me measure by the experience
of the age and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks,
the generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under
his reign, the numbers are recorded, the names were conspicuous, the
execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent. [1116] The
Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus; but even their
hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissembled the provocations
which might excuse or justify his rigor, but even these provocations
must gradually inflame his resentment and harden his temper in the use
or the abuse of despotism. Yet the character of the fifth Constantine
was not devoid of merit, nor did his government always deserve the
curses or the contempt of the Greeks. From the confession of his
enemies, I am informed of the restoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the
redemption of two thousand five hundred captives, of the uncommon
plenty of the times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled
Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise his
activity and courage; he was on horseback in the field at the head
of his legions; and, although the fortune of his arms was various, he
triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and the Danube, in civil
and Barbarian war. Heretical praise must be cast into the scale to
counterbalance the weight of orthodox invective. The Iconoclasts revered
the virtues of the prince: forty years after his death they still prayed
before the tomb of the saint. A miraculous vision was propagated by
fanaticism or fraud: and the Christian hero appeared on a milk-white
steed, brandishing his lance against the Pagans of Bulgaria: "An absurd
fable," says the Catholic historian, "since Copronymus is chained with
the daemons in the abyss of hell."

[Footnote 1116: He is accused of burning the library of Constantinople,
founded by Julian, with its president and twelve professors. This
eastern Sorbonne had discomfited the Imperial theologians on the great
question of image worship. Schlosser observes that this accidental
fire took place six years after the emperor had laid the question of
image-worship before the professors. Bilder sturmand Kaiser, p. 294.
Compare Le Heau. vol. xl. p. 156.--M.]

Leo the Fourth, the son of the fifth and the father of the sixth
Constantine, was of a feeble constitution both of mind [1117] and
body, and the principal care of his reign was the settlement of the
succe