6. ICONOMACHUS. An Ignatius, contemporary of Theodore Studita
lived in the latter half of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century.
He wrote some acrostich verses against the use of images in divine worship. These, with
some similar efforts of perverted ingenuity by other persons, are quoted, with a laboured
confutation, by Theodore, who was a zealous champion of images. The structure of these
pieces is singular : each consists of but a few lines, of which the initial letters, taken
consecutively, the medial letters, and the final letters, compose a sentence. The
confutation or tion is in prose. (Theodorus Studita, Opera, apud
Sirmond. Opera Varia, vol. v. p. 169, seq.) According to Montfaucon
there are many omissions in the verses as given by Sirmond, which he states might be
supplied from a MS. then in the Coislin Library; but as the poem in Sirmond's edition has
the appearance of completeness, the accuracy of Montfaucon's statement may be doubted.
Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vol. vii. p. 46.