The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1629]
[Footnote 78: See the Acts, in Greek and Latin, of the second Council of Nice, with a number of relative pieces, in the viiith volume of the Councils, p. 645-1600. A faithful version, with some critical notes, would provoke, in different readers, a sigh or a smile.]
[Footnote 79: The pope's legates were casual messengers, two priests without any special commission, and who were disavowed on their return. Some vagabond monks were persuaded by the Catholics to represent the Oriental patriarchs. This curious anecdote is revealed by Theodore Studites, (epist. i. 38, in Sirmond. Opp. tom. v. p. 1319,) one of the warmest Iconoclasts of the age.]
[Footnote 80: These visits could not be innocent since the daemon of fornication, &c. Actio iv. p. 901, Actio v. p. 1081]
[Footnote 81: See an account of this controversy in the Alexius of Anna Compena, (l. v. p. 129,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 371, 372.)]
[Footnote 82: The Libri Carolini, (Spanheim, p. 443 - 529,) composed in the palace or winter quarters of Charlemagne, at Worms, A.D. 790, and sent by Engebert to Pope Hadrian I., who answered them by a grandis et verbosa epistola, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 1553.) The Carolines propose 120 objections against the Nicene synod and such words as these are the flowers of their rhetoric - Dementiam .... priscae Gentilitatis obsoletum errorem .... argumenta insanissima et absurdissima .... derisione dignas naenias, &c., &c.]
[Footnote 83: The assemblies of Charlemagne were political, as well as ecclesiastical; and the three hundred members, (Nat. Alexander, sec. viii. p. 53,) who sat and voted at Frankfort, must include not only the bishops, but the abbots, and even the principal laymen.]
[Footnote 84: Qui supra sanctissima patres nostri (episcopi et sacerdotes) omnimodis servitium et adorationem imaginum renuentes contempserunt, atque consentientes condemnaverunt, (Concil. tom. ix. p. 101, Canon. ii. Franckfurd.) A polemic must be hard-hearted indeed, who does not pity the efforts of Baronius, Pagi, Alexander, Maimbourg, &c., to elude this unlucky sentence.]
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.
Part IV.
It was after the Nycene synod, and under the reign of the pious Irene, that the popes consummated the separation of Rome and Italy, by the translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. They were compelled to choose between the rival nations: religion was not the sole motive of their choice; and while they dissembled the failings of their friends, they beheld, with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic virtues of their foes. The difference of language and manners had perpetuated the enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from each other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty: their submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a jealous tyrant; and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as well as the tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored the images, but they had not restored the Calabrian estates ^85 and the Illyrian diocese, ^86 which the Iconociasts had torn away from the successors of St. Peter; and Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy. ^87 The Greeks were now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the breath of the reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious; but a discerning eye might discern their approaching