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Rh been immortalised for having checked a Moorish raid in the West that had nearly spent its force, and that could never have resulted in the permanent subjection of Europe, a much greater man who achieved a much greater feat has missed his laurels, partly because his action as a heretic offended the Church, but no doubt partly also because his achievements were carried out in the East. This man was Leo the Isaurian—Leo —the hero of Finlay's Byzantine history, a rough, uneducated peasant from a remote part of Asia Minor, who is said to have first attracted attention by bringing a present of sheep to the reigning emperor, but a man of genius, vigour, and character.

Leo founded a dynasty of able rulers who held the Eastern Empire together for generations, while the last relics of the Western Empire were in the melting-pot, out of which issued the nations of modern Europe. His own mighty task was to put an effectual and final stop to the Arab encroachments. Syria and Egypt were lost for ever; but Leo retained and strengthened all the empire north of the Mediterranean, remodelled the system of government, and established a military power that put an end to the danger of the swamping of Christianity by Islam. Here then is a man deserving of the highest honour by the Church, since in proving himself the saviour of the empire he became also the deliverer of the Church, with which it was to so great an extent conterminous. In spite of this fact, his own action in the Church called down on his head execrations instead of benedictions. Let us proceed to examine this remarkable phenomenon.

Leo seized the imperial power at a crisis of confusion in the year 716. Ten years later he issued an edict ordering the destruction of the sacred pictures. It has been commonly supposed that he first ordered them to be raised to a higher position on the walls so that the people could not reach up to kiss them. But the only authority for this opinion is the Latin translation of the life of the monk Stephen, on which Baronius bases his assertion of it. On