Leo the Armenian, who seized the throne in 813, was unfriendly to images. He called a synod of Constantinople in 815 in which the acts of the second Council of Nicæa (787) were nullified. He forbade the lighting of lamps and burning of incense before the images and had them elevated in the churches out of the reach of the people in order to prevent their worship. But Leo's widow, Theodora, restored the usages. Thus, after a long, bitter struggle, images were finally restored in the churches with great pomp and ceremony in 842. The "Festival of Orthodoxy" is still celebrated on February 19th in the Greek Church.

After the great victory had been won for images, both the Latin and the Greek Churches continued their use. The puritanical Iconoclastic Controversy was in a certain sense the forerunner of the ruthless destruction of paintings and statues in England, Holland, and Germany during the Reformation. The Council of Trent passed finally on the doctrine and use of images in the Catholic Church.[282:3]

As a result of this controversy, the Eastern Church was greatly weakened through dissensions, checked in the growth of its organisation, robbed of its

independence, made a mere tool of the state, reformed and purified even though image worship finally prevailed because it was better understood, and compelled to recognise the power of the Pope.

The Western Church, on the other hand, was forced to define the right and wrong use of images and was weakened somewhat by a schism like that in the Eastern Church, because the Frankish Church opposed the worship of images East and West. Pepin had the subject discussed in a synod near Paris (767), in which sat legates from Rome and Constantinople. It was decided that "images of saints made up or painted for the ornament and beauty of churches might be endured, so long as they were not worshipped in an idolatrous manner." Charles the Great, aided by Alcuin, published the Caroline books denouncing all abuses in the worship of images, though tolerating them for ornamentation and devotion.[283:1] The cross and relics, however, were commended (790).[283:2] The synod of Frankfort, held in 794, rejected the recommendations of the seventh œcumenical Council of Nicæa and condemned image worship.[283:3] A synod of Paris in 827 renewed the action of 794.[283:4] These doctrines were continued by Agobard of Lyons, Claudius, Bishop of Turin, the Waldenses in Piedmont, and the Lollards in England.[283:5]

Furthermore, the controversy enabled the Pope of Rome to declare his universal supremacy in more

sweeping terms than ever and to make it good in the West. The rise of the Papacy, as the dominating force in the Church of the West, made the rupture inevitable and permanent. The series of protests in the East against the assumptions of the See of Rome prevented any complete and absolute recognition of the supremacy of the chair of St. Peter. As the years passed, the Eastern Church saw that independence could be secured against the sweeping imperial claims of Rome only by a declaration of total separation. The relations between the East and West were likewise affected in another sense, because they were separated politically when Charles the Great became Emperor of the West (800), and were separated religiously when the allegiance of the Pope was transferred from the eastern authority to the newly created western Emperor.

The growing estrangement between the Greek and Roman Churches, which had its origin in a fundamental difference in character, temperament, and ideas, became conspicuous in the fourth century, reached an incurable stage in the ninth century, and culminated in the eleventh century. Pope Nicholas I. in 863 deposed Photius from the office of Patriarch of Constantinople. Photius, in the counter synod held in 867, returned the compliment by deposing the Pope for heresy and schism.[284:1]

The gulf between the East and West became practically irreparable when Nicholas I., standing firmly on the Petrine theory and backed up by the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, wrote to Emperor Michael:

You affirm that you and your predecessors have been