Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/148

 136 THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES already masters. It seemed now that both from the west and from the east the Cross was to be driven back before the Crescent. But the decisive victory of Leo rolled back the Saracens, as a few years later their attempt to pass the Pyrenees was defeated by the Franks under the command of Charles Martel. The Byzantine Empire was already greatly reduced in extent. The Saracens had bereft it of Africa, of Egypt, of Syria, and had left it in possession only of Asia Minor. In Asia Minor. r ....... ,.,. r fact, its Asiatic dominion did not extend very far beyond the old Lydian dominion at the time of its overthrow by Cyrus. This was the one portion of Western Asia which does not appear ever to have been definitely dominated by the Semites ; and which, since the first coming of the Aryans, had always been subject to western influences. The mountain ranges which had protected it in the past from Nineveh and from Babylon still guarded it from the Saracens. Still, as always before, it was the one region where east and west did meet, so that it would be difficult to say that either definitely dominated over the other. The Isaurian dynasty provided a series of vigorous rulers, who, besides rolling back the Saracen tide, made an energetic Church and effort in the direction of ecclesiastical reform. The Empire in eastern emperors habitually attempted, not without the East. success, to assert their supremacy over the Church as well as over the state. In the west we shall presently see a great struggle in progress between the spiritual and the temporal powers. In the east no spiritual power had successfully claimed an authority higher than that of the emperor. In the east and in the west alike, the clergy had always derived a degree of power and influence by encouraging practices which were often highly beneficial, as what may be called stepping-stones, by which the uneducated classes could be led from their traditional paganism to the higher conceptions of Christianity. But some- times the stepping-stones failed to serve their purpose, and were Image- use d to drag down the Christian conceptions to worship. the pagan level. Images and relics, viewed as symbols of things spiritual, helped to touch the imagination, to