Page:Historical Works of Venerable Bede vol. 2.djvu/365

 CHRONICLE.] A.M. 4667 [716].

Philippicus reigned 16 months. He removed Cyrus from the Pontificate, and commanded him to return to Pontus, and there resume as abbot the government of his monastery. He also sent to Pope Constantine letters, with impious commands, which the latter, with the advice of the Apostolic See, returned to him with disdain, and moreover, set up in the portico of St. Peter, pictures containing the acts of the six holy general councils; for Philippicus had commanded that all such pictures, which were in the metropolis, should be removed; on which account the Roman people determined that they would neither have the name of an nheretical emperor in their deeds, nor his statue amongst them; and accordingly neither was his statue introduced into the churches, nor his name in the celebration of divine service.

A.M. 4670 [719].

Anastasius reigned three years. He took Philippicus prisoner, and put out his eyes, but did not put him to death. He sent a letter to Rome to Pope Constantine, by Scholasticus, a patrician and exarch of Italy, in which he declared himself to be favourable to the Catholic faith, and a defender of the sixth holy council, Lithbrand, King of the Lombards, admonished by the venerable Pope Gregory, confirmed the grant of the parimony of the Cottian Alps, which King Herebert had made, but which he had sought to resume. Egbert, a holy man of the nation of the Angles, an ornament to the priesthood in his monastic life, quitted his own home in search of an immortal one, and by his pious preaching brought back many provinces of the Scottish people to the canonical observation of Easter, in the year of our Lord's Incarnation, 716.