278 THE DECLINE AND FALL 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, [A.D. 843] 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 81 [Michael was really indifferent in religious matters ; his policy was toleration.]
- - [His edict against Image-worship was published in A.D. 832. The chief
martyrs were Lazarus the painter, who was scourged and imprisoned, and the brothers Theodore and Theophanes, who were tortured. Verses were branded on the head of Theodore, here known as Graptos. None of the martyrs suffered death.] •** [See the De Theophili imperatoris absolutione, in Kegel's Anal. Byz.-Russ. p. ()sqq. (cp. p. X. sqq.).']
- •* [The Sunday of Orthodoxy. There is a full study on the council of 842 by
Th. Uspenski in his Ocherki po ist. Viz. obrazannosti, p. 3-88.] ^5 See an account of this controversy in the Ale.xias of Anna Comnena (1. v. p. 129 [c. 2]) and Mosheim (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 371, 372).
