clandestine or open
attacks were repelled by the courage and vigilance of the Romans;
the Greeks were overthrown and massacred, their leaders suffered an
ignominious death, and the popes, however inclined to mercy, refused to
intercede for these guilty victims. At Ravenna, the several quarters of
the city had long exercised a bloody and hereditary feud; in religious
controversy they found a new aliment of faction: but the votaries of
images were superior in numbers or spirit, and the exarch, who attempted
to stem the torrent, lost his life in a popular sedition. To punish this
flagitious deed, and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor sent a
fleet and army into the Adriatic Gulf. After suffering from the winds
and waves much loss and delay, the Greeks made their descent in the
neighborhood of Ravenna: they threatened to depopulate the guilty
capital, and to imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example of Justinian
the Second, who had chastised a former rebellion by the choice and
execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants. The women and clergy,
in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer: the men were in arms
for the defence of their country; the common danger had united the
factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries
of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as the two armies alternately yielded
and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was heard, and Ravenna was
victorious by the assurance of victory. The strangers retreated to their
ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats;
the waters of the Po were so deeply infected with blood, that during six
years the public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the
institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images, and
the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the Catholic
arms, the Roman pontiff convened a synod of ninety-three bishops against
the heresy of the Iconoclasts. With their consent, he pronounced a
general excommunication against all who by word or deed should attack
the tradition of the fathers and the images of the saints: in this
sentence the emperor was tacitly involved, but the vote of a last
and hopeless remonstrance may seem to imply that the anathema was yet
suspended over his guilty head. No sooner had they confirmed their own
safety, the worship of images, and the freedom of Rome and Italy, than
the popes appear to have relaxed of their severity, and to have s