and scourged, and two monks, Theophanes the Singer and Theodore Graptus, were tortured—the latter receiving his surname from the fact that some verses were branded on his forehead. A little later John the Grammarian was elected patriarch and was induced to summon a synod which condemned image worship.
On the death of Theophilus (a.d. 842), his widow Theodora, as regent to her son Michael iii., surnamed "The Drunkard," restored the image worship and so put an end to the second iconoclastic campaign. Within a few months of her accession to power she summoned a council, which confirmed the decision of the second council of Nicæa. Still, the fires of the controversy were only smouldering; for in the year 860 the patriarch Photius proposed to Pope Nicholas another council against the Iconoclasts, which met in the following year. But, though this council deposed Ignatius, who had supplanted Photius, we have no record of any reference to images during the course of its proceedings. Eight years later (a.d. 869) yet another synod denounced the Iconoclasts and upheld the pictures as useful for the "instruction" of the people. Henceforth they have hung on the walls of Greek churches, undisturbed except by the ravages of war and time, and adored by successive generations of the devout.
Although the iconoclastic movement sprang from the enlightened policy of two dynasties of strong emperors, while the practice of image worship was maintained by the ignorant populace and the fanatical monks, it must not be supposed that the latter lacked capable and high-minded defenders. On the contrary, the ablest theologian in each of the two periods of Iconoclasm was a champion of image worship. To the first period belongs John of Damascus, and to the second Theodore of Studium, the only churchmen of permanent fame who appeared in the Eastern Church during the eighth and ninth centuries.
John of Damascus is known as the last of the Fathers. He it was who summed up the results of the previous centuries of controversy and gave to his Church the dogmas
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