Legends of the Madonna | Page 7

ecclesiastical antiquities that, previous to the
first Council of Ephesus, it was the custom to represent the figure of the
Virgin alone without the Child; but that none of these original effigies
remain to us, only supposed copies of a later date.[1] And this is all I
have been able to discover relative to her in connection with the sacred
imagery of the first four centuries of our era.
[Footnote 1: Vide "_Memorie dell' Immagine di M.V. dell'
Imprunela_." Florence, 1714.]
* * * * *
The condemnation of Nestorius by the Council of Ephesus, in the year
431, forms a most important epoch in the history of religious art. I have

given further on a sketch of this celebrated schism, and its immediate
and progressive results. It may be thus summed up here. The
Nestorians maintained, that in Christ the two natures of God and man
remained separate, and that Mary, his human mother, was parent of the
man, but not of the God; consequently the title which, during the
previous century, had been popularly applied to her, "Theotokos"
(Mother of God), was improper and profane. The party opposed to
Nestorius, the Monophysite, maintained that in Christ the divine and
human were blended in one incarnate nature, and that consequently
Mary was indeed the Mother of God. By the decree of the first Council
of Ephesus, Nestorius and his party were condemned as heretics; and
henceforth the representation of that beautiful group, since popularly
known as the "Madonna and Child," became the expression of the
orthodox faith. Every one who wished to prove his hatred of the
arch-heretic exhibited the image of the maternal Virgin holding in her
arms the Infant Godhead, either in his house as a picture, or
embroidered on his garments, or on his furniture, on his personal
ornaments--in short, wherever it could be introduced. It is worth
remarking, that Cyril, who was so influential in fixing the orthodox
group, had passed the greater part of his life in Egypt, and must nave
been familiar with the Egyptian type of Isis nursing Horus. Nor, as I
conceive, is there any irreverence in supposing that a time-honoured
intelligible symbol should be chosen to embody and formalize a creed.
For it must be remembered that the group of the Mother and Child was
not at first a representation, but merely a theological symbol set up in
the orthodox churches, and adopted by the orthodox Christians.
It is just after the Council of Ephesus that history first makes mention
of a supposed authentic portrait of the Virgin Mary. The Empress
Eudocia, when travelling in the Holy Land, sent home such a picture of
the Virgin holding the Child to her sister-in-law Pulcheria, who placed
it in a church at Constantinople. It was at that time regarded, as of very
high antiquity, and supposed to have been painted from the life. It is
certain that a picture, traditionally said to be the same which Eudocia
had sent to Pulcheria, did exist at Constantinople, and was so much
venerated by the people as to be regarded as a sort of palladium, and
borne in a superb litter or car in the midst of the imperial host, when the
emperor led the army in person. The fate of this relic is not certainly

known. It is said to have been taken by the Turks in 1453, and dragged
through the mire; but others deny this as utterly derogatory to the
majesty of the Queen of Heaven, who never would have suffered such
an indignity to have been put on her sacred image. According to the
Venetian legend, it was this identical effigy which was taken by the
blind old Dandolo, when he besieged and took Constantinople in 1204,
and brought in triumph to Venice, where it has ever since been
preserved in the church of St. Mark, and held in somma venerazione.
No mention is made of St. Luke in the earliest account of this picture,
though like all the antique effigies of uncertain origin, it was in after
times attributed to him.
The history of the next three hundred years testifies to the triumph of
orthodoxy, the extension and popularity of the worship of the Virgin,
and the consequent multiplication of her image in every form and
material, through the whole of Christendom.
Then followed the schism of the Iconoclasts, which distracted the
Church for more than one hundred years, under Leo III., the Isaurian,
and his immediate successors. Such were the extravagances of
superstition to which the image-worship had led the excitable Orientals,
that, if Leo had been a wise and temperate reformer, he might have
done much good in checking its excesses; but he was himself an
ignorant, merciless barbarian. The persecution by which he sought to
exterminate the sacred pictures