splendour, but her
first object was to restore the worship of images; and the machinations by
which she accomplished this object have been so well related by Gibbon,
that I cannot do better than copy his account of them:--

"Under the reign of Constantine VIII., the union of the civil and
ecclesiastical power had overthrown the tree, without extirpating the root
of superstition. The idols, for such they were now held, were secretly
cherished by the order and the sex most prone to devotion; and the fond
alliance of the monks and females obtained a final victory over the reason
and authority of man. Leo IV. maintained with less rigour the religion of
his father and grandfather, but his wife, the fair and ambitious Irene,
had imbibed the zeal of the Athenians,(58) the heirs of the idolatry
rather than philosophy of their ancestors. During the life of her husband,
these sentiments were inflamed by danger and dissimulation, and she could
only labour to protect and promote some favourite monks, whom she drew
from their caverns, and seated on the metropolitan thrones of the east.
But as soon as she reigned in her own name, and in that of her son, Irene
more seriously undertook the ruin of the iconoclasts, and the first step
of her future persecution was a general edict for liberty of conscience.
In the restoration of the monks, a thousand images were exposed to the
public veneration; a thousand legends were invented of their sufferings
and miracles. By the opportunities of death and removal, the episcopal
seats were judiciously filled; the most eager competitors for celestial or
earthly favour anticipated and flattered the judgment of their sovereign;
and the promotion of her secretary Tarasius gave Irene the patriarch of
Constantinople, and the command of the Oriental church. But the decrees of
a general council could only be repealed by a similar assembly; the
iconoclasts, whom she convened, were bold in possession, and averse to
debate; and the feeble voice of the bishops was re-echoed by the more
formidable clamour of the soldiers and the people of Constantinople. The
delay and intrigues of a year, the separation of the disaffected troops,
and the choice of Nice for a second orthodox synod, removed these
obstacles; and the episcopal conscience was again, after the Greek
fashion, in the hands of the prince."--_Gibbon's Roman Empire_, chap. xlix.
This council, held in 786, restored the worship of images by the unanimous
sent