lew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but he descended
at the head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians; and his final
victory confounded the arms and predictions of the fanatics. His long
reign was distracted with clamor, sedition, conspiracy, and mutual
hatred, and sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images was the motive
or pretence, of his adversaries; and, if they missed a temporal diadem,
they were rewarded by the Greeks with the crown of martyrdom. In every
act of open and clandestine treason, the emperor felt the unforgiving
enmity of the monks, the faithful slaves of the superstition to which
they owed their riches and influence. They prayed, they preached, they
absolved, they inflamed, they conspired; the solitude of Palestine
poured forth a torrent of invective; and the pen of St. John Damascenus,
the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the tyrant's head, both in this
world and the next. I am not at leisure to examine how far the monks
provoked, nor how much they have exaggerated, their real and pretended
sufferings, nor how many lost their lives or limbs, their eyes or
their beards, by the cruelty of the emperor. From the chastisement of
individuals, he proceeded to the abolition of the order; and, as it was
wealthy and useless, his resentment might be stimulated by avarice,
and justified by patriotism. The formidable name and mission of the
_Dragon_, his visitor-general, excited the terror and abhorrence of the
_black_ nation: the religious communities were dissolved, the buildings
were converted into magazines, or bar racks; the lands, movables, and
cattle were confiscated; and our modern precedents will support the
charge, that much wanton or malicious havoc was exercised against
the relics, and even the books of the monasteries. With the habit
and profession of monks, the public and private worship of images was
rigorously proscribed; and it should seem, that a solemn abjuration of
idolatry was exacted from the subjects, or at least from the clergy, of
the Eastern empire.

The patient East abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images; they were
fondly cherished, and vigorously defended, by the independent zeal of
the Italians. In ecclesiastical rank and jurisdiction, the patriarch
of Constantinople and the pope of Rome were nearly equal. But the Greek
prelate was a domestic slave under the eye of his master, at whose
nod he alternately passed from the convent to the throne, and from
the throne to