Baring-Gould’s sources: The Menology of Emperor Basil and the ancient Constantinopoh'tan Synaxarium, and the Greek Mensea. Galilean Martyrology of Saussaye and Modern Roman Martyrology. Authority Notices in Theophanes and the life of S. Stephen the Younger, one of the sufferers in the persecution of Constantine Copronymus.] Justinian II., Emperor of the East, had been driven into exile to the Chersonese. He obtained help from the Bulgarians, and returned to wreak his vengeance on his enemies. His vessel was assaulted by a violent tempest; and one of his pious companions advised him to deserve the mercy of God by a vow of general forgiveness, if he should be restored to the throne. “Of forgiveness ?” replied the intrepid tyrant. “ May I perish this instant if I consent to spare the head of one of my enemies/' He returned to Constantinople at the head of his Bulgarian allies, and rewarded their chief, who retired after sweeping away a heap ofgoldcoin which he measured with his Scythian whip. But never was vow more religiously observed than the sacred oath of vengeance he had taken amidst the storms of the Euxine. The two usurpers, Leontius and Apsimar, were cast prostrate in chains before the throne of the emperor; and Justinian, planting a foot on each df their necks, contemplated above an hour a chariot race, whilst the inconstant people shouted, in the words of the psalmist, “Thou shalt go upon the lion and adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet/' During the six years of his new reign, he considered the axe, the cord, and the rack as the only instruments of royalty. In 711 the troops revolted, weary of serving such a tyrant, and Bardanes, under the name of Philippicus, was invested with the purple. Justinian fell under the hand of May I®.] S. Germanus.

Jan assassin, and Philippicus was hailed at Constantinople as a hero who had delivered his country from a tyrant Philippicus was a Monothelite, and his first act on entering the vestibule of the palace was to order the removal of the painting of the Sixth Council (Constantinople, a.d. 680-1), which had condemned Monothelitism. The emperor also deposed Cyrus the Patriarch, whom he confined in the monastery of Chora, and enthroned John, a Monothelite, in his place. Germanus, metropolitan [the archbishop who heads a group of dioceses] of Cyzicus, and Andrew, bishop of Crete, supported him. He at once set about persecuting those who adhered to the Catholic Faith, and he placed on the diptych s the name of Pope Honorius, whom the Sixth General Council had anathematized as a Monothelite heretic. Shortly after, having found in the palace the acts of this council written by the hand of Agatho the deacon and librarian, he burnt them publicly. On the festival of his birthday, in 714, Philippicus entertained the multitude with the games of the circus; from thence he paraded through the streets with a thousand banners and a thousand trumpets, and returning to the palace, entertained his nobles with a sumptuous banquet. At the meridian hour he withdrew to his chamber, intoxicated with wine and flattery. Some bold conspirators introduced themselves into his room, bound, blinded, and deposed the slumbering monarch, before he was awake to his danger. Yet the traitors were deprived of their reward, and the free voice of the senate and people raised Artemus, the secretary, under the title of Anastasius II., to the imperial throne, and he was crowned in the sanctuary by the patriarch [the title of the bishops of the great ancient sees: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem] John. Then, finding that the new emperor was a Catholic, the patriarch, the bishops, and all the clergy present, hasted to proclaim the authority of the Sixth General Council. John then wrote to Pope Constantine a quibbling letter, in which he endeavoured to excuse his conduct in anathematizing the Council of Constantinopie against the Monothelites, during the brief reign of Philippi cus. But Constantine was dead, and the famous Gregory II. sat in the throne of S. Peter. Anastasius deposed John from his patriarchial seat, and elevated to it S. Germanus, bishop of Cyzicus, with whose orthodoxy he was satisfied, though Germanus had played an unmistakeable Monothelite part under the late emperor. But at this age men were too ready to shift their opinions to accord with the views of the reigning sovereign, and if Germanus proved compliant in one instance, he held firmly in another. Germanus was the son of the patrician Justinian [Byzantine emperor 527–565], who had been compromised in the murder of Cons tans II., the father of Constantine Pogonatus. For this cause the emperor had executed Justinian and made an eunuch of Germanus.

In a mutiny of the fleet, an obscure and reluctant officer of the revenue was forcibly invested with the purple, and after a reign of a year and two months, Anastasius resigned the sceptre, to be followed speedily into the retirement of the cloister by Theodosius [name of Roman emperors; Theodosius I (379–395) made Christianity the state religion] II., who had supplanted him, and who in turn yielded his throne to Leo III. It is agreed that Leo was a native of Isauria, and that Conon was his primitive name. The writers, whose vindictive satire is praise, describe him as an itinerant pedlar who drove an ass with some paltry merchandise to the country fairs. A more probable account relates the migration of his father from Asia Minor to Thrace, where he exercised the lucrative trade of a grazier. Leo’s first service was in the guard of Justinian, where he attracted the notice and awakened the jealousy of the tyrant. From Anastasius he received the command of the Anatolian Legions, and by the suffrage of the soldiers he was raised to the empire in 717, and occupied the throne twenty-four years.

S. Germanics. Leo had reigned for ten years before he declared his hostility to images. But his persecuting spirit had betrayed itself in the compulsory baptism of the Jews and the Montanists in Constantinople.

At the close of these ten years in the reign of Leo, in the summer of 726, a volcanic explosion at sea, in the Archipelago, between the islands Thera and Therasia, accompanied by volumes of smoke and fire, and the elevation of a new island, was regarded by Leo as a signal of Divine wrath against those who venerated images. An edict was fulminated interdicting the veneration of images. His adviser was said to be a certain Besor, a Syrian renegade from Christianity, deeply imbued with Mahommedan antipathies.

The first edict prohibited paying any sort of religious reverence to statues and pictures which represented the Saviour, the Virgin, and the Saints. The statues and those pictures which hung upon the walls were to be raised to a greater height, so as not to receive pious kisses, or other marks of veneration. This edict was followed, at what interval it is difficult to determine, by a second, of far greater severity. It commanded the total destruction of all images, the whitewashing the walls of the churches. But if the first edict was everywhere received with the most determined aversion, the second maddened the vast mass of the people, the clergy and the monks. In the capital the presence of the emperor did not in the least overawe the populace. An imperial officer had orders to destroy a statue of the Saviour in a part of Constantinople called Chaleopratia. The thronging multitude saw with horror the officer mount the ladder. Thrice he struck with impious axe the holy countenance, which had so benignly looked down upon them. Then the endurance of the people broke down, horror and indignation overvol. v.

[May i2. mastered them. Some women shook the ladder, and the officer fell and was beaten to death with clubs. The emperor sent an armed guard to suppress the tumult; and a frightful massacre took place.

This was the beginning of a savage persecution. The pious were punished with mutilations, scourgings, exile and confiscation.

The aged Germain now spoke out. He wrote three letters which are extant. In the first, addressed to John, bishop of Synnada, he said, “We do not adore the works of men, but we believe the holy martyrs are worthy of all honour, and we ask their intercession. To God alone does Christian faith, worship and adoration belong, as it is written: — Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. To Him alone is our doxology and our worship addressed. God forbid that we should worship the creature with the worship due to the Creator. When we prostrate ourselves before emperors and princes, it is not giving them the adoration due to God. The prophet Nathan fell on his face before David, who was only a man, and was not blamed therefor. And when we allow images, it is not to diminish the perfection of Divine worship, for we make no representations of the invisible and incomprehensible Divinity. But as the Son of God condescended to become Man for our salvation, we make representations of His human form to fortify our faith, to assure us that He assumed our real, veritable nature, and not a phantom form, as heretics declare. We salute images and render them suitable honour and reverence, as recalling to us the Incarnation. We also make representations of Christ's Holy Mother, to show that she being a woman of like nature with us, conceived and brought forth Almighty God. We admire the martyrs, prophets, and all other holy servants of God, and we paint their likenesses as memorials of their courage and of the service they rendered to God* Not that we pretend they participate in the Divine Nature, nor do we give them the honour and adoration due to God, but we show our affection for them, and by painting them fortify the faith of men in the verities they have heard through their ears. As we are men of flesh and blood, we need such assistance.” He entrusted this letter to Constantine, bishop of Nacolia, to take to his metropolitan, John; but Constantine was resolved to trim his sails to the breeze that blew from court, and suppressed the letter.

S. Germanus then wrote him a letter of remonstrance. He also wrote to Thomas, bishop of Claudiopolis, who had declared himself against images. From this letter may be extracted the following striking passage: — “Pictures are an abridged history, and all tend to the sole glory of the Celestial Father. When we show reverence to the representation of Jesus Christ, we do not adore the colours applied to the wood; we are adoring the invisible God who is in the bosom of the Father; and Him we worship in spirit and in truth.”

He also wrote to Pope Gregory II., who replied to him in a long letter, in which he congratulated him on the vigour with which he had defended Catholic tradition. The enterprise of Leo the Isaurian against sacred art occasioned a revolt of the people of Greece and the Cyclades, who armed a fleet under the command of Agallian and Stephen, which sailed for Constantinople, but was completely defeated on the 18th of April, 727. Agallian was cast into the sea, and Stephen was decapitated.

This success encouraged Leo, and he made fresh efforts to gain the patriarch Germanus, who had declared against the rebels, although they had sailed under the plea of a holy war. The emperor sent for him, spoke flatteringly to him, and urged him to yield.

“Sire,” said the aged patriarch, “we have received orders to remove our images; but let the persecutor be Conon, not Leo.” “True,” said the emperor, “I received the name of Conon at my baptism.” “ God forbid, sire,” said Germanus, “ that thy reign should see this accursed work carried out. It is a war not against images, but against the reality of the Incarnation.” At the opening of the year 730 Leo held a council of those who favoured his views, and endeavoured to force the patriarch to subscribe its decree against the use of images and pictures, but he preferred to resign his dignity, and removing his pall, he turned to the emperor, and said, “Sire, I may not innovate, nor make an alteration without the authority of au CEcumenical Council.” And he retired to the patriarchal palace. The emperor sent officers to expel him, and the old man, then aged eighty, was driven forth with blows and insults. He retired to his paternal mansion after having occupied the see fourteen years, five months, and three days. In his home he lived as a monk, and died peacefully about the year 732. •S'. Glyceria.