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

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THE ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY. 55
honour and veneration," 1
belonging to them in virtue
of their associations, he declares that he will never
cease honouring the earthly material by means of
which his salvation had been effected. Or again,
should it be urged that the images of Christ and the
Virgin Mother would be sufficient for this purpose.
he answers, that to forbid the rendering a share of
the like honour to images of sainted men would be to
disparage that human nature which Christ had exalted
by His incarnation. should not the saints,
"Why
who have shared in the sufferings of Christ, share also,
as His friends, even here upon earth, in His glory ?
In this, in truth, lay
the difference between the old
dispensation and the new. Under the old, a man s
death was but an occasion for mourning. No temple
was dedicated to God under any man s name. But
now the memory of the saints was held in honour.
and the mourning for a Jacob changed into the
rejoicing for a Stephen."
Meanwhile the imperial edict was producing a
greater ferment in men s minds than Leo himself had
probably expected. The eruption of a volcano in
the ^Egsean, and the sudden throwing up of a
volcanic island, was looked on as a token of the
wrath of heaven against the suppressors of imageworship.
In the Archipelago the influence of the
1
The phrase is from the Rev. W. Palmer s "Dissertations
on Subjects Relating to the Orthodox or Eastern-Catholic
Communion," 1853, p. 265. Dissertation xviii. of that work is
entitled : the worship or veneration of icons and relics,
and contains a skilful defence, though in the nature of special
pleading, of the practice of the Eastern Church in this par
ticular.