a
fabrication so gross that it did not escape the attention of scholars who
lived many centuries afterwards.

Irene rigorously enforced the decrees of this council against the
opponents of images; and that woman, guilty of the death of her own son,
and suspected of that of her husband, is extolled by ecclesiastical
writers as a most pious princess. A contemporary Greek writer, and a
zealous defender of image-worship, the monk Theodore Studites, places her
above Moses, and says that "she had delivered the people from the Egyptian
bondage of impiety;" and the historian of the Roman Catholic Church,
Baronius, justifies her conduct by the following argument: that the hands
of the fathers were raised by a just command of God against their
children, who followed strange gods, and that Moses had ordered them to
consecrate themselves to the Lord, even every man upon his son, and upon
his brother, Exod. xxxii. 29, so that it was a high degree of piety to be
cruel to one's own son; consequently Irene deserved on this account the
first crown of paradise; and that if she had committed the murder of her
son from motives of ambition, she would be worse than Agrippina, mother of
Nero; but if she did it through zeal for religion, as it appears by the
encomium which she had received from very holy men who lived at that time,
she deserves to be praised for her piety.

Irene's piety, shown by the restoration of images, and the persecution of
their opponents, was indeed so much appreciated by the church, that she
received a place amongst the saints of the Greek calendar. She was,
however, less fortunate in her worldly affairs; because she was deposed in
802 by Nicephorus, who occupied the imperial throne, and exiled to Lesbos,
where she died in great poverty. He did not abolish the images, nor allow
the persecution of their opponents; and the ecclesiastical writers
represent him, on account of this liberal policy, as a perfect monster.
Nicephorus perished in a battle against the Bulgarians in 811, and his
successor Michael, who persecuted the iconoclasts, unable to maintain
himself on the throne, retired into a convent, after a reign of about two
years, and the imperial crown was assumed by Leo V., a native of Armenia,
and one of the most eminent leaders of the army, which elevated him to
this dignity.

Though all that we know about Leo V. is derived from authors zealously
opposed to his religious views, yet, notwithstanding all their _