John of Damascus part 30
The coronation of images is an example of an old and obvious symbolic sign of honour that has become a fixed rite. The Greek...
John of Damascus part 29
In both East and West the reverence we pay to images has crystallized into formal ritual. In the Latin Rite the priest is commanded...
John of Damascus part 28
But there is a difference not of principle but of practice between East and West, to which we have already alluded. Especially since Iconoclasm,...
John of Damascus part 27
Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403) tore down a curtain in a church in Palestine because it had a picture of Christ or a saint....
John of Damascus part 26
Long before the outbreak in the eighth century there were isolated cases of persons who feared the ever-growing cult of images and saw in...
John of Damascus part 25
A curious story, that illustrates the length to which theworship of images had gone by the eighth century, is told in the “New Garden”...
John of Damascus part 24
The icon seems to have been in some sort the channel through which the saint was approached; it has an almost sacramental virtue in...
John of Damascus part 23
Long afterwards the Frankish bishops in the eighth century were still unable to understand forms that in the East were natural and obvious, but...
John of Damascus part 22
Distinct from the admission of images is the question of the way they are treated. What signs of reverence, if any, did the first...
John of Damascus part 21
People prayed with extended arms to represent a cross (Origen, “Hom. in Exod.”, iii, 3, Tertullian, “de Orat.”, 14). So also to make the...
