Script._, iii. (2) 90.

[2] Cf. Dr. J. von Pflugk-Hartung, _Acta Pontificum Romanorum inedita_,
1880, 1884.

[3] _Liber Pontificalis_, i. 498.

[4] The question may be read in Mgr. Duchesne's Introduction to the
_Liber Pontificalis_, ccxxxvii.-ccxlii.; and Dr. Hodgkin, _Italy and
her Invaders_, vii. 387-97.

[5] _Liber Pontificalis_, ii. 6.

{155}

CHAPTER XIV

THE ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY

We have spoken already of two important periods in the history of the
Eastern Church. We must now briefly sketch another.

[Sidenote: Sketch of the period, 725-847.]

The third period (725-847) is that of Iconoclasm. Of this, the
originator was the emperor Leo III., one of those soldiers who
endeavour to apply to the sanctuary the methods of the parade-ground.
He issued a decree against the reverence paid to icons (religious
images and pictures), and, in 729, replaced the patriarch S. Germanus
by the more supple Anastasius; a docile assembly of bishops at Hieria,
under Constantine V. (Copronymus), passed a decree against every image
of the Lord, the Virgin, and the saints. A fierce persecution
followed, which was hardly ended before the accession to power of
Irene, widow of Leo IV., under whom assembled the Seventh General
Council at Nicae in 787, a Council to which the West and the distant
East sent representatives. This Council decreed that icons should be
used and receive veneration (_proskuesis_) as did the Cross and the
book of the Gospels. A persecution followed, as bitter as that of the
iconoclastic emperors, and the troubled years of the first half of the
ninth century, stained in Byzantium by every crime, found almost their
only brightness in the patriarchate (843-7) of S. Methodius, a wise
ruler, an {156} orthodox theologian, a charitable man. In Antioch and
Jerusalem, about the same period, orthodox patriarchs were
re-established by the toleration of the Ommeyads and the earlier
Abbasaides; but on the European frontiers of the Empire conversion was
at a standstill during the whole period of iconoclastic fury and
reaction, while in the north-east of Syria and in Armenia the heresy of
the Paulicians (Adoptianism) spread and flourished, and the
Monophysites still throve on the Asiatic borders. In theology the
Church of Constantinople was still strong, as is shown by the great
work of S. Theodore of the Studium, famous as a hymn-writer, a
liturgiologist, and a defender of the faith.

Such are the