e Roman church, it is
somewhat unfortunate, that the two princes who convened the two councils
of Nice are both stained with the blood of their sons. The second of
these assemblies was approved and rigorously executed by the despotism
of Irene, and she refused her adversaries the toleration which at first
she had granted to her friends. During the five succeeding reigns, a
period of thirty-eight years, the contest was maintained, with unabated
rage and various success, between the worshippers and the breakers of
the images; but I am not inclined to pursue with minute diligence the
repetition of the same events. Nicephorus allowed a general liberty of
speech and practice; and the only virtue of his reign is accused by the
monks as the cause of his temporal and eternal perdition. Superstition
and weakness formed the character of Michael the First, but the saints
and images were incapable of supporting their votary on the throne. In
the purple, Leo the Fifth asserted the name and religion of an Armenian;
and the idols, with their seditious adherents, were condemned to a
second exile. Their applause would have sanctified the murder of an
impious tyrant, but his assassin and successor, the second Michael,
was tainted from his birth with the Phrygian heresies: he attempted to
mediate between the contending parties; and the intractable spirit
of the Catholics insensibly cast him into the opposite scale. His
moderation was guarded by timidity; but his son Theophilus, alike
ignorant of fear and pity, was the last and most cruel of the
Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against them; and
the emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by
the public hatred. After the death of Theophilus, the final victory of
the images was achieved by a second female, his widow Theodora, whom he
left the guardian of the empire. Her measures were bold and decisive.
The fiction of a tardy repentance absolved the fame and the soul of her
deceased husband; the sentence of the Iconoclast patriarch was commuted
from the loss of his eyes to a whipping of two hundred lashes: the
bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy
preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. A single
question yet remained, whether they are endowed with any proper and
inherent sanctity; it was agitated by the Greeks of the eleventh
century; and as this opinion has the strongest recommendation of
absurdity, I a