A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

747unbelief of the Arian heresy. The Arians say, to their confusion,that the Son is inferior to the Father and, in the same way, theHoly Ghost is inferior to the Father and the Son; we, CatholicChristians, on the contrary, confess that the Father and the Sonand the Holy Ghost are one true God in three persons, equal inpower and glory. In the times of Rothari there were in nearly allthe cities of his kingdom two bishops, a Catholic and an Arian. [684]To this very day there is shown in the city of Ticinus [Pavia]the place where the Arian bishop resided, at the church of St.Eusebius, and held the baptistery while the Catholic bishop wasat the head of another church. The Arian bishop, however,who was in this city, whose name was Anastasius, accepted theCatholic faith and afterward ruled the Church of Christ. Thisking Rothari caused the laws of the Lombards to be reduced towriting and named the book The Edict; the law of the Lombardsup to that time had been retained merely in memory and by theiruse in the courts. This took place, as the king in the prefaceto his law-book says, in the seventy-seventh year 313 after theLombards came into Italy.§ 109. Rome, Constantinople, and the Lombards in the Period ofthe First Iconoclastic Controversy; the Seventh GeneralCouncil, Nicæa, A. D. 787By the eight century the veneration of pictures or icons hadbecome wide-spread throughout the Eastern Church. Apart fromtheir due place in the cultus, grave abuses and superstitions hadarisen in many parts of the Church in connection with the icons.To Leo III the Isaurian (717-741), and to the army, the venerationof the icons, as practised by the populace, and especially by themonks, seemed but little removed from the grossest idolatry. Accordingly,in an edict issued in 726, Leo attempted to put an end313 The Edict says seventy-sixth year.