rcede for these guilty victims. At Ravenna,
[39] 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, [40] 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 spared the relics of the
Byzantine dominion. Their moderate councils delayed and prevented
the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the Italians not to
separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The exarch was