[1] For general anatomy of fishes, see T. W. Bridge, _Cambridge
Natural History_, and R. Wiedersheim, _Vergl. Anat. der Wirbeltiere_.
The latter contains an excellent bibliography.
[2] Cf. J. Graham Kerr, _Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc._ x. 227.
[3] For electric organs see W. Biedermann, _Electro-Physiology_.
[4] J. Graham Kerr, _Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci._ vol. xlvi.
[5] J. Graham Kerr, _The Budgett Memorial Volume_.
[6] J. Phelps, _Science_, vol. N.S. ix. p. 366; J. Eycleshymer and
Wilson, _Amer. Journ. Anat._ v. (1906) p. 154.
[7] J. S. Budgett, _Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond._ xvi., 1901, p. 130.
[8] L. Drüner, _Zool. Jahrbücher Anat._ Band xix. (1904), S. 434.
[9] J. Graham Kerr, _Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci._ xlvi. 423.
[10] J. S. Budgett, _op. cit._
[11] W. E. Agar, _Anat. Anz._, 1905, S. 298.
[12] J. Graham Kerr, _The Budgett Memorial Volume_.
[13] J. Phelps, _Science_, vol. N.S. ix. p. 366; J. Eycleshymer and
Wilson, _Amer. Journ. Anat._, v. 1906, p. 154.
[14]: F. Maurer, _Morphol. Jahrb._ ix., 1884, S. 229, and xiv., 1888,
S. 175.
[15] J. Rückert, _Arch. Entwickelungsmech_. Band iv., 1897, S. 298;
J. Graham Kerr, _Phil. Trans._ B. 192, 1900, p. 325, and _The Budgett
Memorial Volume_.
[16] Cuvier et Valenciennes, _Hist. nat. des poiss._ xix., 1846, p.
151.
[17] J. Rathke, _Üb. d. Darmkanal u.s.w. d. Fische_, Halle, 1824, S.
62.
[18] Cf. W. Biedermann, Electro-Physiology.
[19] Literature in N. K. Koltzoff, Bull. Soc. Nat. Moscou, 1901, P.
259.
[20] J. Graham Kerr, _Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond._ (1901), p. 484.
[21] J. S. Budgett, _Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond._ xv. (1901), vol. p.
324.
[22] H. F. Jungersen, _Arb. zool. zoot. Inst. Würzburg_, Band ix.,
1889.
[23] E. J. Bles, _Proc. Roy. Soc._ 62, 1897, p. 232.
[24] J. Graham Kerr, _Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond._ (1901) p. 484.
[25] F. M. Balfour and W. N. Parker, _Phil. Trans._ (1882).
[26] J. Graham Kerr, _Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond._ (1901), p. 495.
[27] H. Gadow and E. C. Abbott, _Phil. Trans._ 186 (1895), p. 163.
[28] For development cf. Gaupp in Hertwig's _Handbuch der
Entwickelungslehre_.
[29] Cf. W. E. Agar, _Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin._ xlv. (1906), 49.
[30] Bashford Dean, _Journ. Morph._ ix. (1894) 87, and _Trans. New
York Acad. Sci._ xiii. (1894) 115.
[31] R. Semon, _Zool. Forschungsreisen_, Band i. § 115.
[32] O. Hertwig, _Arch. mikr. Anat._ xi. (1874).
[33] R. H. Traquair, _Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin._ xxxix. (1899).
[34] Cf. E. S. Goodrich, _Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci._ xlvii. (1904),
465.
[35] R. H. Traquair, _Journ. Anat. Phys._ v. (1871) 166; J. S.
Budgett, _Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond._ xvi. 315.
[36] T. W. Bridge, _Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond._ xiv. (1898) 350; W. E.
Agar, _op. cit._
[37] J. V. Boas, _Morphol. Jahrb._ vi. (1880).
[38] Cf. F. Hochstetter in O. Hertwig _Handbuch der
Entwickelungslehre_.
[39] C. v. Kupffer, _Studien z. vergl. Enlwickelungsgeschichte der
Cranioten_.
[40] Cf. F. K. Studnicka's excellent account of the parietal organs
in A. Oppel's _Lehrbuch vergl, mikr. Anatomie_, T. v. (1905).
[41] 2. F. K. Studnicka, _S.B. böhm. Gesell._ (1901); J. Graham Kerr,
_Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci._ vol. xlvi., and _The Budgett Memorial
Volume_.
[42] J. Graham Kerr, _Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci._ vol. xlvi.
[43] F. K. Studnicka, _S.B. böhm. Gesell._ (1901); J. Graham Kerr,
_Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci._ vol. xlvi., and _The Budgett Memorial
Volume_.
[44] G. Elliot Smith, _Anat. Anz._ (1907).
[45] F. K. Studnicka, _S.B. böhm. Gesell._ (1896).
[46] J. Graham Kerr, _The Budgett Memorial Volume_.
[47] F. K. Studnicka, _S.B. böhm. Gesell._ (1901); J. Graham Kerr,
_Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci._ xlvi., and _The Budgett Memorial Volume_.
[48]: R. Wiedersheim, Kölliker's _Festschrift_: cf. also _Anat. Anz._
(1887).
[49] A. Brauer, _Verhandl. deutsch. zool. Gesell._ (1902).
[50] C. Stewart, _Journ. Linn. Soc. Zool._ (1906), 439.
[51] T. W. Bridge and A. C. Haddon, _Phil. Trans._ 184 (1893).
[52] For literature of lateral line organs see Cole, _Trans. Linn.
Soc._ vii. (1898).
[53] For literature of lateral line organs see Cole, _Trans. Linn.
Soc._, vii. (1898).
[54] M. Fürbringer in Gegenbaur's _Festschrift_ (1896).
ICHTHYOPHAGI (Gr. for "fish-eaters"), the name given by ancient
geographers to several coast-dwelling peoples in different parts of the
world and ethnically unrelated. Nearchus mentions such a race as
inhabiting the barren shores of the Mekran on the Arabian Sea; Pausanias
locates them on the western coast of the Red Sea. Ptolemy speaks of
fish-eaters in Ethiopia, and on the west coast of Africa; while Pliny
relates the existence of such tribes on the islands in the Persian Gulf.
Herodotus (book i. c. 200) mentions three tribes of the Babylonians who
were solely fish-eaters, and in book iii. c. 19 refers to Ichthyophagi
in Egypt. The existence of such tribes was confirmed by Sir Richard F.
Burton (_El-Medinah_, p. 144).
ICHTHYOSAURUS, a fish or porpoise-shaped marine reptile which
characterized the Mesozoic period and became extinct immediately after
the deposition of the Chalk. It was named _Ichthyosaurus_ (Gr.
fish-lizard) by C. König in 1818 in allusion to its outward form, and is
best known by nearly complete skeletons from the Lias of England and
Germany. The large head is produced into a slender, pointed snout; and
the jaws are provided with a row of conical teeth nearly uniform in size
and deeply implanted in a continuous groove. The eye is enormous, and is
surrounded by a ring of overlapping "sclerotic plates," which would
serve to protect the eye-ball during diving. The vertebrae are very
numerous, short and deeply biconcave, imparting great flexibility to the
backbone as in fishes. The neck is so short and thick that it is
practically absent. There are always two pairs of paddle-like limbs, the
hinder pair never disappearing as in porpoises and other Cetacea, though
often much reduced in size. A few specimens from the Upper Lias of
Württemberg (in the museums of Stuttgart, Tübingen, Budapest and
Chicago) exhibit remains of the skin, which is quite smooth and forms
two triangular median fins, one in the middle of the back, the other at
the end of the tail. The dorsal fin consists merely of skin without any
internal skeleton, while the tail-fin is expanded in a vertical plane
and has the lower lobe stiffened by the tapering end of the backbone,
which is sharply bent downwards. Immature individuals are sometimes
observable within the full-grown skeletons, suggesting that this reptile
was viviparous.
[Illustration: From British Museum _Guide to Fossil Reptiles and
Fishes_, by permission of the Trustees.
Skeleton of _Ichthyosaurus communis_, with outline of body and fins,
from the Lower Lias of Lyme Regis, Dorset; original nearly four metres
in length.]
The largest known species of _Ichthyosaurus_ is _I. trigonodon_ from the
Upper Lias of Banz, Bavaria, with the head measuring about two metres in
length and probably representing an animal not less than ten metres in
total length. _I. platyodon_, from the English Lower Lias, seems to have
been almost equally large. _I. intermedius_ and _I. communis_, which are
the commonest species in the English Lower Lias, rarely exceed a length
of three or four metres. The species in rocks later than the Lias are
known for the most part only by fragments, but the remains of Lower
Cretaceous age are noteworthy for their very wide geographical
distribution, having been found in Europe, the East Indies, Australia,
New Zealand and South America. Allied Ichthyosaurians named
_Ophthalmosaurus_ and _Baptanodon_, from the Upper Jurassic of England
and North America, are nearly or quite toothless and have very flexible
broad paddles. The earliest known Ichthyosaurians (_Mixosaurus_), which
occur in the Trias, are of diminutive size, with paddles which suggest
that these marine reptiles were originally descended from land or marsh
animals (see REPTILES).
AUTHORITIES.--R. Owen, _A Monograph of the Fossil Reptilia of the
Liassic Formations_, part iii. (Mon. Palaeont. Soc., 1881); E. Fraas,
_Die Ichthyosaurier der süddeutschen Trias- und Jura-Ablagerungen_
(Tübingen, 1891). Also good figures in T. Hawkins, _The Book of the
Great Sea-dragons_ (London, 1840). (A. S. Wo.)
ICHTHYOSIS, or XERODERMA, a general thickening of the whole skin and
marked accumulation of the epidermic elements, with atrophy of the
sebaceous glands, giving rise to a hard, dry, scaly condition, whence
the names, from [Greek: ichthys], fish, and [Greek: xêros], dry, [Greek:
derma], skin. This disease generally first appears in infancy, and is
probably congenital. It differs in intensity and in distribution, and is
generally little amenable to any but palliative remedies, such as the
regular application of oily substances. Ichthyosis lingualis ("smokers'
tongue"), a variety common in heavy smokers, occurs in opaque white
patches on the tongue, gums and roof of the mouth. Cancer occasionally
starts from the patches. The affection is obstinate, but may disappear
spontaneously.
ICKNIELD STREET. (i) The Saxon name (earlier _Icenhylt_) of a
prehistoric (not Roman) "Ridgeway" along the Berkshire downs and the
Chilterns, which crossed the Thames near Streatley and ended somewhere
near Tring or Dunstable. In some places there are traces of a double
road, one line on the hills and one in the valley below, as if for
summer and winter use. No modern highroad follows it for any distance.
Antiquaries have supposed that it once ran on to Royston, Newmarket and
Norfolk, and have connected its name with the Iceni, the Celtic tribe
inhabiting East Anglia before the Roman conquest. But the name does not
occur in early documents so far east, and it has certainly nothing to do
with that of the Iceni (Haverfield, _Victoria History of Norfolk_, i.
286). See further ERMINE STREET. (2) A Roman road which ran through
Derby, Lichfield, Birmingham and Alcester is sometimes called Icknield
Street and sometimes Rycknield Street. The origin of this nomenclature
is very obscure (_Vict. Hist. of Warwick_, i. 239). (F. J. H.)
ICON (through the Latinized form, from Gr. [Greek: eikôn], portrait,
image), generally any image or portrait-figure, but specially the term
applied to the representations in the Eastern Church of sacred
personages, whether in painting or sculpture, and particularly to the
small metal plaques in archaic Byzantine style, venerated by the
adherents of the Greek Church. See ICONOCLASTS; IMAGE-WORSHIP; BYZANTINE
ART. The term "iconography," once confined to the study of engravings
(q.v.), is now applied to the history of portrait images in Christian
art, though it is also used with a qualifying adjective of Greek, Roman
and other art.
ICONIUM (mod. _Konia_), a city of Asia Minor, the last of the Phrygian
land towards Lycaonia, was commonly reckoned to Lycaonia in the Roman
time, but retained its old Phrygian connexion and population to a
comparatively late date. Its natural surroundings must have made it an
important town from the beginning of organized society in this region.
It lies in an excellently fertile plain, 6 m. from the Pisidian
mountains on the west, with mountains more distant on the north and
south, while to the east the dead level plain stretches away for
hundreds of miles, though the distant view is interrupted by island-like
mountains. Streams from the Pisidian mountains make the land on the
south-west and south of the city a garden; but on the east and
north-east a great part of the naturally fertile soil is uncultivated.
Trees grow nowhere except in the gardens near the city. Irrigation is
necessary for productiveness, and the water-supply is now deficient. A
much greater supply was available for agriculture in ancient times and
might be reintroduced.
Originally a Phrygian city, as almost every authority who has come into
contact with the population calls it, and as is implied in Acts xiv. 6,
it was in a political sense the chief city of the Lycaonian tetrarchy
added to the Galatian country about 165 B.C., and it was part of the
Roman province Galatia from 25 B.C. to about A.D. 295. Then it was
included in the province Pisidia (as Ammianus Marcellinus describes it)
till 372, after which it formed part of the new province Lycaonia so
long as the provincial division lasted. Later it was a principal city of
the theme of Anatolia. It suffered much from the Arab raids in the three
centuries following A.D. 660; its capture in 708 is mentioned, but it
never was held as a city of the caliphs. In later Roman and Byzantine
times it must have been a large and wealthy city. It was a metropolis
and an archbishopric, and one of the earliest councils of the church was
held there in A.D. 235. The ecclesiastical organization of Lycaonia and
the country round Iconium on all sides was complete in the early 4th
century, and monuments of later 3rd and 4th century Christianity are
extremely numerous. The history of Christian Iconium is utterly obscure.
The city was thrice visited by St Paul, probably in A.D. 47, 50 and 53;
and it is the principal scene of the tale of Paul and Thecla (which
though apocryphal has certainly some historical basis; see THECLA).
There was a distinct Roman element in Iconium, arising doubtless from
the presence of Roman traders. This was recognized by Claudius, who
granted the honorary title Claudiconium, and by Hadrian, who elevated
the city to the rank of a Roman colony about A.D. 130 under the name
Colonia Aelia Hadriana Augusta Iconiensium. The period of its greatest
splendour was after the conquest by the Seljuk Turks about 1072-1074. It
soon became the capital of the Seljuk state, and one of the most
brilliant cities of the world. The palace of the sultans and the mosque
of Ala ed-din Kaikobad formerly covered great part of the Acropolis hill
in the northern part of the city. Farther south there is still the great
complex of buildings which form the chief seat of the Mevlevi dervishes,
a sect widely spread over Anatolia. Many other splendid mosques and
royal tombs adorned the city, and justified the Turkish proverb, "See
all the world; but see Konia." The walls, about 2 m. in circumference,
consisted of a core of rubble and concrete, coated with ancient stones,
inscriptions, sculptures and architectural marbles, forming a striking
sight, which no traveller ever examined in detail. Beyond the walls
extended the gardens and villas of a prosperous Oriental population,
especially on the south-west towards the suburb of Meram.
When the Seljuk state broke up, and the Osmanli or Ottoman sovereignty
arose, Konia decayed, its population dwindled and the splendid early
Turkish buildings were suffered to go to ruin. As trade and intercourse
diminished Konia grew poorer and more ruinous. The walls and the palace,
still perfect in the beginning of the 19th century, were gradually
pulled down for building material, and in 1882 there remained only a
small part of the walls, from which all the outer stones had been
removed, while the palace was a ruin. At that time and for some years
later a large part of Konia was like a city of the dead. But about 1895
the advent of the Anatolian railway began to restore its prosperity. A
good supply of drinking water was brought to the city by Ferid Pasha,
who governed the vilayet ably for several years, till in 1903 he was
appointed Grand Vizier. The sacred buildings, mosques, &c., were patched
up (except a few which were quite ruinous) and the walls wholly removed,
but an unsightly fragment of a palace-tower still remained in 1906. In
1904-1905 the first two sections of the Bagdad railway, 117 m., to
Karaman and Eregli, were built. In the city there is a branch of the
Ottoman bank, a government technical school, a French Catholic mission
and a school, an Armenian Protestant school for boys, an American
mission school for girls, mainly Armenian, and other educational
establishments.
The founder of the Mevlevi dancing dervishes, the poet Mahommed
Jelal-ed-Din (Rumi), in 1307, though tempted to assume the inheritance
along with the empire of the Seljuk sultan Ala ed-din Kaikobad III., who
died without heirs, preferred to pass on the power to Osman, son of
Ertogrul, and with his own hands invested Osman and girt him with the
sword: this investiture was the legitimate beginning of the Osmanli
authority. The heirs of Jelal-ed-Din (Rumi) were favoured by the Osmanli
sultans until 1516, when Selim was on the point of destroying the
Mevlevi establishment as hostile to the Osmanli and the faith; and
though he did not do so the Mevlevi and their chiefs were deprived of
influence and dignity. In 1829 Mahmud II. restored their dignity in
part, and in 1889 Abd-ul-Hamid II. confirmed their exemption from
military duty. The head of the Mevlevi dervishes (Aziz-Effendi,
Hazreti-Mevlana, Mollah-Unkiar, commonly styled simply Chelebi-Effendi)
has the right to gird on the sultan's sword at his investiture, and is
master of the considerable revenues of the greatest religious
establishment in the empire. He has also the privilege of corresponding
direct with the caliph; but otherwise is regarded as rather opposed to
the Osmanli administration, and has no real power.
Iconium is distant by rail 466 m. from the Bosporus at Haidar-Pasha, and
389 from Smyrna by way of Afium-Kara-Hissar. It has recently become the
seat of a considerable manufacture of carpets, owing to the cheapness of
labour. The population was estimated at 44,000 in 1890, and is now
probably over 50,000. Mercury mines have begun to be worked; other
minerals are known to exist. (W. M. Ra.)
ICONOCLASTS (Gr. [Greek: eikonoklastês: eikôn], image, and [Greek:
klaein], to break), the name applied particularly to the opponents in
the 8th and 9th centuries of the use of images in Christian cult.
As regards the attitude towards religious images assumed by the
primitive Christian Church, several questions have often been treated as
one which cannot be too carefully kept apart. There can be no doubt that
the early Christians were unanimous in condemning heathen image-worship
and the various customs, some immoral, with which it was associated. A
form of iconolatry specially deprecated in the New Testament was the
then prevalent adoration of the images of the reigning emperors (see
Rev. xv. 2). It is also tolerably certain that, if for no other reasons
besides the Judaism, obscurity, and poverty of the early converts to
Christianity, the works of art seen in their meeting-houses cannot at
first have been numerous. Along with these reasons would co-operate
towards the exclusion of visible aids to devotion, not only the church's
sacramental use of Christ's name as a name of power, and its living
sense of his continued real though unseen presence, but also, during the
first years, its constant expectation of his second advent as imminent.
It was a common accusation brought against Jews and Christians that they
had "no altars, no temples, no known images" (Min. Fel. _Oct._ c. 10),
that "they set up no image or form of any god" (see Arnob. _Adv. Gent._
vi. I; similarly Celsus); and this charge was never denied; on the
contrary Origen gloried in it (_c. Celsum_, bk. 7, p. 386). At a
comparatively early date, indeed, we read of various Gnostic sects
calling in the fine arts to aid their worship; thus Irenaeus (_Haer._ i.
25. 6), speaking of the followers of Marcellina, says that "they possess
images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of
material; and they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by
Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among men. They crown these images,
and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world;
that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras and Plato and Aristotle
and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images after
the same manner as the Gentiles" (cf. Aug. _De Haer._ c. 7). It is also
well known that the emperor Alexander Severus found a place for several
Scripture characters and even for Christ in his lararium (Lamprid. _Vit.
Alex. Sev._ c. 29). But there is no evidence that such a use of images
extended at that period to orthodox Christian circles. The first
unmistakable indication of the public use of the painter's art for
directly religious ends does not occur until A.D. 306, when the synod of
Elvira, Spain, decreed (can. 36) that "pictures ought not to be in a
church, lest that which is worshipped and adored be painted on
walls."[1] This canon is proof that the use of sacred pictures in public
worship was not at the beginning of the 4th century a thing unknown
within the church in Spain; and the presumption is that in other places,
about the same period, the custom was looked upon with a more tolerant
eye. Indications of the existence of allied forms of sacred Christian
art prior to this period are not wholly wanting. It seems possible to
trace some of the older and better frescos in the catacombs to a very
early age; and Bible manuscripts were often copiously illuminated and
illustrated even before the middle of the 4th century. An often-quoted
passage from Tertullian (_De Pudic._ c. 10, cf. c. 7) shows that in his
day the communion cup was wont to bear a representation of the Good
Shepherd. Clement of Alexandria (_Paedag._ iii. 11) mentions the dove,
fish, ship, lyre, anchor, as suitable devices for Christian signet
rings. Origen (c. _Celsum_, bk. 3) repudiates graven images as only fit
for demons.
During the 4th and following centuries the tendency to enlist the fine
arts in the service of the church steadily advanced; not, however, so
far as appears, with the formal sanction of any regular ecclesiastical
authority, and certainly not without strong protests raised by more than
one powerful voice. From a passage in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa
(_Orat. de Laudibus Theodori Martyris_, c. 2) it is easy to see how the
stories of recent martyrs would offer themselves as tempting subjects
for the painter, and at the same time be considered to have received
from him their best and most permanent expression; that this feeling was
widespread is shown in many places by Paulinus of Nola (_ob._ 431), from
whom we gather that not only martyrdoms and Bible histories, but also
symbols of the Trinity were in his day freely represented pictorially.
Augustine (_De Cons. Ev._ i. 10) speaks less approvingly of those who
look for Christ and his apostles "on painted walls" rather than in his
written word. How far the Christian feeling of the 4th and 5th centuries
was from being settled in favour of the employment of the fine arts is
shown by such a case as that of Eusebius of Caesarea, who, in reply to a
request of Constantia, sister of Constantine, for a picture of Christ,
wrote that it was unlawful to possess images pretending to represent the
Saviour either in his divine or in his human nature, and added that to
avoid the reproach of idolatry he had actually taken away from a lady
friend the pictures of Paul and of Christ which she had.[2] Similarly
Epiphanius in a letter to John, bishop of Jerusalem, tells how in a
church at Anablatha near Bethel he had found a curtain painted with the
image "of Christ or of some other saint," which he had torn down and
ordered to be used for the burial of a pauper. The passage, however,
reveals not only what Epiphanius thought on the subject, but also that
such pictures must have been becoming frequent. Nilus, the disciple and
defender of Chrysostom, permitted the symbol of the cross in churches
and also pictorial delineations of Old and New Testament history, but
deprecated other symbols, pictures of martyrs, and most of all the
representation of Christ. In the time of Gregory the Great the Western
Church obtained something like an authoritative declaration on the
question about images, but in a sense not quite the same as that of the
synod of Elvira. Serenus of Marseilles had ordered the destruction of
all sacred images within his diocese; this action called forth several
letters from Pope Gregory (viii. 2. III; ix. 4. 11), in which he
disapproved of that course, and, drawing the distinction which has since
been authoritative for the Roman Church, pointed out that--
"It is one thing to worship a picture and another to learn from the
language of a picture what that is which ought to be worshipped. What
those who can read learn by means of writing, that do the uneducated
learn by looking at a picture.... That, therefore, ought not to have
been destroyed which had been placed in the churches, not for worship,
but solely for instructing the minds of the ignorant."
With regard to the symbol of the cross, its public use dates from the
time of Constantine, though, according to many Christian archaeologists
it had, prior to that date, a very important place in the so-called
"disciplina arcani." The introduction of the crucifix was later;
originally the favourite combination was that of the figure of a lamb
lying at the foot of the cross; the council of Constantinople, called
"in Trullo," in 692 enjoined that this symbol should be discontinued,
and that where Christ was shown in connexion with his cross he should be
represented in his human nature. In the catacombs Christ is never
represented hanging on the cross, and the cross itself is only portrayed
in a veiled and hesitating manner. In the Egyptian churches the cross
was a pagan symbol of life borrowed by the Christians and interpreted in
the pagan manner. The cross of the early Christian emperors was a
_labarum_ or token of victory in war, a standard for use in battle.
Religious feeling in the West recoiled from the crucifix as late as the
6th century, and it was equally abhorrent to the Monophysites of the
East who regarded the human nature of Christ as swallowed up in the
divine. Nevertheless it seems to have originated in the East, perhaps as
a protest against the extreme Monophysites, who even denied the
passibility of Christ. Perhaps the Nestorians, who clung to the human
aspect of Christ, introduced it about 550. From the East it soon passed
to the West.
Not until the 8th century were the religious and theological questions
which connect themselves with image-worship distinctly raised in the
Eastern Church in their entirety. The controversy began with an address
which Leo the Isaurian, in the tenth year of his reign (726), delivered
in public "in favour of overthrowing the holy and venerable images," as
says Theophanes (_Chronogr._, in Migne _Patr. Gr._ 108, 816). This
emperor had, in the years 717 and 718, hurled back the tide of Arab
conquest which threatened to engulf Byzantium, and had also shown
himself an able statesman and legislator. Born at Germanicia in Syria,
and, before he mounted the throne, captain-general of the Anatolian
theme, he had come under the influence of the anti-idolatrous sects,
such as the Jews, Montanists, Paulicians and Manicheans, which abounded
in Asia Minor, but of which he was otherwise no friend. But his
religious reform was unpopular, especially among the women, who killed
an official who, by the emperor's command, was destroying an image of
Christ in the vestibule of the imperial palace of Chalcé. This _émeute_
provoked severe reprisals, and the partisans of the images were
mutilated and killed, or beaten and exiled. A rival emperor even,
Agallianus, was set up, who perished in his attempt to seize
Constantinople. Italy also rose in arms, and Pope Gregory II. wrote to
Leo blaming his interference in religious matters, though he dissuaded
the rebels in Venetia, the Exarchate and the Pentapolis from electing a
new emperor and marching against Leo. In 730 Germanus the patriarch
resigned rather than subscribe to a decree condemning images; later he
was strangled, in exile and replaced by an iconoclast, Anastasius.
Meanwhile, inside the Arab empire, John of Damascus wrote his three
dogmatic discourses against the traducers of images, arguing that their
use was not idolatry but only a relative worship ([Greek: proskynêsis
schetkê]). The next pope, Gregory III. convoked a council of
ninety-three bishops, which excommunicated the iconoclasts, and the
fleet which Leo sent to retaliate on the Latin peninsula was lost in a
storm in the Adriatic. The most Leo was able to do was to double the
tribute of Calabria and Sicily, confiscate the pope's revenues there,
and impose on the bishops of south Italy a servitude to Byzantium which
lasted for centuries.
Leo III. died in June 740, and then his son Constantine V. began a
persecution of the image-worshippers in real earnest. In his eagerness to
restore the simplicity of the primitive church he even assailed
Mariolatry, intercession of saints, relics and perhaps infant baptism, to
the scandal even of the iconoclast bishops themselves. His reign began
with the seizure for eighteen months of Constantinople by his
brother-in-law Artavasdes, who temporarily restored the images. He was
captured and beheaded with his accomplices in November 742, and in
February 754 Constantine held in the palace of Hieria a council of 388
bishops, mostly of the East; the patriarchs of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria
and Jerusalem refused to attend. In it images were condemned, but the
other equally conservative leanings of the emperor found no favour. The
chief upholders of images, the patriarch Germanus, George of Cyprus and
John of Damascus, were anathematized, and Christians forbidden to adore
or make images or even to hide them. These decrees were obstinately
resisted, especially by the monks, large numbers of whom fled to Italy.
In 765 the emperor demanded of his subjects all over his empire an oath
on the cross that they detested images, and St Stephen the younger, the
chief upholder of them, was murdered in the streets. A regular crusade
now began against monks and nuns, and images and relics were destroyed on
a great scale. In parts of Asia Minor (Lydia and Caria) the monks were
even forced to marry the nuns. In 769 Pope Stephen III. condemned the
council of Hieria, and in 775 Constantine V. died. His son Leo IV. died
in 780, leaving a widow, Irene, of Athenian birth, who seized the
opportunity presented by the minority of her ten-year-old son Constantine
VI. to restore the images and dispersed relics. In 784 she invited Pope
Adrian I. to come and preside over a fresh council, which was to reverse
that of 754 and heal the schism with Rome. In August 786 the council met,
but was broken up by the imperial guards, who were Easterns and sturdy
iconoclasts. Irene replaced them by a more trustworthy force, and
convoked a fresh council of three hundred bishops and monks innumerable
in September 787, at Nicaea in the church of St Sophia. The cult of
images was now solemnly restored, iconoclast bishops deposed or
reconciled, the dogmatic theory of images defined, and church discipline
re-established. The order thus imposed lasted twenty-four years, until a
military revolution placed a soldier of fortune, half Armenian, half
Persian, named Leo, on the throne; he, like his soldiers, was persuaded
that the ill-success of the Roman arms against Bulgarians and other
invaders was due to the idolatry rampant at court and elsewhere. The
soldiers stoned the image of Christ which Irene had set up afresh in the
palace of Chalcé, and this provoked a counter-demonstration of the
clergy. Leo feigned for a while to be on their side, but on the 2nd of
February 815, in the sanctuary of St Sophia, publicly refused to
prostrate himself before the images, with the approbation of the army and
of many bishops who were iconoclasts at heart. Irene's patriarch
Nicephorus was now deposed and one Theodotus, a kinsman of Constantine
Copronymus, consecrated in his place on the 1st of April 815. A fresh
council was soon convoked, which cursed Irene and re-enacted the decrees
of 754. This reaction lasted only for a generation under Leo the
Armenian, who died 820, Michael II. 820-829, and Theophilus 829-842; and
was frustrated mainly by the exertions of Theodore of Studion and his
monks, called the Studitae. Theodore refused to attend or recognize the
new council, and was banished first to Bithynia and thence to Smyrna,
whence he continued to address his appeals to the pope, to the eastern
patriarchs and to his dispersed monks. He died in 826. Theophilus, the
last of the iconoclast emperors, was a devoted Mariolater and
controversialist who invited the monks to discuss the question of images
with him, and whipped or branded them when he was out-argued; he at
length banished them from the cities, and branded on the hands a painter
of holy pictures, Lazarus by name, who declined to secularize his art; he
also raised to the patriarchal throne John Hylilas, chief instigator of
the reaction of 815. In 842 Theophilus died, leaving his wife Theodora
regent; she was, like Irene, addicted to images, and chose as patriarch a
monk, Methodius, whom the emperor Michael had imprisoned for laying
before him Pope Paschal I.'s letter of protest. John Hylilas was deposed
and flogged in turn. A fresh council was now held which re-enacted the
decrees of 787, and on the 20th of February 842 the new patriarch, the
empress, clergy and court dignitaries assisted in the church of St Sophia
at a solemn restoration of images which lasted until the advent of the
Turks. The struggle had gone on for 116 years.
The iconoclastic movement is perhaps the most dramatic episode in
Byzantine history, and the above outline of its external events must be
completed by an appreciation of its deeper historical and religious
significance and results. We can distinguish three parties among the
combatants:--
1. The partisans of image worship. These were chiefly found in the
Hellenic portions of the empire, where Greek art had once held sway. The
monks were the chief champions of images, because they were illuminators
and artists. Their doctors taught that the same grace of the Holy Spirit
which imbued the living saint attaches after death to his relics, name,
image and picture. The latter are thus no mere representations, but as
it were emanations from the archetype, vehicles of the supernatural
personality represented, and possessed of an inherent sacramental value
and power, such as the name of Jesus had for the earliest believers.
Here Christian image-worship borders on the beliefs which underlie
sympathetic magic (see IMAGE WORSHIP).
2. The iconoclasts proper, who not only condemned image worship in the
sense just explained but rejected all religious art whatever. Fleeting
matter to their mind was not worthy to embody or reflect heavenly
supersensuous energies denoted by the names of Christ and the saints.
For the same reason they rejected relics and, as a rule, the worship of
the cross. Statues of Christ, especially of him hanging on the cross,
inspired the greatest horror and indignation; and this is why none of
the graven images of Christ, common before the outbreak of the movement,
survive. More than this--although the synod of 692 specially allowed the
crucifix, yet Greek churches have discarded it ever since the 8th
century.
This idea that material representation involves a profanation of divine
personages, while disallowing all religious art which goes beyond
scroll-work, spirals, flourishes and geometrical designs, yet admits to
the full of secular art; and accordingly the iconoclastic emperors
replaced the holy pictures in churches with frescoes of hunting scenes,
and covered their palaces with garden scenes where men were plucking
fruit and birds singing amid the foliage. Contemporary Mahommedans did
the same, for it is an error to suppose that this religion was from the
first hostile to profane art. At one time the mosques were covered with
mosaics, analogous to those of Ravenna, depicting scenes from the life
of Mahomet and the prophets. The Arabs only forbade plastic art in the
9th century, nor were their essentially Semitic scruples ever shared by
the Persians.
The prejudice we are considering is closely connected with the
Manichaean view of matter, which in strict consistency rejected the
belief that God was really made flesh, or really died on the cross. The
Manichaeans were therefore, by reason of their dualism, arch-enemies no
less of Christian art than of relics and cross-worship; the Monophysites
were equally so by reason of their belief that the divine nature in
Christ entirely absorbed and sublated the human; they shaded off into
the party of the _aphthartodoketes_, who held that his human body was
incorruptible and made of ethereal fire, and that his divine nature was
impassible. Their belief made them, like the Manichaeans, hostile to
material portraiture of Christ, especially of his sufferings on the
cross. All these nearly allied schools of Christian thought could,
moreover, address, as against the image-worshippers, a very effective
appeal to the Bible and to Christian antiquity. Now Egypt, Asia Minor,
Armenia, western Syria and the Hauran were almost wholly given up to
these forms of opinion. Accordingly in all the remains of the Christian
art of the Hauran one seeks in vain for any delineation of human face or
figure. The art of these countries is mainly geometrical, and allows
only of monograms crowned with laurels, of peacocks, of animals
gambolling amid foliage, of fruit and flowers, of crosses which are
either _svastikas_ of Hindu and Mycenaean type, or so lost in enveloping
arabesques as to be merely decorative. Such was the only religious art
permitted by the Christian sentiment of these countries, and also of the
large _enclaves_ of semi-Manichaean belief formed in the Balkans by the
transportation thither of Armenians and Paulicians. And it is important
to remark that the protagonists of iconoclasm in Byzantium came from
these lands where image cult offended the deepest religious instincts of
the masses. Leo the Isaurian had all the scruples of a Paulician, even
to the rejection of the cult of Virgin and saints; Constantine V. was
openly such. Michael Balbus was reared in Phrygia among Montanists. The
soldiers and captains of the Byzantine garrisons were equally Armenians
and Syrians, in whom the sight of a crucifix or image set up for worship
inspired nothing but horror.
The issue of the struggle was not a complete victory even in Byzantium
for the partisans of image-worship. The Iconoclasts left an indelible
impress on the Christian art of the Greek Church, in so far as they put
an end to the use of graven images; for the Eastern icon is a flat
picture, less easily regarded than would be a statue as a nidus within
which a spirit can lurk. Half the realm of creative art, that of
statuary, was thus suppressed at a blow; and the other half, painting,
forfeited all the grace and freedom, all the capacity of new themes,
forms and colours, all the development which we see in the Latin Church.
The Greeks have produced no Giotto, no Fra Angelico, no Raphael. Their
artists have no choice of subjects and no initiative. Colour, dress,
attitude, grouping of figures are all dictated by traditional rules, set
out in regular manuals. God the Father may not be depicted at all--a
restriction intelligible when we remember that the image in theory is
fraught with the virtue of the archetype; but everywhere the utmost
timidity is shown. What else could an artist do but make a slavish and
exact copy of old pictures which worked miracles and perhaps had the
reputation as well of having fallen from heaven?
3. Between these extreme parties the Roman Church took the middle way of
common sense. The hair-splitting distinction of the Byzantine doctors
between veneration due to images ([Greek: proskynêsis timêtikê]), and
the adoration ([Greek: proskynêsis latreutikê]) due to God alone, was
dropped, and the utility of pictures for the illiterate emphasized.
Their use was declared to be this, that they taught the ignorant through
the eye what they should adore with the mind; they are not themselves to
be adored. Such was Gregory the Great's teaching, and such also is the
purport of the Caroline books, which embody the conclusions arrived at
by the bishops of Germany, Gaul and Aquitaine, presided over by papal
legates at the council of Frankfort in 794, and incidentally also reveal
the hatred and contempt of Charlemagne for the Byzantine empire as an
institution, and for Irene, its ruler, as a person. The theologians whom
Louis the Pious convened at Paris in 825, to answer the letter received
from the iconoclast emperor Michael Balbus, were as hostile to the
orthodox Greeks as to the image-worshippers, and did not scruple to
censure Pope Adrian for having approved of the empress Irene's attitude.
The council of Trent decided afresh in the same sense.
Two incidental results of the iconoclastic movement must be noticed, the
one of less, the other of more importance. The lesser one was the flight
of Greek iconolatrous monks from Asia Minor and the Levant to Sicily and
Calabria, where they established convents which for centuries were the
western homes of Greek learning, and in which were written not a few of
the oldest Greek MSS. found in our libraries. The greater event was the
scission between East and West. The fury of the West against the
iconoclastic emperors was such that the whole of Italy clamoured for
war. It is true that Pope Stephen II. applied in 753 to Constantine V.,
one of the worst destroyers of images, for aid against the Lombards, for
the emperor of Byzantium was still regarded as the natural champion of
the church. But Constantine refused aid, and the pope turned to the
Frankish King Pippin. The die was cast. Henceforth Rome was linked with
the Carolingian house in an alliance which culminated in the coronation
of Charlemagne by the pope on the 25th of December 800.
In the crusading epoch the Cathars and Paulicians carried all over
Europe the old iconoclastic spirit, and perhaps helped to transmit it to
Wycliffe and Hus. Not the least racy clause in the document compiled
about 1389 by the Wycliffites in defence of their defunct teacher is the
following: "Hit semes that this offrynge ymages is a sotile cast of
Antichriste and his clerkis for to drawe almes fro pore men ... certis,
these ymages of hemselfe may do nouther gode nor yvel to mennis soules,
but thai myghtten warme a man's body in colde, if thai were sette upon a
fire."
At the period of the Reformation it was unanimously felt by the
reforming party that, with the invocation of saints and the practice of
reverencing their relics, the adoration of images ought also to cease.
The leaders of the movement were not, however, perfectly agreed on the
question as to whether these might not in some circumstances be retained
in churches. Luther had no sympathy with the iconoclastic outbreaks
which then occurred; he classed images in themselves as among the
"adiaphora," and condemned only their cultus; so also the "Confessio
Tetrapolitana" leaves Christians free to have them or not, if only due
regard be had to what is expedient and edifying. The "Heidelberg
Catechism," however, emphatically declares that images are not to be
tolerated at all in churches.
SOURCES.--"Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council held in Nicaea,
787," in Mansi's _Concilia_, vols. xii. and xiii.; "Acts of the
Iconoclast Council of 815," in a treatise of Nicephorus discovered by
M. Serruys and printed in the _Séances Acad. des Inscript._ (May
1903); Theophanes, _Chronographia_, edit. de Boor (Leipzig,
1883-1885); and _Patr. Gr._ vol. 108. Also his "Continuators" in
_Patr. Gr._ vol. 109; Nicephorus, _Chronicon_, edit. de Boor (Leipzig,
1880), and _Patr. Gr._ vol. 100; Georgius Monachus, _Chronicon_, edit.
Muralt (Petersburg, 1859), and _Patr. Gr._ 110; anonymous "Life of Leo
the Armenian" in _Patr. Gr._ 108; _The Book of the Kings_, by Joseph
Genesios, _Patr. Gr._ 109; "Life of S. Stephanus, Junior," _Patr. Gr._
100; "St John of Damascus," three "Sermones" against the iconoclasts,
_Patr. Gr._ 95; Nicephorus Patriarch, "Antirrhetici," _Patr. Gr._ 100;
Theodore Studita, "Antirrhetici," _Patr. Gr. 99_. For bibliography of
contemporary hymns, letters, &c., bearing on the controversy see K.
Krumbacher's _History of Byzantine Literature_, 2nd ed. p. 674.
Literature: Louis Brehier, _La Querelle des images_, and _Les Origines
du crucifix_ (Paris, 1904); Librairie Blond, in French, each volume 60
centimes (brief but admirable); Karl Schwartzlose, _Der Bilderstreit_
(Gotha, 1890); Karl Schenk, "The Emperor Leo III.," in _Byzant.
Zeitschrift_ (1896, German); Tel. Uspenskij, _Skizzen zur Geschichte
der byzantinischen Kultur_ (St Petersburg, 1892, Russian); Lombard,
_Études d'histoire byzantine_; Constantine V.( Paris, 1902, _Biblioth.
de l'université de Paris_, xvi.); A. Tougard, _La Persécution
iconoclaste_ (Paris, 1897); and _Rev. des questions historiques_
(1891); Marin, _Les Moines de Constantinople_ (Paris, 1897, bk. iv.
_Les Moines et les empereurs iconoclastes_); Alice Gardner, Theodore
of Studium (London, 1905); Louis Maimbourg, _Histoire de l'hérésie des
iconoclastes_ (Paris, 1679-1683); J. Daillé (Dallaeus), _De
imaginibus_ (Leiden, 1642, and in French, Geneva, 1641); Spanheim,
_Historia imaginum_ (Leiden, 1686). See also the account of this epoch
in the _Histories_ of Neander, Gibbon and Milman; Aug. Fr. Gfrörer,
"Der Bildersturm" in _Byzantinische Geschichte 2_ (1873); C. J. von
Hefele, _Conciliengeschichte_ 3 (1877), 366 ff. (also in English
translation; Karl Krumbacher. _Byzant. Literaturgeschichte_ (2nd ed.
p. 1090). (F. C. C.)