ABSTRACT
The prohibition of pictures, J. Tixeront says, applied to Spain only, and the Synod's view of the matter was soon repudiated by the Church as a whole. There is, however, no evidence that anywhere amongst Catholic Christians pictures of Christ had been sanctioned in churches before this period. The Canon proves indeed that some Christians in Spain had begun to decorate churches with sacred pictures: otherwise there would have been no occasion for the Synod's concerning itself with the question. It also proves that at this date the authorities of the Church in Spain deliberately set themselves against the practice. But while some Catholic writers have wrested the language of the Canon in order to make it compatible with the present Roman view of the use of imagery in worship, it has also been misconstrued on the Protestant side as a declaration against the offering of homage to pictures.
