by
the monks for the safety of the soul of her husband, purchased
absolution for him at the price of the restoration of images.

Such was the issue of Iconoclasm in the East. The monks proved stronger
than the emperors, and, after a struggle of 120 years, the images were
finally restored. In the West far more important consequences followed.

[Sidenote: Image-worship in the West.]

[Sidenote: It is sustained by the pope,]

To image-worship Italy was devoutly attached. When the first edict of
Leo was made known by the exarch, it produced a rebellion, of which Pope
Gregory II. took advantage to suspend the tribute paid by Italy. In
letters that he wrote to the emperor he defended the popular delusion,
declaring that the first Christians had caused pictures to be made of
our Lord, of his brother James, of Stephen, and all the martyrs, and had
sent them throughout the world; the reason that God the Father had not
been painted was that his countenance was not known. These letters
display a most audacious presumption of the ignorance of the emperor
respecting common Scripture incidents, and, as some have remarked,
suggest a doubt of the pope's familiarity with the sacred volume. He
points out the difference between the statues of antiquity, which are
only the representations of phantoms, and the images of the Church,
which have approved themselves, by numberless miracles, to be the
genuine forms of the Saviour, his mother, and his saints. Referring to
the statue of St. Peter, which the emperor had ordered to be broken to
pieces, he declares that the Western nations regard that apostle as a
god upon earth, and ominously threatens the vengeance of the pious
barbarians if it should be destroyed. In this defence of images Gregory
found an active coadjutor in a Syrian, John of Damascus, who had
witnessed the rage of the khalifs against the images of his own country,
and whose hand, having been cut off by those tyrants, had been
miraculously rejoined to his body by an idol of the Virgin to which he
prayed.

[Sidenote: and by the Lombard king.]

But Gregory was not alone in his policy, nor John of Damascus in his
controversies. The King of the Lombards, Luitprand, also perceived the
advantage of putting himself forth as the protector of images, and of
appealing to the Italians, for their sake, to expel the Greeks from the
country. The pope acted on the principle that heresy in a sovereign
justifies withdrawal of allegiance,