facts, briefly summarised, of the history of rather more
than a century in the East. But we must examine more attentively the
meaning of the great strife which divided the Eastern Church.

[Sidenote: The orthodox doctrine of images.]

The orthodox doctrine, as it is now defined, is this--that "the icons
are likenesses engraved or painted in oil on wood or stone or any sort
of metal, of our Saviour Christ, of the Mother of God, and of the holy
men who from Adam have been well-pleasing to God. From earliest times
the icons have been used not only to give internal dignity and beauty
to every Christian church and house, but, which is much more essential,
for the instruction and moral education of Christians. For when any
Christian looks at the icons, he at once recalls the life and deeds of
those who are represented upon them, and desires to conform himself to
their example. On this account also the Church decreed in early times
that due reverence should always be paid {157} by Christians to the
holy icons, which honour of course is not rendered to the picture
before our eyes, but to the original of the picture." This statement
represents the views of the orthodox Eastern theologians of the eighth
as clearly as it does the teaching of the nineteenth century. It
represents also the opinions of the popes contemporary with the
Iconoclastic movement, who withstood the emperors to the face. Leo was
threatened by Gregory II., and the patriarch who had yielded to the
storm, Anastasius, was excommunicated. The pope advocated, in clear
dogmatic language, the use of images for instruction of the ignorant
and encouragement of the faithful. In Greece there was something like
a revolution, but it was sternly repressed. [Sidenote: The acceptance
in the West.] In 731 a council, at which the archbishops of Ravenna and
Grado were present, and ninety-three other Italian prelates, with a
large representation of the laity, under Pope Gregory III., ordered
that if anyone should stand forth as "a destroyer, profaner, and
blasphemer against the veneration of the holy images, that is of Christ
and His sinless Mother, of the blessed Apostles and the Saints, he
should be excluded from the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and from
all the unity and fabric of the Church." The answer to this, it would
seem, was the separation of the Illyrian territories and sees from the
Roman patriarchate, as well as the sees in Sicily and Calabria: the
pop