I 101. THE ICONOCLASTIC WAR. 457
up an empire of its own in close connection with the bishop of Rome.
Constantino V., surnamed Copronymos,1 during his long reign of thirty-four years (741-775), kept up his father's policy with great ability, vigor and cruelty, against popular clamor, sedition and conspiracy. His character is very differently judged ac cording to the doctrinal views of the Avriters. His enemies charge him with monstrous vices, heretical opinions, and the practice of magical arts; while the iconoclasts praise him highly for his virtues, and forty years after his death still prayed at his tomb. His administrative and military talents and successes against the Saracens, Bulgarians, and other ene mies, as well as his despotism and cruelty (which he shares with other Byzantine emperors) are beyond dispute.
He called an iconoclastic council in Constantinople in 754, which was to be the seventh oecumenical, but was afterwards disowned as a pseudo-synod of heretics. It numbered three hundred and thirty subservient bishops under the presidency of Archbishop Theodosius of Ephesus (the son of a former empe ror), and lasted six months (from Feb. 10th to Aug. 27th); but the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, being under Moslem rule, could not attend, the see of Constantinople was vacant, and Pope Stephen III. disregarded the imperial sum mons. The council, appealing to the second commandment and other Scripture passages denouncing idolatry (Rom. 1 : 23, 25 ; John 4: 24), and opinions of the Fathers (Epiphanius, Eusebius, Gregory Xazianzen, Chrysostom, etc.), condemned and forbade the public and private worship of sacred images on pain
the payment of tribute. But this is an error. On the contrary, in a second letter, Gregory expressly disclaims the power of interfering with the sovereign, while he denies in the strongest terms the right of the emperor to interfere with the Church. See the two letters of Gregory to Leo (between 726 to 731) in Mansi, XII. 959 sqq., and the discussion in Ilefele, III. 389-404.
1 The surname KoTpo>i>i>«of (from K.6irpo<;, dung) was given him by his enemies on acco'mt of his having polluted the baptismal font in his infancy. Theophanes, Ckronogr. ed. Bonn. I. 615. He was also called Cabdlinus, from his love of horses.
458 FOUKTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
of deposition and excommunication, but (inconsistently) ordered at the same time that no one should deface or meddle with sacred vessels or vestments ornamented with figures, and for mally declared its agreement with the six oecumenical councils, and the lawfulness of invoking the blessed Virgin and saints. It denounced all religious representations by painter or sculptor as presumptuous, pagan and idolatrous. Those who make pic tures of the Saviour, who is God as well as man in one insepa rable person, either limit the incomprehensible Godhead to the bounds of created flesh, or confound his two natures, like Eutyches, or separate them, like Nestorius, or deny his Godhead, like Arius ; and those who worship such a picture are guilty of the same heresy and blasphemy. The eucharist alone is the proper image of Christ. A three-fold anathema was pronounced on the advocates of image- worship, even the great John of Damas cus under the name of Mansur, who is called a traitor of Christ, an enemy of the empire, a teacher of impiety, and a perverter of the Scriptures. The acts of the Synod were destroyed except the decision (opo^) and a brief introduction, which are embodied and condemned in the acts of the second Mcene Council.1
The emperor carried out the decree with great rigor as far as his power extended. The sacred images were ruthlessly de stroyed and replaced by white- wash or pictures of trees, birds, and animals. The bishops and clergy submitted ; but the monks who manufactured the pictures, denounced the emperor as a second Mohammed and heresiarch, and all the iconoclasts as heretics, atheists and blasphemers, and were subjected to impris onment, flagellation, mutilation, and all sorts of indignities, even death. The principal martyrs of images during this reign (from 761-775) are Petrus Kalabites (i. e. the inhabitant of a hut, xaMfty), Johannes, Abbot of Monagria, and Stephanus, Abbot of Auxentius, opposite Constantinople (called " the new Stephanus/' to distinguish him from the proto-martyr). The emperor made even an attempt to abolish the convents.2
» Mansi, XIII. 205-363; Gieseler, II- 16; Hefele, III. 410-418.
8 On these persecutions see, besides Theophanes, the Ada Sand, of the