into the heart of Germany these same feelings of filial attachment and love. Thus was Rome exalted in the eyes of the children of the churches of the West, until Gregory II. (715–731), writing the Eastern emperor, could say that to these peoples the very statue of the founder of the Roman church seemed "a god on earth."
The Iconoclasts.—The dispute about the worship of images, known in church history as the Iconoclastic controversy, which broke out in the eighth century between the Greek churches of the East and the Latin churches of the West, drew after it far-reaching consequences as respects the growing power of the Roman pontiffs.
Even long before the seventh century, the churches both in the East and in the West had become crowded with images or pictures of the apostles, saints, and martyrs, which to the ignorant classes at least were objects of adoration and worship. A strong party opposed to the use of images [1] at last arose in the East. These reformers were given the name of Iconoclasts (image-breakers).
Leo the Isaurian, who came to the throne of Constantinople in 717, was a most zealous Iconoclast. The Greek churches of the East having been cleared of images, the emperor resolved to clear also the Latin churches of the West of these symbols. To this end he issued a decree that they should not be used.
The bishop of Rome not only opposed the execution of the edict, but by the ban of excommunication cut off the emperor and all the iconoclastic churches of the East from communion with the true Catholic Church. Though images were permanently restored in the Eastern churches in 842, still by this time other causes of alienation had arisen, and the breach between the two sections of Christendom could not now be closed. The final outcome was the permanent separation, about the middle of the eleventh century, of the churches of the East from those of the West. The
- ↑ The so-called images of the Greek Church were not statues, but mosaics, or paintings. The Eastern Church has at no period sanctioned the use of sculptures in worship.
