menace to Christianity the religion of Islam which made it the first duty of the faithful to extirpate idolatry. The case for Mohammedanism was strengthened by the existence of idolatry in the Christian Church, and a wise Christian ruler might well be anxious to remove that scandal from his cause. Only two years before Leo took action the caliph was vigorously engaged in destroying the pictures among the Christian churches in his dominion. Naturally enough this similarity of policy led the image worshippers to accuse their fellow Christian Iconoclasts of treasonable connections with the Mohammedans. At the seventh œcumenical council (II Nicæa, a.d. 787) the monk John accused Constantine, bishop of Nacolia in Phrygia, of collusion with the caliph. This bishop, who had been actively engaged in tearing down the images in his own district, came to Constantinople to consult the Patriarch Germanus on the subject. He got no encouragement in that quarter. Germanus was a staunch supporter of image worship, and in the case of this bold bishop we have a rare instance of independence on the part of the head ecclesiastic of the Greek Church at Constantinople in opposition to the emperor, which is in marked contrast to the too common subservience of the Constantinople patriarchs. But that fact makes it all the more remarkable that Leo should have so acted as to stir up a hornets' nest just when he was consolidating his power for the security of the empire. The fair and reasonable explanation is that which is also most simple and straightforward, namely, that we should accept the emperor's own declared motive as genuine. He regarded image worship as idolatry. He saw that Christianity as a spiritual faith was becoming swamped and drowned in the grossest superstition. The pictures were actually idols. The people were satisfied to kiss and adore them; in illness they resorted to them for miraculous cures; if they had any other religious practice to which they attached weight, it was the treasuring of relics. Perhaps the reason why Leo did not attack this also was that it was practised in private. The relics were the
