pictures. It argued that "the oftener one gazed on these representations, the more would the gazer be stirred to the resemblance of the originals and the imitation of them, and to offer his greeting and reverent homage to them,[1] not the actual worship,[2] which belonged to the godhead alone," … for "whosoever does reverence[3] to an image does reverence to the person represented by it."[4]
The pope adopted the decrees of the council, and thus Irene had her ecclesiastical policy justified by the Church voting at a great council and speaking through its chief pontiff. Her personal history is an ugly commentary on these transactions. She was so greedy of her authority that she was unwilling for her son Constantine to take up the government when he came of age. For five years he succeeded in having the upper hand. Then he misused his opportunity by putting out the eyes of one of his uncles, Nicephorus the Cæsar, and cutting out the tongues of four other uncles. These crimes might have been condoned by the cruel custom of the times. But when Constantine divorced the Empress Maria, whom his tyrannical mother had forced upon him, and married Theodota, one of his mother's maids of honour, that ecclesiastical offence alienated the Church authorities and destroyed his popularity. Irene came back into power. Thereupon she showed her vindictiveness, or at least her unappeasable ambition, by having Constantine's eyes put out. This unnatural mother who blinded her own son has been canonised by the Greek Church for her restoration of image worship. She was more reasonably appreciated in her lifetime. Dethroned by a court conspiracy (a.d. 802), she was exiled to the island of Lesbos, where she died a few months later; and Nicephorus, the imperial treasurer, who had led the conspiracy, succeeded to the empire. He proved to be a man of moderate ideas, who wished to maintain image worship without persecuting its opponents; but, like Zeno and Justinian, he tried to bring about peace by forcibly
