The most distinguished hegoumenos of the monastery was John Hylilas, better known, on account of his learning, as the Grammarian, and nicknamed Lecanomantis, the Basin-Diviner, because versed in the art of divination by means of a basin of polished brass. He belonged to a noble family of Armenian extraction, and became prominent during the reigns of Leo V., Michael II., and Theophilus as a determined iconoclast. His enemies styled him Jannes, after one of the magicians who withstood Moses, to denote his character as a sorcerer and an opponent of the truth. Having occasion, when conducting service in the imperial chapel to read the lesson in which the prophet Isaiah taunts idolaters with the question, 'To whom then will ye liken God, or to what likeness will ye compare him?' John, it is said, turned to Leo V., and whispered the significant comment, 'Hearest thou, my lord, the words of the prophet? They give thee counsel.' He was a member of the Commission charged by that emperor to collect passages from the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church that condemned the use of images in worship. Prominent iconodules were interned in the monastery of Hormisdas in the hope that he would turn them from the error of their ways by his arguments and influence. He directed the education of Theophilus and supported the iconoclastic policy pursued by that pupil when upon the throne. Theophilus appointed his tutor syncellus to the Patriarch Antony, employed him in diplomatic missions,[104] and finally, upon the death of Antony, created him patriarch. The name of John can still be deciphered under somewhat curious circumstances, in the litany which is inscribed on the bronze doors of the Beautiful Gate at the south end of the inner narthex of S. Sophia. When those doors were set up in 838, Theophilus and his empress had no son, and accordingly, in the threefold prayer inscribed upon the doors, the name of John was associated with the names of the sovereigns as a mark of gratitude and esteem. But in the course of time a little prince, to be known in history as Michael III., was born and proclaimed the colleague of his parents. It then became necessary to insert the name of the imperial infant in the litany graven on the Beautiful Gate of the Great Church, and to indicate the date of his accession. To add another name to the list of names already there was, however, impossible for lack of room; nor, even had there been room, could the name of an emperor follow that of a subject, though that subject was a patriarch. The only way out of the difficulty, therefore, was to erase John's name, and to substitute the name of the little prince with the date of his coming to the throne; the lesser light must pale before the greater. This was done, but the bronze proved too stubborn to yield completely to the wishes of courtiers, and underneath Michael's name has kept fast hold of the name John to this day.