was this formidable sentence made public, than the Roman and other Italian Princes, subject to me, violated their allegiance, and rising in arms, either massacred or banished all my deputies or officers.

Q. Will you relate to the Court some of

the effects that followed?

A. When I first proclaimed my decree, a number of my subjects, who were deluded by the Priests and Monks, who acted for him, rose in rebellion in the islands of Archipelago, ravaged a part of Asia, and afterwards reached Italy. The prisoner (who was the author and ringleader of these civil commotions and insurrections,) had ordered me to revoke my edict against images, and upon my refusing, his anathemas followed. However, being exasperated by these violent proceedings of this haughty Pontiff, I resolved to make him and his Italian rebels feel my displeasure; but I failed in the attempt. More irritated than discouraged by this disappointment, I assembled a Council at Constantinople, ordered all images to be burnt, and inflicted a variety of punishments upon such as were attached to that idolatrous worship. The deluded followers of the prisoner, being supported by him, continued to rebel. And at last it ended, after much blood being spilt, in the Italian provinces being torn from the Greek Empire.

Q. What name did the prisoner go by when you knew him?

A. He was then known by the name of Constantine, afterwards he assumed that of Gregory I. and Gregory II.

Emperor Constantine, sworn.

Q. In what year did you succeed to the Imperial Throne?

A. In the year of our Lord 741. I am the son of Leo, who resigned his sceptre to me.

Q. Are you acquainted with the conduct manifested by the prisoner at the bar to your father, and did he presume to treat you in the same manner?

A. I recollect his base conduct to my father. He was excommunicated; all his subjects in Italy were absolved from the obligations of the oath of allegiance which they had taken, and prohibited from paying tribute to, or shewing him any marks of submission and obedience. I followed my father's steps, and in a Council assembled at Constantinople, in the year 754, condemned both the worship, and use of images. I met with the same treatment from the prisoner as my father did, while I indeavored to the utmost of my power, to extirpate idolatry from my dominions. Q. Did the prisoner excommunicate you by the same name he did your father.

A. His ecclesiastical interdict was sent

forth, first by the name of Gregory II. And afterwards Gregory III.

Emperor Leo IV. sworn.

Q. Look at the prisoner at the bar. Do you know him, and by what name do you know him?

A. I do know him. He lived at Rome, and was known by the name of Pope Adrian. Q. In what year were you declared Emperor?

A. In the year 755.

Q. Did you continue long on the Imperial

Throne?

A. No. Only about three years. Three Emperors who preceded me had zealously opposed image worship, and I followed their example. But a cup of poison, administered by the impious council of my perfidious and profligate wife, Irene, rendered me incapable of performing the functions of royalty. The prisoner and iny wife perceiving me disqualified to govern the Empire, as I was considered dead; they entered into an alliance, to abrogate all the imperial laws against idolatry. They summoned a council at Nice in Bithynia, restored the worship of images, and denounced severe punishments against such as maintained that God was the only object of religious worship. The other enormities of the flagitious Irene, and her deserved fate, I need not state to the Court.

Childeric, King of France, sworn.

Q. Did not the prisoner at the bar, under pretext that he was Christ's Vicar, depose you and place another person on your throne?

A. He did. In the year 751, when he called himself Pope Zachary I., Vicar of Christ, &c.

Q. Will you relate to the Court some of the leading particulars of that transaction?

66

A. In the year I before noticed, one Pepin who was mayor, aspired to the throne, and in an assembly by him collected, proposed the design of dethroning his sovereign. It was then agreed, that the Roman Pontiff should be first consulted, and accordingly an ambassador was sent by Pepin to Rome, with the following question: "Whether the divine "law, did not permit a valiant and warlike people to dethrone a pusillanimous and in"dolent monarch, who was incapable of dis"charging any of the functions of royalty, "and to substitute in his place, one more "worthy to rule, and who had already render"ed most important services to the state?"* The prisoner then decreed Pepin to be King of France, and as soon as the decision of the Pope was published in France, I was stript of royalty, Pepin ascended the throne, and was anointed by his Legate at Soissons. Soon after this the prisoner assumed the title

*See 'Bossuet Defens. declarationis Cleri Gallicani,' Part I p. 225, &c. Mosh. Eccl. Hist.

of Pope Stephen II. when he came into France to solicit assistance to fight against the Lombards. He then dissolved the obligation of the oath of allegiance, that Pepin had sworn to me, and which he had violated by his usurpation. And to render his crown pretendedly sacred, he anointed him a second time, with his wife and two sons. Pepin in return, fought for the prisoner with a numerous army against the Lombards, and in the year following established him as a temporal prince.

Q. Do you recollect in what year the prisoner came into France and anointed Pepin? A. In the year 754.

Q. Then he never was properly established as a temporal Prince till the year of our Lord 755: And he obtained both his spiritual and temporal authority, it appears, by usurpers like himself?

A. He never was owned as a temporal Prince till the year 755, and after that he carried two swords, to signify both his terrestrial and celestial power, which he had blended together.

Henry IV. Emperor, sworn.

Q. Have you any knowledge of the prisoner at the bar?

A. I have. I have reason to know him; and so have many thousands. When I knew him he was called Pope Gregory VII.