The Synod of Elvira in 4th Century Prohibited Images

Discussion in 'Church History' started by Stalwart, Jul 3, 2019.

  1. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I wonder why this historic fact does not figure more into the discussion of images? I have only recently learned about it, and it fits the outlines of Patristic doctrine on images we can glean from other sources, such as St Epiphanius and St Augustine, who were emphatically against the use of images in a Divine Service.
     
  2. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    What do you mean by prohibited images in Divine Service? Do you. mean churches could not have paintings or statues or what?
     
  3. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Right. Here is the CCEL reference for the synod/council of Elvira (dated to around 306 AD):
    http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc2.v.vi.xv.html

    And here is what it states:
    (Latin): "Placuit picturas in ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur."

    "There shall be no pictures in the church, lest what is worshipped and adored should be depicted on the walls."


    It follows, therefore, that the Anglican Church follows the pristine faith of the Fathers, and both the Roman and the (Byzantine) eastern Orthodox depart from the faith on this matter.
     
  4. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    The Council of Elvira was only for Spain and it region. It had no powers outside of that region. I am not sure that it speaks authoritatively and it points towards pictures being common, or else why would they single it out, and unless I can find some other sources that speak like that I don't see how this proves anything other than a snap shot in one regions history.
     
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  5. Peteprint

    Peteprint Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I would agree that no one council can define what the Church believes (other than an Ecumenical Council), and I think the historical evidence clearly shows that image veneration was an innovation.

    St. John of Damascus' arguments notwithstanding, when we consider the Jewish roots of Christianity, the veneration of images is even more unusual. It was obviously a concession to the pagan communities that Christianity took root in, just as the patron saints took the place of certain pagan deities.

    I love religious art for decorative, inspirational, and educational purposes, but I no longer reverence images since leaving the Orthodox Church. My salvation doesn't depend on it, one way or the other.
     
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  6. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Oh I certainly wouldn't argue that it was on a level of Ecumenical Council and canonically binding on the whole church catholic.

    The only thing I was saying was that it adds to our portrait of the Patristic doctrine on images in divine worship, in that in some parts of the early church it even reached the level of local councils. So it's not just an impression that hangs on one statement from a St. Epiphanius, or from a St. Augustine any more, but a more broader wide-sweeping consensus.

    Not only did the Church of Spain embody this in her ancient canons, but the other Churches did not see it in any way disagreeable enough to record an objection. So this is at least a tacit approval even from the Fathers whose thoughts we don't have on the issue. They hear that a church council in Spain makes this declaration, and say hey, nothing here goes against my beliefs enough to really object to.
     
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  7. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    Many of the canons were incorporated into other places but from what I read was that the prohibition on pictures were not never picked up anywhere else. It does add to our portrait and I thank you for bringing this council to my attention.
     
  8. Botolph

    Botolph Well-Known Member

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synod_of_Elvira

    The dating of canon 33 may not be as simple as at first thought, as it may well be a later interpolation, perhaps in order to argue a case later as having some authority from earlier times.
     
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  9. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I think there is no question that after the Patristic era, the church Catholic began to deviate from the pristine faith, in some parts faster and in some parts slower. In the East, the patristic side was soundly defeated in the 2nd Council of Nicea. However in the West, the images were prohibited in worship as late as the 8th and 9th centuries and the 2nd Council of Nicea was not accepted as valid. Of course by the 11th century, the Bishop of Rome did endorse the 2nd Council as valid, and both halves of the church catholic firmly rejected the patristic doctrine, until the Reformation cleaned that up (not without its own issues obviously).
     
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  10. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    I was under the impression from my reading of Church History that the Pope always was in support pictures and was a big proponent of what the 2nd Council of Nicea proclaimed about them. I tend to accept all 7 Ecumenical Councils though
     
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  11. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    On the contrary, the ISIS destroyed synagogue at Dura Europos proves icons were a part of ancient Judaism. The historical evidence points to iconoclasm dating from the 6th century.
     
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  12. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I would also note Elvira predates Nicea and could well have been heterodox according to the later formations.
     
  13. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    That is simply inaccurate - Iconoclasm was a specifically Byzantine problem and Rome always accepted icons, which is why you find examples of Romanesque iconography that predates the Great Schism.

    And the Reformation never happened in the East; the Nikonian controversy in Russia caused, in addition to the Old Believers, some doomsday cults, the Molokans, a Judaizing sect, and a group of Unitarians known as the Doukhobors, who with the financial backing of Tolstoy and his circle, emigrated to Western Canada and annoyed the population for several decades with nude marches and arson attacks over the issue of public schooling. So, there is nothing we can say that ever appeared in the Eastern churches natively, which looks anything like an organic, locally initiated attempt at reformation, which to me settles the doctrine.

    The Roman Church because of its abusive nature and increasingly heterodox theology experienced the Reformation, because Christians will not withstand that. And of the churches produced by the Reformation, the Anglicans and to a lesser degree the Lutherans, especially post-1800, began to closely resemble the Orthodox Church in terms of worship, ecclesiology and iconography. Although I would state, I should prefer it if Anglican churches focused more on implementing neo-Romanesque and Gothic iconography, rather than the recent trend installing Byzantine-rite icons in the nave, or the pure horror of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco*, which abuses the Orthodox liturgical patrimony by painting a ceiling with Byzantine style icons of chaps like the Khangxi Emperor and John Coltrane, and which further profanes our paschal services, and especially the funeral liturgy, through the incorporation of heterodox practices from the Shaker cult, which is now nearly extinct, and the Shinto religion.

    *At this point given the dubious legacy of Bishop James Pike, one groans in anticipation of what is to come, but surprisingly, the Anglican Province of Christ the King has their seminary across the bay in Berkeley.
     
  14. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    The synagogue at Dura Europos dates from the 3rd or 4th century AD, if I'm not mistaken. In other words, it is a witness to the emerging Talmudic Judaism, which is not a faithful or orthodox Judaism in the traditional Old Testament sense.


    I don't disagree with that. It's quite possible that Council of Elvira could have been considered heterodox according to Nicea II. Which just goes to show what a drastic change of theology took place between the patristic era of Elvira and the medieval era represented by Nicea II. But nothing guarantees Nicea II itself to have been infallible. You have one council against another. Nicea II wasn't really ecumenical because the Western church was not present at it, and from its passing for several centuries had rejected and denied it. All which shows that the patristic doctrine on images (Elvira, St. Epiphanius, St. Augustine, etc) lasted longer in the West than it did in the East.

    The only way we can condemn Elvira and extol Nicea II is if we believe that what happens later is always better than what happened earlier. According to the Anglican hermeneutic, it is possible that what happened later could be worse than what happened earlier. We believe that ecclesiastical corruption is possible, and thus must always go to the earliest and most pristine sources for all our beliefs.


    Nope, it is a famous fact in the history of the church that Charlemagne prohibited the edits of Nicea II in the Western church. For many centuries afterwards, the list of councils used in the Western church excluded Nicea II, skipping from 7th century to 9th century, 11th century, etc. Nicea II for 3-4 centuries was erased from Western history, as incompatible with orthodoxy.

    Yes, after the 8th century the Popes have pushed ever so slightly for its acceptance, violating the norms of Charlemagne in various churches under their control. Around the 12th century Nicea II was coverly included among the list of ecumenical councils, and has stayed there ever since. But to this day there is no official document which ratifies the acceptance of Nicea II by the western church. It was snuck in, in the later middle ages.


    Completely agree!
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2019
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  15. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    The edict against the Second Council of Nicea issued from some Frankish Bishops was condemned by the Pope and the Pope upheld the Second Council of Nicea. In fact that Franks were working with a faulty translation and the work was banished until the reformation. The Papal Legates approved it and the Pope's always supported the party of the images.
     
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  16. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I have to look into it further, because this is such arcane knowledge that almost nobody today knows all the facts surrounding the contested reception of Nicea II in the western church.

    But even if we grant that the Popes were always on the side of images, the fact is that they didn't become what the Popes are today, until much later. As we know from patristic and even 8th century AD history, they did not assert a claim of universal jurisdiction over the Catholic Church, until the period from 8th to the 12th centuries (by the end of which, yes, you have the Popes finally claiming universal jurisdiction, and injecting Nicea II into the list of ecumenical councils). So even if the Popes were on the side of Nicea II, that doesn't mean that the Western Church was. You even briefly mention the Frankish Bishops, which shows where The Bishops stood on images, even as late as the 8th century AD. There is a direct line from Epiphanius to Elvira to Augustine to councils in the 5th-6th centuries, to Charlemagne and the 8th century Western church. That line slowly becomes extinguished by the 12th century, only to be re-affirmed in the 16th century at the Reformation.
     
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  17. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

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    The Frankish Bishops were against 2nd Nicea because of a faulty translations and they gave into the Pope pretty easy. There might be an argument to be made that it was a change from Patrasitic doctrine but 2nd Nicea was well received by the Western Church and the Pope. That much is pretty clear. Although I accept the first 7 Councils so I might be a bit biased
     
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  18. Botolph

    Botolph Well-Known Member

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    That is really not a good reason to discount the oecumenical nature of the Council. Pope Sylvester 1 was not present at Nicaea 1 though he had delegates, and Constantinople 1 was essentially an Eastern Council, and Pope Damasus I sent legates to the Council. The question of the Oecumenicity of the Council is more about it being accepted by the Patriarchs. Elvira was an Iberian Council, with 19 bishops and 24 priests, primarily from southern Spain, assembled with the intention of restoring order and discipline in the local church.

    36. Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration.

    41. Christians are to prohibit their slaves from keeping idols in their houses. If this is impossible to enforce, they must at least avoid the idols and remain pure. If this does not happen, they are alienated from the church.

    http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Canon Law/ElviraCanons.htm

    Nicaea 2 was attended by 308 Bishops and again Papal Legates who approved the lifting of the iconoclasm from the Council of Council of Hieria. One of the big differences to the environment of Nicaea 2 was of course the rise of Islam, which carried with it a strong iconoclastic approach. The objections to Nicaea 2 came from Charlemagne and the Frankish Court, yet it should be remembered that both Pepin the Short and Charlemagne had great suspicions when it came to the Byzantines, and territorial ambitions in the East.
     
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  19. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    On the contrary, Talmudic Judaism is iconoclastic, and did not emerge in anything like what we have today until the 8th and 9th century AD, but was still yet to undergo further radical changes, under the Islamic-influenced philosophy of Maimonides.

    In contrast, ancient Judaism had iconography, for example, in the winged angels on the Ark of the Covenant (which probably still exists, contrary to popular belief; there is compelling evidence to suggest the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has the Ark of the Covenant, and this was removed from the First Temple by the son of Queen Kandake and King Solomon). And Ethiopian Judaism also has iconography. So the question then becomes, from whence did iconoclasm come, and is it authentically Anglican?

    On the former point, I believe Iconoclasm was the result of an Islamic misinterpretation of Jewish scriptural texts. It is well established that iconoclasm began in the Byzantine Empire as a desparate move, in response to the iconoclastic Muslims having a string of military successes against Byzantium. But ultimately, icons were restored in 843 in the Triumph of Orthodoxy, and their absence had no positive military effects for the Byzantines; the Ummayid Caliphate simply outmatched them, and the Empire’s chickens came home to roost, that is to say, the real sin of the Byzantine Empire was relentless persecution of the Assyrians and the Oriental Orthodox, who accounted for the majority of Christians in Egypt and several other critical places. So the Coptic and Syriac Orthodox churches and the Assyrian Church of the East wound up faring much better under the Ummayid regime. Later, under the Fatimids, with the insane caliph Al Hakim, who members of the peculiar Druze religion believe to be God, the Christians suffered considerably, Oriental and Eastern Orthodox, and the schism was blurred. And Armenia, like Byzantium, was eventually conquered, so only the Ethiopians retained their own state continually. The interesting thing about all of these apostolic churches is they all venerate (doulia), but prohibit the worship (latria) of icons, and before Nicea II, there were Iconolaters who would do things like scrape paint off an icon and put it into the Eucharistic chalice.

    Now is iconoclasm authentically Anglican? I think not. The worst excesses in terms of the horrible destruction of artwork and iconography in English cathedrals were committed by the Puritan faction, which was opposed to bishops, the Book of Common Prayer, and so on. Rather, both as witnessed by the lack of iconoclasm in some parts of of England (where most of the surviving Rood Screens, the Western form of the iconostasis, prohibited due to Franciscan and Dominican influence at the Council of Trent and removed from most Roman Catholic churches in the first wave of “wreckovations”, and explained properly as Anglicanism matured under the guidance of eminent authorities such as the Caroline Divines, the Scottish Non Jurors, the Tractarians, and later authorities such as Percy Dearmer, several of the 39 Articles do not mean what the Puritans took them to mean. Article XXII prohibits the worshipping and adoration of relics and images, iconolatria, or idolatry, which had by the 16th century become a major problem in the Roman Church, along with purgatory, and indeed the worship and adoration of relics and images is forbidden in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental churches, and the doctrine of purgatory rejected. Worship and adoration is due only to God; of the saints, they are worthy of veneration, as are icons and relics thereof, and the Virgin Mary, whose perpetual virginity was accepted by Luther, Calvin and Wesley, is worthy of what the Byzantines call hyperdoulia, which is still not worship. It should also be noted that the Byzantines, that is to say, the Eastern Orthodox, go beyond the other ancient churches in terms of how they venerate icons, but at the same time prohibit statues and take other measures to avoid even the possibility of idolatry, and in ecumenical discussions, no one has accused them of idolatry. John Calvin was in error in calling them “the worst of idolaters”, and while Anglicanism does contain the better parts of Calvinist thought, it is not the Church of Scotland, thankfully, but even the Presbyterians and other Calvinist churches largely changed their mind and implemented iconography in the form of stained glass windows, et cetera, perhaps under the influence of Mercersburg Theology.

    So we must take care to differentiate what the Puritans, non-conformists and others did in areas where they had power and influence, particularly under Oliver Cromwell, with the authentic doctrine of the Church of England. And it is right of the Church of England in Article XXII, and the old Methodist Episcopal Church in Article XIV of their reduced 25 articles, to prohibit the worship of icons and idolatry, and to condemn the doctrine of purgatory; these actually remain legitimate problems in the Roman Catholic Church even now.

    Alas I was not referring to the Second Council of Nicea but to the first, in 325. The Synod of Elvira predating it, and Spain having been a known hotbed of heresy until the 1500s, including Gnosticism, Adoptionism, Nestorianism, Arianism, and permutations of the same, culimating in the Cathars and Albigensians in Spain and France in the the 13th century, it is entirely possible this Synod was the product of a heretical sect. Or that the article in question was interpolated. Thus I condemn Elvira on four points entirely unrelated to the point you raise, the idea that what happens later is always better than what happens earlier, which is an idea that as an Orthodox Christian and as someone who has looked on what has happened to Anglicanism and other once beautiful Western churches under the influence of depraved liberal theologians who believe in doctrinal development, which the Orthodox reject, and intends to do something about it, possibly by seconding myself to an Anglican church to work to spread traditional Anglicanism, I regard with a certain horror. Rather, the reasons why I reject Elvira are simple:

    1. It was never received by the Church as an Ecumenical Council.
    2. Rather, it was a local synod held by bishops in the heresy-prone province of Baetica, the region of Spain where most heretical sects tended to appear.
    3. Since the council predated the first Council of Nicea, in 325, the orthodoxy of the participants cannot be established.
    4. The teachings of the council are contrary to the ancient doctrine of the church; we know icons were in use as early as the second century, from evidence at the House Church in Dura Europos, also destroyed by ISIS, and paintings in the Roman catacombs, and two of the most important icons, of Christ Pantocrator and the Ladder of Divine Ascent, date from the sixth century.

    This statement is mostly incorrect. Charlemagne and other Frankish bishops misinterpreted the translation of the council, and incorrectly believed that the council commanded the adoration of images, which it did not, and a document, the Libri Carolini, was written, probably by Bishop Theodulf of Orleans. This text condemned the council, but was filled with errors concerning the council and what it consisted of, and what is more, the Libri Carolini also condemned iconoclasm. Indeed, Theodulf of Orleans is responsible for this church, with its original mosaic of the Ark of the Covenant, dating from the first decade of the Ninth Century:

    [​IMG]

    And thus we see an alleged iconoclast having comissioned a mosaic that glorifies the Ark, which featured Jewish iconography.

    Ultimately, Pope Hadrian wrote a reply to the Libri Carolini and that was that.

    This seems unlikely, since the Libri Carolini languished in obscurity until the Reformation, when people tried to use it as proof of a Patristic iconoclasm which did not in fact exist.

    But even if the Libri Carolini had been retained and the Seventh Ecumenical Council rejected, this would be acceptable, as the Libri Carolini prohibits iconoclasm and specifies for icons the same use as the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

    Accession to Nicea II is not a prerequisite to avoiding Iconoclasm; indeed, the Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East were not parties to this council, but never had a problem with iconoclasm on the scale of the Eastern Orthodox Church, where the most important autocephalous Patriarchate in Constantinople, New Rome, embraced the error. And indeed traces of Byzantine iconoclasm remain, for example, in the Hagia Irene. Rather, the limit of iconoclasm in the Oriental churches was a brief outbreak in Eastern Armenia, which the bishops swiftly suppressed.

    Actually, if one can reject Iconoclasm without accepting Nicea II, I think this is preferrable, because Nicea II is connected with this recent Orthodox myth of the Seven Councils (when really, there were at least nine councils received ecumenically by the entire Orthodox church). And Nicea II contains anathemas of Oriental Orthodox saints who ought not to have been anathematized and other persons who ought not to have been anathematized.
     
  20. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    This doesn’t actually matter that much, because the Libri Carolini rejects iconoclasm.

    But the Pope was still the Primus Inter Pares, the ruling bishop of the Western Patriarchate, and had more power at the time than any other bishops, except for the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the Patriarch of Bulgaria, once Bulgaria received autocephaly, the Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria, the autocephalous Archbishop of Cyprus, the Catholicos of Holy Etchmiadzin in Armenia (the other Catholicosate in Lebanon did not yet exist), the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch* and finally, the Catholicos of the East, who, from his palace in Seleucia-Cstesiphon, presided over the Church of the East, which at the time had the largest geographical reach of any church in the world, and had a very large number of believers, who were mostly slaughtered by the evil Islamist genocidal warlord Tamerlane a few centuries later, except in Persia, Mesopotamia and India, where they were too numerous to wipe out.

    You might note I omitted the Greek Orthodox Patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem and the Greek Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and All Africa; this is because for a time, after the Islamic conquest of the lands these Patriarchates occupied, their Patriarchs tended to live in Constantinople as courtiers of the Emperor and the Ecumenical Patriarch, and indeed one could cynically argue that the Council of Chalcedon was conducted for political reasons, because the Council of Ephesus had deposed Nestorius, and St. Cyril’s successor Pope Dioscorus was a political threat to the Patriarch and to Archbishop Leo of Rome.

    * At the time, the Maronite Church was not under Roman jurisdiction; that followed the Crusades.