honour there, would make it a sanctuary peculiarly acceptable to clergy
from Western Europe. This, however, did not confer upon Roman priests an
exclusive right to the use of the building, and the custom of allowing
them to officiate there was often more conspicuous in the breach than in
the observance. Still the Roman See always claimed the use of the
church, for in the letter addressed in 880 by Pope Julius VIII. to Basil
I., that emperor is thanked for permitting Roman clergy to officiate
again in SS. Sergius and Bacchus according to ancient custom:
'monasterium Sancti Sergii intra vestram regiam urbem constitutum, quod
sancta Romana Ecclesia jure proprio quondam retinuit, divina
inspiratione repleti pro honore Principis Apostolorum nostro praesulatui
reddidistis.'[103]

The most distinguished hegoumenos of the monastery was John Hylilas,
better known, on account of his learning, as the Grammarian, and
nicknamed Lecanomantis, the Basin-Diviner, because versed in the art of
divination by means of a basin of polished brass. He belonged to a noble
family of Armenian extraction, and became prominent during the reigns of
Leo V., Michael II., and Theophilus as a determined iconoclast. His
enemies styled him Jannes, after one of the magicians who withstood
Moses, to denote his character as a sorcerer and an opponent of the
truth. Having occasion, when conducting service in the imperial chapel
to read the lesson in which the prophet Isaiah taunts idolaters with the
question, 'To whom then will ye liken God, or to what likeness will ye
compare him?' John, it is said, turned to Leo V., and whispered the
significant comment, 'Hearest thou, my lord, the words of the prophet?
They give thee counsel.' He was a member of the Commission charged by
that emperor to collect passages from the Holy Scriptures and the
Fathers of the Church that condemned the use of images in worship.
Prominent iconodules were interned in the monastery of Hormisdas in the
hope that he would turn them from the error of their ways by his
arguments and influence. He directed the education of Theophilus and
supported the iconoclastic policy pursued by that pupil when upon the
throne. Theophilus appointed his tutor syncellus to the Patriarch
Antony, employed him in diplomatic missions,[104] and finally, upon the
death of Antony, created him patriarch. The name of John can still be
deciphered under somewhat curious circumstances, in the litany which is
inscrib