One of the interesting works of the very late 7th century, produced around 698 or so, was the work “Concerning Holy Places”, composed by St. Adamnan, the Abbot of Iona. The work was composed by St. Adamnan in concert with Bishop Arculf; Bishop Arculf was a Bishop of Gaul, who had gone on a journey through the East, visiting holy places. On his return journey, his ship somehow made its way to northern Britain, near Iona, and crashed. St. Adamnan received Bishop Arculf in the monastery, and there the work “Concerning the Holy Places” [De Locis Sanctis] was composed. St. Bede the Venerable, in his “Ecclesiastical History” written in 731, speaks about this saying:
“This same person [St. Adamnan] wrote a book about the holy places, most useful to many readers; his authority, from whom he procured the information, was Arculf, a French Bishop, who had gone to Jerusalem for the sake of the Holy Places; and having seen all the Land of Promise, traveled to Damascus, Constantinople, Alexandria, and many islands, and returning home by sea, was by a violent storm forced upon the western coast of Britain. After many other accidents, he came to the aforesaid servant of Christ, Adamnan, who, finding him to be learned in the Scriptures, and acquainted with the holy places, entertained him zealously, and attentively gave ear to him, insomuch that he presently committed to writing all that Arculf said he had said in the holy places.” [Book V, Chapter 15, Ecclesiastical History]
When we turn to St. Adamnan’s work, we find the following account concerning a miraculous Icon of the Mother of God in Constantinople:
“Arculf, who has been so often mentioned, gave us an accurate account, obtained from some well-informed witnesses in the city of Constantinople, as to the bust of the Holy Mother of the Lord: In that metropolitan city there used to hang on the wall of a house a picture of Blessed Mary, depicted on a small wooden tablet, as to which a certain stolid and hard-hearted man, on inquiring whose the picture was, learned from one who answered him, that it was the likeness of Holy Mary Ever-Virgin. That unbelieving Jew, hearing this, at the instigation of the devil, took that picture in great wrath from the wall, and rushed to a neighbouring privy; and there, to dishonour Christ, Born of Mary, he cast the picture of His Mother through a hole upon the filth that lay below, and having dishonoured it by every means in his power, he departed. Now what he did afterwards, or how he lived, or of what sort the end of his life was, is not known. But, after the wretch’s departure, another fortunate man of the common people, a Christian, who was very zealous in religious matters, coming in and knowing what had happened, searched for the image of Holy Mary, and rescued it from the human filth amidst which he found it, and washed it clean with the purest water, and taking it home with him, treated it with great honour. Marvellous to say, there always distills from the wood of that picture of Blessed Mary a true boiling oil, which, as Arculf used to say, he saw with his own eyes. This marvellous oil proves the honour of Mary the Mother of the Lord Jesus, of Whom the Father says, “In My Holy Oil, have I anointed Him.” The same Psalmist says to the Son of God Himself, ‘The Lord Thy God hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.’” [Book III, Chapter 5, “De Locis Sanctis”]
I bring this forward as a testimony to the ideas and impulses that the monastics and clergy [and laity, by extension] in Britain had about specific Christian images, icons. St. Adamnan could have said, “This was idolatrous for this man to ‘treat it with great honour’,” or he could have criticized the holy myrrh streaming from it as ‘idolatry’ or ‘superstition’. But, St. Adamnan, and his Frankish friend, the venerable Bishop Arculf, say nothing bad at all. They rather receive the honour given to the icon as natural, and the holy oil streaming from it as acceptable; this is all very natural to them. Nor does St. Bede make any quips in his remarks about the book containing “idolatrous behavour” and not recommend it, etc.
We must ask ourselves, “Why would St. Bede, St. Adamnan, or Bishop Arculf object to the devout Christian rescuing the icon, honouring it in his house, and the miraculous manifestation of the myrrh-streaming?”
They had no objection, because they did not disagree with the principle of venerating the Saints, including Our Lady, by honouring their icons; nor did they believe iconography could not be a means through which God displays grace-filled actions of miracles, such as holy oil. Their attitude toward iconography was positive, and they had no objection to honouring icons of the Mother of God, but, rather, commend it. The veneration of sacred icons is the natural impulse of Orthodox Christian peoples everywhere, in all times; it is only when people begin to thwart it by ignorance, blasphemy, and heresy, that it comes into question.
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