Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/142

116 and immediately after slipped away unobserved among the crowd. The anecdote vividly illustrates the tyranny of the stern prelate and the terror he was inspiring. Of course he took no notice of what he would only regard as a daring insult. Poor Anastasius was now so much under the power of the Monophysites that he ordered his military commander in the Lebanon to eject Cosmas and another recalcitrant bishop from their sees, although with his usual mildness sending an apology with the order, and expressly stipulating that it must only be executed if this could be done without bloodshed. Severus himself, if we are to believe the statements of the opposite party, acted in a very different spirit, loading orthodox monks and clergy with irons, slaughtering some and flinging out their dead bodies for birds and beasts to devour, drowning others in the Orontes.