Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/149

 THE EASTERN EMPIRE 137 awaken awe and reverence for the Divine. But when the awe and reverence were appropriated to the images and relics themselves ; when these were invested with sanctity, credited with miraculous powers, and themselves received adoration, a form of idolatry was in effect practised. On the other hand, it was easy enough to see how the most honest and spiritual- minded men, themselves heeding the spiritual significance of these things, should have felt that reverence for them and reverence for the Divine were bound up together ; and to see also how the less honest of the clergy felt that their own power and influence depended on maintaining what they themselves regarded as superstitions, but the vulgar regarded as mysteries of which the clergy were custodians. Leo and his successors set their faces against this image-worship, and hence The received the title of the ' Iconoclasts ' or image- Iconoclast breakers. For a time they were successful, that Em P erorB - is to say, they were to some extent able to enforce their views in spite of the opposition of the clergy. But by doing so they intensified the antagonism between the Imperial authority and the Christian Church of the west. Then at the close of the eighth century came a time when there was a struggle for the Imperial authority ; and Irene, the widow of the Emperor Leo iv., for a time secured the Imperial Crown for herself, and endeavoured to compensate for the crimes by which she achieved her ambitions by seeking the support of the clergy. The result was to increase the power and influence End of the of the ecclesiastical organisation, and the restora- isaurian tion of image-worship. So ended the iconoclastic Dvnasty ' 802 - struggle which foreshadowed one of the most prominent features in the Protestant reformation.