ascribes the double deliverance of Edessa to the wealth and valor
of her citizens, who purchased the absence and repelled the
assaults of the Persian monarch. He was ignorant, the profane
historian, of the testimony which he is compelled to deliver in
the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium was
exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been
sprinkled on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel
to the flames of the besieged. After this important service, the
image of Edessa was preserved with respect and gratitude; and if
the Armenians rejected the legend, the more credulous Greeks
adored the similitude, which was not the work of any mortal
pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine original. The
style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how far
their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. "How can
we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial
splendor the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who
dwells in heaven, condescends this day to visit us by his
venerable image; He who is seated on the cherubim, visits us this
day by a picture, which the Father has delineated with his
immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and
which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love." Before the
end of the sixth century, these images, made without hands, (in
Greek it is a single word, ^11) were propagated in the camps and
cities of the Eastern empire: ^12 they were the objects of
worship, and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of
danger or tumult, their venerable presence could revive the hope,
rekindle the courage, or repress the fury, of the Roman legions.
Of these pictures, the far greater part, the transcripts of a
human pencil, could only pretend to a secondary likeness and
improper title: but there were some of higher descent, who