st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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THE ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY. 53
It had become usual to fall down before images, to
pray to them, to kiss them, to burn lights and incense
in their honour, to adorn them with gems and
precious metals, to lay the hand on them in swearing,
and even to employ them as sponsors at 1
baptism."
The miracles alleged to have been wrought by them
were multiplied. Germanus, Patriarch of Constanti
nople, when Leo s first edict was put forth, dwells
particularly on this as a motive for retaining them ip
veneration. He specifies, in one of his letters, an
image 2 of the Virgin at Sozopolis in Pisidia, from the
hand of which unguents distilled. More famous still
was the likeness of our Lord, said to have been borne
by Ananias to Edessa, and placed by King Abgar in
a niche over the city gate. There it was carefully
concealed by the Bishop of Edessa, in the time of
Abgar s grandson, with a lamp burning before it and
;
when, five centuries after this, the Persians had been
Robertson, ii., p. 91.
1
3 Gieseler, ii., p. 201. It should be observed that, while
the terms "images"
and image- worship are retained, for
want of a better substitute, each of them requires some qualifi
cation. The "images" finally sanctioned in the seventh
general council (the second of Nicsea, 786), "were not works
of sculpture, but paintings and other representations on a flat
surface ;
a limitation to which the Greek Church has ever
since adhered." Robertson, ib., p. 164. We have also, as
Dean Milman has observed, no words corresponding to the
proskunesis and latreia of the Greeks ;
the single term wor
ship having to do duty both for the honour implied in the
former, which the Greek divines allowed to be paid to their
icons, and for the service or homage implied in the latter, which
is due to God only. Of course the main question is, whether
the multitude practically observed any such distinction.