Scotus Academicus, Tomus septimus: De Incarnatione Verbi Divini

Although these three words, imago, idolum, and simulacrum, by their first institution and common usage of the Grammarians may seem to signify the same thing; nevertheless it long ago came about among Christians that they obtained a distinct signification. For imago extends more widely than simulacrum, and simulacrum more widely than idolum; since every idolum is a simulacrum, and every simulacrum an imago; but not conversely is every image a simulacrum, nor every simulacrum an idolum, at least according to the Latin signification; although, as Saint Augustine observes on Psalm 135, simulacra are called in Greek idola, and everywhere where the Seventy Interpreters have ⟦greek: εἴδωλον⟧, the Latin edition translates simulacrum. Whence image only sounds forth a likeness of a thing truly expressed or made for representing. But a simulacrum either is the likeness and conformity of the image with the thing which it expresses, if that simulacrum be true; or it is only a representation of a fictitious thing; for, as

Saint Isidore observes, book 8 of Etymologies: Simulacra are so called, either because they are like, or because they are simulated and fabricated, whence they are also false. Wherefore simulacrum is said from simulating, as the commentary upon chapter one of First Thessalonians falsely ascribed to Saint Jerome has it: whence simulacra properly signify false images, that is, such as either represent nothing, or shadow it only with a feigned figure, according to that of Habacuc chapter 3: The graver hath carved it, a molten thing, and a false image: he shall trust in his own fiction who made them, to make dumb simulacra. An idolum truly is a simulacrum which has been made in human figure and consecrated, says Isidore there; wherefore every idolum is an effigy ordained to represent some divinity as present and inherent in the simulacrum, to which religious cult is therefore paid.

Hence the Apostle 1 to the Corinthians 8 says excellently: We know that an idol is nothing in the world: which can be expounded in three ways, says Saint Thomas there in his Commentary. First thus:

An idol is nothing, that is, among the creatures of the world, as regards the form of the idol: for although the matter of the idol be something, namely gold, or silver, or the like; yet it is nothing as to form, namely that which is believed to be therein by idolaters, who believe the idol to be God. Second thus: An idol is nothing else, namely a subsisting person out of a simulacrum and a spirit presiding over it: for from those two nothing is made, as idolaters think. Third thus: An idol is nothing in the world, that is, it has no likeness of anything that is made in the world; for there is a difference between an idol and a simulacrum, because a simulacrum is said to be after the likeness of some natural thing, but an idol is made after the likeness of no thing, as if to a human body there were added the head of a horse. Isaiah 10 : To whom have you likened God?

It is certain therefore that among Ecclesiastical writers (as Henry Stephanus also himself notes in his Thesaurus of the Greek language) εἴδωλα are also called in Latin idola with a peculiar signification, simulacra representing some sort of divinity, which they deign to honor with cult.

It stands therefore that the name image is generic, namely toward true and false or fictitious representation, as is also gathered from sacred Scripture, wherein sometimes it uses the name of image to signify false and feigned effigies, as Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, Habacuc 2; but sometimes to express true and real ones: thus man is said to be created to the image of God, Genesis 1; likewise Christ the image of the Father, 2 Corinthians. But if this name were not generic toward true and false image, but were plainly synonymous, we could as rightly assert Christ to be the idolum of the Father, and man to have been created to the idolum of God, as we religiously say Christ is the image of God: and it would sound ill even among heretics, whoever asserted Christ to be the idolum of the Father and not touched by the idolum of God, because thus would be signified a certain false representation of a vain thing: therefore image is distinguished from idolum in such wise that idolum adds above image vanity and falsity: wherefore an idolum is not distinguished from image solely with respect to the religious cult rendered to the thing, as heretics will, because something is first understood to be an idolum inasmuch as it is representative of a vain and false thing, before any cult be judged rendered to it.

Note secondly. The Gentiles truly judged the simulacra and idola which they worshipped not only to be representations of their gods, but even to be held for gods, as is gathered from Psalm 95 : All the gods of the Gentiles are devils; 4 Kings chapter 19: They cast their gods into the fire: for they were not gods, but the works of the hands of men of wood and stone; Isaiah 44: He hath made a god and carved it for himself: he boweth down before it and adoreth it, and prayeth unto it, saying: Deliver me, for thou art my god. And Wisdom 15: They esteemed all the idols of the nations for gods. And Acts 19: Demetrius the silversmith making silver shrines of Diana complains of Paul before the people of the Ephesians: This Paul persuadeth and draweth away many people, saying: That they are not gods which are made with hands. From which it plainly appears that the Gentiles truly judged some Divinity to inhere in their idols. Which indeed is confirmed from the holy Fathers, for Irenaeus, book 3, chapter 6, against what was said to Moses: Thou shalt not make to thyself any similitude into God, whatsoever things are in heaven above, and whatsoever things are in the earth beneath. Similarly Tertullian in the Apologeticum speaking against the Gentiles of the gods of the Gentiles, and of the persecution wherewith the Gentiles raged against Christians: With fires we are burned, he says, and these things too: (your gods) from their first mass are condemned into metals: thence your Gods are reckoned, etc. If by these any divinity stands, then they who are punished are consecrated, and punishments must be called divinities. A little later: If the Capitolium is sought, or the vegetable market, under the same voice of the auctioneer, under the same spear, under the same annotation of the quaestor, divinity adjudged is let out to hire. Similarly Minucius Felix in Octavius: Behold, it is poured, fashioned, chiseled — not yet is it a god: Behold, it is leaded, built up, erected — nor yet is it a god: Behold, it is adorned, consecrated, prayed to — then finally it is a god. Lastly Arnobius against the Gentiles, book 1: Those very gods whom I had persuaded myself to be, I was proving with grave insults, when I believed them to be woods, stones, and bones, or to dwell in material of things of this kind. And the same, book 6, anticipating the objection of the Gentiles:

But you err (he says) and slip: for neither do we decree bronzes, nor materials of gold and of silver, nor others out of which statues are made, to be per se Gods and religious Divinities: but we worship in these, and venerate, those whom sacred dedication brings in and makes to dwell together in the wrought simulacra. Not a wicked reason, nor one to be spurned, whereby anyone however slow, nay even most prudent, might believe that the Gods, having left their proper abodes (that is heaven), do not refuse nor flee to enter earthly habitations; nay rather impelled by the right of dedication coalesce into the induction of simulacra. Do your gods then dwell in gypsum and in potsherds? Nay rather, are the minds, spirits, and souls of potsherds and gypsum gods? And that vilest things may become august, do they suffer themselves to be shut up, and to lie hid in the confinement of an obscure seat?

But the Gentiles held this false estimation because truly demons mostly existed in simulacris and idolis, and in them resounded prophecies and oracles, as Tertullian testifies, On Idolatry: Demons confer themselves upon bodies. Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols: These spirits lurk beneath statues and consecrated images. Saint Jerome on Habacuc chapter 2: To all simulacra unclean spirits attend. Saint Augustine on Psalm 135: That rather the demons which are in the simulacra might be signified. Arnobius Junior on Psalm 95: It has been proven that all the gods of the Gentiles, which had been placed in temples, had demons dwelling in them.

It does not escape me that the most polished and learned among the Gentiles were not so fatuous and dull as to hold empty simulacra for Gods, which Julian the Apostate signified in part 1 of his works in these words:

Simulacra, and altars, and also the keeping of eternal fire, and, to say it in one word, everything else of that kind our ancestors established as signs of the presence of the gods, not that we should believe these things to be Gods, but that through them we might venerate the gods themselves. For indeed since we dwelling in body ought to render to the gods a cult conformable to body, while they further are without experience of body: first our ancestors showed us simulacra: that is the second kind of Gods, which is honored around the whole heaven in its orb. But since even to these a bodily cult cannot be attributed, for by their own nature they need nothing: a third kind of simulacra was found on earth, upon which bestowing our cult, God will be rendered propitious to us.

Presently he goes on to dispute that those very simulacra are not Gods but effigies of Gods, just as images of kings are not kings but effigies of them. Further, they who love and venerate kings hold their images in love and cult. So the lovers and worshippers of Gods are borne with equal affection toward their simulacra. Such are the words of Julian. Truly, says Petavius, it is not doubtful that, although the more prudent and erudite among the Gentiles easily noted that effigies fabricated of wood, or bronze, or costlier metal are not Gods; nevertheless many, and indeed the greater number, held them for gods and adored them. Concerning which no Christian can make controversy: nor should anyone judge divine Letters of both Testaments to deserve faith rather than the execrable Apostate, summoning the aid of lying and shamelessness to the defense of a worst cause. Certainly that very thing, which suffices for our design, was believed by the heretical Iconoclasts, who burdened the Catholic Church as a worshipper of sacred images with that same infamy which they knew to reside among the Ethnic worshippers of simulacra, that is, of idola.

Note thirdly. That a threefold opinion concerning images has existed generally; the first indeed was that of heretics, not only attacking the cult of images, but also casting them down from Basilicas and other places as idola, who on that account were called Iconoclasts or Iconomachs, because they dared to overturn images utterly, to demolish and dissolve them. Whose sect again is divided two ways, for some disapproved only those effigies expressed in human form, but retained the cross and its figure, and accompanied both with honor; wherefore Paul the pseudo-Patriarch of Constantinople, that he might flatter Copronymus, while he held a public sermon to the people, the saving woods being lifted aloft, swore himself not to be among those who adored sacred images, as Nicephorus relates in his Breviary under year 766. Hence Michael Balbus the Iconoclast Emperor complains in a letter to Louis the Pious Emperor that images were held in such honor as the honorable and vivifying wood upon which Christ our true God deigned to be crucified for our salvation. Others truly, as Claudius of Turin, removed all crosses even from churches, whose impiety in these last centuries the sectaries of the Calvinists emulated — nay surpassed — and many other knaves of the same flour, who declared general war against sacred Images and crosses. The second opinion was of those who thought images indeed ought to be had, nor wholly abolished, or removed from churches and temples, but so that no honor, no veneration be paid them: but only kept and exposed to view, that is, for conserving the memory of divine benefits, or for recalling and representing the eminent virtue and illustrious deeds of Saints. Which opinion many formerly embraced, judged by no means then heretics. Such seem the Gallican Prelates who in the Synod of Frankfurt condemned the second Nicene Council: such was above all others Jonas of Orleans, as appears from those three books published by him against Claudius of Turin; such also existed whoever is author and writer of those four books which are said to have been written in the name of the Emperor Charles the Great and sent to Adrian the Roman Pontiff; such finally were those Prelates who by command of the Emperor Louis the Pious convening at Paris directed their opinion concerning sacred images in an epistle, or little book, to Eugenius the supreme Pontiff. For all these judged that images of Saints are by no means to be venerated and adored, yet not to be excluded from Basilicas and sacred places. The third finally is the opinion of all Catholics teaching, first, that from the very beginning of the Church down to us they were employed by the faithful; second, that they were wont also to be placed in temples; third, finally, that they are worthy of cult and veneration, as will appear in the three following Conclusions.

First conclusion. — That there are images and cult thereof from the very beginnings of the nascent Church was frequently practiced by the faithful.

It is proved first from those most celebrated images of Christ, formed and wrought either by his own miraculous virtue, or by the industry of disciples and earlier faithful. For first the sacred Annalists relate that two images of his divine countenance were impressed by Christ himself: the first indeed, which he impressed by placing a sudarium over his face, he sent to Abgarus King of the city of Edessa, who when he had besought him through Legates that, leaving behind the perfidious Jews assailing him unceasingly, he would betake himself into the city of Edessa together with his Disciples, that he might show to him and his people the reports of miracles heard, Eusebius relates book 1 chapter 13 that Christ answered by letter: If you desire to see my face bodily, behold I send you the species of my cult transformed upon linen, whereby both you may cool the heat of your desire, and judge nothing impossible of what you have heard of me. But after I shall have completed those things which are written of me, I will send you one of my disciples, who may impart healths to you and your people, and lead them to the sublimity of faith, etc. Moreover mention of this image is made not only by Evagrius book 1 of History chapter 26, Nicephorus book 2 chapter 7, Damascene Oration 1 On Images, Stephen supreme Pontiff in the Roman Council; but furthermore Leo Lector of Constantinople attested in the seventh Synod Act 5 that he saw that effigy of the divine countenance of Christ in the city of Edessa, whence carried to Rome it is even today religiously preserved and exposed to the veneration of the faithful in the church of the Monastery of the Nuns of Saint Sylvester. The second effigy of his divine countenance divinely expressed by Christ the Lord is that which at the time of the passion he impressed upon linen and handed to Veronica the pious woman; which is still preserved in the church of Saint Peter at Rome, and in the Vatican Library exists a manuscript history wherein is related how at the time of Tiberius this effigy of the divine countenance of Christ was carried to Rome.

There is celebrated also among the holy Fathers and writers of ecclesiastical history that bronze statue famous for very many miracles, which at Paneas a woman freed from the flux of blood by touching the hem of the garment of Christ erected out of gratitude toward Christ the Lord himself: which statue it is credible was seen by Christ himself and by his Apostles, and affirms that she herself also saw it not only Antipater Bishop of Bostrensis in the sermon on the miracle of that healed woman, but also Eusebius book 7 of History chapter 14, who moreover relates that a certain herb of unwonted form sprouted at the feet of the statue, which wherever it grew up to the hem of the pallium of the same statue drew forth virtue of curing all kinds of diseases. Sozomen adds book 5 chapter 20 that when Julian the Apostate removed the statue thence and commanded his own to be placed there, straightway by wood sent down from heaven the head of the impious statue was cut off. He subjoins chapter 21 that when the Gentiles had broken that statue of Christ ignominiously treated, the Christians gathered its fragments and laid them away in a church; where, says Sozomen, they are preserved to this day.

From WHICH IT MAY BE GATHERED that the fabrication, veneration, and cult of images was neither forbidden by God in the New Testament, nor reproved by the faithful of the nascent Church; seeing that Christ the Lord himself was himself the maker of images, and the faithful held them in price and fashioned them. For, as Tertullian observes in the book On Modesty, chapter 10, where bewitched by the foolish ravings of Montanus and of witch-women he declaims against Catholics — whereas they, convicted adulterers having performed penance, relaxed forgiveness and communion, and for persuading this made use of the example of the good shepherd bearing the lost sheep found upon his shoulders back to the fold, whose image they painted on chalices — he says against it: If perhaps that shepherd will patronize, he says, whom you paint on the chalice, the pimp, and the very merit of the Christian sacrament, and the trick of drunkenness, and the asylum of the harlot following after the chalice; of which you may drink nothing more gladly than the sheep of a second penance. But I draw from Scripture that shepherd's word who cannot be broken. By which words Tertullian, although with heretical mind, nevertheless truly reports the image of the Savior to have been wont to be depicted by the faithful of the nascent Church. To these it would help to add what Nicephorus Calixtus relates in book 6 chapter 15, namely that the frequent use of images of the Apostles existed among Christians at the time of Constantine the first Emperor, as appears from the history of his conversion itself to the Christian religion. Which Saint Ambrose confirms likewise, Letter 51, where speaking of Saints Gervasius and Protasius offered to himself in vision, he says: When there appeared to me a certain third person, who seemed to be like blessed Paul the Apostle, whose countenance a picture had taught me. Which passage holy Damascene also cited, Oration 2 On Images. Saint Ambrose therefore had seen the effigy of Paul expressed in colors. The same Augustine indicates, book 1 Of the Harmony of the Evangelists, chapter 10, where treating of certain Gentiles who preferred certain books written by Christ together with the Apostles: That in many places, he says, they saw them pictured together with him. Similarly Saint Jerome on Jonah chapter 4 testifies that images of the Apostles were wont to be depicted by the faithful, in these words: And truly on those gourds themselves, he says, which are commonly called Saucomariae, images of the Apostles are wont to be sketched. It does not help here to append all the opinions of the holy Fathers, who institute the celebrated usage handed down concerning sacred images. Since indeed you have all those authorities collected abundantly and commended by the Fathers of the 7th Synod, who at the conclusion of the last action, after the cult of sacred images was defined, cry out with one voice in these words: This is the faith of the Apostles, this is the faith of the orthodox: this faith confirmed the whole world. We stand upon the Legislation of the ancient Church, we keep the decrees of the Fathers. The same Adrian Pope confirms by many things, Letter to the Emperor Charles against the pseudo-Caroline book, wherein he relates all his predecessors, and likewise the Ecumenical Councils, by which sacred images were held in veneration, as will appear within.

You will object heretically. Minucius Felix, who relates the Gentile thus upbraiding Christians: Why have they no altars, no temples, no known simulacra? To whom Octavius answering says: Do you think us to hide what we worship, if we have no shrines and altars? For what simulacrum of God shall I fashion, since, if you judge rightly, man himself is the simulacrum of God? What temple shall I build to him, since this whole world, fabricated by his workmanship, cannot contain him? And since man, I, who contain so great a majesty, dwell more widely within one little shrine? Is he not better dedicated in our mind, consecrated in our very breast? Therefore at the time of Minucius Felix, just as Christians had no temples, so neither images,

I deny the consequence. For although in the first times of the Christian religion, while yet the fury of the Gentiles blazed against it and the superstition of idols still clung in the minds of men, the use of sacred images was not so frequent, as neither of temples and altars: thence it is not consequent that among them there were no images, nor altars; for it stands from Tertullian and other more ancient writers that the faithful of that time had certain sacred places, and likewise altars, in which they were wont to gather before daylight assemblies, then to pour forth prayers, then to offer the unbloody sacrifice, then to make the sacramental synaxis. Equally it stands from the same, as we said above, that the use of images was frequent among the faithful. But with peace and liberty restored to the Church, just as the faithful did not hesitate to build Basilicas, and Temples, and Altars in honor and cult of God, so the Church began to employ images of Christ and of the Saints, whose public and solemn use had not yet grown common, for propagating the faith of Christ and of Martyrs and of the other Saints, animating and instructing the faithful unto constancy of piety. For, says Nilus Abba, disciple of Saint Chrysostom, letter to Olympiodorus the Praetect: They who know not letters, nor can read sacred letters, recall by contemplation of pictures the illustrious deeds of those who truly served God. But this public use of images, as Petavius observes most excellently, book 15 chapter 13, was by no means frequented by the faithful in all places with the same institution and time; but elsewhere sooner, elsewhere later, according as the capacity and disposition of nations was, and those who presided over them judged it expedient, lest the veneration of images be a danger of idolatry. Which certainly must diligently be observed for unraveling many difficulties and explaining the remaining examples and testimonies wherewith the Iconomachs are accustomed to abuse for attacking the cult of images, contending that images were sometimes repudiated and condemned by the orthodox, as we shall relate in the following Conclusion. Which thing indeed I would not deny was done prudently on account of the reason of times and places.

Second conclusion. — Sacred images are lawfully and religiously placed in the temples of Christians.

This is against the Iconomachs, especially however against Calvin, who although he admits some images employed by the faithful of the primitive Church, nevertheless asserts book 1 of Institutions, chapter 11, that for five hundred first years from the founding of the Church there were no images in the temples of Christians, and that therefore now they are wrongly placed therein.

It is proved first from Canon 8 of the Apostles in the Antiochene Synod, where thus it is enacted: Let the fallen from idols be scraped off: but let them paint opposite the divine, human, and hand-made unmixed effigy of God the true, and our Savior Jesus Christ: and of his servants against idols and the Jews. Let them neither wander among idols, nor become like the Jews. In which words three things occur to be noted: First, that images of Christ our Lord and of his servants must be formed: Second, that idolatry is strictly prohibited: Third, that images of Christ and of the Saints are to be opposed both to idolomania and to the superstition of the Jews. From which one may infer that the scope of that Canon and Council is that images be placed in temples. For this opposition of images against idols indicates that images are there ordained to be constituted in temples. For there, for the most part, the Ethnic had their idols, as also the Jews who had deflected to the idolatry of the Gentiles. It is confirmed from Theodoret, who relates book 8 against the Greeks that relics of Saints were introduced into temples in place of idols. Truly let it avail to reply that the faith of that Apostolic constitution is doubtful; for, says Fevardentius ours, book 2 chapter 2, in his annotations to the book of Saint Irenaeus number 15, that this Apostolic Canon is genuine, not recently one and another affirm in a corner; but nearly innumerable, who convened in the public theater of the whole world eight hundred years ago, the Fathers of the latter Synod of Nicaea. Leaning upon this Canon also Basil the Great asserted 1270 years ago that the use of images emanated from the Apostles: and at the same time Eusebius, yet more ancient, confirming that it had been handed down from their ancestors: and Pamphilus Martyr superior to both attests he found this constitution of the Apostles, together with many others, in the Origenean Library. But what touches the Synod of Nicaea, this I transcribe from the same, namely from Act 1, where Gregory Nyssenus Bishop brings forward this Canon in confirmation of the use of images, in these words: In the Antiochene Synod of the holy Apostles it was said, that those fallen should no longer wander to idols, but strive before the pillar of God, and of the man Jesus Christ our Lord. To which the other Fathers assented. Truly note that the Canon of the Apostles could not everywhere take effect straightway in the primitive Church, according to their decree, because on account of the persecutions of the ten Caesars of the Ethnic, very few churches had been built until the time of Constantine the Emperor. And therefore it is no wonder that until then little is found consigned in writing concerning the use of images in temples. From the time truly of Constantine himself and thereafter frequent is read the use itself; witness of this matter is Damascene in the Pontifical concerning Sylvester Pontiff, where he says Constantine gave in the Constantinian Basilica these gifts: a silver pediment having in front the Savior sitting in a chair, and the twelve Apostles with crowns; likewise behind in the apse looking back the Savior sitting on a throne, and four Angels of purest gold; finally candelabra of aurichalcum seven in number interclosed with seals of the Prophets with ornament of silver. And again upon the rim of the font where he was baptized, a lamb of purest gold, and in the washing of the lamb John the Baptist of silver holding a written inscription: Behold the Lamb of God, behold who takes away the sins of the world.

It is proved from the perpetual practice of the Church itself, for Tertullian, who flourished about the year 200, book On Modesty, chapters 1 and 10, as said in the prior Conclusion, notes that in his time the image of Christ the Lord carrying upon his shoulders the found sheep had been depicted on sacred chalices. Similarly Saint Gregory of Nyssa in the Oration on Saint Theodore Martyr relates that a Basilica built in honor of that Martyr had been decorated with paintings, wherein his combats seemed expressed in colors with equal elegance and fruit. For painting, he says, silent on a wall is wont to speak, and to profit greatly. Likewise Saint Basil, in the discourse on Barlaam Martyr, says the victories of Martyrs were depicted in the church: and in a fragment of his epistle to Julian, speaking of Apostles, Martyrs, and Prophets, says: I honor and adore the characters of their images, especially since this has been handed down from the holy Apostles, nor prohibited, nay rather shown depicted in all our churches. This truth Prudentius explains luculently in the hymn of Saint Cassianus, where he says he beheld his image in the Basilica of that Martyr, in these words:

Cast upon the ground, I rolled myself upon the tomb which the holy Martyr Cassianus adorns with his dedicated body. While weeping I reckon with myself my wounds, and all the labors of life, and the acuteness of sorrows: I turned my face to heaven; there stood over against my face the pictured image in colors of the Martyr, Bearing a thousand stripes, lacerated through all his limbs, showing his skin torn with minute punctures.

And Saint Paulinus, book 1, Letter 4, describing the baptistery of Saint Severus, has these words:

The venerable image of the man attests Martin; Another figure represents humble Paulinus.

And in the description of three chapels of the temple of Saint Felix, which he calls Basilicas, he says:

To Martyrs with painted names they mark the middle pious, Whom an equal glory of varied sex redeemed: but the two that open right and left Faithful painting adorns with twin histories. One the sacred deeds of holy men fill. Job tried with wounds, Tobias with light. But another holds the lesser sex, illustrious Judith: Who together with powerful Queen Esther is painted.

All these however, and many others whom it would be tedious to commemorate, lived before the first five hundred years: Calvin therefore lies when he affirms that for the first five hundred years from the founding of the Church there were no images in the temples of Christians. Which truth indeed the supreme Pontiff Adrian explains and confirms no less learnedly than elegantly in the Letter to the Emperor Charles; for chapter 19 answering the pseudo-Caroline book thus objecting: Let those knowing make it where in the Old or New Testament, or in six Synodal Councils, it is commanded to make images or adore those made, thus says:

We truly below, those knowing, make it, as we already have done, because both in the Old and in the New Testament, or even in the six Synodal Councils, sacred images have ever been to be venerated, and when made were titled among the Holy of Holies. For those were wont to say to us, in which of those six Synodal Councils sacred images were reprehended. Truly in the first holy Council it was often shown that Sylvester Pope, and Constantine most Christian Emperor venerated sacred images, and with the name of Christianity openly before all faithfully, and marvelously showed them, and from then until now the Churches of the holy Pontiffs, namely of Sylvester, Mark, and Julius, of marvelous magnitude are depicted among us, as well in mosaic as in the other histories, adorned with sacred images. — Likewise in the holy second Council Damasus the most elegant Pope made his own Church, of which Saint Gregory makes mention in the Dialogues, which is called from the name of its founder Damasus: similarly from then until now we hold it painted with sacred histories and images. — Again, and concerning the holy third Council, Saint Coelestine Pope decorated his own cemetery with paintings. But more his successor blessed Sixtus Pope made the Basilica of Mary the holy Mother of God surnamed Major, which is called at the Manger. In like manner he himself also decorated it both in golden metals and in diverse histories with sacred images. And at his request Valentinian Augustus made a golden image with twelve gates, and of the Savior, adorned with precious gems, which by vow of grace he placed above the confession of blessed Peter the Apostle, and from then until now it is venerated among us by all the faithful. — Likewise of the holy fourth Council Saint Leo Pope, excellent and marvelous preacher, himself also made Churches, which painting in mosaic and diverse histories or images he decorated. But more in the basilica of blessed Paul the Apostle, making there the greater arch, and painting in mosaic the Savior our Lord Jesus Christ, and the twenty-four Elders, he decorated it with verses in his own name, and from then until now it is faithfully venerated by us. — And concerning the holy fifth Council Vigilius most holy Pope making a basilica in the Lateran Patriarchium decorated it most beautifully with paintings, as well in histories as in sacred images. Far more indeed his most holy successors Lord Pelagius and Lord John building from the foundation the Church of the Apostles of marvelous magnitude, painting diverse histories as well in mosaic as in various colors together with sacred images, and from then until now they are venerated by us. And Saint Gregory also, book 3 of Dialogues, chapter 33, made a beautiful oratory in his Monastery, and had it painted with diverse histories and sacred images there; the monks entering were alike heard in prayer. And that holy man Eleutherius, whom they say raised even a dead man, prostrating himself before those very sacred images to implore divine clemency did not doubt with Saint Gregory: but bearing perfect faith they were alike heard, and until now they are venerated among us. But also the Church of the Arians of which Saint Gregory himself makes mention in his Dialogues, it pleased the same Saint Gregory that, introduced into the Catholic faith, it ought there to be dedicated with the relics of blessed Sebastian and of Saint Agatha Martyrs, which was done. And after the miracle which was worked in that same Church, blessed Gregory himself had it painted with diverse histories, as well in mosaic as in colors, and erected venerable images therein: and from then until now they are venerated. For if we wished to narrate in order how many Churches our predecessor Pontiffs made up to today erecting images, and painting diverse histories, and likewise venerating them, we dare apostolically say, the time would fail us for enumerating, and for explaining their buildings with sacred images and histories. — In the sixth truly holy Canon ⟦lacuna?⟧ they did not dare to contemn, but even venerating the same sacred images, they enacted that the Lamb Christ our God according to human figure should henceforth be retitled in images for the old lamb. Wherefore Saint Ambrose Bishop of Milan in book 3 On Faith, chapter 7, taught among other things for this sort: Let us therefore observe the prescriptions of our ancestors, nor with daring rashness violate hereditary seals, etc.

They object, heretics first: God forbade that any images be placed in the temple of Solomon and in synagogues of the Jews: but the reason is the same, nay far stronger, concerning temples of Christians: therefore all images are to be banished from them. The antecedent is proved first from that Exodus 20: Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, and that is in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. And Leviticus 26: You shall not make to yourselves an idol and graven thing, neither shall you erect titles, nor put a stone in your land to adore it. Hence Tertullian, book 4 Against Marcion, chapter 22, having said Moses and Elias were known by Peter in the transfiguration, not because Peter had before seen their effigy, but through divine revelation, says: For neither had the people had their images or statues, likeness being forbidden by law. Whence Origen, book 4 Against Celsus, speaking of the Jews, says: Among whom no other Divinity was received than God, whose power over the universality of things all makers of simulacra being far banished; for in their city no painter was admitted, no statuary, laws barring this whole genus, lest occasion be given to gross men, lest their minds be called away from the cult of God. I answer first, denying the antecedent; and to its proof I say that only so far were images forbidden by divine law as they were only adored as gods and paid that cult due to God alone; hence in the precepts prohibiting fabrication of a sculptile, straightway is subjoined, thou shalt adore it, whereby is signified that only on that account were those images forbidden to the Jews which according to the common rite of Gentiles were called Divinities and were truly idola.

But that absolutely images and sculptilia were not to be eliminated from temples and synagogues of the Jews by divine law plainly appears from this, that Exodus 25 at the command of the Lord two figures of Cherubim of molten gold were placed; and in the very oracle of the temple Solomon placed also 3 Kings chapter 6 two other statues of Cherubim of olive wood of ten cubits height, each of whose wings was five cubits. Finally as written 3 Kings 7 the same Solomon placed in the temple figures of oxen, Lions, and Cherubim; therefore not every simulacrum was barred from the temples of the Jews. This same solution Leontius Bishop of Neapolis expends most excellently, cited by Damascene, Oration 3 On Images:

Come, he says, let us next undertake now the defense of the expression of holy images, that the mouths of the unjust speaking iniquities be stopped. For neither is this our invention, but an institution of law. For hear God himself commanding Moses to construct gem images of Cherubim, sculptile and conflatile, which might overshadow the propitiatory. Besides, God showed Ezekiel the temple which indeed from pavement to summit of rafters, he says, had sculptile faces of lions, and palms, and men, and Cherubim. What then, O Leontius? Truly terrible is the word, he says. God who commanded Israel to make no similitude to themselves of anything which is in heaven or in earth commands Moses to make sculptured animate Cherubim; nay further Solomon taking the form from the law filled the temple of bronze with simulacra of oxen, palms, and men. Nor yet for this was he reprehended by God.

And immediately after, inferring that the making of images in the Church is not to be blackened, he subjoins: wherefore if you wish to reprehend me, first reprehend God commanding these things to be done, that his admonition may be an example to us.

To these add that from that Matthew 22: Whose image and superscription is this? it stands that not every kind of image was prohibited to the Jewish people; since the image of Caesar was received among all, nor consequently were arts of painting and sculpting forbidden to the Jews by any divine law: although perhaps in course of time that people banished every such craftsman from their cities, that thus the precept of law might more securely be observed, lest any occasion of idolatry whatever be to the unskilled populace.

They object: Sacred Scripture in many places prohibits the cult of any simulacrum whatsoever figured by the works of hands of men: therefore also of images.

I deny absolutely; for, as Stephen of Bostrensis says most excellently, book Against the Jews, chapter 4: If those things which are made are works of men, and effected by hand, what does it mean that they be done away in the earth, which the hands of men made — or the propitiatory, or the Cherubim, or that golden urn in which the manna was contained, or the inner tabernacle, and all things which by God are called Holy of Holies? Were not the Cherubim, which recall the image of Angels, made by the labor and hand of men? What sayest thou, if thou callest these idola, since thou wouldst impose the name upon what Moses and Israel adored?

They object secondly: Canon 36 of the Council of Elvira thus defining: It pleased that pictures ought not to be in the church, nor that what is worshipped or adored be painted on walls.

I answer. 1. The Council plainly militates against heretics, since it signifies that in the primitive Church images were received in use by the faithful and held in veneration. I say secondly that the Council does not proscribe the cult of images and their placement in churches, but only forbids that they be painted on walls, or other subjects of this kind, which could not easily be moved from place and carried elsewhere. But that this was the genuine mind of the Council appears both from the reason which it there subjoins and from the condition of those times. From reason indeed, for it subjoins it lest what is worshipped or adored be painted on walls, by which words it signifies itself by such edict to prohibit only images being painted on walls, but rather that they ought with greater reverence to be placed on panel or other material per se; for images depicted on walls not only lose splendor and beauty and are easily defaced, nor do they move to veneration as much as if placed on panels: but also they cannot be carried elsewhere. From the condition truly of the times, because this Council is believed celebrated about the year of Christ 305, that is twenty years before the first Nicene Council, at which time, while persecution still raged against Christians and the exercise of the Christian religion was not free to them, it could easily happen that their temples yield to profane uses, and the images of Saints remaining there not only be defrauded of the honor due them but also come into contempt and mockery. Hence it is, as Vazquez observes, disputation 105, chapter 2, that very rarely in temples of the Spaniards do images depicted on walls appear from antiquity, except the effigy of Saint Christopher; although you will find very many temples adorned either with painted panels or wooden statues gilded and varied with colors. Which certainly is an indication that the definition of that Council prevailed in Spain by long custom, although in these new times the Spaniards, like the other nations, have begun to adorn the walls of their temples with pious images. Origen, book 7…

This calumny Origen repels there. Christians on another account do not worship statues and idola than that whereby Scythians, Numidians, Seres and Persae are moved. Item concerning the Persians Herodotus relates: This, he says, is the ritual of the Persians: they themselves dedicate neither statues, nor altars, nor temples; and they hold as fools those who do so: because, I think, they do not believe that Gods arose from men, which is the opinion of the Greeks. And Heraclitus passes this judgment upon them: Thus they offer prayers to those images, For none of these Gentiles, he says, is alien from these things, because he fears a divinity and detracts from those ceremonies which revolve around altars and materials figured with various images: nor because he understands demons fixed to adhere to certain places and statues, whether enchanted with certain magical songs, or otherwise brooding over places once preoccupied, where after the manner of Turcans they delight themselves in vapors of victims, seizing a nefarious and eternal pleasure against divine laws and those of nature. Moreover Christian men and Jews abstain from these on account of that word of the law: Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, him alone shalt thou serve… But we therefore also do not honor simulacra because as much as we can we guard lest we somehow fall into that credulity, so as to attribute to these something also of divinity.

They object thirdly: Saint Irenaeus, book 1 Against Heresies, chapters 23 and 24, relating among the heresies of the Gnostics and Carpocratians, that they had certain images painted, others indeed fabricated from other material, saying the form of Christ was made by Pilate at the time when he was among men: therefore Saint Irenaeus imputes as heresy that images be had by Christians: and presently much more that they be placed in their temples. I answer: Saint Irenaeus blames not those heretics that they had an image of Christ and venerated it; but that they adored it in the Gentile manner so as even to offer sacrifice to it, as Saint Epiphanius observes of them, heresy 27. Which Saint Irenaeus also signifies; for there is speech there of Valentine, which sect, as Saint Augustine notes, chapter 7 On Heresies, was ⟦lacuna?⟧, as Theodoret has it, book 1 of Heretical Fables. Hence Saint Irenaeus closes the cited chapter 24 in these words: And likewise the remaining observance around them, as the Gentiles do. It is a sign therefore that the heretics attacked by him worshipped images with Gentile rite.

He objects fourthly: Adrian the Emperor, as Aelius Lampridius relates in the life of Alexander Severus, founded temples in favor of Christians without images, that they might pray therein. Alanus Copus answers, dialogue 1, chapter 2: those temples were not built by decree without images, but without simulacra and divinities of the Gentiles: for since Christians were unwilling to pray in temples of Gentiles, because they were full of idols, the Emperor commanded other temples to be built, in which there should be no simulacra, which the Gentiles were wont to worship as gods and divinities; but it is not consequent that there were no images there. Add that perhaps at the beginning of the founding of the temple

Christians of that time were unwilling to place images therein, lest perchance the Emperor and the Gentiles have occasion of complaints against them, that refusing to worship simulacra of the Gentiles they worshipped others.

They object fifthly: Saint Epiphanius, Letter to John Bishop of Jerusalem, which Saint Jerome rendered Latin, and which is numbered among his letters in order 60, wherein he thus writes: Moreover because I heard some murmuring against me, why when together I went my way to the holy Place which was called Bethel, that I might make care there of a collection with thee according to Ecclesiastical custom, and had returned to the villa which is called Inablatha, and passing by saw there a lamp burning… I found a veil hanging at the doors of that same church, dyed and painted, and having an image as it were of Christ or of some Saint; for I remember not whose image it was: therefore when I saw in the church of Christ contrary to the authority of Scriptures an image of a man hanging, I cut it, and rather gave counsel to the keepers of the same place that they wrap a poor dead man in it.

Catholic Doctors answer with Alanus Copus, dialogue chapter 22, that that part of the letter wherein he relates this history is supposititious and added by heretics. Which indeed appears, first, because at the time of Saint Jerome very many Greek exemplars of that letter existed, as he himself testifies Letter 101; yet the Iconomachs in the pseudo-Synod of Constantinople, who strove to collect and relate all testimonies of the holy Fathers in any species attacking the cult of images, made no mention whatsoever of this testimony, whom they would not have omitted if at that very time it had been in the Greek codex of Epiphanius and in the Latin of Jerome. Second, it is not likely that Saint Epiphanius, skilled in the sacred Canons (in which it is provided that one Bishop exercise the Episcopal office in another diocese without its own permission), dared attempt that in the diocese of the Prelate of Jerusalem: or if less John of Jerusalem had complained than he complained, that in his diocese without his knowledge he had ordained a Presbyter, as appears from the same letter; yet in no way did he institute complaint concerning this fact, as appears from Letter 61 of Saint Jerome answering all things which John objected to Epiphanius. Third, because Saint Damascene, Oration 2 On Images, near the end, answering a certain testimony of Saint Epiphanius objected by Iconomachs, says that discourse to be fabricated by someone who abused the name of Saint Epiphanius. Which indeed he confirms from this, that his Church of Cyprus was always adorned with images until the times of the Iconomachs. Fourth, since Saint Epiphanius embraced all the heresies which unto his time had ravaged the Church, if he had judged worshippers of images truly to act against Scripture, doubtless he would have numbered them among heretics, whose heresy nevertheless he mentions nowhere. Finally, that appendix repugns to the prior part of the letter; for in the whole second part he marks John of Jerusalem to be an Origenean and complains concerning himself, that he had said he ought not praise Originem the father of Arius and root of other heresies…

They object sixthly: Saint Augustine, book On the Harmony of the Evangelists, chapter 9, where he says they err who sought Christ and the Apostles on painted walls. And Letter 19, question 3, On simulacra which are placed in an illustrious place, that they may be adored; likewise sermon 2 on Psalm 113 expounding those words, They have mouths and speak not, where he says: In temples of Christians there are indeed houses of gold and silver, but not such as have a mouth and speak not, and to which supplication is made. I answer: nothing can be elicited from the cited testimonies of Saint Augustine that patronizes the error of Iconomachs. Not indeed from the first authority; since there Saint Augustine damns neither paintings and representations of images, but blames the gross ignorance of those who from seeing the effigy of Saint Paul depicted together with the image of Christ and of Saint Peter gathered also that Paul had been a disciple of Christ the Lord while living mortal on earth: whence arguing that ignorance he subjoins that they deserved to be deceived, that having omitted the sacred codes in which they would have known the falsity of their error, they sought its proof in pictures. From which against the Iconomachs it is inferred that at the time of Saint Augustine among Christians it was received in use that images of Christ and of the Apostles be painted. Nor does the second authority from Letter 19 support them; since there he only says Christians have what they blame in the sacrilegious rites of Pagans, not that they build temples, institute priesthoods, and make sacrifices, but that they exhibit these things to idols and demons: and that idols are placed in these seats with honorable sublimity, that they be attended by those praying and immolating, in such wise that by the similitude itself of animated members and senses, although they lack sense and soul, they affect weak minds so as to seem to live and breathe. By which words he plainly signifies himself to speak of simulacra and idola in which Gentiles thought some Divinity to inhere: but it is certain that Christians so venerate images that they think nothing of dignity and excellence to inhere in them except by reason of the prototype which they shadow and represent. — Finally nothing whatever supports them even the last authority of Saint Augustine; for there he speaks only of idola and simulacra to which the Gentiles made supplication; but he does not deny there to be images in temples of Christians, just as neither golden and silver vessels, to which we do not supplicate, but to God alone; for Catholics direct not their prayers to images, but only to the Saints which they represent.

Finally they object: Every occasion of idolatry must be removed from temples of Christians: but images are such: therefore, etc. The major stands by similar case; for Ezechias, 4 Kings chapter 18, is praised because he cast down the brazen serpent, because it was an occasion of idolatry to the Jews. — I deny the minor, since, says Isambertus to question 25, distinction 3, article 9, the Church carefully guards lest images be placed in temples of Christians which either be of false dogma or offer the people occasion of error, and commands Pastors diligently to apply themselves to instructing peoples concerning the cult to be paid sacred images. Whence the reason is not equal concerning our images and the brazen serpent, because this then was worshipped by the Jews as something possessing divinity in itself, as Saint Augustine notes lib. 10. De Civit. Dei, c. 8. That serpent, he says, reserved on account of memory of the deed, when afterward the erring people began to worship it as an idol, Eschias King serving with religious power broke it with great praise of piety.

From these appears how wrongly heretics of this time assail Catholics with calumnies, namely that like idolaters they not only place images in temples but also carry them publicly about in processions. Truly we do nothing else than the Israelites, who by institution of God carried about for many years the Ark with Cherubim to the honor of God. Add that God approved this usage even by miracles. I shall record one and another. It is known that Gregory the Great, when a most savage pestilence raged at Rome, and many other calamities at the same time accrued, instituted a religious supplication on the day of Resurrection, and caused the image of the Mother of God depicted by Saint Luke to be brought forth into public, and God confirmed the pious circumgestation by miracle. For whithersoever the image was borne, the heaviness of the pestilential sky driven off, and desired salubrity followed in the city. Where all giving thanks to God, behold an Angel who addressed the holy Virgin from heaven with these voices: Queen of heaven, rejoice, alleluia: For he whom thou didst merit to bear, alleluia: hath risen as he said, alleluia. Which prayer as soon as Gregory heard before him, straightway excited by divine Spirit he completed it in this mode: Pray for us to God, alleluia. Which Canticle thereafter remained solemn in the Church, and has been accustomed yearly to be either argument or confirmation of Paschal joy. Sigonius also confirms the same history accepted from the ancients.

Third conclusion. — Sacred images of Christ and of the Saints are worthily with some adoration and veneration. This is of faith, and Alan Copus proves it first, dialogue 3 chapter 8, from all those texts of Scripture whereby even inanimate things dedicated to divine cult and sacred are declared worthy of some veneration. Thus Exodus 3: Loose the shoes from thy feet: for the place wherein thou standest is holy ground. And Psalm 98: Adore his footstool, for it is holy, which is understood of the Ark of the Lord, which book 1 Paralipomenon chapter 28 is called the footstool of his feet: for the Hebrews thought God to sit as on a throne upon the wings of Cherubim which were above the Ark, according to that Psalm 79: Who sittest over the Cherubim, and his feet rest upon the Ark as upon a suppedaneum or footstool. Hence with supreme veneration that Ark was to be handled by Levites and Priests alone: wherefore Oza being struck died, 2 Kings chapter 6, because, as Lyranus judges, he had placed her in a cart, when she ought to be carried religiously upon shoulders by holy men, according to that Isaiah 52: Be clean, you that carry the vessels of the Lord; and therefore 1 Kings 6 several were slain at Bethsamites because they wished more curiously to gaze at her without due reverence. — Nor does it matter, as heretics object, that in the Hebrew text is read adore toward the footstool, not truly adore the footstool; for in Hebrew there is not the verb adore but prostrate ye yourselves: whence since prostrating oneself before the footstool is the same as adoring the footstool, it follows that in that place is expressed the veneration and adoration due to the Ark on account of the order and relation she had to God. Why not then by equal reason would cult be paid to sacred images on account of a like cause?

It is proved secondly from the definition of Councils, in which the use and cult of sacred images against the arising heresy of Iconoclasts was asserted and propagated: for, leaving aside the various Synods collected on this matter both in the East and in the West, it pleases to commemorate those which were gathered at Rome under various Supreme Pontiffs, whom Adrian Pope relates in his response to the pseudo-Caroline book in these words:

For we have found also our Predecessors, namely most blessed Pontiffs Gregory and Gregory, Zachary and Stephen, Paul, and again Stephen, fervent in the Holy Spirit concerning the erection of sacred images, having zeal of right faith. On whose behalf Gregory Pope second the younger, together with 79 most holy Bishops, presiding before the confession of blessed Peter prince of Apostles, strengthening themselves with testimonies of many holy Fathers, judged in their Council that sacred images be venerated and adored. Further also our predecessor of holy memory once Lord Stephen Pope likewise presiding with Bishops of parts of France and Italy in the Basilica of our Lord Jesus Christ Savior, which is called Constantinian, confirming and embracing the venerable Council of his predecessor, and himself more and more together with all Bishops presiding, adhering to the testimonies of the holy Fathers, enacted that sacred images be adored and venerated. Whence blessed Paul the Apostle teaching, says: Hold the traditions which you have learned. And again: But though we, or an Angel from heaven evangelize to you besides that which we have evangelized to you, ana> thema sit. Truly most openly this Catholic and faithful dogma was handed over and defined in the VI general Synod Nicaea II, Act 7, in the profession of faith, in these words: We decree with all exact care and diligence, similarly to the figure of the holy and vivifying cross, venerable and holy images to be openly set forth, which consist in colors, or tesserae, or other material whatever suitable, in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, and also walls and panels, houses and ways: namely both images of the Lord and God and our Savior Jesus Christ, then of the immaculate Lady our holy Mother of God, and also of honorable Angels and of all Saints and pious men: for the more frequently they are seen through imaginative representation, so much the more are those who behold them excited to remembrance and desire of the prototypes: and that to them they give kiss and honorable adoration, not however true, according to our faith, cult of latria, which belongs to the divine nature alone, but let us venerate in the same manner in which we do the figure of the precious and vivifying cross, and the holy Gospels, and the other sacred monuments: then that incense and lights be applied to them for honoring them: which was the religious custom of the ancients. — By which words the Council touches and damns a threefold error. First indeed that of Iconoclasts demolishing sacred images. Second of those who had stripped them of honor and veneration. Third finally it proscribes the superstition of certain men, opposed in extremes to Iconoclasts, who willed sacred images to be adored with that same cult of latria which is owed to God, as Saint Damascene relates in the book On Heretics near the end, where he calls those superstitious accusers of Christians, because they gave occasion to Saracens for accusing Christians of idolatry. Therefore against this threefold error the Council pronounces holily and religiously: First, that sacred images are not to be broken: secondly, that they are to be accompanied with honor and veneration: Third finally, that they are not to be worshipped with the cult of latria owed to God alone. — The same truth the Florentine Council defined Session ⟦num. deest⟧. But most clearly of all Trent Session 25 in these words: Moreover images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other Saints are especially to be had and retained in temples, and to them due honor and veneration is to be rendered, not because any divinity or virtue is believed to inhere in them for which they are to be worshipped, or because anything is to be asked of them, or because trust is to be fixed in images, as of old was done by Gentiles who placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which they represent; so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ, and venerate the Saints whose likeness they bear: which thing is sanctioned in the decrees of Councils, especially truly of the second Synod of Nicaea against attackers of images*: Subjoins the reason why they should be painted and figured, and honor paid them: That truly let Bishops diligently teach that the people be instructed and confirmed through histories of the mysteries of our Redemption expressed in paintings or other similitudes, in articles of faith to be commemorated and assiduously recalled: then truly from all sacred images great fruit to be received, not only because the people is admonished of the benefits and gifts which have been conferred on it by Christ, but also because the miracles of God through Saints, and salu> tary examples are subjected to the eyes of the faithful, that for them they may give thanks to God, may order their life and manners to the imitation of the Saints, and may be excited to adore and love God and cultivate piety. But if anyone shall teach or feel contrary to these decrees, let him be anathema.

Finally it is proved by reason: Honor which is paid to the prototype ought also to overflow onto its effigy: but God, Christ, and all Saints merit honor and veneration: therefore also their images. The minor stands as regards God and Christ. It stands equally as regards Saints; for whoever excels in excellence and dignity is worthy of honor: but the Saints by many titles are to be celebrated, both on account of eminent grace, then on account of eminent virtues, and finally on account of their illustrious deeds, and consequently honored. But the major is proved: the excellence of the prototype accompanies itself wheresoever it is, and its excellence is communicated to that to which its being is communicated: but the prototype is in its own image, nay is the image itself, inasmuch as formally considered according to the reason of the represented; and an image is a certain participation of that prototype, for it is derived from it, made after its likeness, and represents it, nay is the prototype itself not in being but in representing: therefore it is capable of represented and relative honor. — It is confirmed by authority of Saint Athanasius, Oration 1 Against Arians, where speaking of the image of a King, having said it could address its beholder thus: I and the King are one, for I am in him and he in me, and what you notice in me notice also in him, and what you see in him see also in me: presently signifies the image to be not only King as regards expression of lineaments of body, but also as regards dignity and excellence of the King, which morally overflows into the image itself; for he says: He therefore who adores the image adores the King himself therein, seeing the image itself is nothing else than form and species of King. Saint Basil teaches the same, book On the Holy Spirit, chapter 18: The King is called, he says, image of the law, not however two kings; for neither is power divided nor glory destroyed. By which words he signifies that the dignity and excellence which is in the King overflows into his image and inheres in it, according to moral estimation of men. Hence Saint Ambrose on Psalm 118, Sermon 10, says excellently: He who crowns the image of the Emperor certainly honors him whose image he crowned, namely because the honor of the image overflows into the honor of the prototype, just as the honor of the prototype overflows into its effigy. — Next, whatsoever is capable of injury is also capable of some honor and cult: but images of illustrious persons are capable of injury and insult, such that injury inflicted on them overflows onto the very persons they represent, as Methodius teaches, Oration 2 On Resurrection, in these words: As we honor images of Kings, though of wax or stone, and whoever treats them contumeliously is damned not as if he despised mud or gold, but as if impious toward the King himself; so Angels, whose images we cast from gold, we fashion them unto the honor and glory of God. — Hence it stands from various histories of princes, even Christian ones, that they afflicted with punishment all who wrought injury and insult to their images; for Saint Ambrose relates concerning the death of Theodosius that he commanded many Antiochenes to be killed, because they treated the sta image of his wife ignominiously. Whence also God often exercised divine vengeance on those who broke or contumeliously treated images, as appears in Ecclesiastical Annalists, especially Eusebius book 1 chapter 19, and Richeomus in the books On Miracles and Images. — Third finally, God deigned to work many miracles at the presence of the holy images, both to reward the devotion of those who worshipped them, and to punish the impiety of those who ignominiously treated them: therefore it is a sign that he wills those images to be held in honor and reverence. The antecedent stands from the VII Synod, Act 1, where many miracles worked on occasion of sacred images are related. — To these add that images of Christ and the Saints bear many utilities, on account of which they seem not only to be preserved but also cultivated, which the VII Synod expends all. The first is, that after the manner of books they instruct idiots and teach them mysteries of faith and illustrious deeds of Saints; for painting silent on a wall is wont to speak, says Saint Gregory Nyss., Oration On St. Theodore. Hence Saint Gregory the Great teaches book 7 of Letters, Letter 111, to Serenus of Massilia, that painting is applied in churches precisely that they who know not letters at least reading by seeing on walls learn what they cannot read in codes. — Second, images sometimes move more efficaciously to virtue to be followed and vice to be avoided than books or sermons. Hence Gregory of Nyssa, whom the Fathers of the VII Synod relate, seeing the image of Abraham sacrificing his son wept; whence Theodore Bishop of Catana adds: How much more depicted the incarnate dispensation of Christ our Lord, who became man for us, seeing, will exhort to progress and effusion of tears? They relate thence from Gregory Nazianzen, Sermon On Virtue delivered among poems, that when a harlot summoned by a young man to a nefarious act, looking out beside his gate, saw the image of the Philosopher Polemon, she was suffused with such shame that reverencing the painted as if living, straightway withdrew and received herself into better fruit. Whence the Fathers relate that if the effigy of a Philosopher was so efficacious and powerful as to change a harlot, how great efficacy ought the images of Christ and the Saints possess, that they provoke us to follow their footsteps? — Third, images of Christ and Saints recall their virtues and examples and exhort us to follow them; for if Scipio Africanus said he was animated to virtue by nothing more than examples of ancestors, whose images he saw painted in the forum, as Plutarch relates in his Life, how much more ought the effigies of Christ and Saints provoke us to following their virtue? — Saint Bonaventure explains all these utilities excellently, distinction 3, dist. 9, article 1, q. 2, where he teaches that the introduction of images into the Church was not without reasonable cause.

For they were introduced on account of a triple cause: namely on account of the rudeness of simple ones, and on account of slowness of affections, and on account of frailty of memory. On account of the rudeness of simple ones they were invented, that simple ones, who cannot read, might more openly read in sculptures of this kind the sacraments of our faith. On account of slowness of affections similarly they were introduced, namely that men who are not excited to devotion in those things which Christ did for us while perceiving them by ear, may at least be excited while they discern the same things in sculptures > and paintings as present with corporeal eyes. For our affection is more excited by those things which it sees than by those it hears. Whence Horace, On Poetic Art, about the middle: More sluggishly do they irritate minds things sent down through the ear than those subjected to faithful eyes, etc. On account of frailty of memory, because things which are only heard are more easily handed over to oblivion than things which are seen. For frequently that is verified in many which has been accustomed to be said: a word enters by one ear and exits by another. Besides, he is not always at hand who by words recall benefits bestowed on us to memory: therefore by dispensation of God it came about that images be made chiefly in churches, that seeing them we call to mind benefits bestowed on us and virtuous works of Saints.*

They object first: Heretics, various texts of Scripture whereby cult is prohibited to be paid to any sculptile whatever; for Exodus 20: Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor any likeness that is in heaven above, etc. Leviticus 26: You shall not make to yourselves an idol, nor graven thing, neither shall you erect titles, nor place an inscribed stone in your land, to adore it.

I answer, perhaps that in these and similar places cult of every image, whether of God, or Patriarchs, or other Saints, was forbidden to Hebrews lest it be to them a cause of committing idolatry; since they were of grosser genius, they were most prone to idolatry: therefore that every occasion of idolatry be removed it was congruous that cult of images whatsoever be prohibited to them. Yet thence it is not consequent that that also is prohibited to Christians: for as now, the old law abrogated, we are held no longer by legal precepts, and it is permitted us to eat many foods then forbidden: so now it is permitted to use images and worship them, although at that time they were prohibited.

I answer secondly, that in those places is not prohibited the cult of images but only of those which represented false divinities and were worshipped as gods, as was said in the second Notable. Whence Exodus 20 above cited, first false gods are prohibited, Thou shalt not have strange gods; then is provided against sculptile of vain gods; finally adoration of that sculptile, so that by one precept three things are prohibited, namely fabrication of image of a false god, its conservation and adoration. Hence God subjoins the reason of that prohibition: I am the Lord thy God, whereby he signifies he prohibits these three, lest namely those sculptilia be adored as Gods and held as idola of the Gentiles.

They object secondly: various authorities of holy Fathers. First indeed of Jerome on Daniel chapter 3, where he says: Worshippers of God ought not adore statue or image. Similarly of Saint Augustine, book Of the Manners of the Church, chapter 34: I wish not, he says, that there be many adorers of sepulchres and pictures. Finally of Gregory the Great, book 7 of Letters, Letter 11, who writing to Serenus Bishop of Massilia gravely rebukes him because beholding certain adorers of images (he says) he broke and threw away the same images of the church. What he thinks of this Gregory sets forth in these words: And indeed that zeal, lest anything hand-made can be adored, we praise that you had: but we judge you ought not to have broken the same images. For therefore is painting applied to Churches, that they who know not letters at least reading by seeing on walls may learn what they cannot read in codes. Your fraternity therefore ought both to preserve them and prohibit the people from their cult: so that both the ignorant of letters might have whence they gather knowledge of history, and the people sin least in adoring the painting. To the same Serenus further he wrote there book 9 letter 1 another epistle, in which with many words he rebukes the same fact of his: And indeed that you had decreed they be not adored we praise altogether, but that you broke them we reprehend. But chiefly he was offended by that thing, that whereas he dwelt among Gentiles he ought to have attended lest while rashly kindled with right zeal he generate scandal to fierce minds. But truly he ought not to break, as if placed in churches not for adoring but solely for instructing minds of the ignorant. And because antiquity admitted histories of Saints to be painted in venerable places not without reason, if you had founded zeal in discretion, doubtless both you could healthfully obtain that which you intended, and not scatter the gathered flock, but rather gather the dispersed. Finally he exhorts him to restore the images and admonishes that they be not adored.

— Sixtus Senensis answers to Saint Jerome, book 1 of Sacred Library, annotation 217, that he speaks of images and statues which the nations fashioned to their Kings still living, or placed in public place, such as was that of Nabuchodonosor Daniel 13. To Saint Augustine answers Alanus Copus Dialogue 1 chapter ⟦?⟧ that he speaks of worshippers of sepulchres, not of Martyrs, but of dead men whatsoever, over whose sepulchres he says they drink and eat luxuriously and attribute their voracities to religion. In the same way he understands adorations of pictures not of God, Christ, or Saints, but of dead men whatsoever; and rightly he reprehends them because being Christians they indiscriminately worshipped whatever images placed at sepulchres, and in Gentile fashion, under pretext of a certain religion, defiled themselves with voracity over sepulchres.

— Finally, to Saint Gregory I answer he prohibits images to be adored with the cult of latria which is owed to God alone, namely with that cult wherewith Gentiles adored the empty simulacra of their Gods. That this was his mind plainly stands from his words praised in the objection, therefore namely he prohibits images to be adored, lest those recently received from Gentiles to faith and Church from the aspect of images render to them equal honor, such as not long before they paid to their own idols. But that Saint Gregory did not disapprove the cult of sacred images inferior to that cult which is rendered to divinity, the Fathers of the VII Synod proved, and likewise Adrian supreme Pontiff in the response to the pseudo-Caroline book, from the same Saint Gregory's Epistle to Secundinus Religious recluse, to whom sending the image of the Savior which he himself had asked, he declares how she ought to be cultivated, book 7 of Letters, Letter 51: I know indeed, he says, that thou askest the image of our Savior not that as it were God thou worship it, but for recollection of the Son of God thou grow warm in his love, whose image thou desirest to see. And we indeed not as before divinity prostrate ourselves before it, but we adore him whom through the image we call to mind either born or suffering, but also sitting on a throne. By which words Saint Gregory signifies it to have been posited in use among Catholic faithful that they venerate images and prostrate themselves before them, regarding the prototype, so that with exterior cult exhibited before the image they direct the interior affection of will toward the prototype of that image.

They object thirdly: Certain Councils in which the cult of images was proscribed, especially the Constantinopolitan Council under Leo Isaurian, and another there under Copronymus, and likewise the third Ephesine.

I answer, that the two aforementioned Councils of Constantinople are of no authority or weight. The first indeed, inasmuch as no Patriarch was present at it, and as many Catholic Prelates as were there cried out against the heretical definition of that Council. The second truly, because its convocation and celebration were illegitimate; whence it falsely claims for itself the name of the holy, great, and universal Seventh Synod; for as John the Chancellor said at Act 6 of the Seventh Synod: how is it holy, when it received nothing that is holy in its very conception? Especially since it is defiled and execrable. For those who were gathered in it, as we must confess prophetically, did not distinguish between the holy and the profane, nor did they discern between the clean and the unclean, calling the icon of the incarnate Word of God, namely our Lord Jesus Christ, by the same name of idol as the icon of Satan. And how was it great and universal, when the prelates of the other Churches neither received it nor agreed with it, but delivered it over to anathema? For it had not for its helper the Pope of the Romans of that time, or the priests about him, nor even his Vicars, nor an encyclical letter, in the manner the law of Councils dictates. Nor had it the consenting Patriarchs of the East, namely of Alexandria, Antioch, and the holy city, or their fellow ministers and high Priests who exist with them. The same judgment must be passed on the third Council of Ephesus, since from Act 6 of the Seventh Synod it appears that the aforesaid Council of Constantinople was called Ephesine, taking occasion from the error of Theodosius, Bishop of Ephesus, who had been present among the Presidents of that Pseudo-Synod of Constantinople.

They object 4. Canon 2 of the Council of Frankfort, by which the Seventh Synod is condemned because it established the cult of images, as we said in the prelude of this section.

I answer, that the opinion of authors concerning this Canon is varied and manifold. For some will have it first, with Alanus Copus, Dialogue 1, chapter 11, that not the second Synod of Nicaea but only the heretical one of Constantinople was condemned. But all the Frankish Annalists cry out against this, asserting that that Synod, by which the adoration and cult of images had been defined, was condemned at Frankfort. Thus above all the most ancient Annals relate, which Andreas Quercetanus inserted in Tome 2, where these things are found: Pascha celebratum est in Francofurt, ibique congregata est Synodus magna Episcoporum Galliarum, Germanorum, Italorum: in praesentia iam Principis (Caroli) et Missorum Domini Apostolici Adriani, quorum nomina haec sunt, Theophilactus, et Stephanus Episcopi. Tum Pseudo-Synodus Graecorum, quum falso septimam vocabant, et pro adorandis imaginibus fecerunt, reiecta est a Pontificibus. But in another Chronicle: Pseudo-Synodus Graecorum pro adorandis imaginibus facta, quam falso septimam vocabant, reiecta est a Pontificibus. The same is related by the Annals of Bertiniani. Similarly the Annals of Eginhard: Synodus etiam, inquit, quae ante paucos annos in Constantinopoli sub Irene, et Constantino filio eius congregata, et ab ipsis non solum septima, verum etiam universalis erat appellata, ut nec septima, nec universalis haberetur, and would be called as it were superfluous, was altogether rejected by all. Ammonius relates the same in the Annals of the Franks under the year 791, where he writes thus: Sic etiam scilicet Francofurti synodus, quae ante paucos annos Constantinopoli congregata sub Irene, et Constantino filio eius septima, et universalis ab ipsis appellata est, ut nec septima, nec aliqua diceretur, quasi supervacanea ab omnibus abdicata. The Liber Urspergensis took these same words from him in its Chronicle under the year ⟦?⟧. Regino moreover, book 2, under the year 791, has thus: Pseudo-Synodus Graecorum, quam pro adorandis imaginibus fecerant, a Pontificibus (scilicet Episcopis Francofordiensis Concilii) reiecta est. Ado in his Chronicle, in the year 792, says: Sed Pseudo-Synodus, quum septimam Graeci appellant, pro adorandis imaginibus abdicata penitus est. Johannes Aventinus in his History of the Boians says thus: Item acta Graecorum de imaginibus adorandis reprobata sunt. Therefore from all these it is established that some Synod of the Greeks, in which the cult of images had been determined, was condemned in the Council of Frankfort. Now it is certain that that cult was not defended, but rather assailed, in the Pseudo-Synods of Constantinople: therefore those were not the subject in the Council of Frankfort. Nor does it matter that most of them assert that Synod to have been celebrated at Constantinople. For they add that it was gathered under Irene and Constantine her son, by which they signify that the Synod condemned in the Council of Frankfort was the one celebrated under Irene: but that is the second of Nicaea, which perhaps they call Constantinopolitan because it had first been gathered and begun at Constantinople, as was said in the prelude of the Section.

— Second, very many contend that the Fathers of the Council of Frankfort did truly condemn the definition of the second Synod of Nicaea, but deceived through complete ignorance of what had taken place, inasmuch as they thought that there it had been defined that the same cult was to be paid to sacred images which ought to be rendered to God; for they say in that second Canon: Allata est in medium quaestio de nova Graecorum Synodo, quam de adorandis imaginibus Constantinopoli fecerunt, in qua scriptum habebatur: ut qui imaginibus Sanctorum, ita ut divinae Trinitati servitium, aut adorationem non impenderent, anathema iudicarentur: whereas the contrary had been defined by that Synod, since at Act 1 Basil, Bishop of Ancyra, formerly an Iconomach, was received into the Council on no other condition than professing that sacred images are to be venerated with that adoration only which pertains to honor, as may be read in his confession of faith written out there. Likewise the other Bishops who took part in the Pseudo-Synod of Constantinople were admitted on no other condition than confessing that honor inferior to that which is rendered to God ought to be paid to sacred images.

Nor does it matter that at Act 3 of the Seventh Synod Constantine, Bishop of Cyprus, seems to have said, as the Pseudo-Caroline book has it: Suscipio et amplector honorabiliter sanctas et venerandas imagines, et quae secundum servitium adorationis substantiali et vivificatrici Trinitati emitto. For it is certain that the confession of Constantine is reported corruptedly and vitiated in the Pseudo-Caroline book: for Constantine himself, in the aforesaid Act 3, approving the definition of faith of Theodore, Patriarch of Jerusalem, speaks thus: His consentio, et concors efficior, suscipiens et amplectens honorabiliter sanctas et venerabiles imagines, atque adorationem, quae per latriam, idest Deo debitam servitutem efficitur, soli supersubstantiali et vivificae Trinitati impendo. Which certainly directly opposes that pretended confession of his, as it lies written out in the Caroline book. From these things it may be understood that those Acts of the Seventh Synod, which were made Latin from the Greek and sent to Adrian the supreme Pontiff, and by him into Gaul, were depraved: since the Greek signifies something far different from the Latin, such as is read in Adrian's Apologeticum, and in the Pseudo-Caroline book; for the Acts written in Greek contain the Catholic sense, namely that images are to be adored; yet not with that kind of adoration which is owed to God: but the Latin signifies that images are to be pursued with the same cult of latria with which we venerate the most holy Trinity. That moreover it may be conjectured that Adrian the supreme Pontiff also did not have the Acts of the Seventh Synod faithfully translated, while replying to Charlemagne he answers certain objections expressed in the Pseudo-Caroline book, is gathered clearly enough from this, that, passing over in silence the confession of that Constantine, Bishop of Cyprus, by which the Pseudo-Caroline book contends that he wished to worship the divine Trinity with the same cult, the Pontiff replies nothing else than that those returning from a perverse heresy strive to satisfy the Church most abundantly; whereas without any trouble, and far more learnedly and better, he would have solved and dissolved that objection by replying that the confession of that Constantine had been depraved in what was set forth in the objection, if he himself had faithfully possessed the Greek exemplar of the Acts of the Seventh Synod, as we now possess them, written out and translated in Tome 1 of the Councils by the labor and industry of Philip Labbe.

Nor should you say that the supreme Pontiff, when he transmitted the Acts of that Synod into Gaul, had already approved it, and wished it to be reckoned among the Oecumenical Synods: and consequently that he must then have had the integral Acts of that Synod. For I answer, that the supreme Pontiff at that time approved the Council only so far as he had heard from his Legates returned to Rome by word of mouth that the Synod of Nicaea had restored sacred images (as he himself says near the end of his letter to Charlemagne) to their pristine state, and that a kiss and honorable salutation were to be rendered to them, but not the true cult of the adoration of latria, which is to be paid to God alone, and moreover he had condemned the Pseudo-Synod of Constantinople under the heretic Constantine: Et ideo, inquit, ipsam suscepimus Synodum: nam si eam minime recepissemus, et ad suum pristinum errorem fuissent reversi, quis pro tot millium animarum Christianarum interitu, haberet reddere rationem ante terribile et tremendum divini iudicis examen, nisi nos solummodo? Et intra: Nos vero adhuc pro eadem Symodo nullum responsum hactenus eidem Imperatori Constantinopolitano reddidimus, metuentes ne ad eosdem reverterentur errorem, etc. By which words he indicates that he had not yet fully, and with public and authentic testimony (which later ages called a bull), approved that Synod, and had received it only on this condition, because his Legates had borne witness by word of mouth that nothing had been defined in that Synod which did not accord with Catholic and Apostolic doctrine.

— Third, Baronius at the year 794 frankly confesses indeed that the Synod of Nicaea was condemned in the Council of Frankfort, not indeed by the whole Synod, but only by certain Bishops infected with the error of the Iconoclasts, who had excerpted certain chapters from the Acts of the Synod of Nicaea, and had offered them to Charles the Great the Emperor for this end, namely that he should not permit the decrees of that Synod to be published and received in his kingdom; which excerpts, having been gathered into a bundle and divided into four books, Charles sent to Adrian the supreme Pontiff, that he might disclose what was to be thought of them. Bellarmine indeed, book 2 De Romano Pontifice, chapter 8, judges that the Synod of Frankfort truly disapproved the Synod of Nicaea, but in error and materially, deceived by the author of the Caroline books, who lied twice over: first, in that he feigned that it had been decreed at Nicaea that images be adored with the cult of latria; then, in that he asserted that the Greeks had done this without the consent of the Roman Pope.

— Fourth, it seems to me more probable that one must say with Vazquez, disputation 107, chapter 5; Kellison, question 2, article 3; Bernard Puiol, book De Sacro Adorationis Cultu, dist. 3, who at section 6 judge that the Council of Frankfort decreed nothing whatsoever against the Seventh Synod, nor was anything done in it concerning images, whatever the Annalists named above may say, and likewise Hincmar of Reims in the little work of 85 Chapters, chapter 20; who were deceived in this, that they held the Pseudo-Caroline book to be the synodal Acts of the Council of Frankfort. The foundations of whose opinion are, that the Council of Frankfort had the Legates of Pope Adrian, as the above-named writers of the history of the Franks assert, from whom the assembled Fathers could learn that the Seventh Synod had not decreed that images be worshipped with the same cult as the holy Trinity; and thus, made more certain of this truth, they would willingly have abstained from their own definition against the Seventh Synod. The greatest argument of whose observance is that in the sacrosyllabic book written in the name of that Synod by St. Paulinus of Aquileia, after they had passed sentence of excommunication upon those who should think contrarily concerning the servitude and adoption of Christ, the Fathers add, Servato per omnia iuris privilegio summi Pontificis Domini, et Patris nostri Adriani, primae sedis beatissimi Papae. Therefore it is not likely that the Fathers of that Synod resisted the Legates of the supreme Pontiff, whose supreme authority in all things they acknowledged.

— Then, Claudius of Turin, an Iconomach, although he spread his Iconomachy a little after this Council, did not allege this Council in his own defense; nor does Jonas of Orleans, who wrote against him in favor of images, nor Peter the Deacon, who flourished in the time of Charlemagne, make mention of this decree against the Synod, and against or in favor of images. Finally, it is not likely that before Charlemagne, an Emperor most devout, who was present at the Council, the error of Iconomachy was defined; for Charles was elected Emperor in the West by Leo III almost seven years after the Council of Frankfort, for the reason that the Easterners were Iconomachs, since at the time of the Council he was only King of the Franks. Who therefore would think that the supreme Pontiffs, who had departed from the Eastern Emperors on account of their impiety against sacred images, would have elected Charles Emperor, if he himself in the Council had felt the same as the Easterners? More probable therefore is it, that the authors of the Caroline book, being as they were Iconomachs, when they understood that the Seventh true general Synod had defined that images were to be adored and worshipped, ascribed more to it than was due, in heretical fashion, and said that it had defined images to be adored with the cult of latria; just as because Catholics say that images and the Saints are to be honored, modern heretics say that we worship images and Saints as Gods. Nor does it stand in the way that many authors and writers of the history of the Franks praised above assert that the Synod of Nicaea was proscribed at Frankfort.

For, says Vazquez, chapter 8, all these German and Italian writers composed their works long after the Seventh Synod and the Council of Frankfort. For Ammonius is older than the rest, weaving his history down to the year 828 (for he is not that Ammonius the Monk, in Trithemius, who was after Regino and Ado), whence he wrote nearly a hundred years after the Seventh Synod and the Council of Frankfort: but the rest after him. Now whence could this author know that in the Council of Frankfort anything was done against the Seventh Synod, or have any other knowledge of this, unless either from Paul the Deacon, who was most familiar with Charlemagne, or from Eginhard the Secretary of Charles, or from Jonas of Orleans, who lived at about the same time, or from the preface of that Caroline book, or finally from Hincmar? But Jonas, in those books so often cited concerning the cult of images, and Paul the Deacon, and Eginhard in the Life of Charles, make no mention of this condemnation: there remains therefore that he either fabricated it out of his own head, or drew it from Hincmar and the Caroline book. But we have shown these plainly to have been deceived: the Caroline book indeed, maliciously; Hincmar however, out of ignorance, inasmuch as he reports that he heard these things when he was younger; for he says in the little work of 55 Chapters addressed to Hincmar of Laon, chapter 20. Septima vocata universalis Pseudo-Synodus de imaginibus: quas quidam confringendae, quidam autem adorandae dicebant: neutra vero pars intellectu sano definiens, sine auctoritate Apostolicae sedis, non longe ante nostra tempora Constantinopoli est a quam pluribus Episcopis habita, et firmissimam missam quam etiam Papa Romanus in Franciam direxit. Inde tempore Caroli Magni Imperatoris, iussione Apostolica sedis, generalis est Synodus in Francia, concocente praefato Imperatore, celebrata, et secundum Scripturarum tramitem, traditionemque maiorum, ipsa Graecorum Pseudo-Synodus destructa, et penitus abdicata. De cuius destructione non modicum documentum, quod in palatio adolescentulus legi, ab codem Imperatore Romam est per quosdam Episcopos missum.

By which words he signifies that he received this from the Caroline book while still young. But an adolescent and a youth badly instructed in matters could easily be deceived, taking the Caroline book for the definition of the Council of Frankfort, since perhaps at that time that book had been published together with the Acts of the Council of Frankfort. Further, when he says, neutra vero pars intellectu sano defining, etc., he is not to be said to have condemned the cult of sacred images, since otherwise he was a Catholic man, but only to have denied that the cult of latria was to be paid to images, the contrary of which he judged had been defined in the Seventh Synod, since he did not yet possess the accurate Acts of that Synod. From these things Vazquez gathers that Ammonius had no ancient writer from whom he could certainly learn what had been decreed concerning images in the Council of Frankfort. Yet he stumbles regarding Eginhard, when he says that he made no mention of the condemnation of images: for the contrary appears from the testimony of the same praised above.

— Finally, some judge with Petavius, book 15, chapter 12, number 10, that the Fathers of Frankfort condemned the Seventh Synod not so much as knowing it not yet to be Oecumenical and approved by Adrian, inasmuch as the Pontiff had sent its Acts to them, to be surely considered and known, as Hincmar testifies. Although however these objections (which are false and nonexistent, unless you except no one ⟦line destroyed⟧) do not lack foundation, and seem probable: nevertheless (as I said) I should judge it more probable that no canon concerning sacred images was published in the Council of Frankfort; of whose assertion no light argument is this, that all the ancient writers of history make no mention of such a Canon, which, unknown before along with the rest, Sirmondus not long ago brought to light; nor indeed is any mention made of that controversy, whether in the sacrosyllabic book, or in the Letter of Charles to the Bishops of Spain, or in the other Acts of this Council, which seems to have been assembled only against the Felician heresy. Nor does it stand in the way that the Caroline book in its preface heaps up this Canon, for very many suspect that preface to the Caroline book, in which this Canon is cited, to have been published by some heretic of our time, who, concealing his name and expressing it only in these syllables, Eli, fili, brought that work to light in the year 1549; although Cardinal Perron asserts in his collections that D. du Tillet committed it to the press out of a zeal for harming, since he himself had been a disciple of Calvin, and consequently had in him no other than the impious heretical opinion of his master concerning images.

They object fifthly: That pseudo-Caroline book which they will to have been published in the name of Charles the Great against the definition of the VII Synod concerning images to be worshipped, which four-parted book is said sent by Charles the Great to Adrian supreme Pontiff, whom the supreme Pontiff answered, retelling all objects. And that seems to be that volume which he testifies he read as a youth in the Palace and was sent by Charles the Great to Rome through certain Bishops, Hincmarus with words praised above. It is a sign therefore (say Calvin book 1 of Institutions, c. 11, and the Centuriators century eight) that Charles the Great and the Gallican Church reprobated veneration of images.

I answer first, that those books were not truly by Charles the Great, nor composed in his name or by his command, whatever the preface prefixed to them bears and asserts; which indeed is urged first because Charles seems to have directed those books themselves to Adrian supreme Pontiff, that by his own authority he might respond and consider, and define what ought to be believed around this controversy, as appears near the end of the apology or epistle of Adrian, likewise of the chapters directed to Adrian himself. For the last chapter bears there ought to be followed the sense of the Epistle of Saint Gregory writing to Serenus Bishop of Massilia: We permit, he says, images of Saints, whosoever shall wish to form them, both in church as outside church, for love of God and of the Saints: but we compel no one unwilling to adore them: to break or destroy them, even if anyone should wish it, we permit not, and because following the sense of most holy Gregory in this epistle we freely profess without doubt the universal Catholic Church pleasing to God. Thirdly, Paulus Aemilius testifies in book 1 of the History of the Franks, that Charles himself at the beginning of his reign sent to the Lateran Council under Pope Stephen twelve chosen Bishops, whose work especially condemned the Pseudo-seventh Synod under Copronymus. It does not therefore seem likely that King Charles wished to reject the doctrine of the Church defined in the Nicene Synod in all things consonant with the definition of the Lateran Council: otherwise all those Bishops who were present at the Lateran, and also others of the same faith and confession, would doubtless have resisted: and thence there would have arisen in Gaul no lesser contention and sedition of minds concerning the cult of images than in the East, of which no ancient Writer makes mention; Which last chapter indeed the Pontiff recognizes as sacred and venerable, and much differing from the other heads. And therefore, he says, therein we have recognized it proper to your royal excellence preserved by God and orthodox, that where right faith is wholly confessed it follows the sense of most holy Gregory. But this sense is altogether Catholic and far alien, as the Pontiff rightly said, from the sense of the author of the pseudo-Caroline book: therefore Charles the Great is not to be judged author or promoter of that book; since if the book had been published by his authority or genius, neither would he have transmitted it to the Pontiff whom he knew had approved the seventh Synod, nor added that last chapter to the others. Whence one may infer that book was published by certain Iconoclast leaders among the Gauls, and since contentions and disputations arose in Gaul on its occasion, Charles perhaps directed it to Adrian, that what he felt concerning it he might disclose with Pontifical authority: wherefore Charles himself…

I answer secondly, that book was published by unskilled men and utterly ignorant, as Perronius observes learnedly in his collectanea under title Of Image, and Charles the Great, and gathers the ignorance and childish genius of its authors from this, that they contend the first Nicene Synod to be far more excellent than the second, because in it were Bishops 312, in this truly only 306; but the duodenal number, say they, is far superior to the ternary, which indeed they prove because there are twelve Apostles, twelve months, twelve signs, etc. Which certainly is a fallacious and puerile reason. Next, the author of those books mostly usurps sayings of Iconoclasts as definitions of a Council, and thence pours out his virulent and bitter hatred upon the Synod. He adds also, attacking the history of the image of the Philosopher Polemon mentioned in Council, that he knows not what sort of Saint Polemon that may be, whom sought with long labor in the roll and Kalendar of Saints he found not. Finally he asks who be Saint Gregory Nyssenus, whom he marvels commemorated and praised among holy Fathers and Doctors by the Synod. Other countless examples and testimonies of such mocking ignorance and childish genius you will find in the work itself, whence appears it to be of no authority.

— Nor say that Adrian Pontiff, who noted and disapproved all blemishes and errors of that book, made no mention of the things aforesaid. Hence indeed I have no light argument that the aforesaid book is not that which was directed by Charles the Great to Adrian, but only some selected titles of chapters of the same book, written in inverted order. Which moreover is confirmed, because the Pontiff responds to titles alone prefixed at the heads of the Caroline books: not truly to the proofs of those titles, which with sharp and vehement reprehension note and damn various opinions pronounced in the seventh Synod: but who would judge the Pontiff, writing to the King who had transmitted chapters that he might answer them, willed to refute only titles of the work, leaving their reasons and proofs untouched? Next, in four Caroline books are found 120 chapters, or lemmata, and objects proposed against the Synod: but the Pontiff commemorates and refutes not more than ⟦num. illegible⟧. Finally, the Pontiff does not repeat and refute those objects in the same order in which they were written in the Caroline books: since the first chapter to which the Pontiff responds is prefixed to the third chapter of the third Caroline book. The second chapter in the apology of the Pontiff for the Synodus is the title of the fourth chapter of the third Caroline book. And so frequently in the others you will find no concordant order between the titles of the Caroline books and those to which in his apology the Pontiff responds. Which certainly is no light argument for me that those books were not directed whole to the Pontiff, but that from them certain titles of chapters were excerpted, which perchance at that time collected into a little book and compacted by Iconoclasts were spread abroad through the Gauls, that they might the more easily allure men less cautious and learned into their erroneous opinion.

— Nor does it matter that Hincmarus above praised asserts that not small volume written against the seventh Synod, which as a youth he read in the palace, was sent by Charles to Rome through certain Bishops. Thence indeed also there is argument for me that those books are not those which Adrian received and answered, but perhaps only certain chapters of those books; for himself at the beginning of the apology and Epistle to King Charles writes he received a certain capitulary against the Synod, which was directed by your most clement illustrious royal power for erection of sacred images, through Engilbertus Abbot and minister of the chapel, who almost from the rudiments of infancy was nourished in your palace and received in all your Councils. Therefore the work to which the Pontiff responds is not that great volume which Hincmarus commemorates as sent to Rome through Bishops. Thence however it is not permitted to infer that volume compacted of the four Caroline books was also transmitted through Bishops, with distinct legation and deputation, and separately from that office which Engilbertus exercised: since of the legation of these Bishops you find not even a light indication either with Adrian nor with Gallic writers, except perchance among those deceived by the relation of Hincmarus; who being yet an adolescentulus could easily slip into error, judging the whole volume transmitted to Rome through Bishops, when only some Synopsis of it had been transmitted through Engilbertus Abbot, who in the royal court possessed supreme authority.

Heretics urge: Not more efficaciously can be gathered what was the mind of Charles the Great than from things done after his death: but after his death the Gallican Church admitted not yet veneration of images, neither in Synod; for reigning Louis the Pious son of Charles the Great, when Michael Balbus and Theophilus the Greek Emperors sent legates into Gaul to Louis the Pious with imperial letters, wherein they expounded the dissension of the Eastern Church on account of veneration of images, and commissioned their legates that having accepted commendatory Letters of Emperor Louis they go to Rome to the Pontiff, and effect with him that by his work through Orient and West the sentence concerning sacred images become concordant among Christians. But the Legates heard, he commanded a Synodus gather at Paris in his palace year 825, in which veneration and adoration of images was proscribed, likewise the second Nicaene Synodus, and two Epistles of Adrian damned, in which the Pontiff defended cult of sacred images. — I answer first, that Parisian convention, should anyone defend it, was not a Synod, although a libellus year 1596 issued forth at Frankfort struck with types under this title, Parisian Synodus concerning images year 825 described from a most ancient codex, now first published to light, wherein mention is nowhere made of the place whence that most ancient codex was accepted. For the libellus itself rebukes the vanity of its own title; thus we read page 126 in the pretended Epistle of Louis the Pious to Eugenius Pontiff:

We, not gathering a Synod, but as we demanded of you, and perceived license of acting, together with our familiars, your sons, as much as impeded by manifold divers occupations of the kingdom, at intervals we strove to consider what of so great necessity we could signify to your commodity.

Therefore from the assertion of the libellus itself, that Parisian Convention, if any it was, held not the name nor authority of a Synod, but only of a certain congregation into which convene not only some Bishops but also Doctors and lettered men, who excerpt and collect sentences of the holy Fathers concerning images, whereby for deciding this controversy and conciliating peace between the Latin Church and Greek the Pontiff could be helped. I answer secondly, that it seems more probable that libellus is spurious and illegitimate, and fabricated from the brain of some recent heretic, as Bellarmine demonstrates most excellently in his refutation of the same libellus divided into six chapters, which he appended as appendix to the treatise On the Cult of Images. This libellus truly, says Bellarmine, contains chiefly five:

First namely in it is read an epistola in the name of Michaël and Theophilus to Louis the Pious son. Second, collected testimonies from old Fathers whereby it is proved images are neither to be broken, as wished Iconomachs, nor worshipped, as second Nicaena Synodus had enacted. Third, an epistola written in the name of the supreme Pontiff by Gallic Doctors to Michaël Emperor, teaching images neither to be afflicted with injury nor even adored. Fourth, an epistola of Louis Emperor to Eugenius Pontiff of that same second name, exhorting him to send legation into Greece and pacify the Church. Fifth, an epistola of the same Louis to Jeremias and Jonas Bishops, whom he sends to Rome to the supreme Pontiff and instructs how prudently before the Pontiff they ought bear themselves, that they draw him over to their opinion.

Truly all these things are either false and erroneous, or feigned supposititious. For, in fewer words to embrace what more ample style Bellarmine hands over and explains, it is certain first that the epistola of Michael Balbus is stuffed with lies; for above all he deplores the simultaneous slaughter of Leo Emperor his predecessor, whom he says was miserably slain by a conspiracy of certain wicked men: but it stands from the annals of Zonaras, Cedrenus, etc. that Michael himself was chief of the conspiracy and killing. Moreover he seems piously to complain that the Church on account of cult of images is divided by dissension, while himself was the chief artisan of that dissension, since he rejected the Nicaena Synodus which had removed dissensions and restored Iconomachy almost buried. What truly in the extreme part of the epistola he reprehends in Catholics — that they despise the cross, that they adore images as Gods, that they offer sacrifices to them, that from them by I know not what artifice they wish to be received from the sacred font and to perceive sacramental communion, etc. — are mere calumnies and impostures. Therefore either those who are supposed to have convened in the Parisian convention gave faith to such epistolae or not. If the first, doubtless they were deceived: if the second, they wished to deceive, abusing those letters, to persuade Louis the Pious and likewise Eugenius Pontiff that Nicaena Synodus ought be disapproved and cult of images attacked. Secondly their error or crass ignorance appears from the collected sentences of SS. Patrum, most of which prove nothing else than God alone is to be worshipped with latria cult proper to him alone, and images not to be adored so that sacrifices also be offered to them, which neither do Catholics deny nor had Nicaena Synodus decreed: some truly they twist into a contrary sense; other very many they congregate which directly militate against their nefarious dogma. One I shall relate whom they praise, Saint Basilium Epistola to Emperor Julianum, whence these were excerpted among the rest:

But I receive also the holy Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs, and their intercession to God, whereby through them he has made God most merciful propitious to me; for whom therefore I honor and adore the figures of their images; this especially has been handed down from the holy Apostles, nor prohibited, but I will that their histories be depicted in all our churches, etc.

There are not lacking other similar testimonies in the same libellus of Athanasius, Germanus, Leontius, and others, which imprudently the adversaries bring forth against their own erroneous dogma, whence appears with what great forces truth is strong, for its very attackers also not rarely defend it though unwilling. Thirdly, utterly ridiculous, and altogether unworthy of a Pontiff, is that epistola which those pretended Doctors write in the name of the Pontiff to Michaël Emperor, and pretend to be subscribed by the Pontiff, as Bellarmine demonstrates in many ways; chiefly because this epistola makes the Pontiff an imprudent flatterer of the Emperor, while they will write thus to him: O venerable Princes of the world! together with the whole holy Church of God, which ye govern by the disposing and committing Lord. But who would bear that the Pontiff thus address a most criminal man who was addicted to magical arts, denied resurrection of flesh, said fornication lawful, and had mulcted so many most holy men, holders-back of Catholic truth, either with exile, prison, or slaughter? Secondly in that epistola Constantinus and his Mother Irene are reprehended because by their edict he commanded sacred images according to decree of general Council to be held with veneration. Which reprehension truly could not be written by supreme Pontiff unless plainly out of mind. Whence neither Eugenius subscribed this epistola nor did any of his successors fall into that lapse. Hence Anastasius Bibliothecarius writing to John eighth of same name Pontiff, who had been substituted for Adrian second successor of Eugenius second, in preface seventh Synod says:

Which things the present Synod teaches concerning the adoration of venerable images, these also your Apostolic see, as certain writings intimate, held of old, and the universal Church has ever venerated, and is venerated hitherto, excepting only certain of the Gauls, to whom indeed the truth of these things has not yet been revealed.

Finally as regards the rest, namely as to the epistle of Louis the Pious to Eugenius Pontiff, and to Jeremias of Sens and Jonas of Orleans Bishops, there are many things which breathe frauds of recent heretics, as will appear to the reader; whence Bellarmine chiefly suspects that whole libellus either to be fabricated, or — which is more credible — depraved and augmented, for conciliating odium against the Roman Church.

Heretics insist: Such was the opinion of the Gallican Church concerning images at the time of Louis the Pious, such as writers of that age relate: but they judge no veneration ought to be paid to images. It is betrayed chiefly by Jonas of Orleans, who in his books on the adoration of images, answering Claudius of Turin arguing from the Old Testament that God prohibited adoration of sculptilia, writes thus:

I cannot deny but that similitudes of heavenly and earthly creatures existed: although those were made not by God unto adoration, but to prefigure types of things future. Let images of Saints be permitted thee, not that they be worshipped, but rather that they render a certain beauty, and impress upon the senses of the unskilled in churches painted the memory of past things: but that a creature be adored, and anything of divine servitude paid it, we say is impious.

Similarly Hincmarus forty years later writing in the Opuscule of 55 chapters chapter 20 to Hincmarus of Laon says among other things that at that very time the Roman Pontiffs more vehemently promoted the cult of their own puppets, as the Centuriators relate, century 8 chapter 9. — I answer to the first: Jonas willed images to be kept in churches not only for ornament and recollection but also for cult, namely that we kiss them, incline our head to them, and exhibit other signs of veneration and honor; for he teaches this often in those books, but denies only that adoration ought to be paid them which consists in the affection of divine servitude, and is latria internal and mental, as appears in his second book, where to Claudius contemning the relics of Saints and prohibiting that veneration be exhibited them because they are works of hands of men, he says:

In the sense of this opinion thou art soberly wise with us. True, I say, because neither are works of hands of men to be adored and worshipped with that cult and adoration namely which belongs to Divinity alone. For works of hands of God the bodies of Saints preceding thy little work betray thee to have said: which are not to be adored with the adoration due to Divinity, but with pious love are to be embraced and honored, seeing they are sacred temples of the Holy Spirit.

Yet I deny not that the opinion of Jonas concerning images seems involved, little self-consistent and coherent; for sometimes he denies all cult and veneration to works of hands of man, and professes some adoration not to be paid a creature, nevertheless he wholly strives to prove against Claudius that the cross is laudably worshipped and adored from tradition of SS. Patrum; yet that it is a creature and work of hands of men no one doubts. Secondly I say those aforesaid words are not Hincmarus's but the Centuriators'; although Baronius to year 791 n. 41 judging these written by Hincmarus sharply accuses him, that less catholically, nor with that gravity and piety wherewith became an Archbishop, he felt concerning sacred images. Truly those words are not Hincmarus's, since neither in his books struck by the press nor in any manuscript works of the same are they found; therefore those words belong to the Centuriators, which perhaps the amanuensis of Baronius, copying from them the sentence of Hincmarus which was not written out in a different character, described together with Hincmarus's own words.

You ask. 1. Whether lawfully certain images representing God and divine persons can be formed, and adored?

I affirm, with all Catholics; and it is gathered from the seventh Synod, Act 5, where among the impious dogmata of a certain Nenaia is also recounted this, that she would say it to be an act of a childish mind to fashion in a dove an idol of the Spirit most adorably holy. And shortly after in the same place it is condemned because she thought it inconvenient that pious men outline the Holy Spirit as having a body.

It is confirmed from the most frequent and most ancient usage of the Church, which of old willed divine persons to be expressed and outlined in figures in temples; for in the Constantinopolitan Synod under Mennas Act 5 is related the suppliant libellus of Clerics and Monks of Antiochia to John Patriarch against Severus, wherein among the crimes of this man it is related that he appropriated golden and silver doves in form of Holy Spirit hung above sacred lararia and altars, saying it behooves not to name the Holy Spirit in the species of a dove. Hence the Council of Trent, Session 25, approves this usage of the Church when it prescribes:

So that, if at any time it shall be expedient for the unlearned people that histories and narratives of sacred Scripture be expressed and figured, let the people be taught that Divinity is not therefore figured, as if it could be beheld by bodily eyes, or expressed by colors and figures.

But that every difficulty which might be objected may be tacitly cleared away, it must be observed from Cajetan to question 25 that images of God can be made in three ways: First indeed, so that through them it be intended to paint and figure God according to the truth of his own nature: and thus the fashioning of images of God is prohibited Isaiah chapter 10, and by the Church is damned as the heresy of Anthropomorphites: for we must not deem the Divinity to be like unto gold or silver, says the Apostle Acts 17. Secondly, so that through an image God be represented, not indeed as he is in himself, but as he sometimes appeared to men in some visible form, either through himself immediately, or through Angels. And thus even heretics do not deny images of God can be fashioned, especially Chemnitius concerning the above-cited definition of the Council of Trent; and Peter Martyr in his commonplaces chapter 5. Thus we paint God the Father in the form of an old man, because he seems to have appeared in that form to Daniel chapter 7; God the Son in human form, because he assumed humanity; God truly the Holy Spirit in the species of a dove, because he appeared in it Matthew 3. For although that dove was formed indivisim from three persons, nevertheless because it was touched to represent the Holy Spirit, he alone is said to have appeared in it. Thirdly, so that through an image God or some divine person be represented inasmuch as it has analogy with some perfection of God: and in this mode also it appears God and divine persons can be represented. Nor stands in the way Canon 82 of the sixth Synod, in which is prohibited the image of Christ to be figured in form of lamb. For I say first, that these Canons appear to many not to be of the true and genuine sixth Synod, but of certain Bishops who several years after the sixth Synod had been dissolved and finished gathered in Trullo published those Canons, which universal Church approved not, as Turrianus teaches at length in his book On the false acts of the sixth Synod, and Baronius to the year of Christ 692. I say secondly, that the Canon does not prohibit Christ being thus figured absolutely, but only comparatively, namely that to those figures of the lamb should be preferred images representing Christ in human figure. — Many testimonies both of Scripture and of the Fathers heretics heap together whereby they strive to prove no image of God is to be made. Truly all those you will easily dissolve by replying that they are to be understood of the image of God employed in the first mode, by which namely it would wish to signify that God has a figure of this kind.

You will object: If any image of God is to be adored, especially a living one, such as man: but man is not to be adored: therefore neither is any image to be worshipped. — I answer first, that man is said not so much to be the image of God as made to the image of God. Second, that religious adoration is founded in some excellence which signifies an order to a supernatural end, just as civil cult is founded on the perfection of the natural order: whence, since man is the image of God only according to his natural things, for this reason he does not seem to be worshipped with religious cult. Third, that man, insofar as he is the image of God, can also be received with some veneration; hence we often see in the Sacred Scriptures men prostrating themselves before others and adoring them.

You ask. 2. Whether images can be adored either per se, so that the adoration itself be rendered to the thing, as to a thing that terminates it and is the terminus of that adoration: or only by reason of the prototype, so that the image is only called the terminus quo of that adoration?

I answer, that it seems more probable that images are to be adored only as the terminus quo of that adoration, so that he who adores the image venerates through it the exemplar as terminus and proximate matter of that adoration. So all the princes of Theology teach; for thus Alensis teaches, part 3, question 30, member 3, article 3, § 1. St. Bonaventure, book 3, dist. 9, art. 1, qu. 2. Albertus in the same place, article 1. St. Thomas in the same place, question 1, article 2. and many other followers of theirs whom Vazquez cites, dist. 104, cap. 3.

This opinion is preferred first indeed by the authority of Councils: but chiefly from the definition of the Seventh Synod which we expressed above: for after it decreed that images are to be honorably retained in temples, namely that through the inspection of these painted images all who see may fly to the memory, remembrance, and desire of the prototypes, and exhibit to them salutation and honorable adoration, etc., it adds the reason in these words: for the honor of the image redounds to the prototype, and he who adores the image adores in it also the subject depicted. By which words it signifies that images are adored precisely because the same honor of the image redounds to the exemplar. Similarly the Synod of Sens, decree 11: Images of Christ, it says, are adored not because any divinity inheres in them, but on account of the veneration of the exemplar. By which words it refers the whole adoration of the image back to the very prototype. Then, Trent teaches that images are to be adored,

non quod, inquit, credatur inesse aliqua in his Divinitas, vel virtus propter quam sint colenda: sed quoniam honos, qui his exhibetur, refertur ad prototypa, quae illae repraesentant, ut per imagines, quas osculamur, et coram quibus caput aperimus, et procumbimus, Christum adoremus, et sanctos, quorum illae similitudines sunt.

Therefore the Council does not judge images to be adored per se on account of their peculiar excellence, but only by reason of the prototype which they represent.

Vazquez proves secondly by the authority of the holy Fathers teaching that the honor paid to sacred images does not rest in them, but rebounds to the prototype. Thus St. Dionysius, chapter 2 De Coelesti Hierarchia: Those who studiously behold sacred simulacra do not linger in such lineaments as in wax, but honor is rendered to divine things and through the negations of things and their diverse likenesses with extremes. By which he signifies that when sacred images are beheld and adored and worshipped, one must not linger and rest in them, but honor must be rendered to their exemplars. St. Damascenus luminously proves the same truth, Orat. 1 De Imag., by the testimony of St. Basil from the book De Spiritu Sancto, chapter 18, where it stands thus:

Quia lex etiam dicitur Regis imago, et non dumtaxat reges: neque enim imperium scinditur, neque gloria dividitur, quemadmodum principatus, et potestas una est, quae nobis dominatur: sic etiam et glorificatio a nobis una est, et non multa, propterea quod imaginis honor ad exemplar transit.

And he comments upon this opinion thus:

Quemadmodum purpura, et sericum, et quicquid ex his vestimentum conficitur, per se nihil aliud sunt, nisi tenue quoddam operimentum; quod tamen si rex induerit, honoris quo praestat Rex, ipsum quoque particeps fit: ita res ex materia constantes per se quidem adorandae non sunt, at si gratia plenus sit is, quem illae referunt, pro fidei proportione, ipsae quoque participes fiunt.

He confirms it by Oration 3, with the testimony of Leontius in Dialogue 4 against the Jews, where it is said thus:

Quemadmodum etiam Iacob accipiens a filiis suis tunicam sanguine conspersam Ioseph, cum lacrymis osculatus est, suisque oculis circumposuit, non ipsam tunicam diligendo, aut honorando hoc fecit, sed per eam arbitratus est, se Ioseph osculari, et in manibus habere: sic etiam Christi omnes imagines Christiani, aut Apostoli, aut Martyris tenentes, nostraque carne osculantes, animo videmur nobis ipsum Christum, aut Martyrem amplecti.

But he brings forward as example him who kisses the garment of his dead son. The same concerning sons who, while their Father is far away and journeying abroad, embrace with tears whatever they see in his house, whether staff or cloak; yet these are not worthy of reprehension. He gives the reason in these words: non enim, ut Deum, tunicas adorasti, sed ipsum amorem erga eum, qui his amiciebatur, tuum per oscula declarasti. Finally he concludes the argument saying:

Therefore, as I have often said, in every salutation and adoration the very intention is required and weighed, that is, it must be considered and examined. Passing over the testimonies of other holy Fathers touched upon, whereby Vazquez proves the same truth in the same place.

But that this grave controversy stirred up among Recent Theologians on this matter, although, as it seems to me, of little use to Catholic truth, may be composed with a fairer judgment, I should judge it must be said that sacred images indeed are to be venerated with a peculiar and primary cult only on account of their prototype, so that by that reason they are judged worthy of religious cult because they recall to memory the excellence of the prototype: nevertheless, since, as we said above, a certain moral diffusion and attribution of the excellence of the very prototype into its image takes place, thence I should judge also that images, by reason of that excellence morally promanating and poured forth over them, are judged worthy per se also of some veneration, not indeed according to their material being, from which they are formed, namely insofar as they are wood, bronze, silver, gold, or colors, nor even according to their formal being simply, that is, according to the outlines and disposition of parts skillfully and artfully joined together, for this is merely artificial, but insofar as they are ordered to signifying and representing the thing which of itself and in itself embraces an excellence worthy of veneration.

Note 1. That various heretics held the sacred spoils and relics of the Saints departed this life not only in no honor, but even despised them and condemned their cult. For, that I may pass over all the Iconoclasts, who just as they were most bitter assailants of images, so also of sacred relics, above all that nefarious Copronymus, there are very many who specifically abolished the veneration of relics. First appears Eustathius of Sebaste, who, as Alphonsus de Castro and Prateolus relate under the word Eustathius, was condemned in the Council of Gangra: for although in that Council no Canon is prescribed against those despising sacred relics; nevertheless in the preface of that Council the error is attributed to Eustathius that he contemns the places of the holy Martyrs and reprehends those who gather there. The same error is attributed to this Eustathius by Jonas of Orleans, book 1 De Cultu Imaginum. But the followers of Eunomius and Vigilantius persisted in his error; the latter of whom, as St. Jerome relates, Epist. 51, called Catholics cinerarii and idolaters because they worshipped the ashes of the Saints and their sacred spoils. Faustus the Manichee was a propagator of the same error; for, as St. Augustine relates, book 20 Contra Faustum, chapter 22, he accused Christians because they honored the memorials of the Martyrs and had converted idols into Martyrs, appeasing the shades of the dead with wine and meats. Wycliffites long ago re-excited the nefarious opinion of mind of all these errors long buried, as Waldensis relates, Tome 3, title 11, chapter 131; likewise Lutherans, whose standard-bearer, in the Sermon De Cruce, calls relics seductions of the faithful, and wishes them to be buried most deep beneath the earth.

Calvinists, who especially in this age drinking down all the virulent dregs of those ancient heretics, have labored not only to abolish the invocation of the Saints and images from among men, but also raging with the madness of the demon against everything sacred, have raged furiously against all the venerable relics of the Saints; the impious dogmas and foundations of all whom are to be set forth and uprooted.

Note 2. That among Catholics there is not one concordant opinion concerning the manner of worshipping sacred relics. For although all agree against the heretics that the sacred spoils of the Saints are to be held in price and honor, nevertheless they dissent among themselves concerning the manner of worshipping them. For certain ones with the Seraphic Doctor, book 3, dist. 9, art. 1, question 1, teach that although sacred images are not to be worshipped with the special cult which is owed to the prototype, because we venerate them only by reason of representation, and they always lead us into veneration and estimation of the exemplar which they represent; nevertheless relics of the Saints claim for themselves secundum se some excellence, namely either on account of the contact or on account of the affinity which they had and still keep with the blessed soul, by which in the general resurrection of the dead they must again be revivified, and accordingly merit secundum se some cult and veneration. But others judge that cult and adoration are not owed to relics secundum se, but only together with him whose relics they are: so that these are not the terminus qui of that whole adoration, but only partial; nor can they be said simply to be adored with absolute cult, but only respective: but what is to be judged truer will be disclosed below.

Note 3. By sacred relics we understand here not only the sacred spoils of the Saints departed this life, and their whole bodies, or parts of them, but also their garments and other similar things which served either their necessary use or the ministry of penance and mortification. Concerning all which two things occur here to be determined: First, whether these sacred relics are to be worshipped and adored. Second, whether they claim for themselves absolute, or only respective cult.

First Conclusion. — The relics of the Saints are worthy of veneration.

It is proved first from the Old Testament, namely by all those testimonies whereby God willed the bodies of holy men departed this life to be held in veneration, which gift indeed the pious man illustrious observed as religious and sanctioned by divine precept. Hence Genesis 50: Joseph commanded that his father Jacob, departed this life, be embalmed with spices, and he asked license of Pharaoh to bury him in the land of Chanaan, in that double sepulchre which Abraham had bought, as Jacob himself had requested, Genesis 23. Similarly Joseph, Genesis 50, being near death, commands his brethren: Asportate ossa mea vobiscum de loco isto.... and embalmed with spices he was laid in a coffin in Egypt. Hence Ecclesiasticus 49 says of the bones of Joseph: Ossa ipsius visitata sunt, because doubtless Joseph had said in Genesis 50: Visitabit vos Deus, asportate ossa mea vobiscum, and the bones of Joseph are said in the same place to have prophesied after death, either because the prophecy of Joseph concerning them was fulfilled when they were carried away according to his prediction; for in Exodus 13 Tulit Moyses ossa Ioseph secum, because he had adjured the children of Israel saying: Visitabit vos Deus, afferte ossa mea vobiscum: or because after death they worked miracles, which bore witness that he was a great Prophet of God. Similarly Ecclesiasticus 49 also says of the twelve Prophets: Et duodecim Prophetarum ossa pullulant de loco suo. But the bones of those are said to sprout because after death they live in memory and honor, on account of the same miracles, prophecies, and sanctity of life. We read similarly 4 Kings, chapter 13, that God at the contact of the buried body of Eliseus raised up a corpse cast into his sepulchre, lest surely a profane corpse should rest in the sepulchre of the most holy Prophet: by which miracle God signified that the relics of Prophets and Saints are to be held in veneration and honor. Hence in the same place, chapter 23, Josias the King, wishing to overturn every idolatry and superstition, having ordered all the bones of the Pseudo-Prophets to be exhumed and the altar dedicated over idols to be burned, willed the sepulchre of Eliseus and of the other true Prophet to remain untouched. Hence St. Jerome observes on chapter 1 of Osee, that the sepulchre of the same Osee, Jonas, and Abdias is held in veneration to this day together with that of Eliseus the Prophet, and of John the Baptist in Sebaste.

Similarly the same truth is gathered from the New Testament; for above all the sepulchre of Christ the Lord has always stood in such honor among all the faithful, according to that prophecy of Isaias, chapter 11: Et erit sepulcrum illius gloriosum, that St. Jerome, Epistle 17, writes that in his time the faithful of the whole Christian world ran together to it for devotion and veneration. Quicumque, inquit, in Gallia primus huc properat, dictus ab orbe Britannus, si in religione processerit, medio sole dimissa, quaerit locum forma sibi tantum per scriptorum relationem cognitum. We read likewise Matthew 9 that the woman suffering from an issue of blood, devoutly touching the hem of the garment of Christ, was healed of her infirmity. And Acts 5 records that the people vied in bringing the sick and laying them on beds and couches, that at least when Peter came, his shadow at least might overshadow someone, and they might be delivered from their infirmities. Which St. Augustine weighing in Sermon 29 de Sanctis, and celebrating the chains with which Peter had been bound, says:

Si tam medicabilis fuit obumbratio visitantis, quanto magis catena cingentis? Si inanis quaedam species caecae imaginis habere potuit in se vim salutis, quanto plus de corpore meruerunt attrahere salutis, ferreo pondere sacris impressa membris vincula passionis?

The same is related, chapter 19, concerning the handkerchiefs and aprons of St. Paul: Supra languidos deferabantur a corpore eius sudaria, et semicinctia, et recedebant ab eis languores, et spiritus nequam egrediebantur.

This truth is proved thirdly from the Councils; for it was defined in the Council of Gangra, in the last Canon, if compared with what is said in the preface of that Council. Similarly in the Seventh Synod, Act 6, in the definition of faith expressed in the preceding Question. Likewise in the Fifth Council of Carthage, Can. 14, where it is defined that altars are not to be consecrated without the relics of Saints; in the Third Council of Braga, Can. 5; of Mainz in the time of Charlemagne, Can. 51; of the Lateran under Innocent III, chapter 62; but chiefly that of Trent, Session 21, where it prescribes the manner of exposing and worshipping sacred relics, so that none may be received anew and exposed to the veneration of the faithful without the Bishop examining and approving.

The holy Fathers and sacred ecclesiastical writers bear witness to the same truth, who assert that Christians of old held in veneration the bodies, ashes, bones, and other relics of the Saints, especially Martyrs. This the Church of Smyrna proves above all in the encyclical Letter which she wrote concerning the Acts and death of St. Polycarp her Bishop, a disciple of the Apostles, around the year of Christ 117, which also Eusebius of Caesarea wove into book 4 of his History, chapter 15. There, after the passion has been set forth, the narrative relates that his enemies among the Christians acted at last before the Proconsul, that they should not grant them power over his body, lest, leaving the Crucified, they said, they would begin to worship this man. When the Jews pressed this above all, he says that the Centurion consumed the sacred body with fire. Thus say the Smyrnaeans,

sublatis postea ossibus illius, quae quibusvis pretiosiora lapillis, et auro probatiora erant, ibi eum, uti par erat, reposuimus, quo in loco, pro eo ac poterimus, in exsultatione ac laetitia dabit nobis Dominus congregatis natalem Martyrii illius celebrare diem: tum ad eorum memoriam, qui ante certamine functi sunt: tum ad illorum, qui postea sunt passuri exercitationem et praeparationem.

— Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 18, disputing concerning the Resurrection, treating of Elias and Eliseus and those raised by each, says that the latter raised the dead twice, in life and after death. For living, he says, he effected a resurrection through his soul: but that not only the souls of the just be honored, but also that it be believed some power inheres in the bodies of the just, the dead man cast into the sepulchre of Eliseus, when he touched the body of the dead Prophet, was vivified. Which he proves thus, and whence; for if the handkerchiefs and aprons of Paul, which were outside his body, being applied to the sick healed them, how much more is it fitting to believe this of the bodies of Saints, which draw power from the souls to which they long afforded a dwelling? — St. Basil, on Psalm 115, expounding these words, Pretiosa in conspectu Domini mors Sanctorum eius, observes that in the old Law the bodies of the dead were held as unclean; but in the new Law the matter stands otherwise. Now truly whoever, he says, touched the bone of a Martyr receives some communication of sanctification from that grace which inheres in his body. — St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 18, on St. Cyprian, testifies that his relics and sacred ashes expel demons, heal diseases, and work miracles. All which things, he says, the very dust of Cyprian can do, if faith be present, as those know by experience who have handed down the deed even to our memory, and will transmit it to subsequent times. — St. Ambrose, in Epistle 53, relating how he found the bodies of SS. Gervase and Protase, then narrates what great miracles were there touched:

Cognovistis, inquit, imo vidistis ipsi multos a daemoniis purgatos, plurimos etiam, ubi vestem Sanctorum manibus contigerunt, iis quibus laborabant debilitatibus absolutos, reparata restituti corporis miracula, quo se per adventum Domini Iesu gratia terris maior infuderat: umbra quorum Sanctorum corporum plerosque sanatos cernitis. Quanta sudaria iactantur? Quanta indumenta super reliquias sacratissimas, et tactu ipso medicabilia reposcuntur? Gaudent omnes extrema linea contingere, et qui contigerit, salus erit.

Finally he says he laid the Martyrs beneath the altar: Conferamus ergo reliquias sacrosanctas, et dignis aedibus inducamus, totumque diem fida devotione celebremus. And in Sermon 14, which is concerning SS. Nazarius and Celsus, treating of the relics of the holy Bodies: Hoc est, inquit, sanctorum Martyrum gloria: quorum etsi per universum mundum seminetur in cineribus portio, manet tamen integra in virtutibus plenitudo. And at the end:

Honoro ergo, inquit, in carne Martyris exceptas pro Christi nomine cicatrices: honoro viventis memoriam perennitate virtutis: honoro per confessionem Domini sacratos cineres: honoro in cineribus semina aeternitatis: honoro corpus, quod mihi Dominum meum ostendit diligere: quod me propter Dominum mortem docuit non timere: cur autem non honorent corpus illud fideles, quod reverentur et daemones, quod et afflixerunt in supplicio, sed glorificatur in sepulcro? Honoro itaque corpus, quod Christus honoravit in gladio: quod cum Christo regnarit in caelo.

— St. Jerome thus addresses Vigilantius, Epist. 53:

Dolet, inquit, Martyrum reliquias pretioso operiri velamine, et non vel pannis, vel ciliciis colligari, vel proiici in sterculinum, ut solus Vigilantius ebrius et dormiens adoretur. Ergo sacrilegi sumus, quando Apostolorum basilicas ingredimur, sacrilegus fuit Constantinus Imperator, qui sanctas reliquias Andreae, Lucae, et Timothei transtulit Constantinopolim, apud quas daemones rugiunt, et inhabitatores Vigilantii illorum se sentire praesentiam confitentur? Sacrilegus et nunc dicendus est Augustus Arcadius, qui ossa beati Samuelis longo post tempore de Iudaea transtulit in Thraciam? Omnes Episcopi non solum sacrilegi, sed et fatui iudicandi, qui rem vilissimam, et cineres dissolutos in serico, et vase aureo portaverunt? Stulti omnium Ecclesiarum populi, qui occurrerunt sanctis reliquiis, et tanta laetitia, quasi praesentem, viventemque Prophetam cernerent, susceperunt, ut de Palestina usque Chalcedonem iungerentur populorum examina, et Christi laudem una voce resonarent!

He adds shortly after:

Male fecit ergo Romanus episcopus, qui super mortuorum hominum Petri et Pauli, secundum nos ossa veneranda, secundum te vilem pulvisculum, offert Domino sacrificia, et eorum tumulos Christi arbitratur altaria, etc.

— St. Chrysostom in almost innumerable places, and especially Homily 65, de SS. Berenice, Prosdoce, et Domnica: Forte, inquit, ingens in vobis concitatum est desiderium Martyrum istorum. Cum hoc igitur ardore accedamus ad reliquias ipsorum; amplectamur eorum loculos. Possunt enim vel ipsa Martyrum conditoria magna valere, quemadmodum eorundem ossa Martyrum plurimum possunt. Thus in Hom. 65 on St. Pelagia:

Illustrius, ait, esse palatiis regiis omnium iudicio sepulcrum illud, in quo situm est corpus eiusmodi, quod cum virtute, pietateque vixit. Atque huius rei testes vos estis, qui divitum sepulcra, quamvis aureis ornata palliis, tamquam speluncas praeteritis; ad hanc vero Sanctam cum ingenti alacritate concurristis; quoniam martyrio, et confessione, ac virginitate, pro aureis vestibus, semetipsam velut ad funebrem apparatum componens, inclyta Martyr excessit.

Thus at the end of Homily 76 on SS. Juventinus and Maximinus, whose relics he says were placed in one reliquary; he calls them columns, rocks, towers, and luminaries of the Church, because they sustain and protect it. Then he exhorts the people thus: Assidue itaque ad illos veniamus, et loculum contingamus, et cum fide reliquias eorum circumplectamur, ut benedictionem aliquam inde attrahamus. For as soldiers showing wounds received from enemies address the King boldly, so also these carrying their severed heads in their hands and holding them forth, will easily be able to effect everything they shall have asked with the heavenly King. — If you desire more testimonies of the holy Fathers on this matter, you may consult Coccieus, book 5 De Sanctis Ecclesiae, chapter 16; Alanus Copus, Dialogue 3, chapter 12; Bellarmine, book 2 De Imaginibus; Petavius, book 14 De Incarnatione, chapter 15; Perron in his refutation of the false dissertation and mendacious discourse of du Tillet; and many other moderns who have written most abundantly against the heretics of this time concerning this controversy.

Therefore deservedly against the heretics of this time we can renew the complaint which Dungalus framed in the year of Christ the Lord 825, in exactly the same controversy, in his book against Claudius of Turin:

Qualis, inquit, et quanta est insana elatio, et vana temeritas, ut quod a primaevo tempore Christianitatis per annos ferme 825. (dicamus nos 1675.) a sanctis ac beatissimis Patribus, ac religiosissimis postmodum principibus, in gloriam et laudem Dei, in Ecclesiis, et in quibuslibet Christianorum dominibus fieri concessum, constitutum, et iussum est, unus homo (scilicet Claudius Taurinensis) blasphemare, reprehendere, contestari, proiicere, ac sufflare praesumat? Quasi in tanto iam dicto spatio nullus sanctus, vel sapiens in Ecclesia Dei extitisset auctor, qui tam ardentissimum in corde suo zelum, vel subtilissimum potuerit habere intellectum, sicut iste, qui audet oppugnare, quod caeteri quasi formidolosi ausi non sunt; vel vituperare, quod alii esse vituperandum, quasi stulti non intellexerunt.

The heretics object: That oracle of Christ the Lord, Luke 11: Vae vobis, qui aedificatis monumenta Prophetarum: Patres autem vestri occiderunt illos; profecto testificamini, quod consentitis operibus Patrum vestrorum, quoniam ipsi quidem occiderunt, vos autem aedificatis eorum sepulchra: but Christ in these words does not accuse the Jews of any other crime except that they were building monuments to the Prophets and venerating their relics, in which they consented to the works of their fathers: therefore it is a crime to venerate the relics of Saints. — I deny the minor, for there is none among the holy Fathers or Interpreters of Scripture who says that the adorning of monuments of just Men is there disapproved; for their sepulchres were always held in honor among the Jews, nor anywhere marked with any superstition, as Waldensis observes excellently, Tome 3, chapter 131. It must be said therefore that Christ the Lord there especially accuses the Pharisees of hypocrisy, which he explains clearly in Matthew 23, where, instituting the same complaint, he says:

Vae vobis Scribae, et Pharisaei hypocritae: quia aedificatis sepulchra Prophetarum, et ornatis monumenta iustorum, et dicitis: si fuissemus in diebus Patrum nostrorum, non essemus socii eorum in sanguine Prophetarum: itaque testimonio estis vobismetipsis, quia filii estis eorum, qui Prophetas occiderunt.

By which words Christ the Lord signifies that they were guilty of the same crime, as regards the mind, as their parents; because just as they killed the Prophets, so they ought to kill the greatest of the Prophets, even meditating in mind his death and persecution. Whence he reprehends them not because they built monuments to the Prophets, but because under this show of piety toward the Prophets they concealed a malevolent mind toward Him who was Prince of the Prophets: just as in the same place he reprehends them because they tithe mint and anise and cummin, not that he condemns tithing, which was commanded by the law: but because under the pretext and veil of these lighter works they concealed impiety, and omitted the weightier precepts of the law.

You will object 2. That passage of Deuteronomy, last chapter, where it is said that Moses, departed this life, was buried on Mount Nebo in the vale of Moab, and afterward it is added: et non cognovit homo sepulcrum eius usque in praesentem diem: but (says Calvin in the admonition de reliquiis) his body and sepulchre was hidden for no other cause than lest it be worshipped by the Jews: therefore the cult of the bodies of Saints is prohibited by God. They confirm it from the Epistle of St. Jude, where it says: Cum Michael Archangelus cum diabolo disputans altercaretur de Moysis corpore, etc.: but this dispute between Michael and the devil was nothing else than that Michael wished the body of Moses always to remain hidden, lest the Jews venerating it should rush into idolatry, but the devil wished the sepulchre and body of Moses revealed, so that under pretext of piety occasion of idolatry might be given to the Jews: therefore since the same danger exists in the veneration of relics, by equal reason this is to be guarded against. — I answer first, that the aforesaid text rather stands against Calvin than pleads for him: since when God willed the body of Moses to be entombed by the ministry of Angels, it is a sign that He Himself wishes relics and the bodies of Saints to be held in honor. I say second, that indeed with the best right God did not wish the body of Moses to be revealed, lest the Jews, prone to idolatry, worship him as a divinity, especially since they had had him living as leader, lawgiver, and savior, and had beheld him working so many and such stupendous miracles. But a danger of this kind is not to be guarded against in Christians, chiefly since they are better instructed concerning the cult to be paid to sacred relics; for there is no one who does not know that he honors Saints not as divinities, but as pious ministers of God on account of the eminent virtue of the Saints and the patronage which can be obtained through their intercession.

They object 3. That passage of St. Paul to the Colossians 2: Nemo vos seducat volens in humilitate, et religione Angelorum, quae non vidit, ambulans frustra, inflatus sensu carnis suae: but he calls this religion of Angels ἐθελοθρησκείαν, that is, voluntary cult, that is, not prescribed by God: but the cult of relics is voluntary and by no means prescribed by God: therefore it is voluntary and superstitious cult. — To this objection Catholic Doctors respond that the Apostle reproaches two things in the Jews in that chapter: namely the cult of Angels, because they worshipped them as lesser Gods, and because they extolled them above Christ; and the observance of certain foods and other legal observances, and this cult of Angels he calls religion of Angels; and that observance of things legal at the end of the chapter he calls superstition. Wherefore nothing against Catholics can be gathered from this place, because they do not honor Angels, or Saints, or their relics above Christ; nor observe legal observances, nor use certain foods in the manner of the Jews, nor as if what was prescribed were retained by law, since they acknowledge that the old law, as regards ceremonies and judicial precepts, was abrogated through Christ: nor can the cult of Saints, or images, and relics be called ⟦ethelothreskeia?⟧ which signifies feigned and merely voluntary cult, for which there is no sufficient authority, no reason: but for the cult of Saints, images, and relics we have the authority of Scripture, Tradition, Councils, and Fathers, indeed also reason militating for this cult, and thus this cult is not merely voluntary and feigned, as was that cult of Angels and superstition in foods.

They object 4. The Council of Elvira, can. 34, where candles are prohibited to be lit by day, lest the spirits of the dead be disturbed: Cereos, inquit, placuit in coemeterio non accendi: inquietandi enim Spiritus sanctorum non sunt. Similarly also St. Jerome against Vigilantius, where, when Vigilantius had objected that it is idolatry to light such candles by day in temples or before the relics of Saints, St. Jerome responds:

Cereos clara luce non accendimus, sicut frustra calumniaris: sed ut noctis tenebras hoc solatio temperemus, et vigilemus ad lumen, nec caeci dormiamus in tenebris. Qualiter si aliqui ex imperitia et simplicitate saecularium hominum, vel etiam religiosarum personarum, de quibus vere possamus dicere, confiteor, colunt Deum sed non secundum scientiam, hoc pro honore Martyrum faciunt, quid inde perdis?

St. Jerome therefore judged that the cult paid to the relics of Saints was superstitious. — I answer, that the Council of Elvira prohibited the use of candles before the sepulchres of Saints for this reason, that the faithful living among pagans might not participate in their superstition: for the Ethnic peoples were persuaded that the souls of the dead dwell in sepulchres and that their buried bodies still have some sense and consequently need foods and lamps, wherewith they would likewise dispel darkness; and therefore they offered feasts, and milk, and wine at funerals, as Plutarch relates at the beginning of the life of Romulus. Hence Virgil, book 6 of the Aeneid, at the exequies of Misenus, says: Aversi tenuere facem, congesta cremantur / Thurea dona, dapes, fuso crateras olivo. Tertullian also observes that the Ethnics performed funeral rites thus to the dead, setting before them eatables which they might eat. Nay, they even placed lit lamps in the tombs, such as are even now found when their urns are dug out; indeed it frequently happened that with lights placed at sepulchres spirits were evoked through magical impiety and necromancy, as Pliny relates, book 30 of his History, chapter 2, and thus they seemed to disturb the souls departed mortal life; which word Samuel's spirit also used, evoked by the Pythoness at the request of King Saul, saying, 1 Kings, chapter 28: Quare inquietasti me, ut suscitarer? But lest the faithful should seem to conform to the custom of the Gentiles and follow their nefarious rites, therefore he prohibits a lamp to be lit in cemeteries by day, adding however the reason saying: Inquietandi enim spiritus Sanctorum non sunt; not because he judges that the souls of the dead are moved from their place by magical incantations, even if they appear in phantasm when evoked by Magi: but because he knew that cult to be superstitious, and consequently displeasing to the Saints, and their spirits thence said to be disturbed; just as in Ephesians 4 the Holy Spirit is said to be saddened by our wicked works. Or, as Garsias Loaysa expounds, expounding the aforesaid Canon, the spirits of the Saints are understood not of the dead but of the living; for the faithful are called Saints in Scripture: but they would be said to be disturbed by that rite because that rite seemed to breathe superstition and imitation of the Gentiles. But after, with Gentility detested, the religion of Christ prevailed, then at last the faithful, with fear or suspicion of approving or imitating the profane rites of the Gentiles banished far away, followed the exequies of Christians with lighted candles. For St. Jerome writes, ad funus S. Paulae, that there was an immense concourse of Clerics and Monks carrying burning candles. Gregory of Nyssa also, in the life of Macrina his Sister, commemorates the Clerics who accompanied the funeral performing her rites as having held lit candles before them. — To St. Jerome I say, that by the aforesaid words the rite of lighting candles in the temples of Christians is not disapproved, but only Vigilantius is shown that he imposes false things on Catholics, and that if certain persons on account of ignorance light candles in cemeteries or before the sacred relics of Martyrs by day, they are not therefore to be blamed, since they do this for the honor of the Martyrs, and consequently lose nothing and are about to receive the reward of their work. But when Vigilantius added that this rite is superstitious and received from idolaters, St. Jerome responds:

Non diffiteor omnes nos qui in Christo credimus de idololatria errore caenisse. Non enim nascimur, sed renascimur christiani. Et quia quondam colebamus idola, nunc Deum colere debemus, nec similes videamur cum idolis honore venerari. Illud fiebat idolis, et ideo detestandum est: hoc fit martyribus, et ideo recipiendum est. Nam absque martyrum reliquiis per totas Orientis Ecclesias, quando legendum est Evangelium, accenduntur luminaria, iam sole rutilante: non utique ad fugandas tenebras, sed ad signum laetitiae demonstrandum. Unde et virgines illa evangelicae semper habent accensas lampades suas. Et ad Apostolos dicitur: sint lumbi vestri praecincti, et lucernae ardentes in manibus vestris.

Therefore he judges that lamps can be lit by day over the sepulchres of Martyrs as a sign of joy, and to signify the eternal lamp which after this fleeting life shines upon the souls of the pious.

You will object 5. That is not to be exposed to the veneration of the faithful which can lead into superstition: but such are the relics of Saints, because as true ones they may be supposititious, and so he who venerated them would exhibit undue and superstitious cult. — I answer first, that very many relics of Saints, as we said, are illustrious by miracles and daily grow bright with prodigies, whereby their truth and power has been plainly known. I say second, that the Council of Trent, Session 25, sufficiently provided for impeding this abuse, while it commands those relics not to be exposed to the veneration of the faithful unless first approved as legitimate by the judgment of Bishops. I say third, that although notwithstanding these things it might happen that some relics be supposititious, yet the veneration of the faithful concerning them would not thence be to be condemned, which in this case would be only material superstition, not formal, since the faithful would have the intention of venerating the relics of some Saint and would direct their veneration to that.

Second Conclusion. — The relics of the Saints are to be venerated with respective cult, namely that with which their images are to be worshipped.

Thus St. Damascenus, book 1 De Fide, chapter 12, where speaking universally concerning all sacred things to be venerated he says: Omnia quae Deo dedicata atque consecrata sunt, ita adoramus, ut cultum et venerationem eidem cum referamus. The same teaches the Auctor Epist. II among the works of St. Hieron., who, speaking of the veneration which holy Paula exhibited to places and things consecrated by the contact and presence of the humanity of Christ, says: Inde speluncam Salvatoris ingressa, postquam vidit sacrum Virginis diversorium, et stabulum, in quo agnovit bos possessorem suum, et asinus praesepe Domini sui, ut impleretur, quod in eodem Propheta scriptum est, me audire iurabat, se cernere fidei oculis infantem pannis involutum, vagientem in praesepio, Magos adorantes Dominum, &c. Hence Paula herself used to say: Ego misera, atque perculsa indigna sum osculari praesepe, in quo Dominus parvulus vagiit.

Reason also lends its support to these, because inanimate things, such as relics are, are per se not capable of honor or contumely, except insofar as they signify order and connection with things endowed with reason: therefore the relics of Saints are to be venerated insofar as they signify respect to the Saints themselves, or to their souls illustrious with pre-eminent virtue, grace, and disposition. Therefore the same judgment must be passed upon relics as upon sacred images; although I judge sacred relics worthy of ampler cult and veneration than the images of Saints, partly because God more often works miracles at the presence of relics than of images; partly because the bodies of Saints served most especially for the exercise of virtue; and consequently, says Tertullian in the book De Resurrectione carnis, Non possunt separari in mercede, quas opera coniungit; finally because those venerable spoils were not only living temples of the Holy Spirit anointed with various sacred unctions, consecrated repeatedly by the frequentation of the sacraments, and illustrated by special and intimate communion not only with the most holy soul but also by its motions, operations, and illustrious actions. For by all these and other similar titles of glory they vindicate for themselves ampler honor and veneration than images, which represent only the likeness of the prototype.

NOTE 1. That the assistance and mediation of the Saints is assailed by those same heretics who persecute their veneration: for Vigilantius, in St. Jerome's libellus 1 Contra eundem, impiously said: Dum vivimus, nobis mutuo pro nobis orare possumus, postquam mortui fuerimus, nullius pro alio exaudienda est oratio. With no less impiety Copronymus prohibited by public edict the intercession of Saints, as Suidas testifies in Copronymo, and Glicas, book 4 of the Annals. The Waldenses followed the same heresy according to Guido, heresy 16; the Lollards according to Trithemius in his Chronicle at the year 1315; the Wycliffites; for, as Waldensis relates, Wyclif in part 3 of the Trialogus used to say that it is foolish to leave Christ the readier fountain and withdraw to turbulent and remote men (thus he calls the Saints). The Lutherans raised this heresy, like almost all the other ancient heresies long buried, even from hell; for Luther in his Postilla maior on the seventh Sunday after Trinity says: the merits of St. Peter could not redeem even themselves: how then will they help me, since they have not even brought aid to themselves? And to this impiety Calvin subscribed, book 1 of the Institutes, chapter 11, where he says that God alone is to be prayed to, and he calls the invocation of Angels Platonic philosophy.

NOTE 2. That the Saints are deservedly called our mediators with God; for intercession, that is, deprecation and conciliation, whereby someone is reduced into the favor of a more powerful one, especially when alienated and offended, is a proper mark of whatever sort of mediator: although Christ exercises this function primarily with the Father, and this office befits Him most excellently and in a certain peculiar manner, as was demonstrated in disputation 2; yet nothing in that matter stands in the way that after Him, and by His authority and power, others be advocates and mediators, through whom access to the principal one lies open. For toward perfect mediation a twofold office is desired: one which is seen in meriting well and assisting with deeds themselves: the other which consists in prayers and orations, which the patron pours forth to God as mediator for clients received into his protection, that he may elicit His aid and beneficence. From these things mutual love of the clients toward the patron and confidence are born; wherein they use it, so that both in arduous and difficult matters they may recur to his protection, and encompass him with supplications and vows, and in turn may testify toward him a grateful and benevolent mind by whatever services, honor, and cult they can. But all these things the Saints fulfill toward us, as will be clear in the course of this disputation.

NOTE 3. That from the Seraphic Doctor, book 1, dist. 45, art. 3, question 2, the Saints assist us and conciliate divine beneficence by a twofold means; namely merit and affection.

Merito quidem praecedenti, inquit, quo Deo facillime servierunt, et tantum locum suis meritis sunt adepti, ut non solum sibi beatitudinem et gloriam meruerint, sed etiam aliis suffragari. Multa etiam supererogaverunt affectu, quin amici Dei sunt facti, et amicitia est idem velle, et nolle: hinc cum Sancti aliquem speciali amore prosequuntur, illum stimulant, ac impellunt, ut Deum diligat, et ei impense in omnibus obsequatur.

These things thus premised, the Catholic dogma must be established, namely that by the constant and perpetual tradition of the Church the invocation and interpellation of the Saints has been used by the faithful in every age; which truth indeed

Only Conclusion. — THE INVOCATION AND INTERPELLATION OF THE SAINTS HAS ALWAYS BEEN FREQUENTLY USED AND PRACTICED RELIGIOUSLY BY THE FAITHFUL.

It is proved first from Sacred Scripture, especially those places in which Angels are interpellated and besought by Patriarchs and most holy men. Thus Genesis 48 Jacob prays the Angel to bless the sons of Joseph, and moreover admonishes that after his death his name be invoked over them with the name of his fathers Isaac and Abraham: Angelus, ait, qui eruit me de cunctis malis, benedicat pueris istis, et invocetur super eos nomen meum, nomina quoque patrum meorum Abraham, et Isaac. He judges therefore that the assistance and interpellation of holy Angels, and also of men departed this life, profits the living. The same is signified Job 5, where Eliphaz admonishes Job: Voca ergo si est, qui tibi respondeat, et turn to some one of the saints.* He supposes therefore that the interpellation of the Saints will not be fruitless. The same is signified Job 33, where Eliu, speaking of the sinner whose soul has drawn near to corruption, says: Si fuerit pro eo angelus loquens, unus de millibus, ut annuntiet hominis aequitatem, miserebitur eius, et dicet: libera eum, ut non descendat in corruptionem: inventa est enim ei propitiatio. By which words he plainly signifies that holy Angels sometimes assist men and pour forth prayers to God for them and elicit aid whereby sins may be declined. It is confirmed by that passage of Jeremias 15, where God addressing the Prophet says: Si steterit Moyses, et Samuel coram me, non est anima mea ad populum: he supposes therefore that Moses and Samuel, although then departed this life, could have prayed for the people.

NOR DOES IT AVAIL TO REPLY WITH CALVIN, book 3, chapter 20, that thence is gathered the contrary of our Conclusion; for, he says, when God says: si steterit Moyses et Samuel, he supposes that they did not stand nor pray for the Israelitic people: therefore much less are the other Saints to be judged to intercede for the living, and if God did not hear Moses and Samuel praying, neither would He hear others. For I answer that Calvin seeks absurdities or evasions; for although Moses and Samuel then did not pray, it does not follow that they could not have deprecated for that people: nor do we assert that the Saints act immediately with prayers to God for discharging our sins or necessities: and certainly, if there were no prayers of the Saints departed this life for the living, God would mock, saying that even if Moses and Samuel poured forth prayers for the transgressing Israelitic people, He nevertheless was not going to hear them in this respect. To what end indeed this protestation, except to signify that He was accustomed to hear their prayers? Hence deservedly St. Chrysostom, Homily 1 on 1 Thess. (whom Plessaeus Mornaeus had translated mutilated and truncated with certain words suppressed, as is familiar to heretics), from those words of Jeremias infers that the prayers of the Saints are not to be despised; yet not that in them alone the security and certainty of our salvation is to be established. This is proved chiefly from 2 Machabees 15, where Judas Machabeus relates that he saw Onias and Jeremias departed this life in dreams and heard them praying for the Israelitic people: but that this book is Canonical stands established from the Second Council of Carthage, Can. 22; Augustine, book 18 De Civitate, chapter 36; and Jerome against Vigilantius.

It is confirmed also from the New Testament; for St. Peter, Epistle 2, chapter 1, pledges to the faithful that after death he will act with his prayers with God, that they might fulfill the works which he had taught, with divine grace favoring and spurring: for he says: Dabo autem operam, et frequenter habere vos post obitum meum, ut horum memoriam faciatis. Add that there is greater reason, indeed weightier, for interpellating the Saints departed this life joined far more intimately to God triumphing in the celestial fatherland, than those who exile and militate in this mortal life: but the Apostle teaches that the intercession of just men dwelling here profits us, and he himself often beseeches it: for he urges them to pour forth prayers to God for him. Thus 1 Thess. 5: Fratres, orate pro nobis. And in the same place Paul prays for them. And the Epistle to Philemon: Spero per orationes vestras donari me vobis. Hebrews, last chapter: Orate pro nobis.

Second, the same truth was defined in Councils, but chiefly in the Seventh Synod; for in its Action 1 there is approved the letter of Tarasius to John the Priest and Anchoret, in which among other things it has this: Poscimus intercessionem intemeratae Dominae nostrae sanctae Deiparae, sanctorum item Angelorum, omniumque Divorum. And at the end of the same letter: Salvos facias intercessione, et precibus Dominae nostrae sanctae Deiparae, and the confession of the same faith, in which it has this: Obsecrans intercessionem sanctissimae, intemerataeque Virginis Mariae, sanctorumque Angelorum, Prophetarum, et Martyrum, Confessorum, et Doctorum. And again at the end: Sanctamque suam Ecclesiam custodiat, quaeque huic imminent scandala, intercedente immaculata Deipara Virgine Maria, omnibusque Sanctis, avertat. Similarly the Council of Chalcedon, Act 11, past the middle, confirms this truth; for in it the Fathers cried out: Flavianus post mortem vixit, Martyr pro nobis oret. And the Council of Trent, Session 25, in the decree concerning the invocation, veneration, and relics of Saints, and sacred images, defines it to be good and useful to invoke the Saints, &c., and condemns those asserting the contrary.

It is proved thirdly by the authority of the holy Fathers and ancient Theologians: above all Origen, book 8 Contra Celsum, shows that the Saints pray for us and placate God:

Habent enim, inquit, sensum eorum, qui Dei benevolentia digni sunt: nec solum erga eos, qui digni sunt, sic sunt affecti: sed et omnibus opitulantur, qui summum colere Deum cupiunt, quem et propitium reddunt, et cum iis communiter precantur, ac simul postulant.

Wherefore, book 2 on Job, he says: O beate Iob, ora pro nobis miseris, &c. and in the lamentation: O Sancti Dei, vos lacrymis, fletu, dolore pleno deprecor, ut procidatis misericordiae eius pro me misero. And afterward: Haec mihi Pater Abraham deprecare pro me.

St. Basil subscribes, Homily 20 on the forty Martyrs, where he says:

Quantum laborares, ut vel unum invenires, qui pro te Dominum rogaret? Ecce quadraginta sunt eandem effundentes orationem. Ubi duo, vel tres congregati sunt in nomine Domini, ibi in medio ipsorum est. Ubi ergo quadraginta sunt, quis de illius praesentia dubitabit? Qui affligitur, ad quadraginta confugit: qui laetatur, ad ipsos occurrit. Hic, ut malorum exitum inveniat: ille, ut in secundis rebus conservetur. Hic religiosa femina pro illis orans invenitur: ac peregre agenti viro reditum postulans: aut aegrotanti sanitatem. Tum Martyribus postulata nostra iunguntur.

Then, certain things being interposed: O communes, inquit, custodes humani generis, boni curarum participes, orationis adiutores, legati potentissimi!

St. Gregory Nazianzen concurs, in the funereal Oration on St. Basil, where near the end he thus beseeches him:

Tu vero, divinum, et sacratum caput e coelo nos aspice; et carnis stimulum a Deo nobis ad disciplinam datum, vel precibus tuis siste, vel persuade fortiter ferre: ac totum vitae nostrae curriculum ad id, quod maxime conducibile est, dirige. Postquam autem excesserimus e vita, illic nos etiam in tua tabernacula suscipe; ut simul viventes, et sanctam ac beatam Trinitatem intuentes, &c.

The same formula of praying addresses St. Athanasius at the end of Oration 21. And in Oration 21, speaking of Athanasius concerning the same: Here, he says, our affairs are to behold from heaven, and to stretch forth the hand to those laboring for the sake of virtue, and that the more because he is freed from the bonds of the body. St. Gregory Nyssenus accords,

in the Oration on St. Theodore, whose aid he thus most splendidly requests in these words: Intercede pro patria apud communem regem... Timemus vexationes, expectamus pericula. Non longe absunt nefandi Scythae, qui bellum contra nos meditantur. Tamquam miles pro nobis pugna: tamquam Martyr pro consortibus utere libertate. Quum e vita excesseris, qui nosti perpessas et necessitates humanae naturae: Parem postula. Then he proceeds thus:

Nos enim dum incolumes sumus servati, tibi acceptum referimus. Postulamus autem, et futuri securitatem temporis. Quod si maiori adrocatione et intercessione opus est, fratrum tuorum Martyrum chorum congrega; et cum omnibus deprecare. Multorum iustorum orationes populorum ac multitudinum peccata dissolvunt. Admone Petrum, excita Paulum, necnon Ioannem Theologum et dilectum Discipulum, ut pro fundatis a se Ecclesiis solliciti sint, pro quibus catenas gestarunt.

St. Ambrose commends the same truth in many places, chiefly Epist. 63, where he relates how he found the bodies of Saints Gervase and Protase, God revealing it to him, in whose sepulchre a libellus was also found, in which their origin and end were written, of which this was the closing sentence: Ego servus Christi Philippus sustuli cum filio meo furtim nocte sancta corpora: et in domo mea, Deo solo teste, in ista arca saxea sepelivi: credens me orationibus eorum consequi misericordiam Domini nostri Iesu Christi. But he explains this truth most clearly in the book De Viduis, where he demonstrates that the Saints dead, just as living, intercede for us: for when he had related the miracle of the mother-in-law of Simon healed by Christ at the intercession of Peter and Andrew, he adds: Ergo rogaverunt pro ea Petrus et Andreas. Exsistat aliquis, qui tam cito possit rogare pro nobis, vel certe isti, qui pro socru rogant, Petrus et Andreas frater eius. Tune enim pro affinitate poterant: nunc iam possunt pro nobis, et pro omnibus impetrare. He then continues:

Observandi sunt Angeli pro nobis, qui nobis ut praesidium dati sunt: Martyres observandi, quorum videmus nobis quodam corporis pignore patrocinium vindicare. Possunt pro peccatis rogare nostris, qui proprio sanguine, etiam si qua habuerint peccata, laverunt. Isti enim sunt Dei Martyres, nostri praesules, speculatores vitae, actuumque nostrorum. Non erubescimus eos intercessores nostrae infirmitatis adhibere: qui et ipsi infirmitatem corporis, etiam cum viverent, cognoscebunt.

St. Chrysostom commends this very thing in various places, but chiefly in the panegyrical Homily on the Egyptian Martyrs. And on the First Epistle to the Corinthians 1, 12; and in the Homily on the Saints Berenice, &c., where he says:

Not on this feast day alone, but also on other days let us cling to them, let us beseech them; let us pray that they be our patrons, for they obtain great confidence with God, not only while living, but also dead: nay rather, dead far more. For now they bear the stigmata of Christ; and pointing out these stigmata they can persuade the King of nothing whatever, &c.

S. Jerome most clearly preaches this truth everywhere, especially in Epistles

1. 25. and 27, but at greatest length in the book Contra Vigilantium, where among other things he has this:

You say in your little book that, while we live, we can pray for one another mutually; but after we have died, the prayer of no one is to be heard for another, especially since the Martyrs, beseeching vengeance for their blood, did not cease until they obtained it. If the Apostles and Martyrs, while still constituted in the body, can > pray for others, when they ought now to be solicitous for themselves, how much more after their crowns, victories, and triumphs? One man, Moses, obtains from God pardon for seventy thousand souls: and Stephen, the imitator of his Lord and the first Martyr in Christ, beseeches life for his persecutors: and after they have begun to be with Christ, will they avail less, &c. Finally, the Saints are not called dead, but living.

By this same argument we Catholics are accustomed to use it against the followers of Vigilantius, the haters of the saints, to dispel these same calumnies.

S. Augustine commends the invocation and succour of the Saints best of all by almost countless testimonies; but most splendidly in Sermon 51 De diversis, ch. on S. Stephen, whose relics had recently been discovered:

He triumphed, he says, he was crowned; his body lay hidden for so long a time; it came forth as God willed, it illumined the earth, it wrought such great miracles, and died — died again mightily, because not even dead. Therefore I commend this to your charity, that you may know that his prayers obtain much, yet not all things. For you will find even in the little books which are given out, that there were difficulties in obtaining, yet afterwards he received a benefit, the faith of the suppliant not being refused. There was no ceasing, prayer was made: and afterwards God gave through Stephen. These are the words of Stephen praying: and the answer was made to him: For whom you pray is not worthy, he did this and that. And light pressed upon him, he asked, he received.

He has similar things in Sermons 91, 96, and 99, and also in the book De cura pro mortuis gerenda, ch. 16, where he asks how the Martyrs can be present to those who invoke them; and he judges this done either by the ministry of Angels or by a special grace of God. God Almighty, he says, who is present everywhere, neither conjoined to us nor remote from us, hearing the prayers of the Martyrs diffused everywhere through angelic ministries, grants men these consolations. But also in book 1 De baptismo contra Donatistas, near the beginning, speaking of S. Cyprian, he says: Let him bind us, then, in prayers amid the mortality of this flesh, as labouring in a darkened cloud, that with the Lord granting we may imitate his good works as much as we can.

I dismiss all the other celebrated later assertors of the same truth, who handed down to us the rite of invoking the Saints received from the Fathers by constant tradition; for it suffices to have shown those most holy Doctors of the Church, in whose time the heretics do not deny that the faith still flourished unspotted and the doctrine of the Gospel pure, that hence it may be evident that those others are held by a wicked error, while they esteem the invocation of the Saints a great impiety.

Proof moreover by this reasoning: If imploring the aid of the Saints were not superstitious or illicit, especially either because this would redound to the injury of Christ, or because they themselves cannot hear us praying and interceding, or because they cannot bring aid and succour, or because they will not: but none of these is true: therefore to intercede with and invoke the Saints is not illicit. The heretics admit the major, for it is chiefly on these four heads that they impugn the intercession of the Saints. The minor is proved as to each part: First, it is certain that the invocation of the Saints is not injurious to Christ, both because without injury to Christ we ask the Saints and just men living that they beseech Christ for us; why then shall it not be permitted even without injury to Christ to intercede with those who have departed this life? seeing that we would invoke them in no other way than as living among us, that is, not as Gods, nor as Christs, but as friends of God and Christ. Then because we do not invoke the Saints that they may bestow grace, or confer remission of sins, or impart other benefits, but that by their prayers with God they may act so that He Himself, the author and bestower of all goods, may deign to grant what we ask and seek. Then because we intercede with them not as mediators of redemption — for Christ alone is the one mediator of redemption — but as mediators of intercession, indeed not primary and principal (for Christ alone claims this dignity for Himself), but as secondary and less principal intercessors, whose prayers derive all their force and efficacy from the merits of Christ: therefore since the intercession of holy men detracts nothing from the dignity of the glory and ministry of Christ, their invocation must not be judged to derogate either, from those who although they have departed this corporeal life nevertheless live with God, with whom is the fountain of life. Nor would the invocation of the Saints be illicit and vain because they could not hear our prayers, as Calvin belched forth with fetid mouth against this religious observance, lib. 3 Institutionum, ch. 20, n. 21: Who will grant them ears so long as reach to our ears: eyes also so keen as to attend to our necessities? For I say that although the Saints in heaven, their bodies laid aside, have not ears and eyes (except the blessed Virgin, and those who rose again with Christ), yet they have spiritual eyes and ears, such as are in the Angels, who rejoice at Luke 16 over the conversion of a sinner; such as Samuel had, who in 1 Kings 9 told Saul that the asses he sought had been found; such as Eliseus had, while in 1 Kings 6 he penetrated the secret counsels of the king of the Assyrians and announced them to the king of Israel. For since the Saints are illumined by the clear vision of God, they behold and hear all things that pertain to their state. Hence S. Ambrose, in the book De Viduis, calls the Martyrs spectators of our life and acts. Whence S. Gregory the Great, lib. 1 Dialog., ch. 8: Because, he says, in that eternal felicity all behold with the common clarity of God, what is it that they know not there, where they know Him who knows all things?

S. Augustine proves the same thing, lib. 2 De Civitat. Dei, ch. 29, adducing the example of Eliseus.

Nor does it matter that the same Augustine, in the book De cura pro mortuis gerenda, seems to assert that the Saints do not know what is being done, but can hear it from the Angels, or by the revelation of the Spirit of God; for in ch. 16, after saying that the Martyrs themselves are sometimes present to suppliants, that they may bestow their aid, by the example of S. Felix, who appeared visibly to the citizens of Nola that he might deliver them from the siege of the barbarians: presently doubting he proposes whether the Martyrs are present of themselves at one time in places so diverse, and aid those whom it is certain they are invoked for, or whether God, hearing the prayers of the Martyrs, provides men these solaces generally to those praying, through angelic ministries diffused everywhere, &c. This matter, he says, is higher than that I can attain it, and more abstruse than that I am able to search it out: and therefore whatever of these be true, or whether perhaps both be so, that sometimes these things come to pass through the very presence of the Martyrs, sometimes through Angels taking the person of the Martyrs, I dare not define; it must be much sought out by those who know.

But that very thing which Augustine brought forward hesitatingly, and thought probable, Jerome taught more assuredly: that the Saints are by no means fixed to certain abodes so that they cannot fly hither and thither to bring aid; and piercing Vigilantius arguing against this with keener speech, he rouses him from his torpor. You say, he says,

that the souls of the Apostles and Martyrs have settled either in the bosom of Abraham, or in the place of refreshment, or under the altar of God: nor can they be present at their tombs, and where they will; being, as it were, of senatorial dignity, that they be not held in foulest prison among murderers, but in free and honourable custody be confined in the Fortunate Isles and in the Elysian fields. You will impose laws upon God! You will put fetters upon the Apostles, that they be held in custody until the day of judgment and not be with their Lord, of whom it is written: They follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth? If the Lamb is everywhere, then those who are with the Lamb must also be believed to be everywhere. And while the devil and the demons wander through the whole world, and with exceeding swiftness are present everywhere: shall the Martyrs, after the shedding of their blood, be shut up in a chest, and not be able to go forth from it?

Nor yet the third, namely that they have not that power that by their prayers they obtain anything from God for us: for, as S. Augustine says in Sermon 1 on Saint Stephen:

Let us commend ourselves to his prayers; for far more will he now be heard for his venerators, who was so heard for his stoners.

The same thing holy Jerome urged above against Vigilantius. Wherefore S. Bernard in the Sermon for the Vigil of the Saints says: You ought to consider three things in the feasts of the Saints: the aid of the Saint, his example, our confusion. His aid, because powerful on earth, he is mightier in heaven before the face of the Lord his God, &c.

Finally, not because they will not: for indeed, while they lived as mortals they burned with such charity toward their neighbour that each of them could say with the Apostle: I desire to be anathema from Christ for my brethren; how much more fervent and constant will their love for their neighbour be, excited not only by sanctifying grace but perfected by glory? Whence S. Bernard in the place just praised:

If the saint, while he lived here, had pity on sinners and prayed for them: now much more, inasmuch as he more surely knows our miseries, does the brother pray for us, whom that blessed fatherland has not altered but augmented in charity: for he is not therefore made altogether impassible that he is also made incapable of compassion, but now rather has clothed himself with the bowels of mercy, since he stands before the fountain of mercy.

To these add what, as the Seraphic Doctor says in 1 dist. 15, last question,

God decreed and willed that we should ask the Saints for a threefold cause, namely on account of our poverty, the glory of the Saints, and the reverence of God. On account of poverty in meriting, that where our merits do not suffice, the merits of others may patronize us. On account of poverty in contemplating, that we who cannot behold the highest light in itself may behold it in the Saints. On account of poverty in loving, because wretched man feels himself more affected toward one Saint than even toward God. Therefore having compassion on our poverty He willed us to ask the Saints; and hereby the first is plain; because he who before was unworthy of himself becomes worthy by asking the Saints, through their patronage. The second cause is the glory of the Saints, because God wills to glorify His Saints, wills to work miracles through them in bodies and salvation in souls, that we may praise them: and this not only through the supreme Saints but also the lowest; whence as one is healed corporally by invoking Peter, another conversely, so also spiritually. And thus the second is plain, because God wills the honour of dulia to be given to all the Saints. The third cause is the reverence of God, that the sinner, because he has offended God, should as if not dare to approach God in his own person, but implore the patronage of friends. And thus the third observance is plain, because it is good sometimes to turn aside from God out of reverence.

They object 1. That heretics bring forward various texts of Scripture: first indeed that of Isaiah 63: Abraham hath not known us, and Israel hath been ignorant of us. Second, that of the Apostle to the Romans: How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Since therefore we believe not in the Saints but in God, we ought to invoke not them but God alone. Third, that of 1 Timothy 2: For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And 1 John 2: If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just: therefore we ought to intercede with none other than Christ.

I answer to the first, that although at that time Abraham and Jacob did not know what was being done among the Israelites, it does not follow that the Saints now dwelling in heaven know not what is done among us; since those Patriarchs then were with the other just in limbo, where they were not illumined by the clear vision of God. I say second, that the Prophet by these words only signifies that those Patriarchs did not know the Israelites with a knowledge and acknowledgment of approbation, in that they did not hold them for legitimate sons, because the Jews, deviating through sins from the virtue of their Patriarchs, were degenerate and unworthy to be named sons by the virtue of the Prophets. To the second I say, that the Apostle does not assert that God alone is to be invoked with every kind whatsoever of invocation, otherwise it would not be permitted to intercede with just men living, nor with princes or other men for any grace whatever; but he speaks only of that supreme invocation which has the cult of latria annexed, and which tends to God, threefold in His being the most mighty and most abundant bestower and fountain of all goods. To the third I say, that the Apostle asserts Christ to be one mediator, yet does not say Him to be the only one, which two things are far distinct; for the word "one" includes the association of another, "only" excludes it. Next I say that the Apostle speaks of the mediator of redemption, for he adds: Who gave himself redemption for all. S. John means the same, for he adds: He is the propitiation for our sins. But of this kind of mediation we do not deny that Christ is the only mediator. But the Saints, as we said above, are called mediators not of redemption but of intercession. Yet this kind of mediation the Apostles do not deny can belong to another besides Christ, seeing that while they themselves lived they were entreated to pour forth prayers to God for others.

You will object 2. Canon 35 of the Council of Laodicea, by which, according to the interpretation of Theodoret, those are condemned in Colossians ch. 2 who taught that Angels are to be adored. This Canon has: It is not fitting that Christians, forsaking the Church of God, should go and make congregations of idolatrous admiration of Angels, &c.

I answer, that this Canon was an edict against the angelic heretics, so called, from this that, as Epiphanius testifies, Haer. 60, and Augustine, Haer. 39, they taught that Angels were to be adored with the cult of latria due to God alone; but that the Canon condemns no pious veneration whatsoever of Angels, nor even does Theodoret, is evident from this that in the preceding Canon 31 the religious cult of a true martyr is received, while the superstitious veneration of false Martyrs is prohibited. But who would believe that the holy synod in the immediately following Canon cut away the pious cult of Angels, who in the gifts of nature and grace excel almost all the Saints? Theodoret moreover not only venerates Angels, but constantly affirms them to be ministers of our salvation and our intercessors and patrons with God, as may be seen lib. Divin. Decret. 5, De Angelis, and on Daniel, ch. 1.

I answer secondly with Baronius, at the year of Christ 60, n. 20 and seq., that just as in the preceding Canon the cult of false Martyrs is prohibited, so here is prohibited the cult of false Angels. Now Baronius says that the false Angels, whom the gentiles and magi religiously venerated, were genii, in whose honor celebrating the birthday feast they summoned their relatives and friends; and this is what he notes in these words: to make gatherings for the Angels of abominable idolatry (that is, adored by idolaters). More probable, however, he judges that by false Angels should be understood demons, whom when they invoked to accomplish their magic arts, the Fathers of this council named idolaters. But since, to veil their impostures under an honorable name, they professed themselves to invoke Angels, as Tertullian says in the Apologeticus, cap. 28, they were called hidden idolaters. This response is confirmed by the following words of the same Canon: Whosoever shall be found secretly favoring this idolatry, let him be anathema: because abandoning the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, he has gone over to idols. But the honor we show to the Angels, since it is not latria, cannot be called idolatry, nor can the Angels themselves be called idols. Therefore the aforesaid council condemns a cult far other than ours.

They object 3. The various authorities of the holy Fathers of the first three centuries: especially of Ignatius, Epistle to the Philadelphians; Irenaeus, book 2, cap. 27; Tertullian, in the Apologeticus, cap. 30; Clement of Alexandria, in the Stromata, cap. 8; Origen, Contra Celsum, book 8, by which the aforesaid Doctors signify that no one is to be invoked besides God.

Truly I answer from all those authorities, which Molinaeus collected and objected in cap. 7 of the book entitled The Novelty of Papism, that nothing against the Catholic dogma can legitimately be inferred, nor against the invocation of Saints. For first, as to the authority of Ignatius, which he sets forth conceived in these words: Virgins to have only Christ before their eyes, and his Father to be illuminated in your souls by the Holy Spirit: I say that this sentence does not occur in the genuine edition of those letters, lately set forth in print from the Florentine codex, just as not in the old Latin edition. Then, even if the aforesaid words are Ignatius's, thence no aid shines forth for the heretics; for Ignatius merely counsels, when praying, to hold God present: which certainly takes place also when through the intercessions of the Saints we direct ourselves to Him: nor does the particle "only" there have the force of exclusion, otherwise when praying it would not be fitting to think at all about the Holy Spirit; seeing that Ignatius counsels holding only Christ and his Father before our eyes. As to St. Irenaeus I say, that he there assails the Valentinian heretics, who invoked their Aeons and false Angels and devoted themselves to incantations, which the Church execrates: She, he says, who directs pure, and chaste, and manifest prayers to God, who makes all things, and invokes the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing similar, surely, does he admit who venerates and invokes the Saints or Angels. As to Tertullian, I say that he there rebukes the gentiles accusing Christians because they did not supplicate the Gods for the safety of the Emperors, and mocks them because they ask that safety from Gods who cannot give it. Then he subjoins this: I cannot pray for this from another than from him from whom I know I shall obtain it: since he himself is he who alone bestows it. Therefore Tertullian there opposes to the daemons, empty of all goods, the chief bestower of all honors; but he does not exclude the intercession of Saints, Angels, or men. To Origen, who says that supplication is to be made to the supreme God alone, I say that he excludes only supplication made to idols and daemons; for whereas Celsus had said: That we ought to believe not in one God alone, but also in daemons, precisely because they are Gods, so that we may sacrifice. Origen answers: Away with that counsel of Celsus, saying that supplication is to be made to daemons. For by no means is he to be listened to. Indeed the supreme God alone is to be prayed to: but also his Only-begotten is to be prayed to, and first-born of every creature, that is, the Word of God: him we must beseech that he himself, as Pontiff, may wish to carry our prayer, which has reached him, up to God his own, and our God. It is evident therefore that Origen asserted that the supreme honor, which Celsus wished to be shown to daemons, must be rendered to God alone. He does not exclude therefore the intercession of Saints, who exist as mediators inferior to Christ.

Finally, as to Clement of Alexandria, I say that he censures the gentiles, because they ask something from those who are not Gods as if from Gods. Extreme, he says, is the ignorance, to ask from those who are not Gods as if from Gods, or to ask those things which do not conduce: while under the appearance of goods we seek evils. Whence deservedly, since one alone is the good God, from him alone do we ask, both we and the angels, that some good things be given, others consecrated. He blames therefore only those who thought they could obtain something from another than from God, the bestower of all goods: but when we entreat the Saints, we await the effect of our petition from none other than from God himself, whom we approach and implore with the benefit of the Saints interceding: therefore it is not the case that heretics should boast that they have so open a patronage of their error in the aforesaid testimonies.

They object 4. Christ has merited for us not only by his death, but also by his prayers, all graces and all gifts to be conferred on us by God: and moreover he always lives to make intercession for us: therefore the prayers of the Saints are superfluous, and their intercession vain.

I deny the consequence, for just as Christ, although he merited every grace for us by his death, nonetheless willed it to be conferred on us chiefly through the sacraments, so likewise although by his prayers he merited all gifts necessary for us, yet he decreed to confer very many on us only at the instance and prayers of the Saints, both living and dead.

Add that if by this reasoning the prayers and invocations of the Saints were illicit, it would follow that even our petitions to God would be blameworthy, nor could we ask anything of God without injury inflicted upon the merit of Christ's prayer.

They object 5. From that invocation of the Saints it follows that we venerate them as Patrons and protectors: but that derogates from the glory of God, whom we are bound to invoke as our unique protector and helper: therefore, &c.

I distinguish the major: as Patrons and protectors, who guard us by their absolute authority and power, I deny: who by their prayers obtain for us the protection and help of God, I concede. And likewise, the minor thus distinguished, I deny the consequence. For no injury is thence inflicted on God, that we should have before him as intercessors those whom he has gifted with eternal felicity as most loving sons. Hence all the holy Fathers praised above do not hesitate to entreat the Saints as protectors and patrons. Thus especially St. Basil in Oration 10, On the Martyrs, says: O sacred choir! o holy order! o unassailable band! o common guardians of humankind! best companions of our cares, mutual advocates of prayers and vows, most powerful legates with God!

They object 6. The Saints cannot attend to so many prayers, which everywhere on earth are directed to them simultaneously: therefore very many of them are futile.

I distinguish the antecedent: if you regard only the natural force of their intellect, let it pass: if you attend to the divine illumination, which comes about through the light of glory advancing and exalting their intellect to the clear and intuitive vision of God, I deny it. For just as, notwithstanding that natural weakness of the human mind, the intellective faculty can be so strengthened that it rises to the intuitive vision of God, so will it be able with far greater facility to perceive all things whatsoever human that pertain to their state.