254 THE DECLINE AND FALL against the pavement ; and the honours 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 Archi- pelago, 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 harbour of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favourite of God and the people. They de- pended on the succour of a miracle ; but their miracles were [AD. 727] inefficient against the Greek fire ; and, after the defeat and conflagration of their 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 Arta- vasdes, 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 claim of the usurper was acknowledged both in the new, and in ancient, Rome. Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal mountains ; but he descended at the head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians ; and his final victory confounded the arms and predictions of the fanatics. His long reign was dis- tracted with clamour, sedition, conspiracy, and mutual hatred, and sanguinary revenge ; the persecution of images was the motive, or pretence, of his adversaries ; and, if they missed a temporal diadem, they were rewarded by the Greeks with the crown of martyrdom. In every act of open and clandestine treason, the emperor felt the unforgiving enmity of the monks, the faithful slaves of the superstition to which they owed their riches and influence. They prayed, they preached, they ab- solved, they inflamed, they conspired ; the solitude of Palestine poured forth a torrent of invective ; and the pen of St. John Damascenus, -- the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the 21 The holy confessor Theophanes approves the principle of their rebellion, eee'w Ki.vovi.fvoi ^^Ao) ip. 339 [a.m. 6218]). Gregory II. (in Epist. i. ad Imp. Leon. Concil. torn. viii. p. 661, 664) applauds the zeal of the Byzantine women who killed the Imperial officers. 22 John, or Mansur, was a noble Christian of Damascus, who held a consider-
