Basil (d. 379), preaching about St. Barlaam, calls upon painters to do the saint more honor by making pictures of him than he himself can do by words (“Or. 318-21; Hefele-Leclercq, op. How likely they were to set up a graven thing as a strange god is shown by the story of the golden calf at the very time that the ten words were promulgated. The feast celebrates the triumph of the veneration of images and the definitive confirmation of the Christology developed in the first six ecumenical Councils, the doctrine which underlies the veneration of icons. 392-431). As specimens of exceedingly beautiful and curious icons painted after the Iconoclast troubles at Constantinople, we may mention the mosaics of the Kahrie-Jami (the old “Monastery in the Country”, Mone tes choras) near the Adrianople gate. Still any one who reads it might see in the other words too an absolute command. People salute flags, bow to empty thrones, uncover to statues and so on; nor does any one think that this reverence is directed to colored bunting or wood and stone. ii, in P.L., XVII, 821). These texts all regard idols, that is, images made to be adored. nov.”, I, “Horn. The principle was quite simple. in S. Barlaam”, in P.G., XXXI, 488-489, quoted in Hefele-Leclercq, “Histoire des Conciles”, III, p. 611). It was the chief outward sign of the Faith, was treated with more reverence than any picture; “worship of the cross” (staurolatreia) was a special thing distinct from image-worship, so that we find the milder Iconoclasts in after years making an exception for the cross, still treating it with reverence, while they destroyed pictures. The Jews at the risk of their lives persuaded Pilate to remove the statues of Caesar set up among the standards of the army in Jerusalem [“Ant. cit., 7, from Combefis, “Auctar. So in the First Commandment we must distinguish the clauses—”Thou shalt not have strange gods before me”, “Thou shall not adore them nor serve them “—which are eternal natural law (prohibitum quia malum), from the clause: “Thou shalt not make to thy-self any graven image”, etc. What signs of reverence, if any, did the first Christians give to the images in their catacombs and churches? Veneration of Images † Catholic Encyclopedia Veneration of Images I. IMAGES, VENERATION OF The phrase refers to those exterior acts of honor or reverence directed to God, the angels, or the saints through some artifact of the representative or symbolic arts. St. Gregory the Great (d. 604) was always a great defender of holy pictures (see below). This was a general synod of the Church of Spain held, apparently about the year 300, in a city near Granada (Hefele-Leclercq, “Hist. Suggest as a translation of "veneration of images" Copy; DeepL Translator Linguee. In my mind as soon as you make the official position of the church that icons and images are a go for veneration equal to the word, then you will become increasingly blind to truth as icons and images do not contain the words of God … They must be arranged according to a systematic scheme across the screen between the choir and the altar that from this fact is called iconostasis (eikonostasis, picture-stand; see Fortescue, “Orth. cxxxiv, 15 sqq. The text then of the decision of the seventh session of Nicaea II is: “We define (orizomen) with all certainty and care that both the figure of the sacred and life-giving Cross, as also the venerable and holy images, whether made in colors or mosaic or other materials, are to be placed suitably in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, on walls and pictures, in houses and by roads; that is to say, the images of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, of our immaculate Lady the holy Mother of God, of the honorable angels and all saints and holy men. Kunst”, I, 175). St. Thomas declares what idolatry is in the “Summa Theologica”, II-II, Q. xciv, and explains the use of images in the Catholic Church (ib., a. An insult to the sign (a flag or statue) is an insult to the thing of which it is a sign; so also we honor the prototype by honoring the sign. It appears (without a figure) above the image of Christ in the apsidal mosaic of St. Pudentiana at Rome, in His nimbus constantly (Kraus, I, 182-3, etc. Nor does it by any means obtain as a universal principle in later times. See Synonyms at honor. Since their triumphant return on the Feast of Orthodoxy in 842, their position has not again been questioned by any of the old Churches. He writes to an Iconoclast bishop, Serenus of Marseilles, who had destroyed the images in his diocese: “Not without reason has antiquity allowed the stories of saints to be painted in holy places. cit., 544-8, etc.). Synonyms for Veneration of Images in Free Thesaurus. eccl., VII, 18); he wrote many arguments to persuade Constantine’s sister Constantia not to keep a statue of our Lord (see Mansi, XIII, 169). Relative worship is paid to a sign, not at all for its own sake, but for the sake of the thing signified. vita, 12). Only the authority of the Church has occasionally stepped in, sometimes to prevent a spasmodic return to Iconoclasm, more often to forbid excesses of such signs of reverence as would be misunderstood and give scandal. A feeling of profound respect or reverence: an object held in veneration. The Greek pagans offered golden crowns to their idols as specially worthy gifts. The cross further gained an important place in the consciousness of Christians from its use in ritual functions. There are no pictures of the Crucifixion except the mock-crucifix scratched by some pagan soldier in the Palatine barracks (Kraus, I, 173). But canon xxxvi of the Synod of Elvira is important. A feeling of profound respect or reverence: an object held in veneration. Some priests scrape the paint off images, mix it with the consecrated bread and wine and give it to the faithful. des Conc.”, I, 212-64). Christians are not bound to circumcise, to abstain from levitically unclean food and so on. 2. So in the first Byzantine centuries there grew up traditions of respect that gradually became fixed, as does all ceremonial. omn. It is from this reverence that the whole tradition of venerating holy images gradually and naturally developed. Entry for 'Veneration of Images' - 1910 New Catholic Dictionary - One of 28 Bible dictionaries freely available, this dictionary contains nearly 13,000 entries referencing every subject of … The icon seems to have been in some sort the channel through which the saint was approached; it has an almost sacramental virtue in arousing sentiments of faith, love and so on, in those who gazed upon it; through and by the icon God worked miracles; the icon even seems to have had a kind of personality of its own, inasmuch as certain pictures were specially efficacious for certain graces (see F. Marin, “Les moines de Constantinople“, Paris, 1897, pp. Nevertheless most of the practices described by the emperor can be established by other and quite unimpeachable evidence. A Syriac manuscript of the sixth century contains a miniature representing the scene of the crucifixion (Kraus, “Christi. The four answers, nos. 2. For honor paid to an image passes on to its prototype; he who worships (o proskunon) an image worships the reality of him who is painted in it” (Mansi, XIII, pp. That the first Christians had any sort of prejudice against images, pictures, or statues is a myth (defended amongst others by Erasmus) that has been abundantly dispelled by all students of Christian archaeology. cit., 23G 40), and sometimes, as in the famous one of Julius Bassus, with elaborate scenes from the New Testament (ibid., 237). 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