25. The Image-Worship Question
Nothing, perhaps, can more strikingly illustrate the difference between the christians we read of in the New Testament, and those who professed to be “orthodox christians” of the flock of the one Shepherd, styled the Universal Bishop, than the fierce disputes of the eighth and ninth centuries, concerning the worship of images. For these symbols of dead men and women, whose factitious immortalities are supposed to be in a heaven “beyond the realms of time and space,” apostolic christians had no respect. They had renounced image-worship when they became christians; and, as his little children, were earnestly exhorted by the disciple beloved of Jesus, among the last words he addressed to them, to “keep themselves from idols”—1 John. v. 21.
The use of pictures in churches preceded that of images, the first notice of which is in the censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred years after the birth of Jesus. The first introduction of a worship of stocks and bones was in the veneration of the cross, and of relics. The “immortal souls” of saints and martyrs, whose intercession was implored, were supposed to be seated at the right hand of God; and their worshipers imagined that they showered gracious, and often supernatural favors around their tombs, whose disgusting contents they touched and kissed as memorials of their merits and sufferings. From such memorials the transition was easy to delineations of the deceased by painting or sculpture. At first, the experiment of paying them religious honors was made with caution and scruple. Gradually, however, the honors of the original were transferred to the copy; and he who began by worshiping three gods devoutly prayed before the image of a dead person; and the pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries and incense, became part of the ritual of the Greek and Roman superstition in which was firmly established the use and worship of images before the end of the sixth century. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will show the gross idolatry of this worship. “How can we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image: He who is seated on the cherubim, visits us this day by a picture which the Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable p. 299 manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love.” These images of Christ were styled αχειροποιητοι, made without hand; and were circulated in the camps and cities of the eastern empire, as objects of worship, and instruments of miracles.
But, in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, an apprehension was awakened among the Greeks, that the incessant charge of the Jews and Mohammedans that they were idolaters, might possibly be true. The murmurs of many simple and rational people arose against the superstition. They appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church.
Of this party was Leo the Third, who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the East. He is styled the Iconoclast, or Image-breaker. Though inspired with hatred of images, in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and danger, he submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before the idols he despised, and satisfied the Universal Bishop, the special patron of the idols, with the annual profession of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation he attempted, his first steps were moderate and cautious; but resistance and invective, and the urgency of his friends, provoked him to more active measures. The existence and use of religious pictures were proscribed; the churches of Constantinople and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, were demolished; and the sect of the Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors; and the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years.
It was, however, with reluctance that the patient east was brought to abjure its sacred images; they were fondly cherished, and vigorously defended by the more violent zeal of the Italians, stimulated to sanguinary resistance by the pretended Vicar of Christ. “It is agreed,” says Gibbon, “that in the eighth century, the dominion of the popes was founded on rebellion, and that the rebellion was produced and justified by the heresy of the Iconoclasts.” This is equivalent to saying, that the dominion of the popes and their clergy was founded on idolatry and their zeal for its support. This is true, and upon this basis the pope stands before the world as the “Pontifex Maximus” of Roman Idolatry, in which character he is the striking counterpart or “Image” of the pagan imperial pontiffs of the Sixth Head of the Beast.
Two original epistles from Gregory II., founder of the papal monarchy, to the emperor Leo Isauricus are still extant. “During ten pure and fortunate years,” says he, “we have tasted the annual comfort p. 300 of your royal letters, subscribed in purple ink with your own hand, the sacred pledges of your attachment to the orthodox creed of our fathers. How deplorable the change! How tremendous the scandal! You now accuse the catholics of idolatry; and by the accusation you betray your own impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the grossness of our style and arguments; the first elements of holy letters are sufficient for your confusion; and were you to enter a grammar school, and avow yourself the enemy of our worship, the simple and pious children would be provoked to cast their horn-books at your head.” After this not very complimentary salutation, the episcopal apologist of catholic idolatry attempts the usual distinction between the idols of the pagans and the idols of the catholics. The former, he affirms, were the fanciful representations of phantoms or demons, at the time when the true God had not manifested his person in any visible likeness. The latter, he says, are the genuine forms of Christ, his mother, and his saints, who had approved, by a crowd of miracles, (styled by Paul “all power, and signs, and lying wonders”) the innocence and merit of this relative worship, which he lyingly asserted had been in perpetual use from the apostolic age. To the impudent and humane Leo, more guilty than a heretic, he recommends peace, silence, and implicit obedience to his spiritual guides of Constantinople and Rome. He defines the limits of civil and ecclesiastical powers. To the civil he appropriates the body; to the ecclesiastical, the “immortal soul;” the sword of justice is in the hands of the magistrate: the more formidable weapon of excommunication is entrusted to the clergy; and in the exercise of their divine commission, a zealous son will not spare his offending father: the Successor of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the earth!
“You assault us, O Tyrant,” he continues, “with a carnal and military hand: unarmed and naked, we can only implore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host, that he will send unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and the salvation of your soul. You declare, with foolish arrogance, I will despatch my orders to Rome; I will break in pieces the image of St. Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor, Martin, shall be transported in chains, and in exile, to the foot of the imperial throne. Would to God that I might be permitted to tread in the footsteps of the holy Martin; but may the fate of Constans serve as a warning to the persecutors of the church. After his just condemnation by the bishops of Sicily, the tyrant was cut off in the fulness of his sins by a domestic servant: the saint is still adored by the nations of Scythia, among whom he ended his banishment and his life. But it is our duty to live for the p. 301 edification and support of the faithful people; nor are we reduced to risk our safety on the event of a combat. Incapable as you are of defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the city may perhaps expose it to your depredation; but we can remove to the distance of four and twenty stadia, to the first fortress of the Lombards, and then—you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the East and the West? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility, whom all the kingdoms of the west hold as a God upon earth, whose image, St. Peter, you threaten to destroy. The remote and interior kingdoms of the west present their homage to Christ and His Vicegerent; and we now prepare to visit one of their most powerful monarchs, who desires to receive from our hands the sacrament of baptism. The Barbarians (the Ten Horns) have submitted to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to the voice of the shepherd. The pious barbarians are kindled into rage; they thirst to avenge the persecution of the East. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprize; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist we are innocent of the blood that will be spent in the contest: may it fall on your own head.”
The character of Leo, says an ecclesiastical writer, has been so blackened by catholic partizans, that it is difficult to form a just estimate of it; but when we consider that he not only condemned the worshiping of images, but also rejected relics, and protested against the intercession of saints, we cannot doubt of his possessing considerable strength of mind, while it may help us to account for much of the obloquy that was cast upon him.
The first assault of Leo against the idols of Constantinople had been witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related with grief and indignation the iconoclasm of the emperor. But on the reception of his proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic deities—“the demonials and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood”—Apoc. ix. 20. The edict abolished the images of Christ and the virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, from all the churches of Italy; and a strong alternative was presented to the Roman High Priest of the New Idolatry, namely, the imperial favor as the price of his compliance, or degradation and exile, as the penalty of his disobedience. Gregory did not hesitate which to accept. Without depending on prayers or miracles, he boldly armed against his imperial master, and by pastoral letters, excited the Italians to resistance. At the signal given, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities of the exarchate and Pentapolis, which adhered to the cause of idol-worship, unfurled the banner of rebellion. They swore, as fools only p. 302 would swear, to live and die in defense of the Bishop of Rome and the demonials; and even the Lombards were ambitious to share in the war, not so much in the interest of the pope and his idols, as for the sake of expelling the Dragon Power from Italy, that the entire country might be theirs. The statues of Leo were destroyed, and the tributes of Italy withheld; magistrates and governors were elected, and the creation of an orthodox emperor was proposed. Gregory II. and his successor of the same name, were condemned at Constantinople as the authors of the revolt, and every attempt was made, either by fraud or force, to seize their persons and assassinate them. But these attempts did not succeed. The Greeks were thwarted and massacred; and at Ravenna, the Exarch himself was slain. To punish this flagitious treason, and to restore his dominion in Italy, the Dragon cast out of his mouth water as a flood; in other words, the imperial government of Constantinople sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic to depopulate and lay waste the country. But the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood. In a hard-fought day the idolators prevailed. The imperialists retreated to their galleys, but the populous sea coast poured forth a multitude of boats; and the slaughter is said to have been so great that the waters of the Po were deeply infected, so that during six years the people abstained from eating the fish of that river. But, in the midst of these broils, while defending idolatry and promoting the rebellion with all his influence, Gregory II. was stopped short in his roaring blasphemies. “He was extremely insolent,” says an impartial writer, “though he died with the character of a saint.”
He was succeeded in the Roman Bishoprick, A. D. 731, by Gregory III., who entered with great spirit and energy into the measures of his predecessors. The following epistle addressed by him to the emperor, on his elevation, is an amusing illustration of his arrogance and blasphemy.
“Because you are unlearned and ignorant,” says he, “we are obliged to write to you rude discourses, but full of sense and the word of God. We conjure you to quit your pride, and hear us with humility. You say that we adore stones, and walls, and boards. It is not so, my Lord; but these symbols make us recollect the persons whose names they bear, and exalt our groveling minds. We do not look upon them as gods; but if it be the image of Jesus, we say, “Lord help us.” If it be the image of his mother, we say, “Pray to your Son to save us.” If it be of a martyr, we say, “St. Stephen, pray for us.” We might, as having the power of St. Peter, pronounce punishment against you; but, as you have pronounced the curse upon yourself, let it stick to you. You write to us to assemble a general p. 303 council, of which there is no need. Do you cease to persecute images, and all will be quiet; we fear not your threats.”
“No sooner,” says Gibbon, “had they confirmed their own safety, the worship of images, and the freedom of Rome and Italy, than the popes appear to have relaxed in their severity, and to have spared the relics of the Byzantine dominion. Their moderate counsels delayed and prevented the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman Monarchy. The Exarch was permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather than a master; and till the imperial coronation of Charlemagne, the government of Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the successors of Constantine.”
Rome and her territory were now reduced to narrow limits, extending from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the mouth of the Tyber. Nominally subject to Constantinople, still they were really without any other protection than they who were slaves by habit could create for themselves. They had become free by an accident, the effect of the grossest superstition; so that when the excitement was allayed, their liberty was the object of their amazement and terror; and they were devoid of knowledge, or virtue, to build the fabric of a commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, as at this day, the offspring of slaves and strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious barbarians; who, as often as they expressed their most bitter contempt of a foe, called him a Roman; “and in this name,” says the bishop Luitprand, “we include whatever is base, whatever is cowardly, whatever is perfidious, the extremes of avarice and luxury, and every vice that can prostitute the dignity of human nature.” It must be remembered that the popes were the Eyes and Mouth of this Name—the unicum nomen in mundo; so that Luitprand’s definition of it is true of that Name of Blasphemy on the Seven Hills; by whose authority in their now transition state from the dominion of the Little Horn of the East, to that of the Little Horn of the West, their foreign and domestic counsels were moderated. His alms, his preachings, his correspondence with the kings and bishops of the west, his recent services in the interest of idolatry, and so forth, accustomed the idol worshipers of Rome to consider him as the first magistrate or Prince of the city. The pretended humility of the popes was not offended by the title of Lord; and coins of the date A. D. 772 are extant bearing the face and inscription of the popes, who now commenced a career of temporal ambition which was insatiable; and demanded exaltation “above every thing called god, or is worshiped.”
Having thus by rebellion freed themselves from all but a nominal p. 304 subjection to the Constantinopolitan Dragon, the great object of these ambitious blasphemers was now to preserve themselves in their feebleness from falling a prey to the Lombards, who longed for a united Italy with Rome for their capital. The love of arms and rapine was congenial to them; and they were irresistibly tempted by the disorders of Italy, the nakedness of Rome, and the unwarlike profession of her new chief, to embrace the present opportunity of effecting what would have been, if successful, the healing of the Seventh Head of the Beast. This, however, was not the Providential indication to be fulfilled. It was the Imperial Head, not the Regal, that was to be healed, or re-established as an Eighth Head upon the Seven Hills. But the Lombards did not know this; and in the confident hope of success, marched to the conquest of Spoleto and Rome. The storm, however, evaporated without effect; but alarmed the country with a vexatious alternative of hostility and truce, which caused a feeling of insecurity for life and property on every side. Hence, a Protector of the Roman People against the Lombards was the great desideratum of the time.
The Lombards were now masters of the Exarchate, and as ambition is only increased by accession of dominion, they began to lay claim to the Roman Dukedom, and to Rome itself. In order to enforce his demand, Astolphus marched an army towards the city, reducing many places in its vicinity, and threatening to put the inhabitants to the sword, if they refused to acknowledge him as their sovereign. The Romans hesitated, complained, used prayers and entreaties, and offered presents, but all in vain. Stephen III., then pope, alarmed at the severity of his message, sought to appease him by a solemn embassy; but all was useless, for the one desire of Astolphus was to govern Rome. Time, however, was gained by negotiations, till the friendship of an ally and avenger beyond the Alps was secured.
This ally appeared on the arena in the person of Pepin, son of Charles Martel, who governed the French monarchy with the humble title of Mayor or Duke; but who by his signal victory over the Saracens, had saved his country, and perhaps Europe, from the Mohammedan yoke. Zachary, predecessor of Stephen, and successor to Gregory III., an aspiring and crafty politician, had attached Pepin to his interests by resolving a case of conscience in his favor. He desired to know whether a prince incapable of governing, or a minister invested with royal authority, and who supported it with dignity, ought to have the title of king? Zachary decided in favor of minister Pepin; and the French clergy supported his pretensions, because he had restored to them the lands of which his father had robbed them.
p. 305 The pope’s decision silenced all scruples. Pepin threw his master, Childeric III., into a monastery; and caused himself to be crowned king with all orthodox solemnity at Soissons by Boniface the bishop of Mentz, the famous apostle of Rome’s idolatry to the Germans.
Stephen, made sensible that nothing but force could avail against Astolphus, resolved to crave the protection of Pepin; who, mindful of his obligations to Zachary, readily promised him assistance. A treaty was concluded between them at the expense of the Constantinopolitan Dragon, and the Lombard Horn of the Beast. On his visit to Paris, Stephen reanointed Pepin with the unction of papal holiness, declaring him and his son Charles, known afterwards as Charlemagne, Protector of the Romans; in return for which honors, Pepin promised to make a donation of the Exarchate and Pentapolis to the Romish Church.
Pepin’s presence in Italy, at the head of a French army, caused Astolphus to sue for peace, and obtained it, on condition that he should deliver up to the pope, not to the emperor, all the places he had taken. He consented; but when Pepin had returned; he resumed his former position, and laid siege to Rome.
In this extremity, Stephen again had recourse to his protector the king of France; but apprehensive of fatiguing the zeal of his transalpine allies, enforced his complaint and request by an eloquent letter in the name and person of St. Peter himself. This blasphemous forgery is too remarkable to be here omitted. It runs thus: “Peter, called an apostle by Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, etc. As through me the whole catholic, apostolic, and Roman church, the Mother of all other churches, is founded on a rock: and to the end that Stephen, Bishop of the beloved church of Rome, and that virtue and power may be granted by our Lord to rescue the church of God out of the hands of its persecutors: To you most excellent princes, Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, and to all the holy bishops and abbots, priests and monks, as also to dukes, counts, and people, I, Peter the apostle, conjure you, and the Virgin Mary, who will be obliged to you, gives you notice and commands you, as do all the thrones, dominations, etc. If you will not fight for me, I declare to you by the Holy Trinity, and by my apostleship, that you shall have no share in heaven.” Whether Pepin believed this forgery or not, he obeyed the summons, and delivered Rome from its peril a second time.
Meanwhile, Constantine Copronymus, who had succeeded Leo Isauricus, informed of the treaty between the king of France and the Pope, by which the latter was to be put into the possession of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, remonstrated by his ambassadors against that agreement, offering to pay the expenses of the war. But Pepin p. 306 replied, that the Exarchate belonged to the Lombards, who had acquired it from the East by arms, as the Romans had originally done; that the right of the Lombards was now in him, so that he could dispose of that territory as he thought proper. He had bestowed it, he said, on St. Peter, that the catholic faith might be preserved in its purity, free from the damnable heresies of the image-breaking Greeks; and all the money in the world, he added, should never make him revoke that gift, which he was determined to maintain to the church with the last drop of his blood.
Before Pepin returned to France he renewed his donation to what he called St. Peter, yielding to the catholic church represented by the Popes the Exarchate—Romagna and Marca d’Ancona, with twenty-one cities therein, to be held by them for ever; the kings of France retaining the superiority as Protectors of the Romans. Thus was the sceptre of temporal dominion added to the keys, the sovereignty to the priesthood, which was enriched by the spoils of the Lombard kings and the Roman emperors. It was a novelty among the Horns, and the beginning of the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth, and the Image of the wounded head, or of the Imperial Sixth.
After this double chastisement, the Lombards languished about twenty years in languor and decay. “On either side,” says Gibbon, “their expiring monarchy was pressed by the zeal and prudence of Pope Adrian I., the genius, the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne the son of Pepin; these heroes of the church and state were united in public and domestic friendship, and while they trampled on the prostrate, they varnished their proceedings with the fairest colors of equity and moderation.” A quarrel between Adrian and Desiderius, the last of the Lombard kings, caused the latter to ravage the Patrimony of St. Peter, and to threaten Rome itself. In order to avert the pressing danger, Adrian sent privately to Charlemagne, not only imploring his aid, but inviting him to the conquest of Italy. Having a pique of his own to avenge, he accepted the invitation with great satisfaction. Being determined to pluck up the Lombard kingdom by the roots, he passed the Alps by an unexpected route, with an overwhelming force, and falling suddenly upon the enemy, struck them with such terror that they fled in the utmost confusion. He besieged Desiderius in his capital with great vigor. While the siege was progressing under the conduct of his uncle, he visited Rome for the celebration of Easter. The pope received his deliverer in the most pompous manner, the magistrates and judges walking before him with their banners, and the clergy, always ready to flatter and fawn upon the world’s heroes, and to blaspheme those who dwell in the heaven, repeating, “Blessed is he that cometh in p. 307 the name of the Lord!” After Charlemagne had gratified his curiosity, and confirmed his father’s donation to St. Peter, he returned to the camp before Pavia, which, after a blockade of two years, was surrendered by Desiderius with the sceptre of the kingdom. Thus ended the power of the Lombards A. D. 774, after it had continued two hundred and six years. The Vandalic Horn had been annexed to Italy by Belisarius, and Italy now became the property of Charlemagne; so that the Horn of the Vandals, and the Horn of the Lombards, both included in Italy, were two of the three horns Daniel predicted would fall before the Little Horn, with Eyes and Mouth, and be “plucked up by the roots.” The third will appear in the sequel.
The question, however, concerning images, was still far from settlement, either at Rome or Constantinople, but continued to agitate the Laodicean Apostasy for many years. During the reign of Constantine Copronymus, a synod was held at Constantinople to determine the controversy. It decreed, that “every image of whatsoever materials made and formed by the artist, should be cast out of the christian churches (as they styled their temples) as a strange and abominable thing,” adding an “anathema upon all who should make images or pictures, or representations of God, or of Christ, or of the Virgin Mary, or of any of the saints,” condemning it as “a vain and diabolical invention”—deposing all bishops, and subjecting the monks and laity who should set up any of them, in public or private, to all the penalties of the imperial constitution. Paul I., then Roman Pontiff, sent his legate to Constantinople, to admonish the emperor to restore his beloved idols to their temples, threatening him with excommunication in case of refusal. But the Dragon chief treated his message with the contempt it richly deserved.
On Paul’s decease, A. D. 768, the Lion-Mouth of the Beast was represented for one year by a bishop named Constantine, who condemned the worship of idols, for which he was tumultuously deposed, and Stephen IV., a furious defender of them, substituted in his place. He forthwith assembled a council in the Lateran, where they abrogated all Constantine’s decrees, deposed all the bishops he had ordained, annulled all his baptisms and chrisms, and as some historians relate, after having beat him and used him with great indignity, made a fire in the church and burned him to death. After this cruel disposition of this papal specimen of “holiness” and “infallibility,” they annulled all the decrees of the Dragon’s council, ordered the restoration of the idols, and cursed that execrable and pernicious synod, giving the absurd and blasphemous reason for the use of images—“that if it was lawful for emperors, and those who had p. 308 deserved well of their country, to have their images erected, but not lawful to set up those of God, the condition of the immortal God would be worse than that of man.”
The fortunes of the demonials and idols were at length revived in the East. As soon as Irene reigned in her own name and that of her son Constantine Porphyrogenetus, she undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts. The first step of her future persecution was a general edict for liberty of conscience; after which she convened a general council at Nice, A. D. 787, at which the legates of the Roman Pontiff Adrian, attended, and her domestic slave the Patriarch of Constantinople, who presided. This counsel of three hundred and fifty bishops unanimously pronounced, that the worship of images is agreeable to scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church. The acts of this council are still extant; “a curious monument,” says Gibbon, of “superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly.” An illustration of the judgment of these bishops on the comparative merit of image-worship and morality, may be found in the reply of one to a certain monk, that “rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his mother in their holy images, it would be better to enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute, in the city.”
During the five succeeding reigns the contest was maintained with unabated rage and various success between the idolators and the breakers of idols. At length the enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against the Iconoclasts; and the emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by the public hatred. The final victory of the idols was achieved by Theodora, A. D. 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She ordered her Iconoclast Patriarch a whipping of two hundred lashes in commutation of the loss of his eyes; the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the demonials and idols of all metals and woods were triumphant. Rome and Italy were jubilant; while the Latins of Germany, France, England and Spain, lagged behind in the race of superstition. They admitted the idols into their spiritual bazaars, not as objects of worship, but as memorials of faith and history. Nevertheless, idolatry advanced with silent and insensible progress; but, as Gibbon remarks, “a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the reformation, and of the countries both of Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of superstition.”
26. The Further Development of the Beast of the Earth
“In the twenty-six years,” says Gibbon, “that elapsed between p. 309 the conquest of Lombardy and his imperial coronation, Rome, which had been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his own, to the sceptre of CHARLEMAGNE. The people swore allegiance to his person and family; in his name money was coined, and justice was administered; and the election of the popes was examined and confirmed by his authority. Except an original and self-inherent claim of sovereignty, there was not any prerogative remaining which the title of emperor could add to the Patrician of Rome.”
By the gift conferred upon the pretended Vicar of Christ by Pepin for the remission of his sins and the salvation of his soul, the world beheld for the first time a bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince: with the choice of magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the plucking up of the Lombard Horn by the roots, the inhabitants of the duchy of Spoleto sought a refuge from the storm, shaved their heads after the Roman fashion, declared themselves the servants and subjects of St. Peter, and completed by this voluntary surrender, the circle of the ECCLESIASTICAL STATE, or Patrimony of Saint Peter, as it existed previous to the first French Revolution. “That mysterious circle,” says Gibbon, “was enlarged to an infinite extent by the verbal or written donation of Charlemagne, who, in the first transports of his victory, despoiled himself and the Greek emperor of the cities and islands which had formerly been annexed to the Exarchate. But in the cooler moments of absence and reflection, he viewed, with an eye of jealousy and envy, the recent greatness of his ecclesiastical ally. The execution of his own and his father’s promises was respectfully eluded: the king of the Franks and the Lombards asserted the inalienable rights of the empire; and in his life and death, Ravenna, as well as Rome, was numbered in the list of his metropolitan cities. The sovereignty of the Exarchate melted away in the hands of the popes: they found in the Archbishops of Ravenna a dangerous and domestic rival: the nobles and people disdained the yoke of a priest: and in the disorders of the times, they could only retain the memory of an ancient claim, which, in a more prosperous age, they have revived and realized.” It was realized when “the Image of the Beast” was created by the Beast of the Earth in after ages.
It was after the Nicene synod, and under the reign of Irene, that the Roman Pontiffs of the Latin Idolatry consummated the separation of Rome and Italy from the Dragon of the East, by the translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. The popes were compelled to choose between the rival nations, which had been alienated from each other by the question concerning the demonials p. 310 and idols for so many years. In that schism of the Apostasy the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty. The Greek Dragon had restored the idols, but he had not restored the Calabrian estates and the Illyrian diocese, which the Iconoclasts had torn away from the so-called successors of St. Peter. This embezzlement of Peter’s goods, pope Adrian regarded as practical heresy to be punished with excommunication unless speedily repented of. The Greek emperors took a different view of the subject, and were more disposed to demand the restoration of the Exarchate, and the return of the pope from treason and rebellion to the allegiance of his rightful sovereign. But the popes had gone too far to recede; and besides Charlemagne was now the real owner of the Exarchate of Rome, and his right and power the pope was unable to alienate or abolish. Charlemagne was the Patrician of Rome, and Protector of the Romans, and consequently the Master and Protector of the pope, who was too feeble to circumvent his policy had he been so disposed. His interests, therefore, attached him to Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the western empire that they could pay their obligations to him, or secure their establishment. “By this decisive measure,” says Gibbon, “they would finally eradicate the claims of the Greeks: from the debasement of a provincial town the majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin christians would be united under a supreme head in their ancient metropolis; and the conquerors of the west would receive their crown from the successors of St. Peter. The Roman church would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and under the shadow of the Carlovingian power, the Bishop might exercise with honor and safety, the government of the city.”
But Adrian did not live to witness the execution of the projects he had formed for the exaltation of the Roman church and the French monarchy. This rising up of a grand dominion was to be consummated by his successor, Leo III.; who immediately sent to Charlemagne the standard of Rome, begging him to send some person to receive the oath of fidelity from the Romans; a most flattering instance of submission, as well as a proof that the sovereignty of Rome at that time belonged to the kings of France. Three years after, two nephews of the late pope, attacked him in the street, dispersed the unarmed multitude, wounded him in several places, and dragged him half dead into the church of St. Mark. He made his escape by the assistance of friends, who sent him under an escort to Charlemagne. He received him with all possible marks of respect, sent him back with a numerous retinue of guards and attendants, and went soon after to Italy in person to do him justice.
On the arrival of the French monarch at Rome, he spent six days p. 311 in private conference with the Pope; after which he convoked the bishops and nobles, to examine the accusation brought against the pontiff. “The apostolic see,” exclaimed the bishops, “cannot be judged by man.” Leo, however, spoke to the accusation: he said the king came to know the cause, and no proof appearing against him, he purged himself by oath.
A more extraordinary scene soon followed this trial of the pope. On the festival of Christmas, A. D. 799, as the king assisted at mass in St. Peter’s temple, in the midst of the ecclesiastical ceremonies, and while he was on his knees before the altar, the Roman Pontiff advanced and put an imperial crown upon his head. As soon as the people perceived it, they cried, “Long life and victory to Charles the most pious Augustus, crowned by the hand of God! Long life to the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans!” The head and body of Charlemagne were consecrated by the royal unction. During the acclamations, Leo conducted him to a magnificent throne, prepared for the purpose, and as soon as he was seated, after the example of the Cæsars, he was saluted or adored by the pontiff, declaring that, instead of the title of Patrician, he should henceforth style him EMPEROR and Augustus. Leo then presented him with the imperial mantle, with which being invested, Charles returned amid the acclamations of the populace to his palace.
The pope had unquestionably no right to proclaim an emperor; but Charles the Great was worthy of the imperial ensigns; and though in a certain sense a successor to Augustus, he is justly considered as the founder of the NEW EMPIRE of the West, from the establishment of which Europe dates a new era. That dominion was not unworthy of its title; for its founder reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and HUNGARY—the last of the three horns plucked up by the roots before him; the Horns of the Vandals, the Lombards, and the Huns. After a bloody conflict of eight years the relics of the nation submitted, and the rapine of the Huns, for two hundred and fifty years, enriched the victors or decorated the temples of France and Italy. After the plucking up of the Hungarian Horn, the New Dominion was bounded by the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save, with the unprofitable provinces of Istria, Liburnia and Dalmatia. The rest of the Ten Horns, which had degenerated into petty sovereignties, revered the power of Charlemagne, implored the honor and support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West. Two-thirds of the western empire of Rome were subject to him; while the other third was still possessed by the Dragon of Constantinople, in conflict with the Saracens, whose mission was to p. 312 torment, but not to kill, the body politic of the east, during two periods of five months of years each—Apoc. ix. 5, 10.
It is worthy of note here, that in treating of the enemies with which Charlemagne had to contend, the historian expresses his surprise that he should prefer attacking the poverty of the North to the riches of the South. “It was an effect of his moderation,” says Gibbon, “that he left the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the Greeks. . . . The three and thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the woods and morasses of Germany, would have sufficed to assert the amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have ensured an easy victory, and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy.” But the historian did not know, or at least recognize the truth, that Charlemagne and the Saracens were the sword of Jehovah appointed to work out his purpose, which he had revealed to his servants through the apostle John. He did not intend Charlemagne and the Saracens to destroy one another. He gave the Saracens a mission against the demonial and idol worshipers of the East and South, and when they exceeded it, he caused the grandfather of Charlemagne, named Charles Martel, to give them a signal overthrow at Chalons, A. D. 732. He treated the first Napoleon in the same way at Moscow. Charlemagne’s mission was precisely that which excited Gibbon’s surprise. He was not employed by the Eternal Spirit against the maritime dominions. Hence, what Gibbon styles “his moderation.” The providential work before him was an operation in which the Romans with all their skill and power could never succeed. His work was the subjugation of Germany. This is why he laboriously consumed thirty-three campaigns in the woods and morasses of Germany. These constituted “the Earth” out of which the Two-Horned Dominion was to ascend—the Middle Europe of our time. This was to be the arena of the Little Horn among the Ten. Besides founding a dominion over the population of these woods and forests, he was to pluck up by the roots three of the Ten Horns. This enlarged his mission to the work of annexing Italy and Hungary to his Mitteleuropische Reich, or Middle European Kingdom, as the Germans style it. By the annexation of Italy, he also annexed the Roman Church with its Universal Bishop; and in so doing he inserted a pair of Eyes and a Mouth into his Horn, of which he regarded himself as the ruling brain.
Here, then, was an imperial ecclesiastical dominion, consisting of the episcopal orders and lay nobility under a secular chief, as the ruling p. 313 power. This imperial constitution of the Beast of the Earth was predicted by John in the words, ελαλει ὡς δρακων, he spake as being a Dragon. The reader is well aware that a dragon is the symbol, both in Heraldry and the Apocalypse, of the dominion of an emperor, not of a simple king. This new power was an emperorship among neighboring kingdoms; and the large admixture of the clerical orders with the lay nobles, over whom they preponderated in the administration of state affairs, constituted it an EPISCOPAL POWER. Charlemagne seems to have foreseen that the claims of the clergy, though inactive against himself, would be urged in after times, and at length overshadow his throne. He determined, therefore, to assert the independent right of monarchy and conquest. Hence, the year before his death, A. D. 813, he summoned a parliament at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he asked every one present whether they would be pleased that he should give his son Louis, afterwards styled “the Pious,” the title of Emperor, and they assenting, made him his colleague in the empire. At his coronation he commanded Louis to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands, without intervention of pope or bishop, to place it on his head, as a gift which he held from his father, from God, and from the nation.
Charles the Great died A. D., 814, aged 72 years, having reigned forty-eight years, and as an emperor fourteen. His sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes who were already invested with their power and dominions.
27. Two Horns like a Lamb’s
The dominion ascending out of the earth and planted in Middle Europe, had that peculiarity in its constitution that would entitle it to be apocalyptically and symbolically represented by “two horns like to a lamb.”
A horn is a dynastic symbol—a symbol of power. A dominion having two horns is a sovereignty dominated by a plurality of dynastic or ruling orders, which, in their speaking or ruling, “as a dragon,” are imperial. But these two imperial dynastic orders are not compared to the horns of an antelope or a buffalo; if to the former, it would have indicated something analagous to swiftness; or to the latter, to endurance and strength; but they are likened to a lamb. Every one knows the characteristics of a lamb—meek, patient, inoffensive, and unresisting under the knife of the slayer. It is the apocalyptic symbol of Deity sacrificially manifested in the flesh, p. 314 through which the lamb-like characteristics were displayed. But it is not in this sense that we find the lamb’s horns illustrative of the character of the Beast of the Earth; for the prophecy itself shows that its ruling characteristics are the very reverse of inoffensiveness and meekness; for it causes all who do not obey its mandates to be killed.
But a lamb being symbolical of “the Shepherd and Bishop of souls,” comes also to represent things ecclesiastical. The true believers, or the saints, are all in the Lamb, because they are “in Christ,” and constitute “His Body the Ecclesia.” They are, in other words, invested or clothed with the lambskin, and the horns of an animal are appendages of its skin. Hence, “horns like a lamb” would fitly symbolize a body ecclesiastical claiming to be christian; and such a claimant might pass for christian, if things were not affirmed of it incompatible with the principles of Christ. A truly christian body would not set up an Image of the wounded sixth head of the beast to be worshiped upon the pain of death. This the Beast of the Earth was to do; and since he arose, has done. We are, therefore, under the necessity of concluding that whatever ecclesiastical domination may be represented by the sheep’s clothing, “pallium,” or state mantle, it is not a real sheep dominion, but a counterfeit: one—the Dominion of the Romish Dragon in Sheep’s clothing.
Such was the dominion of which Charlemagne was the founder in the eighth, and beginning of the ninth, centuries. These were the age of the Romish Bishops, as the eleventh and twelfth centuries were of the Popes. The Carlovingians and the Bishops were the Beast of the Earth in its primary phase. The position assumed by Charlemagne was military, civil and ecclesiastical. He was head of the church and head of the state. “The sovereign,” says Hallam, “who maintained with the greatest vigor his ecclesiastical supremacy was Charlemagne. Most of the capitularies of his reign relate to the discipline of the church. Some of his regulations are such as men of high-church principles would, even in modern times, deem infringements of spiritual independence.” He enacted of his own will that “no legend of doubtful authority should be read in the churches, but only the canonical books, and that no saint should be honored whom the whole church did not acknowledge. These were not passed in a synod of bishops, but enjoined by the sole authority of the emperor, who seems to have arrogated a legislative power over the church which he did not possess in temporal affairs. Many of his other laws relating to the ecclesiastical constitution, are enacted in a general council of the lay nobility as well as of the prelates, and are so blended with those of a secular nature, that the two orders may appear to have equally consented to the whole. But whatever share p. 315 we may imagine the laity in general to have had in such matters, Charlemagne himself did not consider even theological decisions as beyond his province; and in more than one instance, manifested a determination not to surrender his own judgment, even in questions of that nature, to any ecclesiastical authority.
“This part of Charlemagne’s conduct is duly to be taken into the account, before we censure his vast extension of ecclesiastical privileges. Nothing was more remote from his character than the bigotry of those weak princes who have suffered the clergy to reign under their names. He acted upon a systematic plan of government, conceived by his own comprehensive genius, but requiring too continual an application of similar talents for durable execution. It was the error of a superior mind, zealous for religion and learning, to believe that men (the clergy) dedicated to the functions of the one, and possessing what remained of the other, might, through strict rules of discipline, enforced by the constant vigilance of the sovereign, become fit instruments to reform and civilize a barbarous empire. It was the error of a magnanimous spirit to judge too favorably of human nature, and to presume that great trusts would be fulfilled, and great benefits remembered.
It is highly probable, indeed, that an ambitious hierarchy did not endure without reluctance this imperial supremacy of Charlemagne, though it was not expedient for them to resist a prince so formidable, and from whom they had so much to expect. But their dissatisfaction at a scheme of government incompatible with their own objects of perfect independence, produced a violent recoil under Louis the Debonair (Charlemagne’s son and successor) who attempted to act the Censor of ecclesiastical abuses with as much earnestness as his father, though with very inferior qualifications for so delicate an undertaking. The bishops (the Romish Wolves in sheep’s clothing) accordingly, were among the chief instigators of those numerous revolts of his children which harassed this emperor. They set, upon one occasion, the first example of a usurpation which was to become very dangerous to society, the deposition of sovereigns by ecclesiastical authority. Louis, a prisoner in the hands of his enemies, had been intimidated enough to undergo a public penance; and the Bishops pretended that, according to a canon of the church, he was incapable of returning after to a secular life, or preserving the character of sovereignty. Circumstances enabled him to retain the empire, in defiance of this sentence; but the church (the two horns like a lamb) had tasted the pleasures of trampling upon crowned heads, and was eager to repeat the experiment. Under the disjointed and feeble administration of his posterity in their several kingdoms the p. 316 Bishops availed themselves of more than one opportunity to exalt their temporal power. Those weak Carlovingian princes, in their mutual animosities. encouraged the pretensions of a common enemy. Thus, Charles the Bald, and Louis of Bavaria, having driven their brother Lothaire from his dominions, held an assembly of some bishops, who adjudged him unworthy to reign, and after exacting a promise from the two allied brothers to govern better than he had done, permitted and commanded them to divide his territories. After concurring in this unprecedented encroachment, Charles the Bald had little right to complain when, some years afterwards, an assembly of bishops declared himself to have forfeited his crown, released his subjects from their allegiance, and transferred his kingdom to Louis of Bavaria. But, in truth, he did not pretend to deny the principle which he had contributed to maintain. Even in his own behalf he did not appeal to the rights of sovereigns, and of the nation they represented. ‘No one,’ said this degenerate grandson of Charlemagne, ‘ought to have degraded me from the throne to which I was consecrated, until, at least, I had been heard and judged by the Bishops, through whose ministry I was consecrated, who are called the Thrones of God in which God sitteth, and by whom he dispenses his judgments; to whose paternal chastisement I was willing to submit, and do still submit myself.’ ”
These are very remarkable passages, and throw considerable light upon the episcopal and ecclesiastical character of the new dominion of the earth. “It seemed,” says Hallam, “as if Europe was about to pass under as absolute a domination of the hierarchy, as had been exercised by the priesthood of ancient Egypt, or the Druids of Gaul.” Such was the appearance of things which did not belie the reality; so that the appearance, the reality, and the apocalyptic representation thereof are found to be in harmony. What could more fitly symbolize a dominion in which the episcopal orders were the controlling element than a beast with two horns like a Lamb, and speaking as a Dragon? The sheep’s clothing was a mantle of the imperiality, and strikingly significant when we come to know the customs peculiar to the Romish, or Latin, church. Dr. Keith quotes from “Rome in the XIXth Century,” the following: “There is a peculiar sort of blessing given to two lambs on Jan. 21, at the church of St. Agnes without the walls; from the sainted fleeces of which are manufactured, I believe, by the hands of nuns, two holy mantles called pallj, which the pope presents to the Archbishops as his principal shepherds.” This was a literal investiture with sheep’s clothing, which was completed in the Mitre with its two horns, originally springing up right and left over each ear.
p. 317 In one of his notes, Mr. Elliott informs the reader, that the Jesuit, Joseph Acosta, after approvingly stating the common patristic idea, that the second beast symbolized “a multitude of Antichrist’s preachers on whom are the horns of a lamb, because through hypocrisy they pretend that they are saints,” proceeds to express his opinion that probably some eminent church dignitary, supporting Antichrist, might very possibly be specially intended; because of two Lamb’s horns being the symbol of the episcopal dignity: “quendam acerrimum Antichristi defensorem; eum merito non regem, aut militem, sed virum in ecclesiâ insignem, quod duo agni cornua episcopalis dignitatis insigne sint.”
Another Jesuit named Lacunza in considering the beast of the earth’s lamb-like horns, seems to have recognized their identity with the priesthood to which he belonged. “Our priesthood it is,” he exclaims, “and nothing else, which is here signified under the metaphor of a beast with two horns like those of a lamb.”
Elliot also quotes from a work styled “The Church of our Fathers” in which the author in his chapter on the Mitre, observes how at the opening of the eleventh century, shortly after the Pope’s complete subordination of the Western Clergy to himself, the first sproutings, as it were, of the two horns began to show themselves: and how the mitre then in England “arose into two short points, not raised before and behind as now, but right and left over each ear.” He illustrates from figures on the font in Winchester Cathedral, as given in the Vetusta Monumenta. Bonanni remarks that the Greek Bishops do not use the mitre. It is a Latin distinctive.
Thus, the Spirit foreseeing that the Latin Episcopacy of the Western division of the Apostasy would symbolize its ecclesiastical dignity by a two-horned mitre and the fleeces of lambs, adopted them for the apocalyptic symbol of a dominion to arise in the midst of Europe the most striking characteristic of which would be its hierarchial and episcopal, so-called “Holy Roman,” constitution. In other words, the two episcopal lamb’s horns are to the beast of the earth what the “Eyes like the eyes of a man” are to Daniel’s Little Horn. The eyes and the lamb’s horns represent the same constituent of the dominion—the ecclesiastical orders of abbots, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes; a hierarchy of “Holy Orders” so-called which still support and overshadow the secular thrones of the Latin world.
Charles the Fat was the last emperor of Charlemagne’s family. From his abdication to the establishment of Otho the First may be deemed a vacancy of seventy four years. His father Henry the Fowler, by birth a Saxon, was elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to p. 318 save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. In the north, he propagated the two-horned superstition by the sword, and subjected the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder to its authority. He planted German colonies in the marshes of Brandenburg and Sleswig; and the king of Denmark, and the dukes of Poland and Bohemia confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the Pope, and finally fixed the crown of the Two-Horned Romish Episcopal Dragon in the name and nation of Germany. “From that memorable era” (A. D. 962) says Gibbon, “two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time; first, that the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired at that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome: Second; But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman Pontiff.”
The popes had not yet reached the height of their ambition. The secular constituent of the beast was still the imperial master of the popes. This will appear from the established order of their election from A. D. 800 to A. D. 1060. On the death of a pope, the seven cardinal-bishops of Ostia, Porto, Velitra, Tusculum, Præneste, Tibur, and the Sabines, the suburban dioceses of the Roman province, recommended a successor to the suffrage of the college of cardinals, and their choice was ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman people. But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be legally consecrated till the emperor, the Advocate of the Church, had graciously signified his approbation and consent. The imperial commission examined, on the spot, the form and freedom of the proceedings; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the qualification of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of fidelity, and confirmed the donations which had successively enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent schisms, the rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor; and in a synod of bishops he judged, condemned, and punished, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the candidate most acceptable to his majesty: his successors anticipated or prevented their choice; and bestowed the Roman benefice, as they bestowed the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on the chancellors or preceptors.
It is unnecessary to adduce any further historical illustration of this two-horned dominion of the earth. Enough has been cited for its identification. The history of the Holy Roman or German empire p. 319 is the history of the beast of the earth with two horns like to a lamb, and speaking as a dragon. I shall therefore conclude this section in the words of Gibbon, that in the fourteenth century “the hereditary monarchs of Europe (the Ten Horns) confessed the pre-eminence of the German Cæsar’s rank and dignity; he was the first of the christian (catholic) princes, the temporal head of the great Republic of the West; to his person the title of majesty was long appropriated; and he disputed with the Pope the sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The oracle of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of Charles IV; and his school resounded with the doctrine, that the Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the earth from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was condemned, not as an error, but as a heresy, since even the gospel had pronounced, “And there went forth a decree, that all the world should be taxed.”
28. The Episcopal Beast causeth the Earth to Worship the First Beast
“And he exerciseth all the authority of the first beast in its presence; and causeth that the earth and the dwellers therein worship the first beast, the plague of whose death was healed”—Ver. 12.
It is evident, from the last clause of this verse, that “the first beast” referred to in that clause is not the whole of the Ten Horns, nor all the Seven Heads, but only one particular head. We are authorized to say this, because “the plague” is, in the third verse, affirmed of “one of the heads” of the Beast of the Sea—of only one of them. This is the special import of the phrase in this clause; but in the first clause of the text, “the first beast” must be understood in a more general sense. The Episcopal Power “exerciseth all the authority of the first beast in its presence”—ενωπιον. Though the secular authority of the emperors of the Holy Roman dominion, on the accession of the Saxon line, did not extend over France, which is one of the ten horns, the episcopal authority of the dominion was dominant in all the countries of Europe. It may therefore be truly said, that the Episcopal Beast of the Earth exercised all the authority of the first beast’s horns “in its presence.” This “presence” is illustrated by Daniel’s Little Horn standing contemporaneously in the midst of the Ten Horns; and besides occupying its own German territory, also standing upon that of the Vandals, Lombards, and Huns. From these considerations, it is regarded in the prophecy as the chief authority among the powers of the imperial republic of the p. 320 west. In fact, this thirteenth chapter is a symbolical exposition of the constitution of Modern Europe in its civil and ecclesiastical relations. It does not undertake to exhibit it in all the phases it has assumed in the course of over a thousand years; but only an heraldic representation sufficiently striking for a ready recognition by those servants of the Deity who have made themselves acquainted with the things that have been, and those which do exist. The recognition of the “Holy Apostolic” Cæsars by the hereditary monarchs of Europe, as the supreme majesty of their political system, as testified in the concluding words of the previous section, constituted their order “the Sun” of the European firmament. The reader will please bear this in mind, for it was upon this Sun that the Fourth Angel poured out his vial; and in so doing scorched men with fire—Apoc. xvi. 8, 9.
Now, this Imperio-Episcopal, or Little Horn, power “causeth that the earth and the dwellers therein worship the first beast, the plague of whose death was healed.” In other words, causeth that the tribes, and tongues, and nations referred to in the seventh verse, worship, or do homage to, the Sixth Head, or form of government, common to the Dragon and Beast of the Sea. The phase “the First Beast” is evidently elliptical; and stands for “the Sixth Head of the First Beast;” for this was the only head of the Seven that was healed, or restored to sovereignty in Rome.
The re-establishment of Imperialism upon the Seven Mountains, signalized by the coronation of Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans, by the hand of the Chief Bishop of the New Empire, was the healing of the Sixth Head so grievously wounded by the Gothic sword. Rome was no longer in the rank to which she had been reduced by Justinian’s “Pragmatic Sanction” of A.D. 554. This ordinance placed her among the cities of the second rank in the Græco-Roman, or Byzantine, empire; but by her becoming the capital of the Holy Romano-Francic, and afterwards Romano-Germanic, dominion, she was restored to the imperial, or dragonic, sovereignty; and the plague of her death was healed.
This was a great revolution in the fortunes of the so-called “Eternal City.” By the restoration of Western Imperialism, an Eighth Form of Government, styled in Apoc. xvii. 8, “the beast that was, and is not, yet is,” was established upon the Seven Mountains. In the seventeenth chapter, the two-horned episcopal element of the Beast of the Earth is replaced by the Great Harlot Mother of the Churches of the Gentiles; while the secular element is expanded into the Scarlet-colored Beast, symbolical of Ezekiel’s Magogian confederacy of powers, which is the last phase of Daniel’s Fourth Beast—the p. 321 Eighth Head in its final manifestation, which, John says, “is of the Seven, and goeth into perdition”—a confederacy in which the European imperiality and royalties combine against Christ and the Saints in the war of the great day of God Almighty—Apoc. xvii. 14; xvi. 14; xix. 19-21.
But the development of the Sixth Head of the Beast into the Eighth, was not only the healing of the plague of death, but it signalized the termination of the third part of the day, and the third part of the night, during which the third of the sun, moon, and stars of the Roman Firmament, heaven, or Aerial, were to be darkened, or eclipsed, by the judgment of the Fourth Wind-Trumpet—Apoc. viii. 12. This period of two hundred and forty years having elapsed, Charlemagne, the Sovereign of Rome and Italy, was no longer content with the substance of imperial authority and the title of PATRICIAN OF ROME inherited from Pepin, which only represented the service and alliance of the Frank monarchs as Protectors of the Roman Pontiff and his church: he was ambitious of shining in the splendor of imperiality, as the coequal in the Roman Air of the Constantinopolitan emperors. This honor, however, he was providentially restrained from till the 240 years were expired; but after this, as we have already seen, on Dec. 25, 799, he added to his title of Patrician, that of Augustus, and Emperor of the Romans. Thus the eclipse of the third of Rome’s day ended, the plague of the first beast’s death was healed, and all of whom there hath not been written the names in the book of life from the foundation of the world, were caused to wonder or adore—ch. xvii. 8.
29. Fire Descending from the Heaven
“And he works great wonders, so that he causeth fire also to descend out of the heaven into the earth in the presence of the men”—Ver. 13.
The wonder-worker is the Beast of the Earth, or New Power; hence the σημεια wrought must have been such “wonders” as military and ecclesiastical human powers have the ability and are known to work. In other words, they were wonderful, or remarkable, events, brought to pass by fraud and battle, “in the presence of the men” of the tribes, tongues, and nations of the European “Wilderness”—ch. xvii. 3. The thirty-three campaigns of Charlemagne in the woods and forests of Germany, in which he subjugated the pagan aborigines of that country, and imposed upon them the superstition of the Roman Priesthood, were among the wonders whereby fire was caused to descend upon them out of the heaven. The wars of Otho the First, by which the limits of his kingdom, which his father, Henry p. 322 the Fowler, had transferred from the French to the Germans, were enlarged on every side; and by which the Two-Horned Superstition was propagated northward, and forced upon the Sclavonian nations of the Elbe and Oder; the marches of Brandenburg and Sleswig, Poland and Bohemia—were also “great wonders, causing fire to descend out of the heaven,” in which the Two-Horned Beast of the Earth was enthroned. The “fire” which descended was the consuming wrath of the Little Horn, ministered by this military apostle of the dragon-speaking beast of the earth, Otho the First. “Fire,” says Daubuz, “with such adjuncts as betoken that it is not put for light, denotes destruction, or torment, great sickness, war and its dismal effects; and is thus used in Isai. xlii. 25; lxvi. 15; Ezek. xxii. 20-22; Zech. xiii. 9. So Persecution is represented by fire, 1 Peter i. 7; iv. 12; 1 Cor. iii. 13, 15. So in the Andromache of Euripides, ver. 147, δια πυρος, through fire, signifies through murder. And thus Sophocles calls the mischief done by the Sphinx to Thebes, ‘a foreign flame of mischief.’” Fire from heaven signifies the commination of persons in authority—their denunciations of vengeance and punishment, as well as their wrath and fury in actual manifestation.
Fire proceeded out of the mouth of the Deity’s two prophets, symbolized by the two olive trees and two candlesticks—Apoc. xi. 5. The reader will note the different sources of the Beast’s fire, and the fire of the two witnesses. The fire of the Beast comes from “the heaven” in which the beast reigns; but the fire of the two prophets proceeds out of their mouth. They devoured their enemies with this fire; in other words, they killed them. Their enemies are apocalyptically symbolized by the Beast of the Sea and the Beast of the Earth, and the image of the Sixth Head of the Beast, which is the False Prophet that worked wonders in the presence of the Ten Horns, by which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshiped his image—ch. xix. 20. These made war upon all the inhabitants of the European Wilderness who did not worship them, whether they were Slavic pagans, the Two Witnesses, or the Saints. The Slavonians and the Witnesses fought the fire of the beast’s heaven with the fire of their own power, though in the end they had to succumb; the fire of their mouth was extinguished by the prevailing of the beast against them.
But the fire of the Two Horned Beast’s heaven, which the authorities of that aerial were able to cause to flame forth with scorching and destructive effect, did not consist solely in war and its calamities. Had the beast consisted solely and simply of a secular military power, its fire would have been restricted to its warlike operations; but it did not. It is also an ecclesiastical power; therefore its fire must be p. 323 more or less of an episcopal character. Ecclesiastical fire is the flashing and forked lightnings of episcopal wrath, thundered against kings, nations, and peoples obnoxious to its displeasure. This fire used to be consuming and terrible, and was ministered by the Two Horns like a Lamb, or the Romish Episcopacy, whose judicial fire is its anathemas, or curses, and excommunications, executed by the secular authorities in all the Horn-Kingdoms of the European Commonwealth. These are sometimes called “the Thunders of the Vatican,” whence they rolled forth, echoing through the heaven by the co-operation of the clergy. These lightnings and thunderbolts, as the Romanists themselves style them, were hurled by Pope Innocent, the Roman Jupiter Tonans, in the Council at Lyons against the emperor Frederick, A.D. 1245, to the great terror of the bystanders. “These words,” says the record, “uttered in the midst of the Council struck the hearers with terror as might the flashing thunderbolts. When, with candles lighted and flung down, the Lord Pope and his assistant prelates flashed their lightning fire terribly against the emperor Frederick, now no longer to be called emperor, his procurators and friends burst into bitter wailing, and struck the thigh or breast. ‘That day,’ said one of them, ‘that day of wrath, of calamity, and of woe!’” The flinging down of lighted candles from an elevated position by the excommunicators, a mimic representation of fire from heaven, was the usual accompaniment of the solemn and great excommunication pronounced annually at the feast Cœna Domini by the Pope in person, his Cardinals and his Priesthood, against all heretics from the elevated Vestibule of the Lateran Temple at Rome; and was directed to be practised by the Romish Bishops elsewhere also on certain solemn occasions.
In the nineteenth century and in protestant countries we have no experience of the effects of this ecclesiastical fire from heaven. It is now as harmless as the faintest sheet lightning. Even in Italy the papal bolts are ineffective and despised. Not so, however, in centuries past. The estate or person of the excommunicated might be attached by the magistrate; and marks of abhorrence and ignominy attended these penalties. They were to be shunned, like men infected with leprosy, by their friends, their families, and servants. Two attendants only remained with Robert, king of France, who on account of an irregular marriage, was put to this ban by Gregory V., and a Roman Council, A. D. 997. The Beautés de l’Histoire de France, p. 104, thus describes the result: “Excommunication was at this epoch a terrible weapon in the hands of the sovereign Pontiff. Every one fled with horror from him who had been struck by it. The lords broke off all commerce with the king. There hardly remained any p. 324 attendants with him to serve him. And these threw all the fragments of his table into the fire rather than eat them.” The mere intercourse with a proscribed person incurred the “lesser excommunication,” or privation of the sacraments, and required penitence and absolution. In some places, a bier was set before the door of an excommunicated individual, and stones thrown at his windows. Every where the excommunicated were debarred of a regular burial. Their carcasses were supposed to be incapable of corruption, which was thought a privilege unfit for those who had died in so irregular a manner.
But as excommunication, which descended from the heaven only upon one and perhaps an obdurate sinner, was not always efficacious, the Lamb-Horned constituent of the beast had recourse to a more scorching and comprehensive punishment. For the offence of a nobleman, the ecclesiastical power put a county, for that of a prince, his entire kingdom, under an interdict, or suspension of religious offices. No stretch of tyranny was more fiery than this. During an interdict, the Saints’ Bazaars, in which the clergy “who have the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name,” trade their wares, were closed, the bells silent, the dead unburied, no rite but those of sprinkling and extreme unction performed. This fiery wrath descended upon those who had neither partaken of, nor could have prevented the offence, which was often but a private dispute, in which the pride of a pope or bishop had been wounded.
This fire issuing from the beast’s heaven and descending episcopally “in the presence of the men,” or “of the beast,” ver. 14, was the motive power of the machinery worked by the clergy, the lever by which they moved. “From the moment,” says Hallam, “that these interdicts and excommunications had been tried, (and they originated subsequently to the ascent of the beast out of the earth,) the powers of the earth might be said to have existed only by sufferance.” The party scathed by this episcopal lightning had no remedy but submission. He who disregards such a sentence, says Beaumanoir, renders his good cause bad. “One is rather surprised,” continues Hallam, “at the instances of failure, than of success, in the employment of these spiritual weapons against sovereigns, or the laity in general. It was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for Europe, that they were not introduced, upon a large scale, during the darkest ages of superstition. In the eighth or ninth centuries they would probably have met with a more implicit obedience. But after Gregory the Seventh (the notorious Hildebrand, elected pope A.D. 1073) as the spirit of ecclesiastical usurpation grew more violent, there grew up by slow degrees an opposite feeling in the laity, which ripened into p. 325 an alienation of sentiment from the church, and a conviction of that sacred truth, which superstition and sophistry have endeavored to eradicate from the heart of man, that no tyrannical government can be founded on a divine commission.” I shall close this section with the remark, that Hallam’s so-called “sacred truth,” is in direct opposition to Paul’s declaration in Rom. xiii. 1, that “there is no power but from Deity; and that existing powers have been put under Deity.” The tyrannical governments of “the Earth” and “the Sea,” are ordained of him as his sword, to punish with war and other tormenting oppressions, the evil doers of the Apostasy for their abominations, and blasphemies uttered against Him “to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and the dwellers in the heaven;” until the time shall come to give judgment to the saints, whose mission it will then be “to execute vengeance upon the nations and punishment upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron: to execute upon them the judgment written: this honor have all the Saints”—Ps. cxlix. 7-9. This will be “fire descending from the Deity out of heaven, and devouring them,” at whatever epoch it may flame.