a new favorite of God
and the people. They depended on the succor of a miracle: but their
miracles were inefficient against the Greek fire; and, after the defeat
and conflagration of the fleet, the naked islands were abandoned to the
clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of Leo, in the first year
of his reign, had undertaken an expedition against the Saracens: during
his absence, the capital, the palace, and the purple, were occupied by
his kinsman Artavasdes, the ambitious champion of the orthodox faith.
The worship of images was triumphantly restored: the patriarch renounced
his dissimulation, or dissembled his sentiments and the righteous claims
of the usurper was acknowledged, both in the new, and in ancient, Rome.
Constantine flew 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,
[22] the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the tyrant's head, both in
this world and the next. [23] [2311] 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. [2312] 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, [24] 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 wanto