I.The Northern Zone or Holarctic Region.—Characterized by Acipenseridae. Few Siluridae. Numerous Cyprinidae, Salmonidae, Esocidae, Percidae.1. Europaeo-Asiatic or Palaearctic Region. Characterized by absence of osseous Ganoidei; Cobitinae and Barbus numerous.2. North American or Nearctic Region. Characterized by osseous Ganoidei and abundance of Catostominae; but no Cobitinae or Barbus.II.The Equatorial Zone.—Characterized by the development of Siluridae.A. Cyprinoid Division. Characterized by presence of Cyprinidae, Mastacembelidae. Anabantidae, Ophiocephalidae.1. Indian Region. Characterized by absence of Dipneusti, Polypteridae, Mormyridae and Characinidae. Cobitinae numerous.2. African Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti, Polypterid and Mormyrid; Cichlid and Characinid numerous.B. Acyprinoid Division. Characterized by absence of Cyprinidae and the other families mentioned above.1. Tropical American or Neotropical Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti; Cichlidae and Characinidae numerous; Gymnotidae and Loricariidae.2. Tropical Pacific Region. Includes the Australian as well as the Polynesian Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti. Cichlidae and Characinidae absent.III.The Southern Zone.—Characterized by absence of Cyprinidae and scarcity of Siluridae. Haplochitonidae and Galaxiidae represent the Salmonids and Esoces of the northern zone. One region only.1. Antarctic Region. Characterized by the small number of species; the fishes of(a) The Tasmanian subregion;(b) The New Zealand subregion; and(c) The Patagonian or Fuegian subregion being almost identical.
I.The Northern Zone or Holarctic Region.—Characterized by Acipenseridae. Few Siluridae. Numerous Cyprinidae, Salmonidae, Esocidae, Percidae.
1. Europaeo-Asiatic or Palaearctic Region. Characterized by absence of osseous Ganoidei; Cobitinae and Barbus numerous.2. North American or Nearctic Region. Characterized by osseous Ganoidei and abundance of Catostominae; but no Cobitinae or Barbus.
1. Europaeo-Asiatic or Palaearctic Region. Characterized by absence of osseous Ganoidei; Cobitinae and Barbus numerous.
2. North American or Nearctic Region. Characterized by osseous Ganoidei and abundance of Catostominae; but no Cobitinae or Barbus.
II.The Equatorial Zone.—Characterized by the development of Siluridae.
A. Cyprinoid Division. Characterized by presence of Cyprinidae, Mastacembelidae. Anabantidae, Ophiocephalidae.
A. Cyprinoid Division. Characterized by presence of Cyprinidae, Mastacembelidae. Anabantidae, Ophiocephalidae.
1. Indian Region. Characterized by absence of Dipneusti, Polypteridae, Mormyridae and Characinidae. Cobitinae numerous.2. African Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti, Polypterid and Mormyrid; Cichlid and Characinid numerous.
1. Indian Region. Characterized by absence of Dipneusti, Polypteridae, Mormyridae and Characinidae. Cobitinae numerous.
2. African Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti, Polypterid and Mormyrid; Cichlid and Characinid numerous.
B. Acyprinoid Division. Characterized by absence of Cyprinidae and the other families mentioned above.
B. Acyprinoid Division. Characterized by absence of Cyprinidae and the other families mentioned above.
1. Tropical American or Neotropical Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti; Cichlidae and Characinidae numerous; Gymnotidae and Loricariidae.2. Tropical Pacific Region. Includes the Australian as well as the Polynesian Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti. Cichlidae and Characinidae absent.
1. Tropical American or Neotropical Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti; Cichlidae and Characinidae numerous; Gymnotidae and Loricariidae.
2. Tropical Pacific Region. Includes the Australian as well as the Polynesian Region. Characterized by presence of Dipneusti. Cichlidae and Characinidae absent.
III.The Southern Zone.—Characterized by absence of Cyprinidae and scarcity of Siluridae. Haplochitonidae and Galaxiidae represent the Salmonids and Esoces of the northern zone. One region only.
1. Antarctic Region. Characterized by the small number of species; the fishes of
1. Antarctic Region. Characterized by the small number of species; the fishes of
(a) The Tasmanian subregion;(b) The New Zealand subregion; and(c) The Patagonian or Fuegian subregion being almost identical.
(a) The Tasmanian subregion;
(b) The New Zealand subregion; and
(c) The Patagonian or Fuegian subregion being almost identical.
Although, as expressed in the above synopsis, the resemblance between the Indian and African regions is far greater than exists between them and the other regions of the equatorial zone, attention must be drawn to the marked affinity which some of the fishes of tropical Africa show to those of South America (Lepidosirenidae,Characinidae,Cichlidae,Nandidae), an affinity which favours the supposition of a connexion between these two parts of the world in early Tertiary times.
The boundaries of Günther’s regions may thus be traced, beginning with the equatorial zone, this being the richest.
Equatorial Zone.—Roughly speaking, the borders of this zoological zone coincide with the geographical limits of the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn; its characteristic forms, however, extend in undulating lines several degrees both northwards and southwards. Commencing from the west coast of Africa, the desert of the Sahara forms a boundary between the equatorial and northern zones; as the boundary approaches the Nile, it makes a sudden sweep towards the north as far as northern Syria, crosses through Persia and Afghanistan to the southern ranges of the Himalayas, and follows the course of the Yang-tse-Kiang, which receives its contingent of equatorial fishes through its southern tributaries. Its continuation through the North Pacific may be indicated by the tropic, which strikes the coast of Mexico at the southern end of the Gulf of California. Equatorial types of South America are known to extend so far northwards; and, by following the same line, the West India Islands are naturally included in this zone.
Towards the south the equatorial zone embraces the whole of Africa and Madagascar, and seems to extend still farther south in Australia, its boundary probably following the southern coast of that continent; the detailed distribution of the freshwater fishes of south-western Australia has been little studied, but the tropical fishes of that region follow the principal watercourse, the Murray river, far towards the south and probably to its mouth. The boundary-line then stretches to the north of Tasmania and New Zealand, coinciding with the tropic until it strikes the western slope of the Andes, on the South American continent, where it again bends southward to embrace the system of the Rio de la Plata.
The four regions into which the equatorial zone is divided arrange themselves into two well-marked divisions, one of which is characterized by the presence of Cyprinid fishes, combined with the development ofLabyrinthicPercesoces (AnabantidaeandOphiocephalidae) and Mastacembelids, whilst in the other these types are absent. The boundary between the Cyprinoid and Acyprinoid division seems to follow the now exploded Wallace’s line—a line drawn from the south of the Philippines between Borneo and Celebes, and farther south between Bali and Lombok. Borneo abounds in Cyprinids; from the Philippine Islands a few only are known, and in Bali two species have been found; but none are known from Celebes or Lombok, or from islands situated farther east.
The Indian region comprises Asia south of the Himalayas and the Yang-tse-Kiang, and includes the islands to the west of Celebes and Lombok. Towards the north-east the island of Formosa, which also by other parts of its fauna shows thecharacters of the equatorial zone, has received some characteristic Japanese freshwater fishes. Within the geographical boundaries of China the freshwater fishes of the tropics pass gradually into those of the northern zone, both being separated by a broad, debateable ground. The affluents of the great river traversing this district are more numerous from the south than from the north, and carry the southern fishes far into the temperate zone. Scarcely better defined is the boundary of this region towards the north-west, in which fishes were very poorly represented by types common to India and Africa.
The African region comprises the whole of Africa south of the Sahara. It might have been conjectured that the more temperate climate of its southern extremity would have been accompanied by a conspicuous difference in the fish fauna. But this is not the case; the difference between the tropical and southern parts of Africa consists simply in the gradual disappearance of specifically tropical forms, whilst Silurids, Cyprinids and evenAnabaspenetrate to its southern coast; no new form, except aGalaxiasat the Cape of Good Hope, has entered to impart to South Africa a character distinct from the central portion of the continent. In the north-east the African fauna passes the isthmus of Suez and penetrates into Syria; the system of the Jordan presents so many African types that it has to be included in a description of the African region as well as of the Europaeo-Asiatic.
The boundaries of the Neotropical or Tropical American region have been sufficiently indicated in the definition of the equatorial zone. A broad and most irregular band of country, in which the South and North American forms are mixed, exists in the north.
The Tropical Pacific region includes all the islands east of Wallace’s line, New Guinea, Australia (with the exception of its south-eastern portion), and all the islands of the tropical Pacific to the Sandwich group.
Northern Zone.—The boundaries of the northern zone coincide in the main with the northern limit of the equatorial zone; but they overlap the latter at different points. This happens in Syria, as well as east of it, where the mixed faunae of the Jordan and the rivers of Mesopotamia demand the inclusion of this territory in the northern zone as well as in the equatorial; in the island of Formosa, where a Salmonid and several Japanese Cyprinids flourish; and in Central America, where aLepidosteus, a Cyprinid (Sclerognathus meridionalis), and anAmiurus(A. meridionalis) represent the North American fauna in the midst of a host of tropical forms.
There is no separate arctic zone for freshwater fishes; ichthyic life becomes extinct towards the pole wherever the fresh water remains frozen throughout the year, or thaws for a few weeks only; and the few fishes which extend into high latitudes belong to types in no wise differing from those of the more temperate south. The highest latitude at which fishes have been obtained is 82° N. lat., whence specimens of char (Salmo arcturusandSalmo naresii) have been brought back.
The Palaearctic or Europaeo-Asiatic Region.—The western and southern boundaries of this region coincide with those of the northern zone. Bering Strait and the Kamchatka Sea have been conventionally taken as the boundary in the north, but the fishes of both coasts, so far as they are known, are not sufficiently distinct to be referred to two different regions. The Japanese islands exhibit a decided Palaearctic fish fauna with a slight influx of tropical forms in the south. In the east, as well as in the west, the distinction between the Europaeo-Asiatic and the North American regions disappears almost entirely as we advance farther towards the north. Finally, the Europaeo-Asiatic fauna mingles with African and Indian forms in Syria, Persia and Afghanistan.
The boundaries of the North American or Nearctic region have been sufficiently indicated. The main features and the distribution of this fauna are identical with those of the preceding region.
Southern Zone.—The boundaries of this zone have been indicated in the description of the equatorial zone; they overlap the southern boundaries of the latter in South Australia and South America, but we have not the means of defining the limits to which southern types extend northwards. This zone includes Tasmania, with at least a portion of south-eastern Australia (Tasmanian sub-region), New Zealand and the Auckland Islands (New Zealand sub-region), and Chile, Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands (Fuegian sub-region). No freshwater fishes are known from Kerguelen’s Land, or from islands beyond 55° S. lat.
The Tropical American region is the richest (about 1300 species); next follow the African region (about 1000), the Indian region (about 800), the Europaeo-Asiatic region (about 500), the North American region (about 400), the Tropical Pacific region (about 60); whilst the Antarctic region is quite insignificant.
Of the migratory fishes, or fishes travelling regularly from the sea to fresh waters, most, if not all, were derived from marine forms. The anadromous forms, annually or periodically ascending rivers for the purpose of spawning, such as several species ofAcipenser,Salmo,Coregonus,Clupea(shads), andPetromyzon, are only known from the northern hemisphere, whilst the catadromous forms, spending most of their life in fresh water but resorting to the sea to breed, such asAnguilla, some species ofMugil,GalaxiasandPleuronectes, have representatives in both hemispheres.
(G. A. B.)
1For general anatomy of fishes, see T. W. Bridge,Cambridge Natural History, and R. Wiedersheim,Vergl. Anat. der Wirbeltiere. The latter contains an excellent bibliography.2Cf. J. Graham Kerr,Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc.x. 227.3For electric organs see W. Biedermann,Electro-Physiology.4J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.vol. xlvi.5J. Graham Kerr,The Budgett Memorial Volume.6J. Phelps,Science, vol. N.S. ix. p. 366; J. Eycleshymer and Wilson,Amer. Journ. Anat.v. (1906) p. 154.7J. S. Budgett,Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.xvi., 1901, p. 130.8L. Drüner,Zool. Jahrbücher Anat.Band xix. (1904), S. 434.9J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.xlvi. 423.10J. S. Budgett,op. cit.11W. E. Agar,Anat. Anz., 1905, S. 298.12J. Graham Kerr,The Budgett Memorial Volume.13J. Phelps,Science, vol. N.S. ix. p. 366; J. Eycleshymer and Wilson,Amer. Journ. Anat., v. 1906, p. 154.14: F. Maurer,Morphol. Jahrb.ix., 1884, S. 229, and xiv., 1888, S. 175.15J. Rückert,Arch. Entwickelungsmech. Band iv., 1897, S. 298; J. Graham Kerr,Phil. Trans.B. 192, 1900, p. 325, andThe Budgett Memorial Volume.16Cuvier et Valenciennes,Hist. nat. des poiss.xix., 1846, p. 151.17J. Rathke,Üb. d. Darmkanal u.s.w. d. Fische, Halle, 1824, S. 62.18Cf. W. Biedermann, Electro-Physiology.19Literature in N. K. Koltzoff, Bull. Soc. Nat. Moscou, 1901, P. 259.20J. Graham Kerr,Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond.(1901), p. 484.21J. S. Budgett,Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.xv. (1901), vol. p. 324.22H. F. Jungersen,Arb. zool. zoot. Inst. Würzburg, Band ix., 1889.23E. J. Bles,Proc. Roy. Soc.62, 1897, p. 232.24J. Graham Kerr,Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond.(1901) p. 484.25F. M. Balfour and W. N. Parker,Phil. Trans.(1882).26J. Graham Kerr,Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond.(1901), p. 495.27H. Gadow and E. C. Abbott,Phil. Trans.186 (1895), p. 163.28For development cf. Gaupp in Hertwig’sHandbuch der Entwickelungslehre.29Cf. W. E. Agar,Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.xlv. (1906), 49.30Bashford Dean,Journ. Morph.ix. (1894) 87, andTrans. New York Acad. Sci.xiii. (1894) 115.31R. Semon,Zool. Forschungsreisen, Band i. § 115.32O. Hertwig,Arch. mikr. Anat.xi. (1874).33R. H. Traquair,Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.xxxix. (1899).34Cf. E. S. Goodrich,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.xlvii. (1904), 465.35R. H. Traquair,Journ. Anat. Phys.v. (1871) 166; J. S. Budgett,Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.xvi. 315.36T. W. Bridge,Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.xiv. (1898) 350; W. E. Agar,op. cit.37J. V. Boas,Morphol. Jahrb.vi. (1880).38Cf. F. Hochstetter in O. HertwigHandbuch der Entwickelungslehre.39C. v. Kupffer,Studien z. vergl. Enlwickelungsgeschichte der Cranioten.40Cf. F. K. Studnička’s excellent account of the parietal organs in A. Oppel’sLehrbuch vergl, mikr. Anatomie, T. v. (1905).412. F. K. Studnička,S.B. böhm. Gesell.(1901); J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.vol. xlvi., andThe Budgett Memorial Volume.42J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.vol. xlvi.43F. K. Studnička,S.B. böhm. Gesell.(1901); J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.vol. xlvi., andThe Budgett Memorial Volume.44G. Elliot Smith,Anat. Anz.(1907).45F. K. Studnička,S.B. böhm. Gesell.(1896).46J. Graham Kerr,The Budgett Memorial Volume.47F. K. Studnička,S.B. böhm. Gesell.(1901); J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.xlvi., andThe Budgett Memorial Volume.48: R. Wiedersheim, Kölliker’sFestschrift: cf. alsoAnat. Anz.(1887).49A. Brauer,Verhandl. deutsch. zool. Gesell.(1902).50C. Stewart,Journ. Linn. Soc. Zool.(1906), 439.51T. W. Bridge and A. C. Haddon,Phil. Trans.184 (1893).52For literature of lateral line organs see Cole,Trans. Linn. Soc.vii. (1898).53For literature of lateral line organs see Cole,Trans. Linn. Soc., vii. (1898).54M. Fürbringer in Gegenbaur’sFestschrift(1896).
1For general anatomy of fishes, see T. W. Bridge,Cambridge Natural History, and R. Wiedersheim,Vergl. Anat. der Wirbeltiere. The latter contains an excellent bibliography.
2Cf. J. Graham Kerr,Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc.x. 227.
3For electric organs see W. Biedermann,Electro-Physiology.
4J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.vol. xlvi.
5J. Graham Kerr,The Budgett Memorial Volume.
6J. Phelps,Science, vol. N.S. ix. p. 366; J. Eycleshymer and Wilson,Amer. Journ. Anat.v. (1906) p. 154.
7J. S. Budgett,Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.xvi., 1901, p. 130.
8L. Drüner,Zool. Jahrbücher Anat.Band xix. (1904), S. 434.
9J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.xlvi. 423.
10J. S. Budgett,op. cit.
11W. E. Agar,Anat. Anz., 1905, S. 298.
12J. Graham Kerr,The Budgett Memorial Volume.
13J. Phelps,Science, vol. N.S. ix. p. 366; J. Eycleshymer and Wilson,Amer. Journ. Anat., v. 1906, p. 154.
14: F. Maurer,Morphol. Jahrb.ix., 1884, S. 229, and xiv., 1888, S. 175.
15J. Rückert,Arch. Entwickelungsmech. Band iv., 1897, S. 298; J. Graham Kerr,Phil. Trans.B. 192, 1900, p. 325, andThe Budgett Memorial Volume.
16Cuvier et Valenciennes,Hist. nat. des poiss.xix., 1846, p. 151.
17J. Rathke,Üb. d. Darmkanal u.s.w. d. Fische, Halle, 1824, S. 62.
18Cf. W. Biedermann, Electro-Physiology.
19Literature in N. K. Koltzoff, Bull. Soc. Nat. Moscou, 1901, P. 259.
20J. Graham Kerr,Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond.(1901), p. 484.
21J. S. Budgett,Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.xv. (1901), vol. p. 324.
22H. F. Jungersen,Arb. zool. zoot. Inst. Würzburg, Band ix., 1889.
23E. J. Bles,Proc. Roy. Soc.62, 1897, p. 232.
24J. Graham Kerr,Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond.(1901) p. 484.
25F. M. Balfour and W. N. Parker,Phil. Trans.(1882).
26J. Graham Kerr,Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond.(1901), p. 495.
27H. Gadow and E. C. Abbott,Phil. Trans.186 (1895), p. 163.
28For development cf. Gaupp in Hertwig’sHandbuch der Entwickelungslehre.
29Cf. W. E. Agar,Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.xlv. (1906), 49.
30Bashford Dean,Journ. Morph.ix. (1894) 87, andTrans. New York Acad. Sci.xiii. (1894) 115.
31R. Semon,Zool. Forschungsreisen, Band i. § 115.
32O. Hertwig,Arch. mikr. Anat.xi. (1874).
33R. H. Traquair,Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.xxxix. (1899).
34Cf. E. S. Goodrich,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.xlvii. (1904), 465.
35R. H. Traquair,Journ. Anat. Phys.v. (1871) 166; J. S. Budgett,Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.xvi. 315.
36T. W. Bridge,Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond.xiv. (1898) 350; W. E. Agar,op. cit.
37J. V. Boas,Morphol. Jahrb.vi. (1880).
38Cf. F. Hochstetter in O. HertwigHandbuch der Entwickelungslehre.
39C. v. Kupffer,Studien z. vergl. Enlwickelungsgeschichte der Cranioten.
40Cf. F. K. Studnička’s excellent account of the parietal organs in A. Oppel’sLehrbuch vergl, mikr. Anatomie, T. v. (1905).
412. F. K. Studnička,S.B. böhm. Gesell.(1901); J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.vol. xlvi., andThe Budgett Memorial Volume.
42J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.vol. xlvi.
43F. K. Studnička,S.B. böhm. Gesell.(1901); J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.vol. xlvi., andThe Budgett Memorial Volume.
44G. Elliot Smith,Anat. Anz.(1907).
45F. K. Studnička,S.B. böhm. Gesell.(1896).
46J. Graham Kerr,The Budgett Memorial Volume.
47F. K. Studnička,S.B. böhm. Gesell.(1901); J. Graham Kerr,Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.xlvi., andThe Budgett Memorial Volume.
48: R. Wiedersheim, Kölliker’sFestschrift: cf. alsoAnat. Anz.(1887).
49A. Brauer,Verhandl. deutsch. zool. Gesell.(1902).
50C. Stewart,Journ. Linn. Soc. Zool.(1906), 439.
51T. W. Bridge and A. C. Haddon,Phil. Trans.184 (1893).
52For literature of lateral line organs see Cole,Trans. Linn. Soc.vii. (1898).
53For literature of lateral line organs see Cole,Trans. Linn. Soc., vii. (1898).
54M. Fürbringer in Gegenbaur’sFestschrift(1896).
ICHTHYOPHAGI(Gr. for “fish-eaters”), the name given by ancient geographers to several coast-dwelling peoples in different parts of the world and ethnically unrelated. Nearchus mentions such a race as inhabiting the barren shores of the Mekran on the Arabian Sea; Pausanias locates them on the western coast of the Red Sea. Ptolemy speaks of fish-eaters in Ethiopia, and on the west coast of Africa; while Pliny relates the existence of such tribes on the islands in the Persian Gulf. Herodotus (book i.c.200) mentions three tribes of the Babylonians who were solely fish-eaters, and in book iii. c. 19 refers to Ichthyophagi in Egypt. The existence of such tribes was confirmed by Sir Richard F. Burton (El-Medinah, p. 144).
ICHTHYOSAURUS,a fish or porpoise-shaped marine reptile which characterized the Mesozoic period and became extinct immediately after the deposition of the Chalk. It was namedIchthyosaurus(Gr. fish-lizard) by C. König in 1818 in allusion to its outward form, and is best known by nearly complete skeletons from the Lias of England and Germany. The large head is produced into a slender, pointed snout; and the jaws are provided with a row of conical teeth nearly uniform in size and deeply implanted in a continuous groove. The eye is enormous, and is surrounded by a ring of overlapping “sclerotic plates,” which would serve to protect the eye-ball during diving. The vertebrae are very numerous, short and deeply biconcave, imparting great flexibility to the backbone as in fishes. The neck is so short and thick that it is practically absent. There are always two pairs of paddle-like limbs, the hinder pair never disappearing as in porpoises and other Cetacea, though often much reduced in size. A few specimens from the Upper Lias of Württemberg (in the museums of Stuttgart, Tübingen, Budapest and Chicago) exhibit remains of the skin, which is quite smooth and forms two triangular median fins, one in the middle of the back, the other at the end of the tail. The dorsal fin consists merely of skin without any internal skeleton, whilethe tail-fin is expanded in a vertical plane and has the lower lobe stiffened by the tapering end of the backbone, which is sharply bent downwards. Immature individuals are sometimes observable within the full-grown skeletons, suggesting that this reptile was viviparous.
The largest known species ofIchthyosaurusisI. trigonodonfrom the Upper Lias of Banz, Bavaria, with the head measuring about two metres in length and probably representing an animal not less than ten metres in total length.I. platyodon, from the English Lower Lias, seems to have been almost equally large.I. intermediusandI. communis, which are the commonest species in the English Lower Lias, rarely exceed a length of three or four metres. The species in rocks later than the Lias are known for the most part only by fragments, but the remains of Lower Cretaceous age are noteworthy for their very wide geographical distribution, having been found in Europe, the East Indies, Australia, New Zealand and South America. Allied Ichthyosaurians namedOphthalmosaurusandBaptanodon, from the Upper Jurassic of England and North America, are nearly or quite toothless and have very flexible broad paddles. The earliest known Ichthyosaurians (Mixosaurus), which occur in the Trias, are of diminutive size, with paddles which suggest that these marine reptiles were originally descended from land or marsh animals (seeReptiles).
Authorities.—R. Owen,A Monograph of the Fossil Reptilia of the Liassic Formations, part iii. (Mon. Palaeont. Soc., 1881); E. Fraas,Die Ichthyosaurier der süddeutschen Trias- und Jura-Ablagerungen(Tübingen, 1891). Also good figures in T. Hawkins,The Book of the Great Sea-dragons(London, 1840).
Authorities.—R. Owen,A Monograph of the Fossil Reptilia of the Liassic Formations, part iii. (Mon. Palaeont. Soc., 1881); E. Fraas,Die Ichthyosaurier der süddeutschen Trias- und Jura-Ablagerungen(Tübingen, 1891). Also good figures in T. Hawkins,The Book of the Great Sea-dragons(London, 1840).
(A. S. Wo.)
ICHTHYOSIS,orXeroderma, a general thickening of the whole skin and marked accumulation of the epidermic elements, with atrophy of the sebaceous glands, giving rise to a hard, dry, scaly condition, whence the names, fromἰχθύς, fish, andξηρός, dry,δέρμα, skin. This disease generally first appears in infancy, and is probably congenital. It differs in intensity and in distribution, and is generally little amenable to any but palliative remedies, such as the regular application of oily substances. Ichthyosis lingualis (“smokers’ tongue”), a variety common in heavy smokers, occurs in opaque white patches on the tongue, gums and roof of the mouth. Cancer occasionally starts from the patches. The affection is obstinate, but may disappear spontaneously.
ICKNIELD STREET.(i) The Saxon name (earlierIcenhylt) of a prehistoric (not Roman) “Ridgeway” along the Berkshire downs and the Chilterns, which crossed the Thames near Streatley and ended somewhere near Tring or Dunstable. In some places there are traces of a double road, one line on the hills and one in the valley below, as if for summer and winter use. No modern highroad follows it for any distance. Antiquaries have supposed that it once ran on to Royston, Newmarket and Norfolk, and have connected its name with the Iceni, the Celtic tribe inhabiting East Anglia before the Roman conquest. But the name does not occur in early documents so far east, and it has certainly nothing to do with that of the Iceni (Haverfield,Victoria History of Norfolk, i. 286). See furtherErmine Street. (2) A Roman road which ran through Derby, Lichfield, Birmingham and Alcester is sometimes called Icknield Street and sometimes Rycknield Street. The origin of this nomenclature is very obscure (Vict. Hist. of Warwick, i. 239).
(F. J. H.)
ICON(through the Latinized form, from Gr.εἰκών, portrait, image), generally any image or portrait-figure, but specially the term applied to the representations in the Eastern Church of sacred personages, whether in painting or sculpture, and particularly to the small metal plaques in archaic Byzantine style, venerated by the adherents of the Greek Church. SeeIconoclasts;Image-Worship;Byzantine Art. The term “iconography,” once confined to the study of engravings (q.v.), is now applied to the history of portrait images in Christian art, though it is also used with a qualifying adjective of Greek, Roman and other art.
ICONIUM(mod.Konia), a city of Asia Minor, the last of the Phrygian land towards Lycaonia, was commonly reckoned to Lycaonia in the Roman time, but retained its old Phrygian connexion and population to a comparatively late date. Its natural surroundings must have made it an important town from the beginning of organized society in this region. It lies in an excellently fertile plain, 6 m. from the Pisidian mountains on the west, with mountains more distant on the north and south, while to the east the dead level plain stretches away for hundreds of miles, though the distant view is interrupted by island-like mountains. Streams from the Pisidian mountains make the land on the south-west and south of the city a garden; but on the east and north-east a great part of the naturally fertile soil is uncultivated. Trees grow nowhere except in the gardens near the city. Irrigation is necessary for productiveness, and the water-supply is now deficient. A much greater supply was available for agriculture in ancient times and might be reintroduced.
Originally a Phrygian city, as almost every authority who has come into contact with the population calls it, and as is implied in Acts xiv. 6, it was in a political sense the chief city of the Lycaonian tetrarchy added to the Galatian country about 165B.C., and it was part of the Roman province Galatia from 25B.C.to aboutA.D.295. Then it was included in the province Pisidia (as Ammianus Marcellinus describes it) till 372, after which it formed part of the new province Lycaonia so long as the provincial division lasted. Later it was a principal city of the theme of Anatolia. It suffered much from the Arab raids in the three centuries followingA.D.660; its capture in 708 is mentioned, but it never was held as a city of the caliphs. In later Roman and Byzantine times it must have been a large and wealthy city. It was a metropolis and an archbishopric, and one of the earliest councils of the church was held there inA.D.235. The ecclesiastical organization of Lycaonia and the country round Iconium on all sides was complete in the early 4th century, and monuments of later 3rd and 4th century Christianity are extremely numerous. The history of Christian Iconium is utterly obscure. The city was thrice visited by St Paul, probably inA.D.47, 50 and 53; and it is the principal scene of the tale of Paul and Thecla (which though apocryphal has certainly some historical basis; seeThecla). There was a distinct Roman element in Iconium, arising doubtless from the presence of Roman traders. This was recognized by Claudius, who granted the honorary title Claudiconium, and by Hadrian, who elevated the city to the rank of a Roman colony aboutA.D.130 under the name Colonia Aelia Hadriana Augusta Iconiensium. The period of its greatest splendour was after the conquest by the Seljuk Turks about 1072-1074. It soon became the capital of the Seljuk state, and one of the most brilliant cities of the world. The palace of the sultans and the mosque of Ala ed-dīn Kaikobād formerly covered great part of the Acropolis hill in the northern part of the city. Farther south there is still the great complex of buildings which form the chief seat of the Mevlevi dervishes, a sect widely spread over Anatolia. Many other splendid mosques and royal tombs adorned the city, and justified the Turkish proverb, “See all the world; but see Konia.” The walls, about 2 m. in circumference, consisted of a core of rubble and concrete, coated with ancient stones, inscriptions, sculptures and architectural marbles, forming a striking sight, which no traveller ever examined in detail. Beyond the walls extended the gardens and villas of a prosperous Oriental population, especially on the south-west towards the suburb of Meram.
When the Seljuk state broke up, and the Osmanli or Ottoman sovereignty arose, Konia decayed, its population dwindled and the splendid early Turkish buildings were suffered to go to ruin. As trade and intercourse diminished Konia grew poorer and more ruinous. The walls and the palace, still perfect in the beginning of the 19th century, were gradually pulled down for building material, and in 1882 there remained only a small part of the walls, from which all the outer stones had been removed, while the palace was a ruin. At that time and for some years later a large part of Konia was like a city of the dead. But about 1895 the advent of the Anatolian railway began to restore its prosperity. A good supply of drinking water wasbrought to the city by Ferid Pasha, who governed the vilayet ably for several years, till in 1903 he was appointed Grand Vizier. The sacred buildings, mosques, &c., were patched up (except a few which were quite ruinous) and the walls wholly removed, but an unsightly fragment of a palace-tower still remained in 1906. In 1904-1905 the first two sections of the Bagdad railway, 117 m., to Karaman and Eregli, were built. In the city there is a branch of the Ottoman bank, a government technical school, a French Catholic mission and a school, an Armenian Protestant school for boys, an American mission school for girls, mainly Armenian, and other educational establishments.
The founder of the Mevlevi dancing dervishes, the poet Mahommed Jelal-ed-Din (Rumi), in 1307, though tempted to assume the inheritance along with the empire of the Seljuk sultan Ala ed-dīn Kaikobad III., who died without heirs, preferred to pass on the power to Osman, son of Ertogrul, and with his own hands invested Osman and girt him with the sword: this investiture was the legitimate beginning of the Osmanli authority. The heirs of Jelal-ed-Din (Rumi) were favoured by the Osmanli sultans until 1516, when Selim was on the point of destroying the Mevlevi establishment as hostile to the Osmanli and the faith; and though he did not do so the Mevlevi and their chiefs were deprived of influence and dignity. In 1829 Mahmud II. restored their dignity in part, and in 1889 Abd-ul-Hamid II. confirmed their exemption from military duty. The head of the Mevlevi dervishes (Aziz-Effendi, Hazreti-Mevlana, Mollah-Unkiar, commonly styled simply Chelebi-Effendi) has the right to gird on the sultan’s sword at his investiture, and is master of the considerable revenues of the greatest religious establishment in the empire. He has also the privilege of corresponding direct with the caliph; but otherwise is regarded as rather opposed to the Osmanli administration, and has no real power.
Iconium is distant by rail 466 m. from the Bosporus at Haidar-Pasha, and 389 from Smyrna by way of Afium-Kara-Hissar. It has recently become the seat of a considerable manufacture of carpets, owing to the cheapness of labour. The population was estimated at 44,000 in 1890, and is now probably over 50,000. Mercury mines have begun to be worked; other minerals are known to exist.
(W. M. Ra.)
ICONOCLASTS(Gr.εἰκονοκλάστης: εἰκών, image, andκλάειν, to break), the name applied particularly to the opponents in the 8th and 9th centuries of the use of images in Christian cult.
As regards the attitude towards religious images assumed by the primitive Christian Church, several questions have often been treated as one which cannot be too carefully kept apart. There can be no doubt that the early Christians were unanimous in condemning heathen image-worship and the various customs, some immoral, with which it was associated. A form of iconolatry specially deprecated in the New Testament was the then prevalent adoration of the images of the reigning emperors (see Rev. xv. 2). It is also tolerably certain that, if for no other reasons besides the Judaism, obscurity, and poverty of the early converts to Christianity, the works of art seen in their meeting-houses cannot at first have been numerous. Along with these reasons would co-operate towards the exclusion of visible aids to devotion, not only the church’s sacramental use of Christ’s name as a name of power, and its living sense of his continued real though unseen presence, but also, during the first years, its constant expectation of his second advent as imminent. It was a common accusation brought against Jews and Christians that they had “no altars, no temples, no known images” (Min. Fel.Oct.c. 10), that “they set up no image or form of any god” (see Arnob.Adv. Gent.vi. I; similarly Celsus); and this charge was never denied; on the contrary Origen gloried in it (c. Celsum, bk. 7, p. 386). At a comparatively early date, indeed, we read of various Gnostic sects calling in the fine arts to aid their worship; thus Irenaeus (Haer.i. 25. 6), speaking of the followers of Marcellina, says that “they possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; and they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among men. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world; that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras and Plato and Aristotle and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images after the same manner as the Gentiles” (cf. Aug.De Haer.c. 7). It is also well known that the emperor Alexander Severus found a place for several Scripture characters and even for Christ in his lararium (Lamprid.Vit. Alex. Sev.c. 29). But there is no evidence that such a use of images extended at that period to orthodox Christian circles. The first unmistakable indication of the public use of the painter’s art for directly religious ends does not occur untilA.D.306, when the synod of Elvira, Spain, decreed (can. 36) that “pictures ought not to be in a church, lest that which is worshipped and adored be painted on walls.”1This canon is proof that the use of sacred pictures in public worship was not at the beginning of the 4th century a thing unknown within the church in Spain; and the presumption is that in other places, about the same period, the custom was looked upon with a more tolerant eye. Indications of the existence of allied forms of sacred Christian art prior to this period are not wholly wanting. It seems possible to trace some of the older and better frescos in the catacombs to a very early age; and Bible manuscripts were often copiously illuminated and illustrated even before the middle of the 4th century. An often-quoted passage from Tertullian (De Pudic.c. 10, cf. c. 7) shows that in his day the communion cup was wont to bear a representation of the Good Shepherd. Clement of Alexandria (Paedag.iii. 11) mentions the dove, fish, ship, lyre, anchor, as suitable devices for Christian signet rings. Origen (c. Celsum, bk. 3) repudiates graven images as only fit for demons.
During the 4th and following centuries the tendency to enlist the fine arts in the service of the church steadily advanced; not, however, so far as appears, with the formal sanction of any regular ecclesiastical authority, and certainly not without strong protests raised by more than one powerful voice. From a passage in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa (Orat. de Laudibus Theodori Martyris, c. 2) it is easy to see how the stories of recent martyrs would offer themselves as tempting subjects for the painter, and at the same time be considered to have received from him their best and most permanent expression; that this feeling was widespread is shown in many places by Paulinus of Nola (ob.431), from whom we gather that not only martyrdoms and Bible histories, but also symbols of the Trinity were in his day freely represented pictorially. Augustine (De Cons. Ev.i. 10) speaks less approvingly of those who look for Christ and his apostles “on painted walls” rather than in his written word. How far the Christian feeling of the 4th and 5th centuries was from being settled in favour of the employment of the fine arts is shown by such a case as that of Eusebius of Caesarea, who, in reply to a request of Constantia, sister of Constantine, for a picture of Christ, wrote that it was unlawful to possess images pretending to represent the Saviour either in his divine or in his human nature, and added that to avoid the reproach of idolatry he had actually taken away from a lady friend the pictures of Paul and of Christ which she had.2Similarly Epiphanius in a letter to John, bishop of Jerusalem, tells how in a church at Anablatha near Bethel he had found a curtain painted with the image “of Christ or of some other saint,” which he had torn down and ordered to be used for the burial of a pauper. The passage, however, reveals not only what Epiphanius thought on the subject, but also that such pictures must have been becoming frequent. Nilus, the disciple and defender of Chrysostom, permitted the symbol of the cross in churches and also pictorial delineations of Old and New Testament history, but deprecated other symbols, pictures of martyrs, and most of all the representation of Christ. In the time of Gregory the Great the Western Church obtainedsomething like an authoritative declaration on the question about images, but in a sense not quite the same as that of the synod of Elvira. Serenus of Marseilles had ordered the destruction of all sacred images within his diocese; this action called forth several letters from Pope Gregory (viii. 2. III; ix. 4. 11), in which he disapproved of that course, and, drawing the distinction which has since been authoritative for the Roman Church, pointed out that—
“It is one thing to worship a picture and another to learn from the language of a picture what that is which ought to be worshipped. What those who can read learn by means of writing, that do the uneducated learn by looking at a picture.... That, therefore, ought not to have been destroyed which had been placed in the churches, not for worship, but solely for instructing the minds of the ignorant.”
“It is one thing to worship a picture and another to learn from the language of a picture what that is which ought to be worshipped. What those who can read learn by means of writing, that do the uneducated learn by looking at a picture.... That, therefore, ought not to have been destroyed which had been placed in the churches, not for worship, but solely for instructing the minds of the ignorant.”
With regard to the symbol of the cross, its public use dates from the time of Constantine, though, according to many Christian archaeologists it had, prior to that date, a very important place in the so-called “disciplina arcani.” The introduction of the crucifix was later; originally the favourite combination was that of the figure of a lamb lying at the foot of the cross; the council of Constantinople, called “in Trullo,” in 692 enjoined that this symbol should be discontinued, and that where Christ was shown in connexion with his cross he should be represented in his human nature. In the catacombs Christ is never represented hanging on the cross, and the cross itself is only portrayed in a veiled and hesitating manner. In the Egyptian churches the cross was a pagan symbol of life borrowed by the Christians and interpreted in the pagan manner. The cross of the early Christian emperors was alabarumor token of victory in war, a standard for use in battle. Religious feeling in the West recoiled from the crucifix as late as the 6th century, and it was equally abhorrent to the Monophysites of the East who regarded the human nature of Christ as swallowed up in the divine. Nevertheless it seems to have originated in the East, perhaps as a protest against the extreme Monophysites, who even denied the passibility of Christ. Perhaps the Nestorians, who clung to the human aspect of Christ, introduced it about 550. From the East it soon passed to the West.
Not until the 8th century were the religious and theological questions which connect themselves with image-worship distinctly raised in the Eastern Church in their entirety. The controversy began with an address which Leo the Isaurian, in the tenth year of his reign (726), delivered in public “in favour of overthrowing the holy and venerable images,” as says Theophanes (Chronogr., in MignePatr. Gr.108, 816). This emperor had, in the years 717 and 718, hurled back the tide of Arab conquest which threatened to engulf Byzantium, and had also shown himself an able statesman and legislator. Born at Germanicia in Syria, and, before he mounted the throne, captain-general of the Anatolian theme, he had come under the influence of the anti-idolatrous sects, such as the Jews, Montanists, Paulicians and Manicheans, which abounded in Asia Minor, but of which he was otherwise no friend. But his religious reform was unpopular, especially among the women, who killed an official who, by the emperor’s command, was destroying an image of Christ in the vestibule of the imperial palace of Chalcé. Thisémeuteprovoked severe reprisals, and the partisans of the images were mutilated and killed, or beaten and exiled. A rival emperor even, Agallianus, was set up, who perished in his attempt to seize Constantinople. Italy also rose in arms, and Pope Gregory II. wrote to Leo blaming his interference in religious matters, though he dissuaded the rebels in Venetia, the Exarchate and the Pentapolis from electing a new emperor and marching against Leo. In 730 Germanus the patriarch resigned rather than subscribe to a decree condemning images; later he was strangled, in exile and replaced by an iconoclast, Anastasius. Meanwhile, inside the Arab empire, John of Damascus wrote his three dogmatic discourses against the traducers of images, arguing that their use was not idolatry but only a relative worship (προσκύνησις σχετική). The next pope, Gregory III. convoked a council of ninety-three bishops, which excommunicated the iconoclasts, and the fleet which Leo sent to retaliate on the Latin peninsula was lost in a storm in the Adriatic. The most Leo was able to do was to double the tribute of Calabria and Sicily, confiscate the pope’s revenues there, and impose on the bishops of south Italy a servitude to Byzantium which lasted for centuries.
Leo III. died in June 740, and then his son Constantine V. began a persecution of the image-worshippers in real earnest. In his eagerness to restore the simplicity of the primitive church he even assailed Mariolatry, intercession of saints, relics and perhaps infant baptism, to the scandal even of the iconoclast bishops themselves. His reign began with the seizure for eighteen months of Constantinople by his brother-in-law Artavasdes, who temporarily restored the images. He was captured and beheaded with his accomplices in November 742, and in February 754 Constantine held in the palace of Hieria a council of 388 bishops, mostly of the East; the patriarchs of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem refused to attend. In it images were condemned, but the other equally conservative leanings of the emperor found no favour. The chief upholders of images, the patriarch Germanus, George of Cyprus and John of Damascus, were anathematized, and Christians forbidden to adore or make images or even to hide them. These decrees were obstinately resisted, especially by the monks, large numbers of whom fled to Italy. In 765 the emperor demanded of his subjects all over his empire an oath on the cross that they detested images, and St Stephen the younger, the chief upholder of them, was murdered in the streets. A regular crusade now began against monks and nuns, and images and relics were destroyed on a great scale. In parts of Asia Minor (Lydia and Caria) the monks were even forced to marry the nuns. In 769 Pope Stephen III. condemned the council of Hieria, and in 775 Constantine V. died. His son Leo IV. died in 780, leaving a widow, Irene, of Athenian birth, who seized the opportunity presented by the minority of her ten-year-old son Constantine VI. to restore the images and dispersed relics. In 784 she invited Pope Adrian I. to come and preside over a fresh council, which was to reverse that of 754 and heal the schism with Rome. In August 786 the council met, but was broken up by the imperial guards, who were Easterns and sturdy iconoclasts. Irene replaced them by a more trustworthy force, and convoked a fresh council of three hundred bishops and monks innumerable in September 787, at Nicaea in the church of St Sophia. The cult of images was now solemnly restored, iconoclast bishops deposed or reconciled, the dogmatic theory of images defined, and church discipline re-established. The order thus imposed lasted twenty-four years, until a military revolution placed a soldier of fortune, half Armenian, half Persian, named Leo, on the throne; he, like his soldiers, was persuaded that the ill-success of the Roman arms against Bulgarians and other invaders was due to the idolatry rampant at court and elsewhere. The soldiers stoned the image of Christ which Irene had set up afresh in the palace of Chalcé, and this provoked a counter-demonstration of the clergy. Leo feigned for a while to be on their side, but on the 2nd of February 815, in the sanctuary of St Sophia, publicly refused to prostrate himself before the images, with the approbation of the army and of many bishops who were iconoclasts at heart. Irene’s patriarch Nicephorus was now deposed and one Theodotus, a kinsman of Constantine Copronymus, consecrated in his place on the 1st of April 815. A fresh council was soon convoked, which cursed Irene and re-enacted the decrees of 754. This reaction lasted only for a generation under Leo the Armenian, who died 820, Michael II. 820-829, and Theophilus 829-842; and was frustrated mainly by the exertions of Theodore of Studion and his monks, called the Studitae. Theodore refused to attend or recognize the new council, and was banished first to Bithynia and thence to Smyrna, whence he continued to address his appeals to the pope, to the eastern patriarchs and to his dispersed monks. He died in 826. Theophilus, the last of the iconoclast emperors, was a devoted Mariolater and controversialist who invited the monks to discuss the question of images with him, and whipped or branded them when he was out-argued; he at length banished them from the cities, andbranded on the hands a painter of holy pictures, Lazarus by name, who declined to secularize his art; he also raised to the patriarchal throne John Hylilas, chief instigator of the reaction of 815. In 842 Theophilus died, leaving his wife Theodora regent; she was, like Irene, addicted to images, and chose as patriarch a monk, Methodius, whom the emperor Michael had imprisoned for laying before him Pope Paschal I.’s letter of protest. John Hylilas was deposed and flogged in turn. A fresh council was now held which re-enacted the decrees of 787, and on the 20th of February 842 the new patriarch, the empress, clergy and court dignitaries assisted in the church of St Sophia at a solemn restoration of images which lasted until the advent of the Turks. The struggle had gone on for 116 years.
The iconoclastic movement is perhaps the most dramatic episode in Byzantine history, and the above outline of its external events must be completed by an appreciation of its deeper historical and religious significance and results. We can distinguish three parties among the combatants:—
1. The partisans of image worship. These were chiefly found in the Hellenic portions of the empire, where Greek art had once held sway. The monks were the chief champions of images, because they were illuminators and artists. Their doctors taught that the same grace of the Holy Spirit which imbued the living saint attaches after death to his relics, name, image and picture. The latter are thus no mere representations, but as it were emanations from the archetype, vehicles of the supernatural personality represented, and possessed of an inherent sacramental value and power, such as the name of Jesus had for the earliest believers. Here Christian image-worship borders on the beliefs which underlie sympathetic magic (seeImage Worship).
2. The iconoclasts proper, who not only condemned image worship in the sense just explained but rejected all religious art whatever. Fleeting matter to their mind was not worthy to embody or reflect heavenly supersensuous energies denoted by the names of Christ and the saints. For the same reason they rejected relics and, as a rule, the worship of the cross. Statues of Christ, especially of him hanging on the cross, inspired the greatest horror and indignation; and this is why none of the graven images of Christ, common before the outbreak of the movement, survive. More than this—although the synod of 692 specially allowed the crucifix, yet Greek churches have discarded it ever since the 8th century.
This idea that material representation involves a profanation of divine personages, while disallowing all religious art which goes beyond scroll-work, spirals, flourishes and geometrical designs, yet admits to the full of secular art; and accordingly the iconoclastic emperors replaced the holy pictures in churches with frescoes of hunting scenes, and covered their palaces with garden scenes where men were plucking fruit and birds singing amid the foliage. Contemporary Mahommedans did the same, for it is an error to suppose that this religion was from the first hostile to profane art. At one time the mosques were covered with mosaics, analogous to those of Ravenna, depicting scenes from the life of Mahomet and the prophets. The Arabs only forbade plastic art in the 9th century, nor were their essentially Semitic scruples ever shared by the Persians.
The prejudice we are considering is closely connected with the Manichaean view of matter, which in strict consistency rejected the belief that God was really made flesh, or really died on the cross. The Manichaeans were therefore, by reason of their dualism, arch-enemies no less of Christian art than of relics and cross-worship; the Monophysites were equally so by reason of their belief that the divine nature in Christ entirely absorbed and sublated the human; they shaded off into the party of theaphthartodoketes, who held that his human body was incorruptible and made of ethereal fire, and that his divine nature was impassible. Their belief made them, like the Manichaeans, hostile to material portraiture of Christ, especially of his sufferings on the cross. All these nearly allied schools of Christian thought could, moreover, address, as against the image-worshippers, a very effective appeal to the Bible and to Christian antiquity. Now Egypt, Asia Minor, Armenia, western Syria and the Hauran were almost wholly given up to these forms of opinion. Accordingly in all the remains of the Christian art of the Hauran one seeks in vain for any delineation of human face or figure. The art of these countries is mainly geometrical, and allows only of monograms crowned with laurels, of peacocks, of animals gambolling amid foliage, of fruit and flowers, of crosses which are eithersvastikasof Hindu and Mycenaean type, or so lost in enveloping arabesques as to be merely decorative. Such was the only religious art permitted by the Christian sentiment of these countries, and also of the largeenclavesof semi-Manichaean belief formed in the Balkans by the transportation thither of Armenians and Paulicians. And it is important to remark that the protagonists of iconoclasm in Byzantium came from these lands where image cult offended the deepest religious instincts of the masses. Leo the Isaurian had all the scruples of a Paulician, even to the rejection of the cult of Virgin and saints; Constantine V. was openly such. Michael Balbus was reared in Phrygia among Montanists. The soldiers and captains of the Byzantine garrisons were equally Armenians and Syrians, in whom the sight of a crucifix or image set up for worship inspired nothing but horror.
The issue of the struggle was not a complete victory even in Byzantium for the partisans of image-worship. The Iconoclasts left an indelible impress on the Christian art of the Greek Church, in so far as they put an end to the use of graven images; for the Eastern icon is a flat picture, less easily regarded than would be a statue as a nidus within which a spirit can lurk. Half the realm of creative art, that of statuary, was thus suppressed at a blow; and the other half, painting, forfeited all the grace and freedom, all the capacity of new themes, forms and colours, all the development which we see in the Latin Church. The Greeks have produced no Giotto, no Fra Angelico, no Raphael. Their artists have no choice of subjects and no initiative. Colour, dress, attitude, grouping of figures are all dictated by traditional rules, set out in regular manuals. God the Father may not be depicted at all—a restriction intelligible when we remember that the image in theory is fraught with the virtue of the archetype; but everywhere the utmost timidity is shown. What else could an artist do but make a slavish and exact copy of old pictures which worked miracles and perhaps had the reputation as well of having fallen from heaven?
3. Between these extreme parties the Roman Church took the middle way of common sense. The hair-splitting distinction of the Byzantine doctors between veneration due to images (προσκύνησις τιμητική), and the adoration (προσκύνησις λατρευτική) due to God alone, was dropped, and the utility of pictures for the illiterate emphasized. Their use was declared to be this, that they taught the ignorant through the eye what they should adore with the mind; they are not themselves to be adored. Such was Gregory the Great’s teaching, and such also is the purport of the Caroline books, which embody the conclusions arrived at by the bishops of Germany, Gaul and Aquitaine, presided over by papal legates at the council of Frankfort in 794, and incidentally also reveal the hatred and contempt of Charlemagne for the Byzantine empire as an institution, and for Irene, its ruler, as a person. The theologians whom Louis the Pious convened at Paris in 825, to answer the letter received from the iconoclast emperor Michael Balbus, were as hostile to the orthodox Greeks as to the image-worshippers, and did not scruple to censure Pope Adrian for having approved of the empress Irene’s attitude. The council of Trent decided afresh in the same sense.
Two incidental results of the iconoclastic movement must be noticed, the one of less, the other of more importance. The lesser one was the flight of Greek iconolatrous monks from Asia Minor and the Levant to Sicily and Calabria, where they established convents which for centuries were the western homes of Greek learning, and in which were written not a few of the oldest Greek MSS. found in our libraries. The greater eventwas the scission between East and West. The fury of the West against the iconoclastic emperors was such that the whole of Italy clamoured for war. It is true that Pope Stephen II. applied in 753 to Constantine V., one of the worst destroyers of images, for aid against the Lombards, for the emperor of Byzantium was still regarded as the natural champion of the church. But Constantine refused aid, and the pope turned to the Frankish King Pippin. The die was cast. Henceforth Rome was linked with the Carolingian house in an alliance which culminated in the coronation of Charlemagne by the pope on the 25th of December 800.
In the crusading epoch the Cathars and Paulicians carried all over Europe the old iconoclastic spirit, and perhaps helped to transmit it to Wycliffe and Hus. Not the least racy clause in the document compiled about 1389 by the Wycliffites in defence of their defunct teacher is the following: “Hit semes that this offrynge ymages is a sotile cast of Antichriste and his clerkis for to drawe almes fro pore men ... certis, these ymages of hemselfe may do nouther gode nor yvel to mennis soules, but thai myghtten warme a man’s body in colde, if thai were sette upon a fire.”
At the period of the Reformation it was unanimously felt by the reforming party that, with the invocation of saints and the practice of reverencing their relics, the adoration of images ought also to cease. The leaders of the movement were not, however, perfectly agreed on the question as to whether these might not in some circumstances be retained in churches. Luther had no sympathy with the iconoclastic outbreaks which then occurred; he classed images in themselves as among the “adiaphora,” and condemned only their cultus; so also the “Confessio Tetrapolitana” leaves Christians free to have them or not, if only due regard be had to what is expedient and edifying. The “Heidelberg Catechism,” however, emphatically declares that images are not to be tolerated at all in churches.