st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

62 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
But as the suppression of image-worship took its
rise with the emperor, so it was liable to come to an
end with any change in the occupant of the throne.
Constantine had bound the inhabitants of Constan
tinople according to some, all the inhabitants of his
dominions by an oath, to the observance of his
decrees. But he died in 775, and his son, Leo IV.,
reigned but four years and a half. The empressmother,
Irene, was left as regent during the minority
of her son, Constantine VI., a child of ten years old.
Irene had been bound, like the rest, by her father-inlaw
s oath, but her mind was bent on undoing the
religious work of his reign. Comparing
the short
interregnum of Leo IV. to that of our Edward VI.,
the task she set herself will appear not altogether
unlike that undertaken by Queen Mary. Without
entering into details concerning the opposition she
had to overcome, or the prelates and soldiers she had
to conciliate, it may suffice to say that in 787 a second
council was assembled, by her direction, at Nicaea, at
which the decrees of the iconoclastic council in the
Heraeum in 754 were revoked. It was now decided
that, "even as the figure of the cross was honoured,
so images of the Saviour and the Blessed Virgin, of
angels and of saints, whether painted or mosaic, or of
any other suitable material, are to be set up
for kissthrough
the mists of partisan historians, may be inferred from
the very sobriquet of Copronymus which they have succeeded
in fastening on this emperor. Though as familiarly
known to
us by it as Caius by his nickname of Caligula, it was really
meant for a most opprobrious epithet, based on a legend of his
having fouled the baptismal font when an infant.