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A.D. 787 - Second Council of Nicea

The seventh ecumenical council, held at Nice, AD 787, was called by the empress Irene, in conjunction with Tarasius patriarch of Constantinople, who directed the whole proceedings. The council was summoned to meet in 786 at Constantinople, for which Nice and a later time were substituted in consequence of iconoclastic tumults at Constantinople. At least 350 bishops assembled, with two envoys from the pope, two imperial commissioners, and an army of monks. This council sanctioned the adoration of images in the church, and repeated the condemnation of pope Honorius.

The first seven ecumenical councils, held between 325 and 787, were meetings of bishops and scholars convened in order to reach a Christian consensus and to restore, continue, and develop a unified Christendom. All were held during the rule of the Byzantine Empire, but by the last ecumenical council, all major western sees, although still in communion with the Byzantine state church, were outside the political control of the empire.

Adoration of images were, for the first time, authoritatively permitted. It was declared that “there should be paid to them the worship of salutation and honor, and not that true worship which is accorded by faith and belongs to God alone;” and that “the honor so paid to them was transmitted to the originals they represent.”

In this year, the Empress Irene, the Jezebel of that day (who became regent, on the death of her husband, Leo IV, and during the minority‘of her son, Constantine VI), convoked the council, and was mainly instrumental in effecting the firm establishment of image worship. She was heathen by instinct, and conceived the idea that this idolatry would soon make the world forget the profligacy of her past life.

But, in 794, the Council of Frankfort, by its second canon, condemned the said decree of the second Council of Nice, and all worship of images; as did also, in 815, a Council of Constantinople, which decreed that all ornaments, paintings, etc., in churches should be defaced. In 825, the Council of Paris condemned the decree of the second Council of Nice, declaring that it was no light error to say that even some degree of holiness could be attained through their means. This Council of Paris was continued at Aix-la-Chapelle ; the French bishops still resisting the decree of the second Council of Nice, though the pope had approved it.

But in 842, at the Council of Constantinople, under the emperor Michael, and Theodora his mother, the decree of the second Council of Nice was confirmed, the image-breakers anathematized, and images restored to churches.

In 870, at the tenth session of the Council of Constantinople, the third canon again enjoined the worship of the cross and the images of the saints. And at the same place, at another council, A.D. 789, in the fifth session, the decrees of the second Council of Nice were approved and confirmed. Again, in 1084, at another Council of Constantinople, the decree made in the council of 842, in favor of the use of images, was confirmed.

The worship of images, after this time, appeared to have taken such deep root among the people, that, in 1549, the Council of Mayence decreed that people should be taught that images were not set up to be worshipped; and priests were enjoined to remove the image of any saint to which the people flocked, as if attributing some sort of a divinity to the image itself, or as supposing that God or the saints would perform what they prayed for by means of that particular image, and not otherwise.

Such was the fearful idolatry to which the introduction of images into churches led ; so that the assembly of French bishops, at the celebrated conference at Poissian in 1561, enjoined on the priests to use their endeavors to abolish all superstitious practices; to instruct the people that images were exposed to view in the churches for no other reason than to remind persons of Jesus Christ and the saints; and it was decreed that all images which were in any way indecent, or which merely illustrated fabulous tales, should be entirely removed.