Leo the Armenian (813-820), who was averse to image-worship but desirous of keeping the peace, was forced by the zeal of the iconoclastic party and the obstinacy of the orthodox to resume an iconoclastic policy. Under such circumstances numbers of the clergy became temporizers, leaving to the monks the fanatical defence of images; and as Leo himself was capable, with the approbation of both parties, of an act of the grossest treachery toward his enemy the king of the Bulgarians, it is clear that neither iconoclasm nor image-worship was raising the plane of morals. Significantly enough, it was at the beginning of the reign of Michael the Drunkard (842-867), who was professedly orthodox, but openly burlesqued the ceremonies of the Church, that image-worship was definitely restored under the regency of his fanatical mother, Theodora. The great majority were weary of the strife, and many of the iconoclasts had come to the conclusion that relative sanity in religion was not worth fighting for. For the rest, Michael was finally assassinated, as Leo the Armenian had been before him. It was at this period that Photius, the most learned man of the Dark Ages, became Patriarch of Constantinople, in the teeth of the opposition of the pope of Rome, who after the formal restoration of image-worship had been appealed to, as a champion of orthodoxy, for the decision of some official disputes in the Eastern Church. After his position was assured, Photius effectually fought the Roman claims, completing the schism between the Churches; and in his own sphere he did much for the preservation of learning, and even something for the cultivation of judgment. In theology, it is admitted by one of another school, "he made use of his own reason and sagacity"; and he is notable, in his period and place, for having reached the idea that earthquakes might not be divine portents. But Photius is the high-water mark of Byzantine intelligence; and no man of equal capacity and culture seems to have arisen during the six remaining centuries of the eastern empire.