Chapter V — On the worship with which the images of the Most Holy Trinity, of Christ the Lord, and of the Saints are to be honored

I. That the use of sacred images is lawful and pious is defined by the Council of Trent, session 25, decree on the invocation of the Saints, in these words: "That the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other Saints are to be had and retained, especially in churches, and that due honor and veneration is to be paid them — not because it is believed that any divinity or power resides in them for which they are to be worshipped, or that anything is to be sought from them, or that trust is to be placed in images as was once done by the pagans, who set their hope in idols; but because the honor shown to them is referred to the prototypes which they represent, so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ, and venerate the Saints whose likeness they bear." At the sight of this decree, all the impostures of the heretics vanish. The honor shown to images we refer to their prototypes. All our adoration of images is relative: it looks, that is, to the prototypes they represent. There is, then, no taint of idolatry in this.

Moreover, very many good things flow from this practice. First, these icons recall above all, for the unlearned, the deeds of our forefathers and their triumphs over the enemy. "I know indeed," says Calvin (Institutes, Bk. I, ch. 11, §7), "that it is more than commonly said, that images are the books of the unlearned." Gregory said this. But the Spirit of God pronounces quite otherwise. Calvin admits — and after him Daillé, and the other innovators — that the use of sacred images prevailed by the fourth and fifth centuries. Yet they do not blush to blurt out that all the Fathers of the Church were stained with the taint of idolatry. The reckless audacity of the Protestants, who set themselves above the whole of sacred antiquity, is no small proof of the fabricated character of their religion. Will they, after twelve centuries, understand the customs and practices of the first Christians better than those Fathers — Gregory and the others — who lived nearest to those times, and of whom the Spirit of God pronounces otherwise? Did not God himself command Moses to make golden Cherubim, with faces extended from either side of the mercy-seat (Exod. 25)? Did he not also order a bronze serpent to be made (Num. 21)? Did not Solomon fashion Cherubim, oxen, and lions (3 Kings 6)? But why heap up more texts to refute an empty fabrication so often demolished?

II. It is lawful, then, to fashion an image of God the Father himself, and of any Person of the Most Holy Trinity. Wherefore Pope Alexander VIII rightly proscribed the following proposition: "It is unlawful for a Christian to set up in a church an image of God the Father seated."

The reason such an image is permitted is that no Catholic intends, in images of this kind, to depict the nature of God. For who is so besotted as to persuade himself that the Person of the Trinity can be painted by human skill? We fashion such pictures only so that, making use of them as a kind of sacred symbol, the mind may be roused to worship God. Are not the invisible things of God perceived through the things that are made? We depict the eternal Father under the likeness of an old man, to show that he is the first Person of the Trinity. On the Father's breast is painted the Word, to signify that he is begotten of the Father. Under the form of a dove the image of the Holy Spirit is fashioned, because it was under this symbol that he deigned to appear. We likewise depict Angels as winged, in the guise of most beautiful youths, because it is often under this form that they have appeared. We testify that no power resides in these images, and that we place no trust in them. All our hope is in God, through the merits of Christ. We implore the intercession of the Saints, that we may the more easily obtain from God what we ask through such powerful intercessors. What, then, is the sense of Calvin's mad and reckless snarling, that we imagine some power of the Godhead to dwell within such icons — when this has always been openly denied by Catholics? What does he gain by objecting that the pagans too did not regard their idols as gods in themselves, but worshipped gods in their idols, adoring their statues? Well enough — but the gods those wretched pagans represented were false. When the Jews built idols, it was not the true God they venerated in them, but the false divinities of the nations. It is, then, an open falsehood of Calvin's to assert that the Jews, in fashioning such images, believed they were worshipping the one true God, Lord of heaven and earth. The Hebrews, rather, in constructing idols, were turning aside to worship the gods of the nations — a thing the Prophets reproach them for again and again: "They went after strange gods"; "he followed strange gods"; "they served strange gods"; "put away the strange gods." Reproaches of this kind, made to the Jews by holy men, occur everywhere in Scripture. They were not, then, held guilty of idolatry for worshipping the true and eternal God in images, as Calvin falsely imagines, but for venerating the gods of the nations in idols. As for Calvin's further reproach — that many images are patterns of obscenity, and that such images show harlots dressed more modestly and decently than the images in our churches meant to represent virgins — this is a deceitful and malicious slander, flung at the Roman Church out of Calvin's hatred for her. If any abuse occurs here, it arises from the fault of the painters. But so that no such corruption should be found in our churches, the Council of Trent itself, and many other Councils, charge the bishops to keep watch against such sacrilegious monstrosities of profanation. But why should I labor further to blunt Calvin's audacity, who pleads a desperate case with nothing but abuse and slander?

III. Let us, then, settle the matter briefly. God forbade the Israelites: "Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth" (Exod. 20). Likewise St. Paul (Acts 17): "...that the Divinity is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, the graving of art and device of man... Being therefore the offspring of God, we must not suppose the divinity to be like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and the device of man." The sense of this and similar texts is made clear by what has already been said. Such images were forbidden to the Israelites as representations of the false gods of the pagans — a point so evident that only the shameless Calvin dares deny it. The same passage makes this plain: "Thou shalt not have gods of gold or silver... nor strange gods with thee" — for when the people fell into idolatry in the desert, it was gods, and not mere images, that they demanded of Aaron: "Make us gods to go before us" (Exod. 32). But all this is already sufficiently established and well known.

IV. Question I. Are such images to be adored? Response: That the use of sacred images is lawful has been briefly shown. It remains now to establish that their veneration is likewise lawful and useful. St. Thomas gives a splendid and cogent account of this matter, III Part, q. 25, art. 3: "There is a twofold movement of adoration: one toward the image itself, considered as a certain thing; another toward the image, insofar as it is the image of another. And between these two movements there is a difference: for the first movement, by which one is moved toward the image as it is a certain thing, is distinct from the movement toward the thing itself; but the second movement, which is toward the image insofar as it is an image, is one and the same as that toward the thing. It must therefore be said that no reverence is shown to the image of Christ insofar as it is a certain thing (say, a carved or painted piece of wood); for reverence is owed only to a rational nature. It remains, then, that reverence is shown it only insofar as it is an image; and thus it follows that the same reverence is shown to the image of Christ as to Christ himself. Since, therefore, Christ is adored with the adoration of latria, it follows that his image is to be adored with the adoration of latria." From this it follows that we cannot approve the opinion of Bellarmine and others, who attribute to images some worship distinct from that shown to the prototype. For St. Thomas expressly teaches that the image is to be adored only as an image, precisely because it represents the prototype; and so the worship of the image is wholly relative, and is referred entirely to the prototype.

V. The Calvinists and Lutherans raise their customary sophistries: that Scripture — Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 4, Romans 1, and six hundred other places — forbids the worship of images and idols. Yet neither the Jews nor the pagans were so dull and stupid as to believe that stones, wood, and the works of men's hands were gods. Though this fabrication has already been demolished, it is still worth transcribing the solution given by St. Thomas. That commandment forbids not the making of any carved image or likeness, but making it for the purpose of adoration — hence it adds: "Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them." And since, as has been said, the movement toward the image and toward the thing itself is the same, the adoration of the image is forbidden in the same way that adoration of the thing of which it is an image is forbidden. It is to be understood, then, that what is forbidden there is the adoration of the images which the pagans made in veneration of their gods — that is, of demons; and hence it is prefaced: "Thou shalt not have strange gods before me." To the true God himself, since he is incorporeal, no bodily image could be assigned; for, as Damascene says, it is the height of folly and impiety to depict what is divine. But because in the New Testament God was made man, he can be adored in his bodily image (III Part, q. 25, art. 3, ad 1). Let the whole article be read, whose teaching overthrows all the trifles and sophistical quibbles of the heretics. Indeed, everything that Catholic theologians have heaped up and learnedly discussed, the Angelic Doctor had already grasped beforehand, in a few and most significant words, and explained with wondrous clarity.

VI. The Angelic Doctor's teaching rests on the perpetual tradition of the Church, and on the authority of the Second Council of Nicaea, of Florence, and of Trent. It is therefore a matter of faith that sacred images are worthy of adoration. Many other proofs, which I might adduce both from the aforesaid Councils and from the Fathers, I pass over, since they are readily available in the authors; and because, from what has already been said, this truth remains sufficiently established.

VII. Let us hear one more of Calvin's fabrications. "Why," he says, "such a difference between images of the very same God, that one is neglected, or honored only in a popular way, while Catholics pursue another with the whole honor of their devotion? Why do they wear themselves out with votive pilgrimages to visit images like those they could have at home? Why do they fight to the point of bloodshed and slaughter over them today, as though for their altars and hearths?" These and similar objections Calvin raises (Institutes, Bk. I, ch. 11, §10) — a piece of raving that collapses of itself the moment one looks at the Angelic Doctor's teaching. For if we show images no worship other than that with which we worship the God they represent, it is evident that all images representing God are adored by us with the very worship we show to God. That some images are frequented by a greater concourse of worshippers does not arise because some peculiar power is believed to reside in them, or because they merit greater worship in themselves; but because God, for his own hidden and wondrous reasons, chooses to work miracles and confer benefits through the use of this image rather than that one. Some images, too, are said to have been painted by holy men — by St. Luke, by Nicodemus, or by Angels. Hence, in memory of such painters, whose intercession with God the faithful also trust in, people venerate one image above another with special devotion, and it is said to aid them in a singular way. Yet no Catholic believes any image to be endowed with some special excellence, or to surpass another; but since all equally represent the prototype, all are adored with the same relative worship.

VIII. The arguments of Bellarmine (On Images, Bk. I, ch. 24), Suárez (disp. 54, sect. 5), and others who contend that images of God, of Christ the Lord, and of the Saints are not to be adored with the very same adoration as their prototypes, but with a lesser worship, since as images they are inferior to what they represent — these arguments, if we wish to speak exactly, carry no weight at all. For their point would only stand if we worshipped images with some special worship considered as things in themselves, rather than as images. Images are signs and symbols that rouse our minds to worship their prototypes; it is not the images but the prototypes represented in them that we worship. In the Cross we kiss Christ; in the Book of the Gospels, eternal truth; in images of the Martyrs and the Saints, we worship the Saints themselves. So teaches the Council of Trent, the Roman Pontifical, and — as the celebrated Bossuet rightly notes in his exposition of Catholic doctrine, ch. 1 — as St. Thomas had already taught with great clarity. When the Councils of Mainz and Sens, and other writers, assert that images of Christ are not to be adored with the worship of latria, they are speaking of the absolute worship shown to the images considered in themselves.

IX. Question II. Is there any precept commanding the use of sacred images? Response: It is certain that no natural or divine precept exists to this effect, since no trace of such a precept is found anywhere in Sacred Scripture, nor does any reason suggest that this use is commanded. As for an ecclesiastical precept, Fr. Paolo Nazario (III Part, q. 25, art. 3, controv. 2) affirms that one exists. This view would be entirely true if understood of the common practice with respect to all the faithful generally. For although this command has not been laid down in express words, it has become established by a custom holding the force of law, that churches and altars are to be adorned with sacred images. It is forbidden to offer sacrifice on an altar on which there is no image of the Crucified. The faithful would suffer grave scandal if churches and altars were stripped of every image. There is no doubt, then, that such a precept binds with respect to the community of the faithful as a whole. This precept does not, however, seem to bind each individual member of the faithful, such that each one is bound by the precept to make use of images. Yet a Catholic who abstained altogether from any use of images could scarcely be excused from fault: for if he neglected them as superfluous and useless, he would fall into heresy; if he thought it advisable not to use them, he would not be free of a kind of superstition, would give scandal, and would not be free of the suspicion of error. If, however, out of a certain carelessness, negligence, or even avarice, he simply did not employ images privately, he would not, in my present opinion, be a transgressor of any precept. The precept to make use of these images can, nevertheless, bind particular individuals accidentally — as when the necessity of professing the Catholic faith requires it. This view is shared by Suárez (Vol. I, on III Part, disp. 54, sect. 3), Leander (disp. 5, q. 3), and the theologians of Salamanca (tract. 21, ch. 10, punct. 8, n. 91).

X. Question III. Is there a precept commanding that these images be adored? Response: The common opinion affirms that a twofold command exists. One is negative, forbidding at all times and in all places that any injury or irreverence be done them. The other is affirmative, obliging one at certain times to pay them worship — as when an occasion arises for professing the faith, or an occasion to join with other of the faithful in venerating an image publicly exposed for adoration, or when some action must be performed toward sacred images that would require veneration. It seldom happens, I think, that a Catholic could violate this affirmative precept without at the same time violating the negative one, by holding those same images in contempt. For in practice one either adores or holds in contempt. I do not deny that both extremes can be avoided absolutely; but in practice this scarcely happens.