saints, were abolished in all the churches of Italy and a strong alternative was proposed to the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as the price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty of his disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to hesitate; and the haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the emperor displays his confidence in the truth of his doctrine or the powers of resistance. Without depending on prayers or miracles, he boldly armed against the public enemy, and his pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their danger and their duty." At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of religion; their military force by sea and land consisted, for the most part, of the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal was transfused into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live and die in the defence of the pope and the holy images; the Roman people was devoted to their father, and even the Lombards were ambitious to share the merit and advantage of this holy war. The most treasonable act, but the most obvious revenge, was the destruction of the statues of Leo himself: the most effectual and pleasing measure of rebellion, was the withholding the tribute of Italy, and depriving him of a power which he had recently abused by the imposition of a new capitation.38 A form of administration was preserved by the election of magistrates and governors; and so high was the public indignation, that the Italians were prepared to create an orthodox emperor, and to conduct him with a fleet and army to the palace of Constantinople. In that palace, the Roman bishops, the second and third Gregory, were condemned as the authors of the revolt, and every attempt was made, either by fraud or force,

" I shall transcribe the important and decisive passage of the Liber Pontificalis. Respiciens ergo pius vir profanam principis jussionem, jam contra Imperatorem quasi contra hostem se armavit, renuens hæresim ejus, scribens ubique se cavere Christianos, eo quod orta fuisset 'mpietas talis. Igitur permoti omnes Pentapolenses, atque Venetiarum exercitus contra Imperatoris jussionem restiterunt; dicentes se Gunquam in ejusdem pontificis condescendere necem, sed pro ejus magis defensione viriliter decertare, (p. 156.)

38 A census, or capitation, says Anastasius, (p. 156;) a most cruel tax, unknown to the Saracens themselves, exclaims the zealous Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclastes, 1. i.,) and Theophanes, (p. 344,) who talks of Pharaoh's numbering the male children of Israel. This mode of taxation was familiar to the Saracens; and, most unluckily for the historians, it was imposed a few years afterwards in France by his patron Louis XIV.

VOL. V.-2

to seize their persons, and to strike at their lives. The city was repeatedly visited or assaulted by captains of the guards, and dukes and exarchs of high dignity or secret trust; they landed with foreign troops, they obtained some domestic aid, and the superstition of Naples may blush that her fathers were attached to the cause of heresy. But these clandestine or open attacks were repelled by the courage and vigilance of the Romans; the Greeks were overthrown and massacred, their leaders suffered an ignominious death, and the popes, however inclined to mercy, refused to intercede for these guilty victims. At Ravenna," the several quarters of the city had long exercised a bloody and hereditary feud; in religious controversy they found a new aliment of faction: but the votaries of images were superior in numbers or spirit, and the exarch, who attempted to stem the torrent, lost his life in a popular sedition. To punish this flagitious deed, and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic Gulf. After suffering from the winds and waves much loss and delay, the Greeks made their descent in the neighborhood of Ravenna: they threatened to depopulate the guilty capital, and to imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example of Justinian the Second, who had chastised a former rebellion by the choice and execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants. The women and clergy, in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer; the men were in arms for the defence of their country; the common danger had united the factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as the two armies alternately yielded and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was heard, and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory. The strangers retreated to their ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats; the waters of the Po were 30 deeply infected with blood, that during six years the public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images, and the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph

"See the Liber Pontificalis of Agnellus, (in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum of Muratori, tom. ii. pars i.,) whose deeper shade of barrarism marks the difference between Rome and Ravenna. Yet we are ndebted to him for some curious and domestic facts--the quarters and factions of Ravenna, (p. 154,) the revenge of Justinian II, (p. 180 161,) the defeat of the Greeks, (p. 170, 171,) &c.

of the Catholic arms, the Ronan pontiff convened a synod of ninety-three bishops against the heresy of the Iconoclasts. With their consent, he pronounced a general excommunication against all who by word or deed should attack the tradition of the fathers and the images of the saints: in this sentence the emperor was tacitly involved," but the vote of a last and hopeless remonstrance may seem to imply that the anathema was yet suspended over his guilty head. No sooner had they con firmed their own safety, the worship of images, and the free dom of Rome and Italy, than the popes appear to have relaxed of their severity, and to have spared the relics of the Byzantine dominion. Their moderate councils delayed and prevented the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The exarch was permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather than a master; and till the Imperial coronation of Charlemagne, the government of Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the successors of Constantine."1

The liberty of Rome, which had been oppressed by the arms and arts of Augustus, was rescued, after seven hundred and fifty years of servitude, from the persecution of Leo the Isaurian. By the Cæsars, the triumphs of the consuls had been annihilated: in the decline and fall of the empire, the god Terminus, the sacred boundary, had insensibly receded from the ocean, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates; and Rome was reduced to her ancient territory from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the mouth of the Tyber." When the kings were banished, the republic

....

40 Yet Leo was undoubtedly comprised in the si quis . . . . imagi num sacrarum . . . . destructor . . . extiterit, sit extorris a cor pore D. N. Jesu Christi vel totius ecclesiæ unitate. The canonists may decide whether the guilt or the name constitutes the excommunication; and the decision is of the last importance to their safety, since, according to the oracle (Gratian, Caus. xxiii. q. 5, 47, apud Spanheim, Hist. Imag. p. 112) homicidas non esse qui excnmunicatos trucidant.

41

Compescuit tale consilium Pontifex, sperans conversionem principis, (Anastas. p. 156.) Sed ne desisterent ab amore et fide R. J. admonebat, (p. 157.) The popes style Leo and Constantine Coprony. mus, Imperatores et Domini, with the strange epithet of Piissimi. A famous Mosaic of the Lateran (A. D. 798) represents Christ, who delivers the keys to St. Peter and the banner to Constantine V. (Muatori, Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 337.)

Í have traced the Roman duchy accor ling to the maps, and the

reposed on the firm basis which had been founded by thei wisdom and virtue. Their perpetual jurisdiction was divided between two annual magistrates: the senate continued to exercise the powers of administration and counsel; and the legisla tive authority was distributed in the assemblies of the people, by a well-proportioned scale of property and service. Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war: the will of the com munity was absolute: the rights of individuals were sacred: one hundred and thirty thousand citizens were armed for defence or conquest; and a band of robbers and outlaws was moulded into a nation deserving of freedom and ambitious of glory." When the sovereignty of the Greek of the Greek emperors was extinguished, the ruins of Rome presented the sad image of depopulation and decay: her slavery was a habit, her liberty an accident; the effect of superstition, and the object of her own amazement and terror. The last vestige of the substance, or even the forms, of the constitution, was obliterated from the practice and memory of the Romans; and they were devoid of knowledge, or virtue, again to build the fabric of a commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, the offspring of slaves and strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious Barbarians. As often as the Franks or Lombards expressed their most bitter contempt of a foe, they called him a Roman; "and in this name," says the bishop Liutprand, "we include whatever is base, whatever is cowardly, whatever is perfidious, the extremes of avarice and luxury, and every vice that can prostitute the dignity of human na"By the necessity of their situation, the inhabitants

ture."

maps according to the excellent dissertation of father Beretti, (de Chorographia Italiæ Medii Ævi, sect. xx. p. 216-232.) Yet I must nicely observe, that Viterbo is of Lombard foundation, (p. 211,) an i that Terracina was usurped by the Greeks.

43 On the extent, population, &c., of the Roman kingdom, the reader may peruse, with pleasure, the Discours Preliminaire to the Republique Romaine of M. de Beaufort, (tom. i.,) who will not be accused too much credulity for the early ages of Rome.

"Quos Romanos) nos, Longobardi scilicet, Saxones, Franci, Loharingi, Bajoarii, Suevi, Burgundiones, tanto dedignamur ut inimicos

Yet this contumelious sentence, quoted by Robertson (Charles V note 2) as well as Gibbon, was applied by the angry bishop to the Bysan tine Romans, whom, indeed, he admits to be the genuine descendants of Romulus.--M.

45

of Rome were cast into the rough model of a republican gov ernment they were compelled to elect some judges in peace, and some leaders in war: the nobles assembled to deliberate, and their resolves could not be executed without the union and consent of the multitude. The style of the Roman senate and people was revived, but the spirit was fled; and their new independence was disgraced by the tumultuous conflict of icentiousness and oppression. The want of laws could only De supplied by the influence of religion, and their foreign and domestic counsels were moderated by the authority of the bishop. His alms, his sermons, his correspondence with the kings and prelates of the West, his recent services, their gratitude, and oath, accustomed the Romans to consider him as the first magistrate or prince of the city. The Christian humility of the popes was not offended by the name of Dom. inus, or Lord; and their face and inscription are still apparent on the most ancient coins. Their temporal dominion is now confirmed by the reverence of a thousand years; and their noblest title is the free choice of a people, whom they had redeemed from slavery.

46

In the quarrels of ancient Greece, the holy people of Elis enjoyed a perpetual peace, under the protection of Jupiter, and in the exercise of the Olympic games." Happy would it have been for the Romans, if a similar privilege had guarded the patrimony of St. Peter from the calamities of nostros commoti, nil aliud contumeliarum nisi Romane, dicamus: hoc solo, id est Romanorum nomine, quicquid ignobilitatis, quicquid timiditatis, quicquid avaritiæ, quicquid luxuriæ, quicquid mendacii, immo quicquid vitiorum est comprehendentes, (Liutprand, in Legat Script. Ital tom. ii. para i. p. 481.) For the sins of Cato or Tully, Minos might have imposed as a fit penance the daily perusal of this barbarous passage.

45

Pipino regi Francorum, omnis senatus, atque universa populi generalitas a Deo servatæ Romanæ urbis. Codex Carolin. epist. 36, in Script. Ital. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 160. The names of senatus and senator were never totally extinct, (Dissert. Chorograph. p. 216, 217;) but in the middle ages they signified little more than nobiles, optimates, &c., (Ducange, Gloss. Latin.)

46 See Muratori, Antiquit. Italiæ Medii Evi, tom. ii. Dissertal xxvii. p. 548. On one of these coins we read Hadrianus Papa (A. D 772;) on the reverse, Vict. DDNN. with the word CONOB, which he Père Joubert (Science des Medailles, tom. ii. p. 42) explains by CONstantinopoli Officina B (secunda.)

47

See West's Dissertation on the Olympic Games, (Pindar. vcl i p. 82-36, edition in 12mo.,) and the judicious reflections of Polybias Itom. i. 1. iv. p. 466, edit Gronov.)