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206 silencing discussion. Where two strong men had failed it is not surprising that this weaker ruler did not succeed. In pursuit of his policy of encouraging image worship, on the death of Tarasius, Nicephorus appointed his namesake, known to us as Nicephorus the historian, to be patriarch of Constantinople, a man of principle and a conscientious supporter of the orthodox position at the return of Iconoclasm ( 806).

A disastrous war with the Bulgarians, in which the Emperor Nicephorus was slain, led to a revolution, in consequence of which his son Staviacius, after having been acknowledged by the soldiers for two months, was sent to a monastery, there to die of his wounds; and the previous emperor's son-in-law Michael was set on the throne. This revolution was carried out by the bigoted party of the image worshippers who had resented the comprehensive policy of the late emperor. But Michael turned out to be a weak ruler. He was regarded as pious, and undoubtedly he pleased the Church by granting out of the State funds lavish doles to her charities and to leading clergy; but since he made similar grants to high-placed court functionaries and chief officers of the army, such action was remarkably like bribery. Another of his pious deeds was to cover the tomb of Tarasius with silver, in grateful acknowledgment of the kindness of the dead patriarch—now prayed to as a saint—for causing a severe epidemic to spread among the invading Bulgarians. But best of all, he won the admiration of the orthodox by yielding to their persuasion in abandoning his liberal policy and persecuting the supporters of Iconoclasm. This fact shows that the movement which Leo the Isaurian had commenced as a piece of high-handed imperial policy, despotically forced on the Church, was not so entirely without popular support as its opponents contended; or, at all events, that it had gained some friends in the course of the eighty years that had intervened. A number of Iconoclasts together with Paulicians and other heretics were persecuted, some even being put to death.