Note 177 — VI. THE EASTERN CHURCH.

Leonis Novell. Constit. III.—It is not improbable that this custom resulted from the iconoclastic schism of Leo the Isaurian and Constantine Copronymus, which occupied nearly the whole of the eighth century. These emperors found their most unyielding enemies in the monks. In the savage persecutions which disgraced the struggle, Constantine endeavored to extirpate monachism altogether. The accounts which his adversaries have transmitted of the violence and cruelties which he perpetrated are doubtless exaggerated, but there is likelihood that his efforts to discountenance celibacy, as the foundation of the obnoxious institution, are correctly reported. “Publice defamavit et dehonestavit habitum monachorum in hippodromo, præcipiens unumquemque monachum manutenere mulierem, et taliter transire per hippodromum, sumptis injuriis ab omni populo cumulatis” (Baronii Annal. ann. 766, No. 1). He ejected the monks from the monasteries, which he turned into barracks; some of the monks were tortured, others fled to the mountains and deserts, where they suffered every extremity, while others again succumbed to threats and temptations, and were publicly married—“alii corporeis voluptatibus addicti, suas etiam uxores circumducere non erubescebant” (Ibid. No. 28, 29).