being received, Childeric was dethroned without opposition, and Pepin
was crowned in his stead.

In the East, the Church was torn with dissensions, while the imperial
throne was rocking under the repeated attacks of the Turks--a tribe
descended from the Tartars--who entered Armenia, struggled with the
Saracens for dominion, subdued them partially, and then turned their
arms against the Greek empire. The great controversy of this century is
that on the worship of images, between the Iconoduli or Iconolatrae
(image worshippers), and the Iconomachi or Iconoclastae (image
breakers). The Emperor Bardanes, a supporter of the Monothelite heresy,
ordered that a picture representing the sixth general council should be
removed from the Church of St. Sophia, because that council had
condemned the Monothelites. Not content with doing this (A.D. 712),
Bardanes sent an order to Rome that all pictures and images of the same
nature should be removed from places of worship. Constantine, the Pope,
immediately set up six pictures, representing the six general councils,
in the porch of St. Peter's, and called a council at Rome, which
denounced the Emperor as an apostate. Bardanes was dethroned by a
revolution, but his successor, Leo, soon took up the quarrel. In A.D.
726, he issued an imperial edict commanding the removal of all images
from the churches and forbidding all image worship, save only those
representing the crucifixion of Christ. Pope Gregory I. excommunicated
the Emperor, and insurrections broke out all over the empire in
consequence; the Emperor retorted by calling a council at
Constantinople, which deposed the bishop of that city for his leanings
towards image worship, and put a supporter of the Emperor in his place.
The contest was carried on by Constantine, who succeeded his father,
Leo, in A.D. 741, and who, in A.D. 754, called a council, at
Constantinople--recognised by the Greek Church as the seventh general