It would be incorrect to assert that there were not a series of Councils held by Bishops which condemned Iconoclasm prior to the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787 (i.e. the Second Council of Nicea). In fact, almost as soon as the heresy arose, condemnations of the heresy, not just by individuals, but by Synods transpired. Let us give a few examples below.
In the 720s, Emperor Leo III the Isaurian published edicts ordering the removal and destruction of iconography, in league with heretical bishops; this was opposed by Patriarch St. Germanus. However, Patriarch St. Germanus was expelled by the heretics, and in his place the Pseudo-Patriarch Anastasius, a supporter of iconoclasm, was put in his place. This called forth massive resistance, breaking of communion, and the eventual anathematization of iconoclasm in a formalized setting at the 731 Synod of Rome. The 8th Century Liber Pontificalis contains the following entries relevant to this, first beginning with Pope St. Gregory II.
In the entry for Pope St. Gregory II [+731], we read the following:
"In the mandates he later sent, the Emperor had decreed that no church image of any saint, martyr, or angel should be kept, as he declared them all accursed; if the Pontiff would agree he would have the Emperor's favour; if he prevented this being carried out as well he would be degraded from his office. So the pious man [St. Gregory II] despised the Prince's profane mandate, and now he armed himself against the Emperor as against an enemy, denouncing his heresy and writing that Christians everywhere must guard against the impiety that had arisen. So all the Pentapolitans and the armies of the Venetiae rose in resistance to the Emperor's mandate -- never would they stoop to killing this Pontiff; rather, they would manfully strive to defend him and to subject Paul the Exarch, the one who had sent him, and his adherents to an anathema. Throughout Italy, scorning [the Exarch's[ his arrangement, they all elected their own Dukes, and in this way they all tried to achieve freedom for the Pontiff and themselves. Once the Emperor's wickedness was known, the whole of Italy adopted a plan: they would elect themselves an Emperor and take him to Constantinople; but the Pontiff restrained this plan as he hoped for the Prince's conversion.
"18. In this same period the Duke Exhilaratus, taken in and prompted by the devil, was, along with his son Hadrian, holding the districts of Campania; they were leading the people astray to obey the Emperor and kill the Pontiff. Then all the Romans pursued, caught and killed him with his son; and after him they also blinded the Duke Peter saying he had written to the Emperor against the Pontiff.
"There was dispute in the districts of Ravenna. Some agreed with the Emperor's iniquity [i.e. Iconoclasm], others sided with the Pontiff and those who kept the Faith. There was strife between then and they killed Paul the Patrician. The castra in Emilia -- Ferronianum, Monteveglio and Verabulum, with their towns Buxum and Persiceto -- and in the Pentapolis the city of Osimo, surrendered to the Lombards.
"19. Some time after, the Emperor sent Eutychius the Patrician and eunuch who had formerly been Exarch to Naples to achieve what the Exarch Paul, the Spatharii and the other schemers of evil could not do. But even so, it was God's bidding that the miserable treachery did not remain secret: the appalling plan was evident to everyone, that they were attempting to violate Christ's churches, put everyone to death and lay waste everybody's property. When he sent his own man to Rome with his written instructions for the death of the Pontiff and the chief men in Rome, and when his cruel madness became known, they straightway wanted to kill this envoy of the Patrician, only the Pontiff's vigorous defence prevented this. But they anathematized the Exarch Eutychius: great and small, they bound themselves under oath never to permit a Pontiff who was a zealot for the Christian Faith and a defender of the churches to be harmed or removed; instead they were all ready to die for his safety."
And after describing more violence against the Orthodox by Constantinople's iconoclast powers, we read the following:
"Later the Emperor's wickedness that made him persecute the Pontiff became clear: to force his way on everyone living in Constantinople by both compulsion and persuasion to take down the images, wherever they were, of the Saviour, His Holy Mother, and All the Saints, and, what is painful to mention, to burn them in the middle of the city and to whitewash all the painted churches. Since many of that city's population were preventing this crime, some were beheaded and others paid the price of mutilation.
"[Then the Patriarch Germanus was expelled from his See through the Emperor's wickedness.] For this reason, since Germanus, Bishop of the Holy Church of Constantinople, would not give his assent, the Emperor deprived him of his Pontificate. He set up in his place one of his own followers, the Priest Anastasius. He sent his Synodic Letter, but when the holy man [Gregory II] realized he [i.e. Anastasius] gave his consent to such error [i.e. Iconoclasm], he did not accept him in the normal way as a brother or fellow sacerdos, but in the admonishments he wrote back he commanded that if he would not convert to the Catholic Faith he should be drive out of his Sacerdotal Office. As for the Emperor, in his writings he commanded and tried to persuaded him what was advantageous and warned him to draw back from such execrable wretchedness."
[from pages 11-16, as translated by Davies in "The Eigth-Century Lives of the Popes"]
Pope St. Gregory II also wrote two Letters Against Iconoclasm directed at the Emperor; in these, St. Gregory II did not wish to call an Ecumenical Council to deal with Iconoclasm, but, thought it sufficient that the Church everywhere condemned this heresy. I have read some sources which state that a Synod was held in Rome in 727 during the early life of Pope St. Gregory II condemning Iconoclasm, prior to the 731 Synodal Condemnation.
However, there does seem to be other source material, specifically, from the Chronicle of St. Theophanes the Confessor. St. Theophanes writes:
"In this year the impious Emperor began to frame an order condemning the august, holy icons. When Gregory, the Pope of Rome, learned this he stopped the tribute from Italy and Rome wrote Leo a Doctrinal Letter to the effect that it was not proper for the Emperor to issue a command concerning the Faith or to make innovations in the Ancient Doctrines of the Church, which had been established by the Holy Fathers."
The Chronicle continues in the year 730 and states:
"In Byzantium the champion of pious doctrines -- the Holy and Marevllous Priest Germanos -- was in his prime, fighting against the wild beast who bore the name Leo and against his henchmen. In the Elder Rome, Gregory, an Holy and Apostolic Man who held the same Throne as had the Prince Peter, caused Rome, Italy, and all the West to secede from both political and ecclesiastical obedience to Leo and his Empire. In Syrian Damascus the Priest and Monk John Chrysorrhoas (the son of Mansur) [i.e. St. John Damascene], an excellent teacher, shone in his life and his words."
Nevertheless, during the time of St. Gregory II's successor, St. Gregory III, a Synod was held to condemn Iconoclasm. The entry for Pope St. Gregory III in the 8th century "Life" of him in the Liber Pontificalis states:
"He was Bishop in the time of the Emperors Leo [III] and Constantine [V], while there was raging the persecution they started for the removal and destruction of the sacred images of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Holy Mother, the Holy Apostles and all the Saints and Confessors. On behalf of these, just as his predecessor of sacred memory had done, this holy man sent written warnings, with the authority of the Apostolic See's teaching, for them to change their minds and quit their error. The Priest George carried these writings, but he was moved by human fear and did not hand them to the Emperor. On his return he brought them back with him here to Rome and exhibited them to the Holy Pontiff, confessing the fault of which he was guilty. The Pontiff threatened him greatly and meant to deprive him of his sacerdotal office. But when a Council was in session, and both Council and chief men begged that this Priest be not deposed but subjected to a penance, a just penance was laid on him. He sent him again to the Imperial City with the same writings expanded. But the Emperors' demonstrably wicked arrangement saw to the detention of these venerable writings in Sicily: they did not let this letter-carrier cross over to the Imperial City, but exiled him for almost a full year.
" So spurred with a greater enthusiasm for the Faith, the Supreme and Venerable Pope [held] a Sacerdotal Synod in front of the Most Holy Confessio of St. Peter's most sacred body. With him in session were the Archbishops Antoninus of Grado and John of Ravenna, with other Bishops of this Hesperian district, 93 in number, and Priests of this Holy Apostolic See; the Deacons and all the Clergy were in attendance, and the Noble Consuls and the rest of the Christian people assisted. The Synod decreed that if anyone thenceforth despising the faithful use of those who held the ancient custom of the Apostolic Church, should remove, destroy, profane, and blaspheme against this veneration of the sacred images, viz., of Our God and Lord Jesus Christ, of His Mother the Ever-Virgin Immaculate and Glorious Mary, of the Blessed Apostles and of all the Saints, let him be drive forth from the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ and from the unity and membership of the entire Church. They also confirmed this by their signatures and sanctioned that it be attached to the other teachings of the previous approved Orthodox Pontiffs."
[page 20, from the translation of "The Lives of Eighth-Century Popes," by Raymond Davies].
Additionally, during the time of Pope Stephen III, a Synod was held in the old Lateran Basilica in 769, which also, again, condemned Iconoclasm. The entry in the Liber Pontificalis states:
"After all these matters were promulgated, the various testimonies of the holy Fathers were straightaway brought forward in this Council concerning the Sacred Images of Our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, His Glorious Mother Our Lady the Ever-Virgin St. Mary, the Blessed Apostles and All the Saints, Prophets, Martyrs, and Confessors. They explored them all carefully and decreed that all Christians should venerate these holy images with great respect and honour, just as all this Apostolic See's preceding Pontiffs and all the Venerable Fathers down to the present had observed about the respect and honour towards them, and just as all of them had handed it down, for brining devout remorse to mind. And they disallowed and anathematized that execrable 'Synod' recently held in the districts of Greece [i.e. reference to the iconoclast council of Hieria] for the removal of these sacred images."
[pg. 99]
After having various Popes, Bishops, Saints, and Councils anathematize iconoclasm for years, from the late 720s to the Lateran Council in 769, there seems no doubt that the Church considered iconoclasm an anathematized heresy. They also, concordantly, considered the iconoclasts in Constantinople with all their dependent bishops to have been heretics and schisamtics, i.e. not part of the Church. This is testified to by Patriarch Paul IV who retired in the 780s:
"On August 31 of the seventh indiction Paul, the devout and holy patriarch, abandoned his throne because of illness. He went to the monastery of Florus and received monastic garb without the Empress' knowledge. When she learned of this she went to him with her son and, distressed, cried out, 'Why have you done this?'
"With deep mourning he told her, 'You should be used to the fact that I did not willingly sit on the throne of holiness, as the church has been ruled tyrannically. It is in Schism from the remaining Catholic Thrones and has been anathematized by them.' Irene summoned the Patricians and picked men from the Senate and sent them to hear what he was saying. He told them, 'If there is no Ecumenical Council, and if the error in our midst is not corrected, you will not be saved.'
"They asked him, 'At the time when you were appointed, why did you subscribe to giving no reverence to icons?'
"He said, 'I am in mourning because of that. I have taken refuge in repentance, and I beg God not to punish me, for I am a priest who kept silent until now and did not proclaim the truth from fear of your anger.' In this way he died in peace, leaving behind deep mourning in the Empire and in the pious men of the State. For he was a worshipful man, more than usually compassionate, and deserved total respect. The State and the Empress had had a great deal of faith in him. From this time on everyone began to talk about the issue of the holy, revered icons, which was addressed in open discussion."
Therefore, it would seem more than reasonable, from a wide reading of the Fathers, Scriptures, Councils, Canons, chronicles, lives of Saints, etc, that Conciliar condemnations of heresies should and do take place, often, long prior to an Ecumenical Council. One can think of the condemnations of Arius in the early 300s by Alexandria before Nicea I; or the numerous Councils condemning and separating from the Arian and Macedonian heretics before Constantinople I. In the case of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Ecumenical Councils, the breaks with heretics transpired with little more than a few years, or less, before the Church hierarchy acted exceedingly fast [probably to prevent the situation of a decades long drawn out dispute]; before the Sixth Ecumenical Council, there took place Conciliar Condemnations in Rome, most famously the 649 Lateran Synod, but, also, Synods in England, France, Italy, and Spain, in the 650s, 660s, and 670s, condemning Monothelites as heretic-schismatics. Perhaps in a the future a post can be made for each of these.
The matter is clear; either one acts very quickly when breaks in communion and non-commemoration happen, as St. Cyril did in the case of Nestorius, or St. Leo and others did in calling Chalcedon against Dioscorus, waiting no more than 2 or so years, or, you risk the absolute catastrophe of massive schism on an unprecedented scale, and complete chaos. Of course, if the levers of power in a local Church are seized by heretics, they will condemn and expel anyone who does not agree with their heresy, or will condemn those who openly fight against being forced into a schism by accepting heresy; thus, the schismatic-heretics, for example, who control Moscow, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, etc.
Either you condemn the heretics for their schism and heresy, or you get "condemned" by them as "schismatics".
No comments:
Post a Comment