d Arians maintained,
after their conversion, the simple worship which had preceded their
separation; and the Armenians, the most warlike subjects of Rome, were
not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to the sight of images. [17]
These various denominations of men afforded a fund of prejudice and
aversion, of small account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but
which, in the fortune of a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be
often connected with the powers of the church and state.

[Footnote 15: By Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the origin
of the Aconoclcasts is imprinted to the caliph Yezid and two Jews,
who promised the empire to Leo; and the reproaches of these hostile
sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy for restoring the purity
of the Christian worship, (see Spanheim, Hist. Imag. c. 2.)]

[Footnote 1511: Yezid, ninth caliph of the race of the Ommiadae, caused
all the images in Syria to be destroyed about the year 719; hence the
orthodox reproaches the sectaries with following the example of the
Saracens and the Jews Fragm. Mon. Johan. Jerosylym. Script. Byzant.
vol. xvi. p. 235. Hist. des Repub. Ital. par M. Sismondi, vol. i. p.
126.--G.]

[Footnote 16: See Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 267,) Abulpharagius,
(Dynast. p. 201,) and Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 264,), and the
criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iii. A.D. 944.) The prudent Franciscan refuses
to determine whether the image of Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa;
but its repose is inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is no
longer famous or fashionable.]

[Footnote 17: (Nicetas, l. ii. p. 258.) The Armenian churches are still
content with the Cross, (Missions du Levant, tom. iii. p. 148;) but
surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the superstition of the
Germans of the xiith century.]

Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo the Third,
[18] who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the
East. He was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but his education,
his reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had
inspired the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and it was held
to be the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of
his own conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten
years of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy,
bowed before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman
pontiff with the annual