280 THE DECLINE AND FALL their foes. The difference of language and manners had per- petuated the enmity of the two capitals ; and they were alienated from each other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty : their submission would have ex- posed them to the revenge of a jealous tyrant ; and the revolu- tion of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as well as the tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored the images, but they had not restored the Calabrian estates ^^ and the Illyrian diocese, ^"^ which the Iconoclasts had torn away from the successors of St. Peter ; and pope Hadrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy.-'^ The Greeks were now orthodox, but their religion might be tainted by the breath of the reigning monarch ; the Franks were now con- tumacious, but a discerning eye might discern their approach- ing conversion from the use, to the adoration, of images. The name of Charlemagne was stained by the polemic acrimony of his scribes ; but the conqueror himself conformed, with the temper of a statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy. In his four pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes in the communion of friendship and piety ; knelt before the tomb, and consequently before the image, of the apostle ; and joined, without scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman liturgy. Would prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to renounce their benefactor . Had they a right to alienate his gift of the Exarchate ? Had
- Theophanes {p. 343 [su6 A.M. 6224]) specifies those of Sicily and Calabria,
which yielded an annual rent of three talents and a half of gold (perhaps 7000I. sterling). Liutprand more pompously enumerates the patrimonies of the Roman church in Greece, Judasa, Persia, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Egypt, and Libya, which were detained by the injustice of the Greek emperor (Legat. ad. Niceph- orum, in Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. ii. pars i. p. 481 [c. 17]). "The great diocese of the Eastern Illyricum, with .pulia, Calabria, and Sicily (Thomassin, Discipline de I'Eglise, tom. i. p. 145). By the confession of the Greeks, the patriarch of Constantinople had detached from Rome the metro- politans of Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Nicopolis, and Patrae (Luc. Holstcn. Geograph. Sacra, p. 22) ; and his spiritual conquests extended to Naples and Amalphi (Giannone Istoria Civile di Napoli, torn. i. p. 517-524. Pagi, a.d. 730, No. 11). [See Mansi, Cone. 13, 808; 15, 167.] "1 In hoc ostenditur, quia ex uno capitulo ab errore reversis, in aliis duobus, in eodem (was it the same?) permaneant errore . . . de diocesi S. R. E. seu de patrimoniis iterum increpantes commonemus, ut si ea restituere noluerit hereticuui eum pro hujusmodi errore perseverantia decernemus (Epist. Hadrian. Papa; ad Carolum Magnum, in Concil. tom. viii. p. 1598) ; to which he adds a reason, most directly opposite to his conduct, that he preferred the salvation of souls and rule of faith to the goods of this transitory world.
