ght assault with a
secret horror the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated
to the honor of his celestial patrons. In the reformation of the
sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the faculties
of man: the thirst of innovation superseded the reverence of antiquity;
and the vigor of Europe could disdain those phantoms which terrified the
sickly and servile weakness of the Greeks.

The scandal of an abstract heresy can be only proclaimed to the people
by the blast of the ecclesiastical trumpet; but the most ignorant can
perceive, the most torpid must feel, the profanation and downfall
of their visible deities. The first hostilities of Leo were directed
against a lofty Christ on the vestibule, and above the gate, of the
palace. A ladder had been planted for the assault, but it was furiously
shaken by a crowd of zealots and women: they beheld, with pious
transport, the ministers of sacrilege tumbling from on high and dashed
against the pavement: and the honors of the ancient martyrs were
prostituted to these criminals, who justly suffered for murder and
rebellion. The execution of the Imperial edicts was resisted by frequent
tumults in Constantinople and the provinces: the person of Leo was
endangered, his officers were massacred, and the popular enthusiasm was
quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and military power. Of the
Archipelago, or Holy Sea, the numerous islands were filled with images
and monks: their votaries abjured, without scruple, the enemy of Christ,
his mother, and the saints; they armed a fleet of boats and galleys,
displayed their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the harbor
of Constantinople, to place on the throne 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 f