that his passion for Theodota was at the bottom of all his complaints
against the empress. He added, that, though she were guilty of the crime
he laid to her charge, his second marriage during her life, with any
other, would still be contrary to the law of God, and that he would draw
upon himself the censures of the church by attempting it. The monk John,
who had been legate of the eastern patriarchs in the seventh council,
being present, spoke also very resolutely to the emperor on the subject,
so that the pretors and patricians threatened to stab him on the spot:
and the emperor, boiling with rage, drove them both from his presence.
As soon as they were gone, he turned the empress Mary out of his palace,
and obliged her to put on a religious veil. Tarasius persisting in his
refusal to marry him to Theodota, the ceremony was performed by Joseph,
treasurer of the church of Constantinople. This scandalous example was
the occasion of several governors and other powerful men divorcing their
wives, or taking more than one at the same time, and gave great
encouragement to public lewdness. SS. Plato and Theodorus separated
themselves from the emperor's communion to show their abhorrence of his
crime. But Tarasius did not think it prudent to proceed to
excommunication, as he had threatened, apprehensive that the violence of
his temper, when further provoked, might carry him still greater
lengths, and prompt him to re-establish the heresy which he had taken
such effectual measures to suppress. Thus the patriarch, by his
moderation, prevented the ruin of religion, but drew upon himself the
emperor's resentment, who persecuted him many ways during the remainder
of his reign. Not content to set spies and guards over him under the
name of Syncelli, who watched all his actions, and suffered no one to
speak to him without their leave, he banished many of his domestics and
relations. This confinement gave the saint the more leisure for
contemplation, and he {467} never ceased in it to recommend his flock to
God. The ambitious Irene, finding that all her contrivances to render
her son odious to his subjects had proved ineffectual to her design,
which was to engross the whole power to herself, having gained over to
her party the principal officers of the court and army, she made him
prisoner, and caused his eyes to be plucked out; this was executed with
so much violence that the unhappy prince died of it in 797. After this
she reigned a