For the attitude of the Frankish church in this iconoclastic controversy, I quote once more from Schaff (4. 467):

Charlemagne, with the aid of his chaplains, especially Alcuin, prepared and published, three years after the Nicene Council, an important work on image-worship under the title Quatuor Libri Carolini (790). He dissents both from the iconoclastic synod of 754 and the anti-iconoclastic synod of 787, but more from the latter, which he treats very disrespectfully. He decidedly rejects imageworship, but allows the use of images for ornament and devotion, and supports his view with Scripture passages and patristic quotations. The spirit and aim of the book is almost Protestant. The chief thoughts are these: God alone is the object of worship and adoration (colendus et adorandus). Saints are only to be revered (venerandi). Images can in no sense be worshiped. To bow or kneel before them, to salute or kiss them, to strew incense and light candles before them, is idolatrous and superstitious. It is far better to search the Scriptures, which know nothing of such practices. The tales of miracles wrought by images are inventions of the imagination, or deceptions of the evil spirit. On the other hand, the iconoclasts, in their honest zeal against idolatry, went too far in rejecting images altogether. The legitimate and proper use of images is to adorn the churches and to perpetuate and popularize the memory of the persons and events which they represent. Yet even this is not necessary; for a Christian should be able to rise to the contemplation of the virtues of the saints and to ascend to the fountain of eternal light. . . . The Council of Nicea committed a great wrong in condemning those who do not worship images.

The author of the Caroline books, however, falls into the same inconsistency as the Eastern iconoclasts, by making an exception in favor of the sign of the cross and the relics of the saints. The cross is called a banner which puts the enemy to flight, and the honoring of relics is declared to be a great means of promoting piety.

A Synod in Frankfort, a. D. 794, the most important held during the reign of Charlemagne, and representing the churches of France and Germany, in the presence of two papal legates . . . endorsed the doctrine of the Libri Carolini, unanimously condemned the worship of images in any form, and rejected the seventh ecumenical council. According to an old tradition, the English church agreed with this decision.

Let us see if anything beside 'an old tradition' points to the agreement of the English Church. The Frankfort

Synod supported the Caroline Books, which we have seen the Emperor prepared and published with the aid of his chaplains, especially Alcuin.' Schaff says in his biography of Alcuin (4. 687): 'In 794 he took a prominent part, although simply a deacon, in the council of Frankfort.' Also, in a foot-note to the last sentence of our long quotation, he says: This [the agreement of the English Church] rests partly on the probable share which the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin had in the composition of the Caroline Books, partly on the testimony of Simeon of Durham.' Again, in his biography of Alcuin, he says: 'In 792 he sent, in the name of the English bishops, a refutation of image-worship.' This is the testimony of Simeon of Durham,' and here, evidently, the historian believes it may be accepted for truth.

But the testimony of the sort we have gained from the investigation of the previous chapter confirms what already seems probable. In all the Anglo-Saxon literature, whether in the vernacular or in Latin, there is not a hint that images were ever used for worship. Lingard, in his discussion of paintings in the Anglo-Saxon church,' says, ‘Of any species of religious honor paid to the paintings themselves, I do not recollect any instance in the contemporary records. But with respect to the cross it was far otherwise.'

Augustine brought a picture of Christ upon landing in England, and Benedict Biscop in the seventh century brought paintings from Rome. But even such adornment was rare, and, as Lingard says, there is no evidence that these pictures received any species of religious honor.'

In the previous chapter we found that the crucifix was apparently unknown in England till the end of the ninth century. This is an important piece of evidence in determining the attitude of the English Church toward imageworship during the great controversy. If even the crucified image was unknown, to say nothing of being worshiped, it is not difficult to guess the position of the English clergy in this quarrel.

'Hist. and Antiq. 2. 108.

Indeed, all the evidence there is points toward the full sympathy of the English Church with the tenor of the Caroline Books and the Frankfort decrees. Nay, more, these were probably the expression of the English Church itself through Alcuin. Alcuin was not the kind of man to stand apart from the traditions in which he was bred-like Scotus Erigena, for example-but led his age only as the exponent of his age, never as a pioneer. He was just the kind of man to reflect faithfully the traditions of the church in which he was born and bred.

The value of establishing this point about the English Church is this, that it was characteristic of those who opposed image-worship-both the fiercest iconoclasts, like Leo III, for example, and those who took a more moderate position, like Charlemagne-to make a great exception in favor of the cross. The cross was the only image-if so it may be called-to which adoration could properly be paid; and in condemning images, they laid special emphasis upon the cross.

The latter part of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth centuries we have recognized as the period in England when there seemed to be a special impulse toward the honoring of the cross. This period was in the very heart of the iconoclastic war. The theory that this impulse was largely due to the attitude of England in the controversy, the quickening of a regard for the emblem which was already dear to the national heart by the story of Oswald, and already received 'adoration,' to the exclusion of every other object in the church, appears, on the whole, to be the most satisfactory in explaining the facts.

Very likely, beneath the Elene, or the Dream of the Rood, there was a personal experience of some sort-a dream, for example-in which the cross figured. Yet it would be just this heightened interest in the cross which would account for its being the centre of this religious experience in the mind of the poet, rather than the person of Christ, for example, or Mary, or one of the saints.

We may regard, then, this poetry of the cross in England as perhaps the first fruit of this impetus, giving to it, at the same time, added force by its own warmth, beauty, and sincerity. And it may not be too much to regard the application of the elaborate and minute traceries of Celtic ornament upon stone crosses as the first fruit of this impetus in Ireland, for probably the Irish church was at one with the other churches of the North in regard to the use of images. At all events, as soon as the Irish had developed this style of the cross, the Anglo-Saxons appropriated it for their own, erected it everywhere, and it became the most conspicuous feature of their national art. This impulse found expression, then, in the Old English crosspoetry, the Latin prose and verse of Alcuin, and in the interlaced crosses which came from Ireland.

Finally, let us inquire if this feeling in Anglo-Saxon England had any influence upon the literature of her neighbors on the continent.

'In the ninth century,' says Didron, 'the praises of the cross were sung as men sing those of a god or a hero, and Rhaban Maur, who was archbishop of Mayenne in 847, wrote a poem in honor of the cross.'1 Rabanus Maurus was undoubtedly the greatest singer of the cross in the ninth century. His effort in verse, The Praises of the Cross, finished in 815, has been characterized as 'a monument of misdirected zeal and patience.' In this he develops the cruciform acrostic to a point that is fairly appalling. However, his work became very popular, and was admired as a miracle of ingenuity. It seems to be this, especially, that Didron has in mind.

But the exaltation of the cross as a god or a hero' is precisely what we have noted among the Anglo-Saxons. The second book of Rabanus' praises of the cross is an explanation in prose of the figure in his acrostic. The last

11, 371-2.

chapter deals with the last figure, representing a monk adoring a cross, and concludes thus:

O crux alma Dei, usque huc, quantum potui, laudem tuam cecini; sed quia triumphum perpetem expetis, quem in his mortalibus pleniter et perfecte non invenis, confer te ad caelestia angelorum agmina, ibique tibi laus perpetus per cuncta sonabit sæcula.1

This is the tone of the Dream of the Rood. It would be interesting to trace a connection between these ideas of Rabanus and the cross-poetry of the Anglo-Saxons. Alcuin was called to the court of Charlemagne in the year 752, and from that time his career is chiefly bound up with the empire of Charlemagne. His best work, undoubtedly, was in education; and to his school at Tours were sent young men of promise from all parts of the realm. One of these was Rabanus Maurus, and between this brilliant student and his master there developed a warm and lasting friendship. Naturally in such relations of friend and pupil one would expect that Rabanus would become throughly imbued with the traditions of the Church of England. But further than this, we find that the very poem under discussion was written by Rabanus at the suggestion of Alcuin.2

With this the connection becomes complete. But, unfortunately, the love of the cross in Alcuin found its expression chiefly in the self-imposed penance of the acrostic. And this was the model that the master set before his pupil, rather than the Elene or the Dream of the Rood. So it was the love of the cross in its scholastic habit that affected Rabanus, and inspired his De Laudibus Sanctæ Crucis.

While Rabanus is by far the most important singer of the cross of this period in the Frankish empire, two others may be noticed: Johannes Scotus Erigena, and Otfrid, the author of the Evangelienbuch.

The former was an eccentric Irish scholar who went to France about the year 843. Among his writings is a poem