They
Must Not Do This—d²
The canons of Elvira contain four
different patterns by means of which a certain deed or behavior is rejected.
Pattern d² represents a canon or part of a canon in which a
straightforward prohibition is stated: “They must not do this.” While many
other canons threaten the transgressor either with a sentence of exclusion or
of penance, the d² sentences stop at the prohibition, not reckoning with
the chance that it may not be heeded. Why not? Is the difference between canons
that merely say No and canons that carefully spell out what happens when
Christians disregard the No a matter of chance? Is it that some of the men who
formulated particular sentences happened to reckon with disobedience while
others did not? It can be shown that the difference is not merely coincidental,
and results from the bishops’ ambivalence. In some canons the simple prohibition
sufficed because the synod did not fear noncompliance. In others, however, the
synod failed to spell out penalty, exclusion, or mercy because the clerics were
uncertain about their own convictions.
The famous can. 36 illustrates
this first of Elvira’s four negative patterns: “There shall be no pictures in
churches, lest what is worshipped and adored be depicted on walls.” The text
has been controversial in historical analysis, in respect to Christian art and
ancient Christian iconoclasm, because it does not make clear what the problem
of iconoclasm was in Spain at the time. Were all images summarily banned or
only those with liturgical connotations? Did the canon attack abuses or did it
presuppose the total absence of art in churches? I believe that the ambiguity
of the decision is revealing: it was in such a d² pattern that the synod
operated when it did not want to commit itself.
There are three kinds of
ambiguity in can. 36. In the first place, the canon has no addressee; it is one
of the few canons which deal merely with the issue, without an s¹
segment. The canon, however, should have an s¹ segment, for those walls
on which pictures were not to be painted were surely not decorated by angels.
Bishops and presbyters, the same kinds of people who made decisions at Elvira,
decided on such matters. When the synod meant to stop either a cleric or a
layman from committing some objectionable deed, it certainly named him, or her,
or them: “Bishops and presbyters who . . . .” Yet in the canon under
discussion, the synod did not come to terms with persons. In the second place,
the canon has no sanction. When the synod was afraid that its decision would
not be heeded, it certainly was not reluctant to outline penalty or anathema,
as the forty-nine cases of penance and irrevocable exclusion show. It does not
spell out what would happen if images were put into churches. Moreover, in
leaving out the s¹ unit, the synod did not even hold anyone responsible
for such a misdeed. In the third place, the canon has a rather puzzling s³
segment: “ne quid colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur.” This segment
could be interpreted as meaning that only what might be worshipped and adored
was prohibited; but the main part of the canon does not prohibit images in such
a restricted way. The synod’s ambivalence is unmistakable.
These three evidences, compared
to the other decision patterns, make it quite clear that in the decision in
can. 36 the synod was unwilling to commit itself. Why? There are two
possibilities: either it did not regard the issues as very important, and did
not expect much resistance, or it felt that the issue was too hot and it did
not dare to make stringent sanctions against disobedience. One has to reckon,
in all of the d² decisions, with both of these possibilities. They are
not as unlike each other as one assumes at first sight. Whether the synod
regarded the case under scrutiny as too unimportant to make an issue of or only
halfheartedly supported its own ruling does not matter. What matters is that
sanctions, anathema, and penance were left out of the d² decisions. They
were left out to avert a confrontation.
Such evasion is especially clear
in can. 36. The decision is ambiguous because the synod did not want to use the
iconoclastic issue as a test case of its control of the churches. For some
reasons that can no longer be recovered the issue came up in the council. It
found a majority vote, perhaps a unanimous one. Who knows? The verdict,
however, was vague: no one was threatened, no one was to be punished. The
decision, like the preceding s³ segment, was inconclusive, and this
canon was the only one passed concerning the matter of iconoclasm. The clerics
who came to Elvira did not want to make a major issue out of iconoclasm.
Perhaps they themselves loved images, their aesthetic character, their symbolic
beauty. Perhaps there were pictures in their own churches which they felt were
harmless. Yet they could imagine abuses, and so a stance had to be taken. The
fourth-century church profited from their tentativeness: images became
acceptable.
This tentativeness can be
understood when set against the background of early Christianity’s relationship
to art. Ever since the beginning of Christianity there had been polemic by
Christian writers against the use of images, which was inherited in part from
Judaism and in part from the philosophical criticism of popular religion. The
critical statements of the early church against image worship were made by
theologians, by the Christian leaders who rejected images as pagan, idolatrous,
blasphemous, anthropomorphic, and crass. The archeological evidence, however,
shows that Christianity in the third century, if not earlier, often produced
pictures. The catacombs are full of them, and the baptistry and sanctuary at
Duro Europos exhibit them. Can. 36 of Elvira would not have been necessary if
pictures had not existed at all.
The conflict about images is
related to the different attitudes toward them among clergy and laity. While
the Christian elite regarded the icons for a long time with hostility, the
Christian grass-roots community employed them without qualm. The conflict
between traditional clerical anti-iconic positions and the popular demand for
images was in evidence only a few years after Elvira when Constantine asked
Eusebius of Caesarea for a picture of Christ, and Eusebius although one of the
protagonists for Constantine’s imperial Christian ideals, rejected the
emperor’s demand. For centuries, an anti-iconic and a pro-iconic stance
continued side by side in the Christian church, one leading to the superb art
of Ravenna and the other to the iconoclastic pogroms of the eighth century. The
dilemma of can. 36 is the dilemma of a crucial moment involving that duality.
The ambiguity of can. 36, thus,
directly reflects the mixed feelings of the clergy toward the matter. As
members of the Christian elite, they had to speak against the images; as part
of a church that acquiesced more and more in the popular demand for visual,
concrete imagery, they were not so sure about the corrupting character of such
art. The d² decision of can. 36 enables us to read that ambivalence
between the elite’s traditional theological, as well as social, rejection of
images and its personal emotional acceptance of them.
The d² pattern, therefore,
was applied to cases that were easily resolvable because the persons named were
essentially powerless to resist. It was also applied, however, to precisely
opposite cases in which obedience would have been very hard to secure. Can. 29,
for instance, prohibiting possessed Christians from participating in the
liturgy of the church or from holding an office in the church did not need to
say more. The mentally ill were easily dismissed in the ancient world. Such a
ruling would hardly have evoked much dissent. Likewise, can. 80 barring
freedmen from the episcopal rank contained no controversial move: freedmen were
socially outclassed by the bishops and did not have much of a chance to break
that barrier. (Samuel Laeuchli, Power and Sexuality: The Emergence of Canon
Law at the Synod of Elvira [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1972], 33-37)
Further Reading:
Answering
Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons