flagitious deed, and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor
sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic Gulf. After suffering
from the winds and waves much loss and delay, the Greeks made
their descent in the neighborhood of Ravenna: they threatened to
depopulate the guilty capital, and to imitate, perhaps to
surpass, the example of Justinian the Second, who had chastised a
former rebellion by the choice and execution of fifty of the
principal inhabitants. The women and clergy, in sackcloth and
ashes, lay prostrate in prayer: the men were in arms for the
defence of their country; the common danger had united the
factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow
miseries of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as the two armies
alternately yielded and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was
heard, and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory.
The strangers retreated to their ships, but the populous
sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats; the waters of the Po
were so deeply infected with blood, that during six years the
public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the
institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images,
and the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of
the Catholic arms, the Roman pontiff convened a synod of
ninety-three bishops against the heresy of the Iconoclasts. With
their consent, he pronounced a general excommunication against
all who by word or deed should attack the tradition of the
fathers and the images of the saints: in this sentence the
emperor was tacitly involved, ^40 but the vote of a last and
hopeless remonstrance may seem to imply that the anathema was yet
suspended over his guilty head. No sooner had they confirmed
their own safety, the worship of images, and the freedom of Rome
and Italy, than the popes appear to have relaxed of their