of the Empire was entrusted to his mother, Irene, who was determined to restore image-worship.

In spite of her definite leanings toward image-worship, Irene did not undertake any decisive measures in the direction of its official restoration during the first three years of her reign. This postponement was due to the fact that all the forces of the Empire had to be directed to the internal struggle with the pretender to the throne and the external fight with the Slavs who lived in Greece. Furthermore, the restoration of icon-worship had to be approached with great caution, because the major part of the army was favorably inclined to iconoclasm, and the canons of the iconoclastic council of 753-54 declared by Constantine as imperial laws continued to exert a certain amount of influence upon many people in the Byzantine Empire. It is quite likely that many members of the higher clergy accepted the decrees of the iconoclastic council by compulsion rather than by conviction, hence they constituted, according to Professor Andreev, "an element which yielded readily to the reformatory operations of the iconoclastic emperors, but which would not form any real opposition to the measures of an opposite tendency.

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It was only in the fourth year of Irene's reign that the see of Constantinople was given to Tarasius, who declared that it was necessary to convoke an Ecumenical Council for the purpose of restoring image-worship. A delegation was sent to Pope Hadrian I with an invitation to come to this council in Constantinople. The Pope sent his legates.

The council gathered in the year 786 in the Temple of the Holy Apostles, but the troops of the capital, hostile to icon-worship, rushed into this temple with drawn swords and forced the assembly to disperse. It seemed that the iconoclastic party had triumphed once more, but it was only for a brief period. Irene skilfully replaced the disobedient troops by new soldiers, more loyal to her ideals.

In the following year (787) the council convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea, where, as we know, the first Ecumenical Council had been held. Seven meetings of the Council, from which the se I. Andreev, p. 98 (in Russian).

Emperor and Empress were absent, took place in Nicaea. The eighth and last assembly was held in the imperial palace at Constantinople. The number of bishops who came to this council exceeded. three hundred. This was the seventh and last Ecumenical Council in the history of the Eastern church.

Image-worship was restored by the decree of this Council. The adoration of holy images was confirmed, and those who disagreed with the ruling of the Council were anathematized. Excommunication was also proclaimed for those "who called the holy images idols and who asserted that the Christians resort to icons as if the latter were Gods, or that the Catholic church had ever accepted idols." The bishops of the Council acclaimed "a New Constantine and a New Helen."'87 With regard to the question of relics, it was ruled that relics had to be placed in all of the restored temples from which these necessary attributes of an orthodox church were absent. The transformation of monasteries into common dwellings was severely condemned, and orders were issued to restore all the monasteries abolished and secularized by the iconoclasts, The Council devoted much of its attention to raising the morality of the clergy by condemning the buying of church offices for money (simony), etc. It also prohibited the existence of mixed monasteries (for both sexes).

The great importance of the Nicene Council does not lie only in the restoration of image-worship. This Council created for the iconodules the organization which they had lacked in their early struggle with their opponents; it collected all theological arguments in favor of images, which could later be used by the iconodules in their disputes with the iconoclasts. In brief, the Council provided for the iconodule party a weapon which facilitated all future struggles with their antagonists when the second period of the iconoclastic movement set in.

We must constantly keep in mind that the so-called "iconoclastic" activities of the emperors of the eighth century were only one, and perhaps not the most important, side of that period. For most of our data on this period we are dependent upon the later onesided literary tradition of the triumphant icon-worshiping party which destroyed practically all the iconoclastic documents. But ow87 Mansi, XIII, 739-40.

ing to some occasional and scattered information which has reached us we may conclude that the main energy of Leo III and Constantine V was directed toward the secularization of large monasterial landed property and the limitation of the enormous number of monks, that is to say, against the elements which, by escaping state control and by functioning with almost complete independence, were undermining the vital forces and unity of the Empire.

The coronation of Charles the Great and the significance of this event for the Byzantine Empire.—According to James Bryce "The coronation of Charles is not only the central event of the Middle Ages; it is also one of those very few events of which, taking them singly, it may be said that if they had not happened, the history of the world would have been different."88 At present this event is important for us primarily in as much as it concerned the Byzantine Empire.

In the conception of the medieval man, as we know, the Roman Empire was a single empire, so that when in previous centuries we encountered two or more emperors the situation was to be viewed as a case where two rulers governed one state. We have pointed out in an earlier part of this work that it is wrong to speak of a fall of the Western Roman Empire in the year 476. The idea of a single empire lay behind the militaristic policy of Justinian in the sixth century, and this idea was still alive in the year 800, when the famous imperial coronation of Charles the Great occurred in Rome.

And while theoretically the conception of a single empire still prevailed in the ideology of the Middle Ages, actual reality was a forceful evidence that it was obsolete. The Eastern or Byzantine Graeco-Slavic world of the late eighth century and the Western Romano-Germanic world of the same period were, in language, in ethnographical composition, in their cultural problems, two distinctly different, separate worlds. The idea of a single empire was out of date and has become a historical anachronism from our modern point of view, though not in the opinion of the Middle Ages.

Iconoclasm contributed its share toward preparing the event of 800. The papacy, which energetically protested against the icon88 J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (New York, 1919), p. 50 (the beginning of the fifth chapter).

oclastic measures of the Byzantine emperors and excommunicated the iconoclasts, turned to the West in hopes of finding friendship and defense in the Frankish kingdom among the rising majordomos (mayors of the palace), and later the kings of the Carolingian house. At the end of the eighth century the Frankish throne was occupied by the most famous representative of this house, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. We shall leave aside the complex question, variously regarded in historical literature, of the mutual interests of the Pope and the King of the Franks which eventually led to the coronation of the latter with the imperial crown.

The event itself is well known. On Christmas day of the year 800, during the solemn service in the Church of St. Peter, Pope Leo III placed the imperial crown upon the head of the kneeling Charles. The people present in the church proclaimed "To Charles, the most pious Augustus crowned by God, to the Great and Peace-giving, many years and victory!"

Scholars have expressed diverse opinions about the significance of Charles' acceptance of the imperial rank. Some believed that the title of emperor did not give him any new rights, that in reality he still remained, as before, only "a king of the Franks and Lombards, and a Roman patrician"; briefly, that in receiving the crown Charles assumed only a new name. Others thought that through the coronation of Charles in the year 800 a new Western Empire was created, which was now entirely independent of the existence of the Eastern or Byzantine Empire.

To regard the event of 800 in either of the ways indicated would mean to introduce into this analysis opinions of later times. At the end of the eighth century there was not, and could not be, any question of a "titulary" emperor, nor of the formation of a separate Western Empire. The coronation of Charles must be analyzed from a point of view prevalent in 800, i.e., as it was looked upon by the participants of the event, by Charles the Great and Leo III.

Neither of them intended to create a Western Empire which would counterbalance the Eastern Empire. Charles was undoubtedly convinced that upon receiving the title of emperor in the year 800

89 W. Sickel, "Die Kaiserwahl Karls des Grossen," Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, XX (1899), 1-2, 3.

he became the sole ruler and the continuator of the single Roman Empire. The event meant only that Rome had reclaimed from Constantinople the right of imperial election. As we have repeatedly pointed out, the mind of that time could not conceive of the simultaneous existence of two empires; in its very substance the Empire was single. "The imperial dogma of a sole empire rested upon the dogma of a sole God, since only in his capacity of God's temporary deputy could the emperor exercise divine authority on earth."90 The prevailing conditions of this period facilitated the popular acceptance of this view as to imperial power, which was the only view possible at that time.

We saw that in the Byzantine Empire, in the year 797, Irene dethroned the legal emperor, her son Constantine, and became the autocratic ruler of the empire. This was in sharp contradiction with the traditions of the Roman Empire, where no woman had ever ruled with full imperial authority. From the point of view of Charles and Pope Leo, the imperial throne was vacant, and in accepting the imperial crown Charles ascended this vacant throne of the undivided Roman Empire and became the legal successor, not of Romulus Augustulus, but of Leo IV, Heraclius, Justinian, Theodosius, and Constantine the Great, the emperors of the Eastern line. An interesting confirmation of this view is found in the fact that in Western annals referring to the year 800 and subsequent years which recorded events by the years of Byzantine emperors, the name of Charles follows immediately after the name of Constantine VI.

And if such was the view of Charles with regard to his imperial rank, then what was the attitude of the Byzantine Empire to his coronation? The Eastern Empire, too, treated it in accordance with the prevailing views of that period. In upholding Irene's rights to the throne, the Byzantine Empire looked upon the event of 800 as one of the many attempts of revolt against the legal ruler, and feared, not without reason, that the newly proclaimed Emperor, following the example of other insurgents, might decide to advance toward Constantinople in order to dethrone Irene and seize the imperial throne by force. In the eyes of the Byzantine government

* Gasquet, L'empire byzantin et la monarchie franque (Paris, 1888), pp. 284-85.