However, that is a view that has never been suggested by their Church officially, she has never made this a ground of complaint against Latins, but admits it to be (as of course it is) simply a difference of fashion or habit, and she recognizes that we are justified by the Second Council of Nicaea in the honour we pay to our statues just as she is in the far more elaborate reverence she pays to her flat icons. In Anglican churches one may find any principle at work, from that of a bare cross to a perfect plethora of statues and pictures. The most common subjects include Christ, Mary, saints and angels. Worship by no means implies only the supreme adoration that may be given only to God. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. It would be natural that people who bowed to, kissed, incensed the imperial eagles and images of Caesar (with no suspicion of anything like idolatry), who paid elaborate reverence to an empty throne as his symbol, should give the same signs to the cross, the images of Christ, and the altar. As soon as people began to represent scenes from the Passion they naturally included the chief event, and so we have the earliest pictures and carvings of the Crucifixion. So it became the general conviction that Jews abhor any kind of statue or image. The Bible tells us not to worship graven images yet Catholics have statues all over the place. A fortiori may and should such reverence be paid to the saints who reign with God. We note in the first place that the First Commandment (except inasmuch as it forbids adoration and service of images) does not affect us at all. In this, after repeating the Nicene Creed and the condemnation of former heretics, they come to the burning question of the treatment of holy images. Only now the situation has become more clearly defined. That council was accepted by the great Church of the five patriarchates as equal to the other six. Nor is there any suspicion that the people who were unconsciously evolving this ritual, confused the image with its prototype or forgot that to God only supreme homage is due. After the time of Constantine it is still mainly by conjecture that we are able to deduce the way these images were treated. .) "We should give to relics, crucifixes and holy pictures a relative honour, as they relate to Christ and his saints and are memorials of them." In the East it is enough to go into any Orthodox Church to see the crowd of holy icons that cover the walls, that gleam right across the church from the iconostasis. Yet in just a few years all this would change, partly in consequence of the enormous social change that Australia underwent in the 1960s and 1970s. It is from this reverence that the whole tradition of venerating holy images gradually and naturally developed. Moses says: Thou shalt worship thy God and Him only shalt thou adore. That the first Christians had any sort of prejudice against images, pictures, or statues is a myth (defended amongst others by Erasmus) that has been abundantly dispelled by all students of Christian archaeology. So that in this matter when Christians began to decorate their catacombs with holy pictures they did not thereby sever themselves from the custom of their Jewish forefathers. Behind the Agnus Dei is a throne with a cross, behind the lambs is a row of trees. Only now the situation has become more clearly defined. In the catacombs there is little that can be described as sculpture; there are few statues for a very simple reason. The idea that the Church of the first centuries was in any way prejudiced against pictures and statues is the most impossible fiction. Toowoomba Church History. eccl., II, 17). ); he also incenses any relics or images of saints that may be on the altar (ibid.). The sign in itself is nothing, but it shares the honour of its prototype. According to the 25th Session of this General Council: As part of the ritual the celebrant and the deacon before they go in to vest bow profoundly before these and say certain fixed prayers: "We worship (proskynoumen) Thine immaculate image, O Christ" etc. The text then of the decision of the seventh session of Nicaea II is: "We define (orizomen with all certainty and care that both the figure of the sacred and lifegiving Cross, as also the venerable and holy images, whether made in colours or mosaic or other materials, are to be placed suitably in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, on walls and pictures, in houses and by roads; that is to say, the images of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our immaculate Lady the holy Mother of God, of the honourable angels and all saints and holy men. The famous statue of the Good Shepherd in the Lateran Museum was made as early as the beginning of the third century, the statues of Hippolytus and of St. Peter date from the end of the same century. Each pdf file is a volume OR download the complete set in the 347.4 MB file. ii, in P.L., XVII, 821). After the storm of the eighth and ninth centuries (see ICONOCLASM), the Church throughout the world settled down again in secure possession of her images. As part of the Catholic high school’s curriculum, this study will enhance the student’s inner, personal experience of faith, and foster a greater understanding of Christ’s teachings. The Arian Philostorgius (fifth century) too was a forerunner of the Iconoclasts (Hist. 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