IMAGE-WORSHIP (Gr. iconolatria), the use, in public or private worship, of graven or painted representations of sacred persons or things, and especially the exhibition of honor, reverence, or worship to or towards such representations. This practice, in the various degrees of which it is susceptible, has formed, for many centuries, so fruitful a subject of controversy among Christians, thr.t we think it expedient first briefly to detail the history of the use of images in Christian worship during the several periods, and secondly to state summarily the opposite views of this history which are taken by the two great parties into whichCliristiaiisi are divided on the question..
Neither in the New Testament, nor in any genuine writings of the first age of Chris tianity, can any trace be discovered of the use of statues or pictures in the worship of Christians, whether public or private. The earliest allusion to such representations ts found in Tertullian, who appeals to the image of the Good Shepherd as engraved upon the chalices. A very curious pagan caricature of Christianity, of the very same age, lately discovered scratched upon the wall of a room in the palace of the Cusars (see GRAFFITI), which rudely represepts a man standing in the attitude of prayer, with out stretched hand, before a grotesque caricature of the crucifixion, and which bears the title " Alexamenus worships God," has been recently alleged by Catholics as an addi tional indication of at least a certain use of images among the Christians of the 2tl century. The tombs of the Christians in the Roman catacombs, many of which are oti a date anterior to Constantine, frequently have graven upon them representations of the dove, of thd cross, of the symbolical fish, of the ship, of Adam and Eve, of Moses striking the rock, of Jonas, of Daniel in the lions' den, of the apostles Peter and Paul, and above all, of the Good Shepherd; and those compartments of the catacombs which were used as chapels are often profusely decorated with sacred representations, the age of which, however, it is not easy to determine with accuracy. But whatever opinion may be formed as to particular instances, such as these, it is admitted by Catholics themselves (who explain it by the fear of perpetuating the idolatrous notions of the early converts from paganism) that for the first three centuries the use of images was rare and exceptional; nor was it until after the establishment of Christianity under Constantine, and particularly after the condemnation of the Nestorian heresy in 430, that statues and pictures of our Lord, of the Virgin Mary, and the saints, were commonly introduced in churches, especially in the east and Italy. And yet, even in the 5th c., the practice
had already reached a great height, as we learn from the church historian, Theodoret, for the cast, and from Paulinus of Nola, for Italy; and in the Gth and 7th centuries many popular practices prevailed which called forth the condemnation of learned and pious bishops both in the cast and in the west. It was usual not only to keep lights and burn incense before the images, to kiss them reverently, and to kneel down and pray before them, but some went so far as to make the images serve as godfathers and godmothers in baptism, and even to mingle the dust or the coloring matter scraped from the images with the eucharistic elements in the holy communion! This use of images by Christians was alleged as an obstacle to the conversion of the Jews, and as one of the causes of the progress of Mohammedanism in the cast; and the excesses described above provoked the reaction of iconoclasm (q.v.). In the second council of Nice, 78:, the doctrine as to the worship of images was carefully laid down. A distinction was drawn between the supreme worship of adoration, which is called latreia, and th inferior worship of honor or reverence, called douleia; and still more between absaubt worship, which is directly and ultimately rendered to a person or thing in itself; :tad relative, which is but addressed through a person or thing, ultimately to another person or thing represented thereby. The second council of Nice declared, first. that the wor ship to be paid to images is not the. supreme worship of latreia, but only the inferior worship of douleia; and, secondly, that it is not absolute, and does not rest upon the images themselves, but relative, that is, only addressed through them, or by occasion of them. to the original which they represent. This explanation of the doctrine and the practice was thenceforth generally received; but a strange error in the translation oF the Greek acts of the council of Nice, by which it appeared that the same adoration was decreed by that council to images " which is rendered to the Holy Trinity itself," led to a vehement agitation in France and Germany under Charlemagne, and to a condemna tion by a synod at Frankfort of the doctrines of the council of Nice. But an explana tion of this error, and of the false transation on which it was based, was immediately afterwards given by the pope; and eventually the Nicene exposition of the doctrine \rums universally accepted in the western as well as in the eastern church.