pictures, relics, and amulets, a more or less impotent enthusiasm for the sternest asceticism—therefore not infrequently strictly dualistic conceptions—and a scrupulous observance of certain things held to be sacred, words, signs, rites, ceremonies, places, and times. There probably never was an age in which Christendom was free from this “Christianity”, just as there never will be one in which it shall have been overcome. But in the fully formed Catholic Church as it passes over into the Middle Ages, this Christianity was not only dragged along with it as a tolerated, because irremovable, burden, but it was to a very large extent legitimised, though under safeguards, and fused with the doctrina publica. Catholicism as it meets us in Gregory the Great and in the final decisions of the seventh Council, presents itself as the most intimate union of Christianity of the first order with that subterranean, thoroughly superstitious, and polytheistic “Christianity”; and the centuries from the third to the eighth mark the stages in the process of fusion, which seems to have reached an advanced point even in the third and was yet reinforced from century to century to a most extraordinary extent.

It is the business of the historian of the Church and of civilisation to describe these developments in detail, and to show how in separate provinces the ancient gods were transformed into Christian saints, angels, and heroes, and the ancient mythology and cultus into Christian mythology and local worship. This task is as aesthetically attractive as that other which is closely allied to it, the indication of the remains of heathen temples in Christian Churches. The temple of Mithras which became St. George’s Church, proves that St. George was Mithras; in St. Michael the ancient Wotan had been brought to life again, just as Poseidon in St. Nicholas; the different “mothers of God”, who were honoured with all sorts of sacred offerings—one preferred fruits, another animals—only show that Demeter, Venus, Juno, and countless other great mothers and holy or unholy virgins, had merged in the one mother.—The provincial calendars and various “Church Years” conceal significant reminiscences from the old heathen times. Here, however, we are only interested in the questions of principle, how far all this had forced its way into the doctrina publica, and how it was possible for that religion, whose strong point had once been a horror of idols, to admit this stuff as something sacred.

As regards the second question, the points of contact existed in the doctrina publica itself. The following may have been the most important. In the first place, the doctrina had been constructed by the aid of Greek and Roman intellectual culture and philosophy. These, however, were connected by a thousand ties with mythology and superstition, which were not got rid of by assigning a “noumenon” to everything. We need only recall the single instance of Origen to see that the father of free and spiritual theology was at the same time the patron of every superstition that would admit of receiving the least grain of spiritual contents. Secondly, the doctrina publica sanctioned the Old Testament. Before this, indeed, and even to some extent in the time of the conflict with Gnosticism great pains had been taken to prove that the Old Testament was a Christian book, and to allegorise all its ceremonial features. But the power of interpretation had weakened more and more in comparison with the strength of the letter. What a wealth was embraced in the book of material drawn from the most varied stages of religious history! This material was sacred. No one indeed now got circumcised, or offered bloody sacrifices, or refrained from eating pork, but what did that signify if everything else gradually came somehow or other to be accepted? From the third century the Church needed infinitely more than a doctrina publica; it needed a sacred constitution, holy priests and a holy ritual. The Old Testament from which pretty nearly anything can be legitimised also legitimised this. Thus, side by side with revelation in the form of sacred doctrine, there arose an indefinitely increasing mass of sacred things which could be justified from the Old Testament alone. For its sake the old strict exclusion of the literal meaning of the book and of its ceremonies was abandoned, slowly indeed, but surely. At first the attempt was made to proceed circuitously, and to attribute the ceremonial decrees to the Apostles, because men were still unwilling to appeal directly to the Old Testament commands; but they then became bolder, and finally felt no scruple about using the Old Testament down to matters of detail, the special points of the Temple ritual—the cherubim being cited, for example, in support of the right to worship pictures.

Thirdly, the sacred rites of Baptism, and especially of the Eucharist, offered points of contact for the intrusion of Christianity of the second rank into official Christianity. The public doctrine had already, at a very early date, treated and regarded these rites as mysteries in the ancient sense. Thus the door was thrown wide open to the inrush of everything of the character of a mystery, magic, liturgical miracles, and fetishes. Fourthly, devil, and angels had played a great part even in primitive Christianity. The official doctrine, however, at first paid comparatively little heed to them; yet they had always employed the imagination even of the most enlightened. Round these traditions the popular conceptions now gathered, and the doctrina publica was almost defenceless against them. When in the fourth and fifth centuries the masses streamed into the Church, it was not in a position, in spite of catechetical instruction, to exercise any control over them, or to examine the (mental) luggage of those desiring admission. Nay, more, the monks, who in the same period had with such extraordinary rapidity obtained full charge of piety, moved in this world of demons and angels, and cherished the ancient mythology under a Christian name. To live in the sphere of pure and impure spirits, to be visited, refreshed, strengthened by the former, and to be tempted and assailed by the latter, soon was held to be a sign of a heroic Christianity; and to this the official doctrine had to accommodate itself. Besides the cultus, men obtained their edification from a pious light literature whose dualism and exotic character might lead the critic to assign it wrongly to the Gnosticism of the second century. But the Church was perhaps even more strongly influenced by the Neoplatonic doctrine of spirits. In devoting itself to a lofty intuition, and, like the Gnostics of old, seeing between God and the world hosts of graded moons (angels) who as the “heavenly hierarchy”—in reality as cosmical powers —reduced the many to the one, this doctrine legitimised the superstitious and barbarous conceptions of demigods and genii. The one God, whom the people had never understood, threatened to disappear, even in the views of refined theologians, behind the whole complicated intermediaries who appeared more tangible and therefore more trustworthy. Who can wonder that now the cultured Christian, if a mystic, also preferred in his religious difficulties to resort to these courts rather than to turn directly to God? If the supreme God had appointed and set these courts between himself and his world, then it would be presumption and aimless effort to ignore them. Only the strict ascetic might venture that. But he also would rather dwell in fancy in the magnificent, beautifully ordered world of spirits, where the golden buckets ascend; he would rather picture the fulness and variety of the immortal life than dwell for ever on the desolate and terrifying thought of the One, who was so incomprehensible, that not even his Being could be conceived.

Fifthly, as a residuum of the idea that all Christians were “saints”, and that the Church possessed apostles, prophets, and spiritual teachers, the conviction had remained that there had been a Heroic Age, and that those who had then won a name for themselves were “saints”. They were added to the Patriarchs and Old Testament Prophets, and they continued to receive successors in the martyrs and great ascetics. The most cultured theologians had already set up theories of the power of these heroes to intercede with God, and of their special relation to Christ. The anniversaries of the birth or death of the saints were celebrated, and thus they offered themselves in the most natural way to take the place of the dethroned gods and their festivals. They fell into line with the angelic powers, and were held to be more trustworthy than the latter. Among them Mary came to the front, and the course of the development of dogma specially favoured her, and her alone. A woman, a mother, made her appearance in proximity to the deity; and thus at last it became possible to include in Christianity the recognition of that which had been most foreign to primitive Christianity—homage paid to sex, the sacred, the divine, in a female form. The Gospel to the Hebrews had already, indeed, made the Lord say, “My mother the Holy Ghost”; but this thought was yet sexless, so to speak, and was besides never made use of in the great Church. Mary now became the mother, the bearer, of God.

Sixthly, from the earliest times the Christians had looked on death as holy; it was the birth-hour of the true life; for in this world life meant for the Christians to practise dying, and to have died was to live in immortality. Accordingly, everything connected with blessed death, had already been touched by the breath of immortality. The martyrs exhaled this breath; therefore their very bones were more precious than gold or jewels. The worship of the dead began early, and only a few opposed it. The heathen use of fetishes and amulets revived in the cultus of the dead and of relics; in this form it was destitute of the aesthetic charm which antiquity knew how to give to its amulets and little sanctuaries, and for this reason the refined taste of enthusiastic Epigoni rose in disgust against the veneration of bones and corpses (see Julian’s attacks). But the Christians satisfied themselves from the contrast between the sensuous appearance and its religious value that their faith was unique and elevated. since it found the divine in the very dust and fragments of death. Therefore they were certain of not being heathen in revering those amulets and relics; for heathenism sought and found its sacred things in the bloom of life, but Christianity in death. With the service of the relics was most intimately connected the veneration of the saints, and the two led to the veneration of pictures and idols.

For, seventhly, the doctrina publica, as has been shown in our whole account, contained to an increasing extent the impulse to transform the μάθησις (doctrine) into mysteries; this impulse it followed continually in the treatment of the Eucharist. But in doing so, it opened up the way to the boundless desire to enjoy the holy everywhere and with the whole five senses, and it then obeyed this desire itself. The Lord’s Supper became the centre of an ever extending circle of material sacred things which could be seen, heard, tasted, smelt, and touched. The religious was much more closely connected with the material than with the moral. That, however, meant the relapse to religious barbarism and the worship of images. This might be transfigured in poetry—everything now showed a trace of God; it could even be spiritualised pantheistically—God is the world, and the world is the deity revealed; but within Christianity it was nothing but apostasy. But further, the senses which seek to perceive and therefore do perceive that which is holy, become dull and blind in presence of that which is actually perceptible, and dazzle the reason. The reason became accustomed to a fabulous world of wonders, and more and more lost all rational standards. Even the most cultured Fathers from the fifth century ceased to be capable of distinguishing between the real and unreal; they were defenceless against the most absurd tales of the miraculous, and lived in a world of magic and enchantment. Then there once more emerged practices which date from the earliest age of civilisation. Soothsaying, auguries, examination of sacrifices, inquiries at oracles of every sort:— they had lost their name and their ritual, but they were now revived in all that was essential as Christian, though in new forms. Bibliomancy, questioning the Bible like a book of oracles, arose. Synods at first denounced it, but even great doctors of the Church favoured the evil habit. Ordeals, which were by no means originated by the Germans, came into vogue. Two clerics of North Africa were suspected of a scandalous act; both denied the charge; one must have been guilty; Augustine sent them over sea to the grave of S. Felix of Nola. There they were to repeat their assertions; Augustine expected that the saint would at once punish the liar. At the sixth Council a Monothelite offered to prove the truth of his confession by writing it and placing it on the breast of a dead man, when the dead would rise up. The Fathers of the Council accepted the test. In cases of sickness questions were addressed to this or that saint; the patient slept in his chapel; on certain days lodging in the chapel was more effective than on others, etc., etc. The sources of the fifth to the eighth century contain hundreds of such cases; not only did the foolish multitude take part in them, but, as the above passages have shown, the spiritual leaders themselves. The impulse to mystagogy, and the misguided craving to feel the proximity of the deity, without being or becoming a new man, were to blame for this decline and fall. Only two points can be cited. First, the better Christians still continued to seek and find an object of thought (νοητόν) in the thousand liturgical sacred things, the thought and its envelopment interchanged with each other in an attractive play. Thus these men defended themselves against the charge of worshipping idols. Secondly, the honour to be assigned to idols was and continued to be uncertain; it was not equal to that of God or of Jesus Christ or to the authority of Holy Scripture, and one might even finally disown them; any one might confine himself to the doctrina publica, and privately interpret in his own way its sensuous and magical portions, if only he did not attack them. But the poor common people knew nothing of this secret privilege of the learned, nor might they share in it. And even scholars were themselves burdened with an immense amount of stuff to which they had to dedicate their piety. It is the same to-day. The pious regard which is required by the whole complex of ecclesiasticism, intimately interwoven as it is with nationality, restricts the capacity to win independent power in religion, and to take earnestly and devoutly what is really earnest and holy. No religion gains anything through time; it only loses. If a hurricane does not pass over it and purify it again and again, it gets stifled in its own withered foliage. No hurricane has yet swept over the Churches of the East. And yet they possess in the Gospel, which they too read, an element of movement which perhaps in some future time will bring life to the dry bones.

On the worship of angels, see Vol. III., Chap. IV. and Schwane, Dogmengeschichte II., pp. 299-328. The seventh general Synod decided that angels must also be portrayed because they were finite in form, and had appeared to many in a human shape. The theologoumenon of Dionysius, who was not the first to teach it, concerning the nine choirs of angels, obtained general acceptance. The conception of the manifold guardian ministry of the angels became more and more important. Even Schwane confesses here: “the doctrine that every man possessed such a guardian spirit appears to have been allied to the old heathen idea of genii, but was also founded on Holy Scripture” (p. 315). The worship and invocation of angels became established; but the Church held in principle to the position that the angelic cultus was not identified with the worship of God.

In reference to the Saints, Cyril says in his fifth mystagogic catechism (c. 9); “Then we also remember those who have already fallen asleep, first the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and martyrs, that God through their prayers and intercession may accept our supplication.” So also Augustine. This circle was extended after the fifth century by the addition of holy bishops, monks, and nuns. The power of the Saints to intercede was always the reason why honour and invocation (τιμὴ καὶ ἐπίκλησις) were due to them. The ancient little martyr-chapels of the saints now became great Churches. The complete apotheosis of the saints was denied in principle. The offerings brought on the anniversaries of Saints and Martyrs were always meant for God. But the connecting of the service of the Saints with the eucharistic sacrifice gave the former an extraordinary value. Banquets were regularly held on their anniversaries—a genuinely heathen custom, and in vain did men like Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory of Nazianzus inveigh against them. The ideas of the communion of the Saints, and its typical import—every class gradually obtained its Saint—were certainly very valuable, and in this sense the worship of the Saints was not entirely unjustifiable; but the harm was greater than the benefit. The worship of God suffered, and crass superstition was introduced, especially in connection with the relics. This was first perceived by the Gallican priest Vigilantius who had witnessed the gross disorder prevalent at the sacred sites of Palestine, Vigilantius (end of the fourth century) went to the roots of the worship of the Saints with his criticism, not only disputing the power of their intercession, but denying its existence, since the Saints were not yet in heaven with Christ. Against him Jerome maintained (c. Vigil. 6) a “ubique esse” of the saints, Apostles, and Martyrs, since they were wherever Christ was. Augustine also, who refers to similar contentions, showed that the Saints continued to have the power and the will to participate in earthly things. Vigilantius had rightly perceived the danger of an actual fusion of the service of God and of the Saints, and his attack resulted, at least, in a sharper distinction being drawn in theory. This was also, however, done by the Greeks; they reserved worship (λατρεία) to God, and described the veneration of the Saints, in language already used by Cyril of Alexandria, as a becoming honour (τιμὴ σχετική).

Most offensive was the worship of relics. It flourished to its greatest extent as early as the fourth century, and no Church doctor of repute restricted it. All of them rather, even the Cappadocians, countenanced it. The numerous miracles which were continually wrought by bones and relics seemed to confirm their worship. The Church therefore would not give up the practice, although a violent attack was made upon it by a few cultured heathens, and besides by Manichæans. Moreover, in the Church itself a scanty opposition arose here and there. The strict Arians (Eunomians) appear to have been more backward about this worship (c. Vigil, 8), and Vigilantius assailed the worshippers of relics, with Julian-like acuteness, though he was moved by the thought of the divine worship in spirit and truth. He called the adorers of relics “suppliants to refuse and servants of idols.” He would have nothing to do with the lights kindled before relics, the praying and kissing, or the pomp with which they were surrounded (c. 4). But that did as little good as his unsuccessful attacks on pilgrimage to the holy sites of Palestine. Men continued to seek the living among the dead, and soon it was enjoined as an universal command—and first in the West—that every altar must have its relics; see Canon 17 of the 6th Synod of Carthage, and Canon 2 of a Parisian Council in Hefele III., p. 70. The altar was no longer merely the table of the Lord, but at the same time the memorial of some Saint or other. Yet in France it was still necessary for a long time to defend the practice against Vigilantius who had obtained no ally in Augustine, although that great theologian well knew that God required a spiritual service. In the East, after Constantine Copronymus had attacked the relics along with the images, their worship was expressly enjoined by the seventh Synod; see the transactions at the fourth and seventh sittings (Hefele III., pp. 466, 472) as also the seventh Canon of the Council: “As every sin is followed by others in its train, the heresy of the iconoclasts dragged other impieties after it. They have not only taken away the sacred pictures, but they have abandoned other usages of the Church, which must now be renewed. We order therefore that relics be deposited with the usual prayers in all temples which have been consecrated without possessing any. But if in future a bishop consecrates a Church not having relics he shall be deposed.” On the worship of saints and relics in the modern Greek Church, see Gass, Symbolik, p. 310 ff., Kattenbusch l.c. I., p. 465 f. Along with relics and pictures the sign of the cross—this from an early date: see even Justin—the volume of the Gospels, the eucharistic vessels and many other things were held to be especially holy. On the cross and the form in which it was to be made, on which great stress is placed, see Gass, p. 184 f.

Mary takes the first place among the saints. She came into notice even in the first three centuries. So early began the legends and aprocryphal narratives that dealt with her; her place in the Symbol next the Holy Spirit insured a lofty position to her for all time. Pierius, Alexander of Alexandria, and Athanasius, already called her mother of God, and her virginity was maintained before, during and after the birth, the birth itself being embellished with miracle, as in the case of the Gnostics. But Mary obtained her chief, her positively dogmatic significance from the fact that the dogma of the Incarnation became the central dogma of the Church. Even the arguments of Irenæus are in this respect very significant (Mary and Eve); but it was only from the fourth century that the consequences were drawn. It would lead us too far to give here a history of mariolatry even in outline. The orthodox Fathers of the Greek Church in the fourth century were still comparatively reserved. Ambrose and Jerome, above all, in their controversy with Jovinian, initiated the Church in the worship of Mary. Ambrose who exerted so strong an influence upon Augustine is especially to be mentioned as patron of this worship. He taught that Mary took an active share in the work of redemption, and already applied Gen. III., 3 to the holy virgin. In his time, again, the fables about Mary, which had long been in existence, began to be recognised as authoritative in the Church. All that had been sung in her praise by extravagant Latin, Greek, and Syrian poets and novelists, was consolidated into a kind of doctrine. It was believed as early as the end of the fourth century that Mary had not died, but had been removed from the earth by a miracle. Yet the Arabian Collyridians, who presented her with offerings of bread-cakes, as if she had been a goddess, were anathematised (Epiph. H. 78). The Nestorian controversy brought Mary into the centre next Christ. She was the rock from which was hewn the deified body of the God-Logos. Nestorius cried in vain to Cyril, and with him to the whole Church, “Don't make the virgin into a goddess”; at Ephesus Cyril exalted her for ever in the Catholic Church above all creatures, above Cherubim and Seraphim, and set her at the right hand of the Son. He started the permutatio nominum by which everything held true of the Son might be said to a great extent of the mother, because without her there would have been no God-man. She now really became a factor in dogma, which cannot be said of any saint or angel; for the name “she who bore God” (bride of the Holy Spirit) was thoroughly meant. It may be said in many respects that the orthodox now taught regarding Mary what the Arians had taught regarding Christ; she was a demi-god mediating between God and men. John of Damascus summarised the Greek theory in De fide orth. III., 12 and in the three homilies devoted to Mary. “The name ‘Bearer of God’ represents the whole mystery of the Incarnation. The Holy Spirit purified Mary with a view to the conception.” John adopted the whole mass of legend up to the Ascension. Her share in the work of redemption is strongly emphasised; her body remained uncorrupted. Yet it is noteworthy that John was much more cautious in his dogmatic work than in his homilies.

The Synod of A.D. 754, hostile as it was to saints and pictures, did not venture to interfere with mariolatry; indeed it expressly avowed its orthodoxy on this point; but that was not enough for the opposition. Theodorus Studita described the iconoclasts as opponents of the worship of Mary—see his ἐγκώμιον εἰς τὴν κοίμησιν of Mary; and it was only by the Synod of 787 that feeling in the East was satisfied. But in spite of all the extravagances with which she was honoured—the successive rise of numerous festivals, the annunciation, birth, death, reception, introduction into the temple—she is only recognised after all in Greek dogmatics as the great patroness and intercessor for men. There is not a word of her having been free from the stain of original sin. It has been rightly said that she soon took a much more independent position in Western piety. “The prayers to Mary in the Greek Euchologion have a very uniform tone, because they dwell persistently on the desire for support and help.” (Gass, l.c. p. 183). In a word, although she is also called “Lady” by the Greeks, she is not the “Queen” who rules Christendom and the world, and commands in heaven. She is not the “Mother of sorrows”; that itself gives a different meaning to the feeling in the two Churches. But the superstition which is practised among the masses in connection with her pictures is perhaps worse in the East than in the West.

The distinctive character of the Greek Church was most clearly expressed in the worship of pictures, in the form in which it was dogmatically settled after the controversy on the subject. There had been pictures from early times, originally for decorative purposes, and afterwards for instruction, in the grave-yards, churches, memorial chapels, and houses, and fixed to all sorts of furniture. Opposition had existed, but it came to an end in the Constantinian age. The people were to learn from the pictures the histories they depicted; they were looked on as the books of the unlearned. At the same time the picture was to adorn holy places. But still another interest gradually made itself felt, one that had formerly been most strenuously resisted by early Christianity. It is natural for men to desire relics and images of venerated beings, to withdraw them from profane use, and to treat them with deep devotion. Christianity had originally resisted this impulse, so far as anything connected with the deity was concerned, in order not to fall into idolatry. There was less repugnance, however, to it, when it dealt with Christ, and almost none from the first in the case of martyrs and heroic characters. From this point the veneration of relics and pictures slowly crept in again. But from the fifth century it was greatly strengthened, and received a support unheard of in antiquity, through the dogma of the incarnation and the corresponding treatment of the Eucharist. Christ was the image (εἰκών) of God, and yet a living being, nay, a life-giving spirit (πνεῦμα ζωοποιόν); Christ had by the incarnation made it possible to apprehend the divine in a material form, and had raised sensuous human nature to the divine: the consecrated elements were εἰκόνες of Christ and yet were his very body. These ideas introduced thought to a new world. It was not only the Areopagite and the mystics who saw in all consecrated finite things the active symbol of an eternal power, or perceived the superiority of the Christian religion to all others in the very fact that it brought the divine everywhere into contact with the senses. They merely raised to the level of a philosophic view what the common man and the monk had long perceived, namely, that everything secular which has been adopted by the Church became, not only a symbol, but also a vehicle of the sacred. But amid secular things the image, which bore as it were its consecration in itself, appeared to be least secular. Pictures of Christ, Mary, and the saints, had been already worshipped from the fifth (fourth) century with greetings, kisses, prostration, a renewal of ancient pagan practices. In the naïve and confident conviction that Christians no longer ran any risk of idolatry, the Church not only tolerated, but promoted, the entrance of paganism. It was certainly the intention to worship the divine in the material; for the incarnation of deity had deified nature (φύσις). A brisk trade was carried on in the seventh and beginning of the eighth century in images, especially by monks; churches, and chapels were crowded with pictures and relics; the practice of heathen times was revived, only the sense of beauty was inverted. It was not fresh life that seemed fair, but, though a trace of the majestic might not be lacking, it was the life consecrated to asceticism and death. We do not know how far artistic incapacity, how far the dogmatic intention, contributed to the Byzantine ideal of the saints. “Authentic” pictures were in existence, and numberless copies were made from them. By their means, monkish piety, engaged in a stupid staring at sacred things, ruled the people, and dragged Christianity down to deeper and deeper depths.