[Footnote 36: (p. 665.) The pope appears to have imposed on the
ignorance of the Greeks: he lived and died in the Lateran; and in
his time all the kingdoms of the West had embraced Christianity.
May not this unknown Septetus have some reference to the chief of
the Saxon Heptarchy, to Ina king of Wessex, who, in the
pontificate of Gregory the Second, visited Rome for the purpose,
not of baptism, but of pilgrimage! Pagi. A., 89, No. 2. A.D.
726, No. 15.)]

The first assault of Leo against the images of
Constantinople had been witnessed by a crowd of strangers from
Italy and the West, who related with grief and indignation the
sacrilege of the emperor. But on the reception of his
proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic deities: the
images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and
saints, were abolished in all the churches of Italy; and a strong
alternative was proposed to the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as
the price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty
of his disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to
hesitate; and the haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the
emperor displays his confidence in the truth of his doctrine or
the powers of resistance. Without depending on prayers or
miracles, he boldly armed against the public enemy, and his
pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their danger and
their duty. ^37 At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities
of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of
religion; their military force by sea and land consisted, for the
most part, of the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal
was transfused into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore