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Those who killed others combating the Catholic Faith do not raise their dynamic hatred. They reply, yawning: “Of course, of course…”īut their dynamic hatred is for those who killed others in the defense of the Faith. You may try to put them against the wall, asking them: “Do you not condemn Diocletian and Nero who made enormous persecutions against Catholics?” However, these same people say not a word of censure against the Roman Emperors who martyred Catholics. In present day society there are many people who pretend that the Crusades, the Inquisition and the religious wars sinned against charity because they caused deaths and torture, which, they say, should never be permitted. Where can we see a similar coherence and perspicacity of the evil ones against the good today? We should lament that we, children of light, are not as perspicacious as are the impious. How Emperor Theophilos looked for every symptom of the cult to images in order to destroy those who promoted it. You may see in this description how coherent and perspicacious impiety is in its hatred for the good.
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Let me focus on a less emphasized point that appears in his life.Įmperor Theophilos promoted the iconoclast heresy However, given the great number of martyrs of the Church who were also faithful, I will not insist on this point. Lazarus to his vocation of martyrdom, which led him to face all types of tortures. In gratitude to the Empress, Lazarus repainted the famousĬhrist the Chalkites over the Chalk Gate of the Imperial Palace in 843.Īs he saw the ancient cult fortified, he delivered himself to the holy exercises of the monastic life,ĭesiring to sanctify himself in the obscurity of the cloister, where he died in 867. When he recovered, he painted a picture of the Precursor, which became one of the most famous paintings of his time.Īfter the death of Theophilos, Empress Theodora and her son Michael III reestablished the cult to images and restored them to their due honor. He did not die and returned to prison.Īfterwards, Empress Theodora obtained from her husband Lazarus’ liberation and kept him hidden in the Church of St.
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The Emperor arrested him again and ordered that he be tortured with burning embers and red-hot iron that scorched him to the bone. Instead, he recovered his strength and continued to paint. The torture was so cruel that he thought St. Since Lazarus did not comply with his command, he resorted to torture. He ordered Lazarus to leave his monastery and appear before him to carry out the edict in his presence. In 829, Emperor Theophilos decreed death to all the painters who refused to destroy the pictures of Saints that they had painted.
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Lazarus had become very skillful in this profession the high reputation he acquired was the cause of the keen persecution he had to suffer. Despite the threats and indignation of the Princes, they introduced the art of sculpture and painting into their monasteries to prevent the holy statues from being totally abolished by the impious. This situation induced many religious superiors to desire to repair such a loss of religious art. Thus, the fear of death, imprisonment or exile prevented many artists from making any painting or sculpture of Jesus Christ or the Saints. The Emperors, not satisfied with breaking the statues and persecuting their defenders, also intimidated the secular painters with rigorous edicts. Now then, at his time the war against sacred paintings and statues had been declared by the iconoclasts.