the example of the Saracens and the Jews Fragm. Mon. Johan.
Jerosylym. Script. Byzant. vol. xvi. p. 235. Hist. des Repub.
Ital. par M. Sismondi, vol. i. p. 126. - G.]

[Footnote 16: See Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 267,)
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 201,) and Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p.
264,), and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iii. A.D. 944.) The
prudent Franciscan refuses to determine whether the image of
Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa; but its repose is
inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is no longer
famous or fashionable.]

[Footnote 17: (Nicetas, l. ii. p. 258.) The Armenian churches are
still content with the Cross, (Missions du Levant, tom. iii. p.
148;) but surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the
superstition of the Germans of the xiith century.]

Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo
the Third, ^18 who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the
throne of the East. He was ignorant of sacred and profane
letters; but his education, his reason, perhaps his intercourse
with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with a
hatred of images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to
impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But
in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and
danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before
the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with
the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the
reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and
cautious: he assembled a great council of senators and bishops,