Armenian renewed the heresy of the Iconoclasts and persecuted the Catholics. Many took refuge in Rome; and Pascal I. (817) built a church for them, in which they held services in Greek. This Pope even sent letters and legates to Constantinople to advocate the cause of the faith, which the majority of the bishops, with the Patriarch Nicephorus at their head, courageously defended. Leo the Armenian, hoping nothing from Rome, sought a support in the Church of France. The Bishops of that church assembled at Paris and adopted several decisions similar to those of the Council of Frankfort, of which we have spoken. Several of them were sent to Rome to give good advice to the Pope, then Eugenius II.
This was the beginning of that traditional opposition of the Church of France to the Papacy, in conformity with catholic doctrine, which has been called Gallicanism.
The Bishops of the Council of Paris, like those of Frankfort, had no precise notion of the question discussed in the East; but we only desire to prove by them that they believed they had the right to contest the œcumenical character of the seventh general council, even after the Pope had concurred in it, and that they ascribed no dogmatic authority in the Church to the Bishop of Rome.
Several somewhat obscure Popes now succeeded each other until 858, when Nicholas I. took the see of Rome. The Eastern Church, persecuted by iconoclastic emperors, defended the holy traditions of the Church with invincible courage. She enjoyed some tranquillity at last under the reign of Michael, (842,) after a persecution that had continued almost without interruption for a hundred and twenty years. Methodius, one of the most courageous defenders of orthodoxy, became Bishop of Constantinople, and was succeeded (847) by Ignatius, son of the Emperor Michael Rhangabe, predecessor of
