Image-worship (Gr. eikonolatreia), the use in public or private worship of graven or painted representations of sacred persons or things, and especially the exhibition of honour, reverence, or worship to or towards such representations. Neither in the New Testament nor in any genuine writings of the first age of Christianity can any trace be discovered of the use of statues or pictures in the worship of Christians, whether public or private. The earliest allusion to such representations is found in Tertullian, who appeals to the image of the Good Shepherd as engraved upon the chalice. A very curious pagan caricature of Christianity of the same age, lately discovered scratched upon the wall of a room in the palace of the Cæsars (see GRAFFITI), which rudely represents a man standing in the attitude of prayer, with outstretched hand, before a grotesque caricature of the crucifixion, and which bears the title 'Alexamenus worships God,' has been recently alleged by Catholics as an additional indication of at least a certain use of images among the Christians of the 2d century. The tombs of the Christians in the
Roman catacombs, many of which are of a date anterior to Constantine, frequently have graven upon them representations of the Dove, of the Cross, of the symbolical Fish, of the Ship, of Adam and Eve, of Moses striking the rock, of Jonah, of Daniel in the lions' den, of the apostles Peter and Paul, and above all, of the Good Shepherd; and those compartments of the catacombs which were used as chapels are often profusely decorated with sacred representations, the age of which, however, it is not easy to determine with accuracy. It is admitted by Catholics, however, that, from the fear of perpetuating idolatrous notions, for the first three centuries the use of images was rare and exceptional; nor was it until after the establishment of Christianity under Constantine, and particularly after the condemnation of the Nestorian heresy in 430, that statues and pictures of our Lord, of the Virgin Mary, and the Saints, were commonly introduced in churches, especially in the East and in Italy. And yet even in the 5th century the practice had already reached a great height, as we learn from the church historian, Theodoret, for the East, and from Panlinus of Nola, for Italy; and in the 6th and 7th centuries many popular practices prevailed which called forth the condemnation of learned and pious bishops both in the East and in the West. It was usual not only to keep lights and burn incense before the images, to kiss them reverently, and to kneel down and pray before them, but some went so far as to make the images serve as godfathers and godmothers in baptism, and even to mingle the dust or the colouring matter scraped from the images with the eucharistic elements in the Holy Communion! This use of images by Christians was alleged as an obstacle to the conversion of the Jews, and as one of the causes of the progress of Mohammedanism in the East; and the excesses described above provoked the reaction of Iconoclasm (q.v.). In the second Council of Nice (787) the doctrine as to the worship of images was carefully laid down. A distinction was drawn between the supreme worship of adoration, which is called latreia, and the inferior worship of honour or reverence, called douleia. The second Council of Nice declared that the worship to be paid to images is not the supreme worship of latreia, but only the inferior worship of douleia; and also that it is not absolute, and is not rendered to the images themselves, but relative—i.e. only addressed through them, or by occasion of them, to the original which they represent. A strange error in the translation of the Greek acts of the Council of Nice, by which it appeared that the same adoration was decreed by that council to images 'which is rendered to the Holy Trinity itself,' led to a vehement agitation in France and Germany under Charlemagne, and to a condemnation by a synod at Frankfort of the doctrines of the Council of Nice. But an explanation of this error, and of the false translation on which it was based, was immediately afterwards given by the pope; and eventually the Nicene exposition of the doctrine was universally accepted in the Western as well as in the Eastern Church.
At the Reformation the reforming party generally rejected the use of images as an unscriptural novelty, and stigmatised the Catholic practice as superstitious and even idolatrous. The Zwinglian, and subsequently the Calvinistic churches entirely repudiated all use of images for the purposes of worship. Luther, on the contrary, while he condemned the Roman worship of images, regarded the simple use of them even in the church for the purpose of instruction and as incentives to faith and to devotion as one of those aciataphora, or indifferent things, which may be permitted, although not of necessary institution; hence, in the
Lutheran churches of Germany and the northern kingdoms, pictures, crucifixes, and other religious symbols are still freely retained. In many of the parish churches of England these remained till long after the Reformation. Thus, we find that William Dowsing found ample employment during ten months of 1644 in destroying pictures and images in the churches of the single county of Suffolk, in accordance with an ordinance of parliament. In the modern Anglican Church the practice is still a subject of controversy, and the magnificent sculptured redos erected in St Paul's Cathedral was protested against as idolatrous by some of the London clergy in 1888. In the Presbyterian Church and in all the other Protestant communions images are entirely unknown, although figures of patron saints and eminent churchmen have occasionally been set up, as in the restored St Giles' High Kirk in Edinburgh.
The Roman Catholic Church, through the decree of the Council of Trent, disclaims the imputation commonly made against Catholics of the idolatrous worship of images, 'as though a divinity dwelt in them, or as though we [Catholics] asked anything of them, or trusted in them, as the heathens did in their idols.' It renews the Nicene distinction between absolute and relative worship; the latter of which alone—'whereby we worship Christ and the saints, who are the prototypes of these images'—it sanctions or permits; and it contends for the great advantage, especially in the case of rude and unlearned people, to be drawn from the use of pictures and statues in the churches as 'memorials of the sufferings and of the mercy of our Lord, as instructive records of the virtues of the saints, and exhortations to the imitation of their example, and as incentives to the love of God and to the practice of piety' (Sess. xxv. On the Invocation of Saints). In many foreign churches, especially in Italy, in southern Germany, and in France, are to be found images which are popularly reputed as especially sacred, and to which, or to prayers offered before which, miraculous effects are ascribed. But instructed Catholics declare that the legends connected with such images form no part of Catholic belief. Most Catholic books of instruction contain cautions against attributing such effects to any special virtue of the images themselves, rather than to the special faith, trustfulness, and fervour which are stirred up by their presence, and by the recorded examples of the mercy of God with which they are associated. For the modern Greek usage, see ICONOCLASTS.