(A. D. 868.)
[Greek Menæa for this day. Authorities:--Life by a contemporary monk
in his monastery.]
This glorious confessor was born in Crete, and was the son of pious
parents, who educated him from earliest infancy in the fear of God. At
the age of ten he was sent to Constantinople, to see his kinsman
Theophanes. He found him a monk of the order of the Sleepless
Ones,[16] in the monastery called the Studium. He entered the same
order, and fulfilled his monastic duties with regularity and devotion.
Having set a brilliant example, he was deemed worthy to be invested
with the priesthood. Then broke out the furious persecution of the
Iconoclasts, about which a few words must be said in this place.[17]
When God was made Man, He was put at once into the most intimate
relation with men; and just as it is lawful for any son to have a
portrait of his father or mother, so did it become lawful and
reasonable that he should have a picture of that God-Man, who is
dearer to him than father or mother. The picture served as a constant
reminder, an evidence for the Incarnation. It is a sermon declaring
God to be made Man. But the Arians, who denied the divinity of our
Lord, were most hostile to sacred representations of Christ, and with
reason, for these pictures were a testimony against them. At first the
Arian attack on the foundation doctrine of the Incarnation was open.
But, when the theological statement of that mystery was made so plain
that there was no opposing it by counter statement, Arianism adopted
other tactics, and appeared as Iconoclasm, or war against sacred
pictures. He who disbelieved, or only coldly acquiesced in the
Incarnation of God, saw that this chief corner-stone of Christianity
could only be uprooted by chilling the ardour of Christian affection.
And no better method of chilling that affection could be devised, than
the obliteration of representations of Christ, His acts, His passion,
and of His mother, and His Saints; then there was some prospect of
religious acceptance of this dogma sinking into cold intellectual
apprehension, and thence it could be dislodged without difficulty.
After the reconciliation of large congregations of Gnostics and Arians
with the Catholic Church, they maintained that icy worship which had
preceded their separation, they adored God as a Spirit, but actually,
though they had ceased to do so formally, overlooked His manhood.
These reconciled bodies afforded a fund of passive prejudice and
aversion of small account so long as Catholic princes were on the
throne, but which, in the fortune of a soldier, might produce serious
results to the Church.
Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the Emperor Leo III., who,
from the mountains of Isauria, ascended to the throne of the East. He
was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but his education, his
reason, perhaps his intercourse with Jews and Arabs, had inspired the
martial peasant with a hatred of images; and he held it to be the duty
of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own
conscience. In the reformation of religion, his first steps were
moderate and cautious; he assembled a great council of senators and
bishops, and enacted, with their consent, that all the images should
be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the
churches, where they might be visible to the eyes, and inaccessible to
the devotion of the people. But it was impossible on either side to
check the rapid though adverse impulses of veneration and abhorrence:
in their lofty position, the sacred images still edified their
votaries, and exasperated their enemies. He was himself provoked by
resistance and invective; and his own party accused him of an
imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation the
example of the Jewish king, who had broken without scruple the brazen
serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence,
as well as the use of sacred pictures; images of Christ, the Blessed
Virgin, and the Saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of
plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the
Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors,
and this topic involved the East and West in an angry conflict of one
hundred and twenty years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to
pronounce the condemnation of images as an article of faith, and by
the authority of a General Council; but the convocation of such an
assembly was reserved for his son Constantine Copronymus. This council
was attended by three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and
Anatolia, but not by those of the Western Church, African Church, or
that of Palestine. It was, in fact, an assembly of those prelates who
were weak enough to assist, fearing condemnation and exile if they did
not submit, ambitious enough to follow the caprice of the reigning
emperor, in hopes of emolument, and also of those who heartily
concurred with his semi-Arianism. After a serious deliberation of six
months, the prelates subscribed such a decree as the emperor desired,
condemning all visible symbols of Christ,[18] except the Eucharist, as
blasphemous and heretical; and denouncing veneration for images as the
idolatry of Paganism. "As if," says a Catholic writer of the time,
"there were not this great difference between the Christian image and
the heathen idol, that the latter is the thing worshipped, whereas the
former is the representation of the person adored."
The first hostilities of Leo had been directed against a lofty Christ
on the vestibule, and above the gate, of the palace, placed there to
exhibit to all men that the emperors had bowed before the King of
kings. A ladder had been placed for the assault, but it was shaken by
a crowd of women and zealots, and for their opposing the execution of
the mandate, severe and savage reprisals were taken. The execution of
the imperial mandates were resisted by frequent tumults in
Constantinople and the provinces, which were quelled by the military,
and much blood flowed.
In the cruel persecution that ensued, the monks, ever the champions of
the Incarnate God, suffered most severely. Nicolas of the Studium,
together with S. Theodore, the abbot, or archimandite, of the
monastery were called to suffer. Nicolas was scourged with leather
thongs on the back and limbs, and his arms extended, so that they
became for a time paralysed. His back, which was lashed and bleeding,
was tenderly bathed with warm water and healing lotions by S.
Theodore, his superior, till it was healed. Both were driven into
exile, and kept for three years in nakedness, and without sufficient
food and drink, in a wretched prison. They were beaten again at
Smyrna, and further imprisoned for twenty-two months, with their feet
in the stocks. On the death of Leo, the confessors were released, and
visited S. Nicephorus at Chalcedon. This took place during the absence
of Constantine Copronymus, who had undertaken an expedition against
the Saracens. During this absence, his kinsman, Artavasdus, assumed
the purple, and everywhere the sacred images were triumphantly
restored. Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but
he descended at the head of the bold Isaurians, and his final victory
placed the unfortunate Catholics once more at the mercy of a brutal
tyrant. This monster of crime derived his name Copronymus from having
defiled his baptismal font. This incident of his infancy was accepted
as an augury of his maturity, and he did not belie it. His reign was
one long butchery of whatever was most noble, or holy, or innocent, in
his empire. In person the emperor assisted at the execution of his
victims, surveyed their agonies, listened to their groans, and
indulged, without satiating, his appetite for blood: a plate of noses
was accepted as a grateful offering, and his domestics were often
scourged or mutilated by his royal hand. His long reign was distracted
with clamour, sedition, conspiracy, mutual hatred, and sanguinary
revenge. The hatred borne by this ruffian against monks and images was
implacable. Images were torn down and defaced with wanton malice
throughout the empire by an officer called the Dragon, sent round for
that purpose; all religious communities were dissolved, their
buildings were converted into magazines or barracks; the lands,
moveables, and cattle, were confiscated, and the monks were mutilated
in eyes and ears and limbs, with refined cruelty.
Under this emperor, Theophilus (829), Nicolas and Theodore again
suffered persecution. Theodore, and the abbot Theophanes, kinsman of
Nicolas, were mutilated by certain verses being cut upon their brows.
During the persecution, S. Nicolas remained concealed; on the
accession of the indifferent emperor, Michael III., (842), he emerged
from his hiding place, and was elected archimandite of the Studium,
the abbot Theodore being dead. After exercising the government for
three years, he resigned it to Sophronius, and retired to Firmopolis,
that he might pass the remainder of his days in peace; but it was not
so to be; after four years he was recalled to the abbacy of the
Studium, on the death of Sophronius, and was at once involved in
conflict. For the patriarch Ignatius, having rebuked the Cæsar Bardas
for incest, and then excommunicated him, the emperor Michael III., his
nephew, was persuaded to exile Ignatius, and to intrude Photius into
the Patriarchal see. The abbot Nicolas refused to communicate with the
intruder, and was consequently driven from his monastery, and a monk,
Achillas, was appointed in his room. Nicolas was pursued from one
retreat to another by the hostility of the intruded patriarch, and
after many wanderings, rested in the Crimea. Upon the death of Bardas
and Michael, Bardas having been murdered by his nephew Michael, and
Michael by his successor, Basil I., (867), the patriarch Ignatius was
recalled, and the patriarch persuaded Nicolas to return to his
government of the Studium, where he died the following year.