isturbance impressed on Europe itself, ending in
the decomposition of Christianity into two forms, Greek and Latin, and
in three great political events--the emancipation of the popes from the
emperors of Constantinople, the usurpation of power by a new dynasty in
France, the reconstruction of the Roman empire in the West.

The dispute respecting the worship of images led to those great events.
The acts of the Mohammedan khalifs and of the iconoclastic or
image-breaking emperors occasioned that dispute.

[Sidenote: Worship of relics and images.]

[Sidenote: Its rapid spread in Christendom.]

Nothing could be more deplorable than the condition of southern Europe
when it first felt the intellectual influence of the Arabians. Its old
Roman and Greek populations had altogether disappeared; the races of
half-breeds and mongrels substituted for them were immersed in
fetichism. An observance of certain ceremonials constituted a religious
life. A chip of the true cross, some iron filings from the chain of St.
Peter, a tooth or bone of a martyr, were held in adoration; the world
was full of the stupendous miracles which these relics had performed.
But especially were painted or graven images of holy personages supposed
to be endowed with such powers. They had become objects of actual
worship. The facility with which the Empress Helena, the mother of
Constantine the Great, had given an aristocratic fashion to this
idolatry, showed that the old pagan ideas had never really died out, and
that the degenerated populations received with approval the religious
conceptions of their great predecessors. The early Christian fathers
believed that painting and sculpture were forbidden by the Scriptures,
and that they were therefore wicked arts; and, though the second Council
of Nicea asserted that the use of images had always been adopted by the
Church, there are abundant facts to prove that the actual worship of
them was not indulged in until the fourth century, when, on the occasion
of its occurrence in Spain, it was condemned by the Council of
Illiberis. During the fifth century the practice of introducing images
into churches increased, and in the sixth it had become prevalent. The
common people, who had never been able to comprehend doctrinal
mysteries, found their religious wants satisfied in turning to these
effigies. With singular obtuseness, they believed that the saint is
present in his image, though hundreds of the same kind wer