BOOK IV.

FROM THE ELECTION OF GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE,

A.D. 590-814

 

CHAPTER IV.

ICONOCLASM. A.D. 717-775.

 

 

The gradual advance of a reverence for images and pictures, from the time when art began to be taken into the service of the church, has been related in the preceding volume. But when it had reached a certain point, art had little to do with it. It was not by the power of form or colour that the religious images influenced the mind; it was not for the expression of ideal purity or majesty that one was valued above another, but for superior sanctity or for miraculous virtue. Some were supposed to have fallen down from heaven; some, to have been the work of the evangelist St. Luke; and to others a variety of legends was attached. Abgarus, king of Edessa, it was said, when in correspondence with our Lord, commissioned a painter to take His likeness. But the artist, dazzled by the glory of the countenance, gave up the attempt; whereupon the Saviour himself impressed his image on a piece of linen, and sent it to the king. This tale was unknown to Eusebius, although he inserted the pretended correspondence with Abgarus in his history; and the image was said, in consequence of the apostasy of a later king, to have been built up in a wall at Edessa, until, after a concealment of five centuries, it was discovered by means of a vision. By it, and by a picture of the blessed Virgin, “not made with hands”, the city was saved from an attack of the Persians. Cloths of a like miraculous origin (as was supposed) were preserved in other places; and many images were believed to perform cures and other miracles, to exude sweat or odoriferous balsam, to bleed, to weep, or to speak.

When images had become objects of popular veneration, the cautions and distinctions by which divines attempted to regulate this feeling were found unavailing. Three hundred years before the time which we have now reached, Augustine, while repelling the charge of idolatry which was brought against the church, had felt himself obliged to acknowledge that many of its members were nevertheless "adorers of pictures"; and the superstition had grown since Augustine's day. It became usual to fall down before images, to pray to them, to kiss them, to burn lights and incense in their honour, to adorn them with gems and precious metals, to lay the hand on them in swearing, and even to employ them as sponsors at baptism.

The moderate views of Gregory the Great as to the use and the abuse of images have been already mentioned.

But although, of the two kindred superstitions, the reverence for relics was more characteristic of the western, and that for images of the eastern church, the feeling of the west in behalf of images was now increased, and the successors of Gregory were ready to take a decided part in the great ecclesiastical and political movements which arose out of the subject.

Leo the Isaurian, who had risen from the class of substantial peasantry through the military service of Justinian II, until in 717 he was raised by general acclamation to the empire, was a man of great energy, and, as even his enemies the ecclesiastical writers do not deny, was possessed of many noble qualities, and of talents which were exerted with remarkable success both in war and in civil administration. In the beginning of his reign he was threatened by the Arabs, whose forces besieged Constantinople both by land and sea; but he destroyed their fleet by the new invention of the Greek fire, compelled the army to retire with numbers much diminished by privation and slaughter, and by a succession of victories delivered his subjects from the fear of the Saracens for many years.

It was not until after he had secured the empire against foreign enemies that Leo began to concern himself with the affairs of religion. In the 6th year of his reign he issued an edict ordering that Jews and Montanists should be forcibly baptized. The Jews submitted in hypocrisy, and mocked at the rites which they had undergone. The Montanists, with the old fanaticism of the sect whose name they bore, appointed a day on which, by general consent, they shut themselves up in their meeting-houses, set fire to the buildings, and perished in the flames.

From these measures it is evident that Leo seriously misconceived the position of the temporal power in matters of religion, as well as the means which might rightly be used for the advancement of religious truth. In the following year, after a consultation with his officers, he made his first attempt against the superstitious use of images. The motives of this proceeding are matter of conjectured It is said that he was influenced by Constantine, bishop of Nacolia, and by a counsellor named Bezer, who had for a time been in the service of the caliph, and is described as an apostate from the faith. Perhaps these persons may have represented to him the difficulties which this superstition opposed to the conversion of Jews and Mahometans, who regarded it as heathenish and idolatrous : they may, too, have set before him the risk of persecution which it must necessarily bring on the Christian subjects of the caliphs. Leo had seen that towns which relied on their miraculous images had fallen a prey to the arms of the Saracens, and that even the tutelar image of Edessa had been carried off by these enemies of the cross. And when, by whatsoever means, a question on the subject had been suggested, the inconsistency of the popular usages with the letter of Holy Scripture was likely to strike forcibly a direct and untutored mind like that of the emperor. But in truth it would seem—and more especially if we compare Leo's measures against images with those which he took against Judaism and Montanism —that his object was as much to establish an ecclesiastical autocracy as to purify the practice of the church.

The earlier controversies had shown that the multitude could be violently agitated by subtle questions of doctrine which might have been supposed unlikely to excite their interest. But here the matter in dispute was of a more palpable kind. The movement did not originate with a speculative theologian, but with an emperor, acting on his own will, without being urged by any party, or by any popular cry. An attack was made on material and external objects of reverence, on practices which were bound up with men’s daily familiar religion, and by means of which the sincere, although unenlightened, piety of the age was accustomed to find its expression. It merely proposed to abolish, without providing any substitute for that which was abolished, without directing the mind to any better and more spiritual worship; and at once the people, who had already been provoked to discontent by some measures of taxation, rose in vehement and alarming commotion against it. The controversy which had occupied the church for a century was now forgotten, and monothelites were absorbed among the orthodox when both parties were thrown together by an assault on the objects of their common veneration.

Leo would seem to have been utterly unprepared for the excitement which followed on the publication of his edict, and he attempted to allay it by an explanation. It was not, he said, his intention to do away with images, but to guard against the abuse of them, and to protect them from profanation, by removing them to such a height that they could not be touched or kissed. But the general discontent was not to be so easily pacified, and events soon occurred which added to its intensity. A Saracen army, which had advanced as far as Nicaea, was believed to have been repulsed by the guardian images of the city. A volcanic island was thrown up in the Aegean, and the air was darkened with ashes—prodigies which, while the emperor saw in them a declaration of heaven against the idolatry of his subjects, the monks, who had possession of the popular mind, interpreted as omens of wrath against his impious proceedings. The monastic influence was especially strong among the islanders of the Archipelago. These rose in behalf of images; they set up one Cosmas as a pretender to the throne, and an armed multitude, in an ill-equipped fleet, appeared before Constantinople. But the Greek fire discomfited the disorderly assailants; their leaders were taken and put to death; and Leo, provoked by the resistance which his edict had met with, issued a second and more stringent decree, ordering that all images should be destroyed, and that the place of such as were painted on the walls of churches should be washed over.

The emperor, relying on the pliability which had been shown on some former occasions by Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, had made repeated attempts to draw him into the measures against images. But Germanus, who was now ninety-five years of age, was not to be shaken. He reminded Leo of the oath which he had taken at his coronation, to make no innovations in religion. It is said that in a private interview the patriarch professed a conviction that images were to be abolished, “but”, he added, “not in your reign”. “In whose reign, then?” asked Leo. “In that of an emperor named Conon, who will be the forerunner of Antichrist”. “Conon”, said the emperor, “is my own baptismal name”. Germanus argued that images were meant to represent, not the Trinity, but the incarnation; that, since the Saviour’s appearance in human form, the Old Testament prohibitions were no longer applicable; that the church had not in any general council condemned the use of images : and he referred to the Edessan impression of our Lord’s countenance, and to the pictures painted by St. Luke. “If I am a Jonas”, he said, “throw me into the sea. Without a general council I can make no innovation on the faith”. He refused to subscribe the new edict, and resigned his see, to which his secretary Anastasius was appointed.

A serious disturbance soon after took place on the removal of a noted statue of the Saviour, which stood over the “Brazen Gate” of the imperial palace, and was known by the name of “the Surety”. This figure was the subject of many marvellous legends, and was held in great veneration by the people. When, therefore, a soldier was commissioned to take it down, crowds of women rushed to the place, and clamorously entreated him to spare it. He mounted a ladder, however, and struck his axe into the face; whereupon they dragged down the ladder, and tore in pieces the man who had dared to assail the object of their reverence. The women were now excited to frenzy, and, having been joined by a mob of the other sex, rushed to the new patriarch’s house with the intention of murdering him. Anastasius took refuge in the palace, and the emperor sent out his guards, who suppressed the commotion, but not without considerable bloodshed. “The Surety” was taken down, and its place was filled with an inscription, in which the emperor gave vent to his enmity against images

This incident was followed by some proceedings against the popular party. Many were scourged, mutilated or banished; and the persecution fell most heavily on the monks, who were especially obnoxious to the emperor, both as leaders in the resistance to his measures, and because the images were for the most part of their manufacture. Leo is charged with having rid himself of his controversial opponents by shutting up schools for general education which had existed since the time of the first Christian emperor, and even by burning a splendid library, with the whole college of professors who were attached to it.

But beyond the emperor’s dominions the cause of images found a formidable champion in John of Damascus, the most celebrated theologian of his time. John, according to his legendary biographer, a patriarch of Jerusalem who lived two centuries later, was a civil officer, high in the service of the caliph of Damascus, when his writings against the emperor's measures provoked Leo to attempt his destructions. A letter was counterfeited in imitation of his handwriting, containing an offer to betray Damascus to the Greeks, and this (which was represented as one of many such letters) Leo enclosed to the caliph, with expressions of abhorrence against the pretended writer’s treachery. The caliph, without listening to John’s disavowals of the charge, or to his entreaties for a delay of judgment, ordered his right hand to be cut off, and it was exposed in the market-place until evening, when John requested that it might be given to him, in order that by burying it he might relieve the intolerable pain which he suffered while it hung in the air. On recovering it, he prostrated himself before an image of the Virgin Mother, prayed that, as he had lost his hand for the defence of images, she would restore it, and vowed thenceforth to devote it to her service. He then lay down to sleep; the “Theotokos” appeared to him in a vision, and in the morning the hand was found to be reunited to his arm. The caliph, convinced of John’s innocence by this miracle, requested him to remain in his service; but John betook himself to the monastery of St. Sabbas, near Jerusalem, where the monks, alarmed at the neophyte’s great reputation, were perplexed how to treat him, and subjected him to a variety of degrading, and even disgusting, trials. But his spirit of obedience triumphed over all; he was admitted into the monastery, and was afterwards advanced to the order of presbyter.

Of the three orations in which John of Damascus asserted the cause of images, two were written before, and the third after, the forced resignation of Germanus. He argues that images were forbidden to the Jews lest they should fall into the error of their heathen neighbours, or should attempt to represent the invisible Godhead; but that, since the Saviour’s incarnation, these reasons no longer exist, and we must not be in bondage to the mere letter of Scripture. True it is that Scripture does not prescribe the veneration of images; but neither can we read there of the Trinity, or of the coessentiality, as distinctly set forth; and images stand on the same ground with these doctrines, which have been gathered by the fathers from the Scriptures. Holy Scripture countenances images by the directions for the making of the cherubim, and also by our Lord’s words as to the tribute-money. As that which bears Caesar’s image is Caesar’s, and is to be rendered to him; so, too, that which bears Christ’s image is to be rendered to Christ, forasmuch as it is Christ’s. That images are material, is no good reason for refusing to reverence them; for the holy places are material, the ink and the parchment of the Gospels are material, the eucharistic table, its vessels and its ornaments,—nay, the very body and blood of the Saviour,—are material. “I do not”, says John, “adore the matter, but the Author of matter, who for my sake became material, that by matter He might work out my salvation”. Images, he continues, are for the unlearned what books are for those who can read; they are to the sight what speech is to the ears. He distinguishes between that sort of worship which is to be reserved for God alone, and that which for His sake is given to His angels and saints or to consecrated things. He rejects the idea that, if the images of the Saviour and of the blessed Virgin are to be allowed, those of the saints should be abolished; if (he holds) the festivals of the saints are kept, if churches are dedicated in their honour, so too ought their images to be reverenced. He adduces a host of authorities from the fathers, with much the same felicity as his quotations from Scripture, while the story of Epiphanius and the painted curtain, which had been alleged by the iconoclasts, is set aside on the ground that the letter which contains it might be a forgery, or that Epiphanius might have intended to guard against some unrecorded local abuse; that the Cypriot bishop’s own church still used images, and that, in any case, the act of an individual does not bind the whole church. John denies that the emperor has any authority to legislate in ecclesiastical affairs :—“The well-being of the state”, he says, “pertains to princes, but the ordering of the church to pastors and teachers”; and he threatens Leo with scriptural examples of judgment against those who invaded the rights of the church.

In Italy the measures of Leo produced a great agitation. The allegiance of that country had long been gradually weakening. The exarchs were known to the people only as tax-gatherers who drained them of their money, and sent it off to Constantinople; for defence against the Lombards or other enemies, the Italian subjects of the empire were obliged to rely on themselves, without any expectation of effective help from the emperor or his lieutenant. The pope was the virtual head of the Italians; and the connexion which the first Gregory and his successors had laboured to establish with the Frankish princes, as a means of strengthening themselves against the empire, had lately been rendered more intimate by the agency of the great missionary Boniface. But the ancient and still undiminished hatred with which the Romans regarded their neighbours the Lombards weighed against the motives which might have disposed the popes to take an opportunity of breaking with the empire; and Gregory II, although he violently opposed Leo on the question of images, yet acted in some sort the part of a mediator between him and his Italian subjects.

Gregory, on receiving the edicts against images, rejected them. The people of Ravenna expelled the exarch, who sought a refuge at Pavia. Liutprand, king of the Lombards, eagerly took advantage of the disturbances to pour his troops into the imperial territory, and, sometimes in hostility to the exarch, sometimes in combination with him against the pope, endeavoured to profit by the dissensions of his neighbours. One exarch was killed in the course of the commotions. The pope, hoping for the conversion of Leo (as it is said by writers in the Roman interest), restrained the Italians from setting up a rival emperor; and when Liutprand, in alliance with a new exarch, appeared before the walls of Rome, he went out to him and prevailed on the Lombard king to give up his design against the city. Thus far, therefore, it would appear that the emperor was chiefly indebted to Gregory for the preservation of his Italian dominions. But the relations between these potentates were of no friendly kind. It is said that repeated attempts were made by Leo’s order to assassinate Gregory; perhaps the foundation of the story may have been that, as the pope himself states, there was an intention of carrying him off to the east, as Martin had been carried off in the preceding century. On the resignation of the patriarch Germanus, Gregory refused to acknowledge his successor, and wrote to Leo in a style of vehement defiance. He urges the usual arguments in behalf of images, and reproaches the emperor with his breach of the most solemn engagements. “We must”, he says, “write to you grossly and rudely, forasmuch as you are illiterate and gross. Go into our elementary schools, and say, ‘I am the overthrower and persecutor of images’; and forthwith the children will cast their tablets at you, and you will be taught by the unwise that which you refuse to learn from the wise”. Leo, he says, had boasted of being like Uzziah; that, as the Jewish king destroyed the brazen serpent after it had existed 800 years, so he himself had cast out images after a like time; and the pope, without raising any question either as to Jewish or Christian history, makes him welcome to the supposed parallel. It would, he says, be less evil to be called a heretic than an iconoclast; for the infamy of the heretic is known to few, and few understand his offence; but here the guilt is palpable and open as day. Leo had proposed a council, as a means of settling the question; but he is told that the proposal is idle, inasmuch as, if a council were gathered, he is unfit to take the part of a religious emperor in it. To say, as he had said, “I am emperor and priest”, might become one who had protected and endowed the church, but not one who had plundered it, and had drawn people away from the pious contemplation of images to frivolous amusements : emperors are for secular matters, priests for spiritual. The pope mocks at the threat of carrying him off to Constantinople; he has but to withdraw twenty-four furlongs from the walls of Rome into Campania, and his enemies would have to pursue the winds. Why, it had been asked, had the six general councils said nothing of images? As well, replies Gregory, might you ask why they said nothing of common food and drink; images are matters of traditional and unquestioned use; the bishops who attended the councils carried images with them. The emperor is exhorted to repent, and is threatened with judgments; he is charged to take warning from the fate of the monothelite Constans, and from the glory of that prince's victims, the martyrs Maximus and Martin.

The sequel of Gregory’s proceedings is matter of controversy. Extreme Romanists and their extreme opponents agree in stating that the pope excommunicated the emperor, withdrew his Italian subjects from their allegiance, and forbade the payment of tribute—by the rightful exercise of apostolical authority according to one party; by an anti-Christian usurpation according to the other. But more temperate inquirers have shown that these representations are incorrect. The popes of that age made no pretension to the right of dethroning princes or of absolving subjects from their allegiance; Gregory, in his second letter, while he denies that the emperor is entitled to interfere with the church, expressly disclaims the power of interfering with the sovereign : and the story as to the withdrawal of tribute seems to have grown out of the fact of a popular resistance to an impolitic increase of taxation. Although Gregory condemned iconoclasm, it appears that he did not pronounce any excommunication against the emperor; and even if he excommunicated him, the sentence would have been unheeded by the church of Constantinople. The utmost that can be established, therefore, appears to be, that, by raising a cry against Leo as a heretic and a persecutor, he rendered him odious to his Italian subjects, and so paved the way for that separation from the empire which followed within half a century.

In the following year Gregory II was succeeded by a third pope of the same name, for whom it was still held necessary that, before his consecration, the election should be confirmed by the exarch. Gregory III, a Syrian by birth, was zealous in the cause of images, and laboured to increase the popular veneration of them. He remonstrated with Leo against his iconoclastic proceedings, and held a council of ninety-eight bishops, which anathematized all the enemies of images, but without mentioning the emperor by name. Leo, indignant at the pope’s audacity, imprisoned his envoys, and resolved to send a fleet to reduce Italy into better subjection. But the fleet was disabled by storms, and the emperor was obliged to content himself with confiscating the papal revenues (or “patrimony”) in Sicily, Calabria, and other parts of his dominions, and transferring Greece and Illyricum from the Roman patriarchate to that of Constantinople.

Gregory III was succeeded in 741 by Zacharias, and Leo by his son Constantine, whose reign extended to the unusual length of thirty-four years. This prince (who is commonly distinguished by the name Copronymus, derived from his having in infancy polluted the baptismal font) is charged by the ecclesiastical writers with monstrous vices, and with the practice of magical arts; while his apologists contend that he was remarkably chaste and temperate. The characteristics which are beyond all controversy are his vigour, his ability, and his cruelty. In war he successfully defended his empire against Saracens, Bulgarians, and other enemies, and under him its internal administration was greatly improved.

The difficulties in which Constantine was involved by the Saracen war, and by the discontents arising out of the question as to images, encouraged his brother-in-law Artavasdus to pretend to the throne; it would seem, indeed, that he was almost forced into this course by the emperor’s jealousy. Artavasdus appealed to the popular affection for images, and restored them in all places of which he got possession. He was crowned by the patriarch Anastasius, who, holding the cross in his hands, publicly swore that Constantine had avowed to him a belief that our Lord was a mere man, born in the ordinary way. Pope Zacharias acknowledged Artavasdus as emperor; but, after having maintained his claim for three years, the rival of Constantine was put down, and he and his adherents were punished with great severity. Anastasius was blinded, and was exhibited in the hippodrome, mounted on an ass, with his face towards the tail; yet after this Constantine restored him to the patriarchate—by way, it would seem, of proclaiming his contempt for the whole body of the clergy.

It is said that Constantine expressed Nestorian opinions, and a disbelief in the intercession of the blessed Virgin and of the saints. But if so, the words were spoken in conferences which were intended to be secret; and it was the emperor’s policy to feel his way carefully before taking any public step in matters of religion. On the question as to images, he wished to strengthen himself by the authority of a general council, and summoned one to meet in the year 754, having in the preceding year desired that, by way of preparation, the subject should be discussed by the provincial assemblies of bishops. The see of Constantinople was then vacant by the death of Anastasius—a circumstance which may have tended to secure the ready compliance of some who aspired to fill it. The remaining three patriarchs of the east were under the Mahometan dominion, and Stephen of Rome disregarded the imperial citation. In the absence of all the patriarchs, therefore, the bishops of Ephesus and Perga presided over the council, which was held in a palace on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, with the exception of the final sitting, which took place in the church of the Blachernae. The number of bishops, although collected from the emperor's dominions only, amounted to three hundred and thirty-eight, and their decisions, after sessions which lasted from February to August, are described as unanimous—a proof rather of the subjection in which the episcopate was held than of any real conviction.

The assembled bishops professed to rest their judgment on the authority of the fathers, from whose writings extracts were read. They declared all representations made for religious purposes by the art of painter or sculptor to be presumptuous, heathenish, and idolatrous. Those who make such representations of the Saviour, it is said, either limit the incomprehensible God to the bounds of created flesh, or confound the natures, like Eutyches, or deny the Godhead, like Arius, or, with Nestorius, separate it from the manhood so as to make two persons. The Eucharist alone is declared to be a proper image of the Saviour—the union of the Divine grace with the material elements typifying that of the Godhead with his human form. All images, therefore, are to be removed out of churches. Bishops, priests, or deacons contravening the decisions of the council, whether by invoking images, by worshipping them, by setting them up, or by secretly keeping them, are to be deposed; monks and lay persons offending in like manner are to be excommunicated. But it was ordered that no one should deface or meddle with sacred vessels or vestments, under pretext of their being adorned with figures, unless by permission of the emperor or of the patriarch; and that no person in authority should despoil churches on this account, as had already been done in some instances. With a view perhaps of clearing themselves from the aspersions which were thrown on the emperor's faith, the bishops formally declared the lawfulness of invoking the blessed Virgin and the saints. And they pronounced anathemas against all religious art, anathematizing by name some noted defenders of images—Germanus, George of Cyprus, and John of Damascus, whom they designated by the name of Mansour loaded with a profusion of dishonourable epithets, and denounced with a threefold curse.

Fortified by the decisions of the council, Constantine now ordered that all images should be removed. For the religious paintings on church walls, he ordered that other subjects—such as birds and fruits, or scenes from the chase, the theatre, and the circus—should be substituted. He required the clergy and the more noted monks to subscribe the decrees of the synod and at a later time an oath against images was exacted from all the inhabitants of the empire. It does not appear that any of the bishops refused to comply; but the monks were violent and obstinate in their resistance, and the emperor endeavoured to subdue them by the most barbarous cruelties. The zeal of the monks in behalf of images provoked him even to attempt the extirpation of monachism by forcing them to abandon their profession. Thus we read that a number of monks were compelled to appear in the hippodrome at Constantinople, each holding by the hand a woman of disreputable character, and so to stand while the populace mocked at them and spit on them. The new patriarch, Constantine, whom the emperor had presented to the council as the successor of Anastasius on the last day of its meeting, was obliged publicly to forswear images, and, in violation of the monastic vows which he had taken, to attend the banquets of the palace, to eat and drink freely, to wear garlands, to witness the gross spectacles, and to listen to the indecent language and music, in which the emperor delighted. Monasteries were destroyed, converted into barracks, or applied to other secular uses. The governor of the Thracian theme, Michael Lachanadraco, especially distinguished himself by the energy of his proceedings against the monks. He assembled a great number of them in a plain, and told them that such of them as were inclined to obey the emperor and himself must forthwith put on a white dress and take wives; while those who should refuse were to lose their eyes and to be banished to Cyprus. Some of them complied, but the greater part suffered the penalty. Lachanadraco put many monks to death; he anointed the beards of some with a mixture of oil and wax, and then set them on fire; he burnt down monasteries, sold the plate, books, cattle, and other property which belonged to them, and remitted the price to the emperor, who publicly thanked him for his zeal, and recommended him as an example to other governors. Relics were to some extent involved in the fate of images, although not so much as consistency might have seemed to required Lachanadraco seized all which he found carried about the person, and punished the wearers as impious and disobedient. The relics of St. Euphemia, at Chalcedon, which even as early as the time of the fourth general council had been famous for miraculous virtue, and were believed to exude a fragrant balsam, were thrown into the sea, and the place where they had lately reposed was defiled. But it is said that they were carried by the waves to Lemnos, where visions indicated the spot in which they were to be found, and secured their preservation until more favourable times.

The monks, on their part, no doubt did much to provoke the emperor and his officers to additional cruelty by violent and fanatical behaviour. Thus, one named Peter “the calybit” made his way into the presence of Constantine, and upbraided him as a new Valens and Julian for persecuting Christ in His members and in His images. For this audacity Peter was scourged in the hippodrome, and was afterwards strangled. Another famous sufferer was Stephen, who had lived as a monk for sixty years. He boldly defied the emperor; he remained unshaken by banishment or tortures, and, by way of illustrating the manner in which insults offered to images might be supposed to affect the holy persons whom they represent, he produced a coin stamped with the emperor’s head, threw it on the ground, and trod on it. In consequence of this act he was imprisoned; but the sympathy of his admirers was displayed so warmly, that Constantine was provoked to exclaim, “Am I, or is this monk, emperor of the world?”. The words were caught up as a hint by some courtiers, who rushed to the prison and broke it open. Stephen was dragged through the streets by a rope tied to one of his feet, until he was dead, and his body was then torn in pieces, which were thrown into a place appropriated to the burial of heathens and excommunicate persons, of suicides and of criminals.

The patriarch Constantine, after all his compliances, was accused of having held treasonable communications with Stephen, and of having spoken disrespectfully of the emperor; and on these charges he was banished to an island, while Nicetas, an eunuch of Slavonic origin, was raised to the patriarchate in his stead. In the second year of his banishment, Constantine was brought back.  After having been beaten until he could not walk, he was carried into the cathedral, where the accusations against him were read aloud, and at every count of the indictment an imperial functionary struck him on the face. He was then forced to stand in the pulpit, while Nicetas pronounced his excommunication; after which he was stripped of the pall, the ensign of his ecclesiastical dignity, and was led backwards out of the church. On the following day he was carried into the hippodrome; his hair, eyebrows, and beard were plucked out; he was set on an ass, with his face towards the tail, which he was compelled to hold with both hands; and his nephew, whose nose had been cut off, led the animal around, while the spectators hooted at and spat on the fallen patriarch. He was then thrown violently to the ground, his neck was trodden on, and he lay prostrate, exposed to the jeers of the rabble, until the games of the day were over. A few days later, some patricians were sent to question him in prison as to the emperor’s orthodoxy, and as to the decisions of the council against images. The patriarch, thinking to soothe his persecutors’ rage, expressed approval of everything. “This”, they said, “was all that we wished to hear further from thy impure mouth; now begone to cursing and darkness!”. The wretched man was immediately beheaded, and his head, after having been publicly exposed for three days, was thrown, with his body, into the same place of ignominy where Stephen had before been buried.

These details have been given as a specimen of the cruelties which are ascribed to Constantine Copronymus. To the end of his reign he was unrelenting in his enmity against the worshippers of images. In the year 775, while on a military expedition, he was seized with a burning pain in his legs, which (it is said) forced from him frequent cries that he already felt the pains of hell. He died at sea, on his way to Constantinople.

 

CHAPTER V.

SAINT BONIFACE A.D. 715-755.