each time successful as a government measure, never laid hold of the Church, and ultimately it failed entirely, the old order re-establishing itself as completely as though nothing had ever happened to interfere with it. Therefore we must regard Iconoclasm as an episode, not as a stage in the development of Church history. Nevertheless it is extremely suggestive, for both the attack on image worship and the defence are symptomatic; by means of them we can learn much about the actual condition of Christendom in the East during a little-studied period. The iconoclastic emperors, for the most part, were strong rulers who successfully defended the empire against the encroachment of foreign powers and who maintained good order within its borders. During their reigns the law was justly administered; security of life and property—except in the case of the persecuted monks—was well guarded; and the morals of the people were higher than at any other time in the history of the Eastern Church. On the other hand—and here we come to the paradox of the situation—the defence of image worship was carried on with genuine religious motives on the part of the ecclesiastical leaders. The most cultivated and devoted Churchmen of the day were champions of what the Iconoclasts stigmatised as "idolatry." Further, it is a curious fact that, while each of the two reforming campaigns was initiated by a powerful emperor—the first by Leo the Isaurian and the second by Leo the Armenian, each of the reactionary movements sprang from the energy of a woman—the first from that of the Empress Irene and the second from that of the Empress Theodora. Unhappily we cannot ascribe to these ladies very lofty motives, at all events not to the first of them.
Leo iv., the son and successor of Constantine Copronicus (a.d. 775), was in delicate health during his short reign, and when he died leaving as his heir his son Constantine vi., Porphyrogenitus—(born in the purple, i.e. the purple chamber at the palace), then only ten years old, the regency devolved on one of the many remarkable women who figure so conspicuously in the history of the Byzantine
