er, and
offered the strong city of Edessa to protect him against the malice of
the Jews. The ignorance of the primitive church is explained by the long
imprisonment of the image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an
oblivion of five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop,
and seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and
most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms of
Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge of the divine
promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a foreign enemy. It is
true, indeed, that the text of Procopius ascribes the double deliverance
of Edessa to the wealth and valor of her citizens, who purchased
the absence and repelled the assaults of the Persian monarch. He was
ignorant, the profane historian, of the testimony which he is compelled
to deliver in the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium
was exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been sprinkled
on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel to the flames
of the besieged. After this important service, the image of Edessa was
preserved with respect and gratitude; and if the Armenians rejected the
legend, the more credulous Greeks adored the similitude, which was not
the work of any mortal pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine
original. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how
far their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. "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 manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and
love." Before the end of the sixth century, these images, made without
hands, (in Greek it is a single word, [11] were propagated in the camps
and cities of the Eastern empire: [12] they were the objects of worship,
and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger or tumult,
their venerable presence could revive the hope, rekindle the courage,
or repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of these pictures, the far
greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil, could only pretend to
a secondary likeness and improper title: but there were some of h