dice and aversion, of small
account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune
of a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be often connected with the
powers of the church and state.

Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo the Third,
who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the East.
He was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but his education, his
reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired
the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and it was held to be
the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own
conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years
of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed
before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with
the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation
of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious: he assembled a
great council of senators and bishops, and enacted, with their consent,
that all the images should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a
proper height in the churches where they might be visible to the
eyes, and inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it was
impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse impulse of
veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position, the sacred images
still edified their votaries, and reproached the tyrant. He was himself
provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him
of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation the
example of the Jewish king, who had broken without scruple the brazen
serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence
as well as the use of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople
and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the
Virgin, and the saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster
was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts
was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and the East
and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and
twenty years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the
condemnation of images as an article of faith, and by the authority of
a general council: but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved
for his son Constantine; and though it is stigmatized by triumphant
bigotry as a