of the Roman Pontiff swelled to an enormous degree, and his sway extended into civil and political affairs: so supreme an authority had he become that, in A.D. 751, the Frankish states of the realm--convoked by Pepin to sanction his design of seizing on the French throne, then occupied by Childeric III.--directed that an embassy should be sent to the Pope Zachary, to ask whether it was not right that a weak monarch should be dethroned; and on the answer of the Pope in the affirmative being received, Childeric was dethroned without opposition, and Pepin was crowned in his stead. In the East, the Church was torn with dissensions, while the imperial throne was rocking under the repeated attacks of the Turks--a tribe descended from the Tartars--who entered Armenia, struggled with the Saracens for dominion, subdued them partially, and then turned their arms against the Greek empire. The great controversy of this century is that on the worship of images, between the Iconoduli or Iconolatrae (image worshippers), and the Iconomachi or Iconoclastae (image breakers). The Emperor Bardanes, a supporter of the Monothelite heresy, ordered that a picture representing the sixth general council should be removed from the Church of St. Sophia, because that council had condemned the Monothelites. Not content with doing this (A.D. 712), Bardanes sent an order to Rome that all pictures and images of the same nature should be removed from places of worship. Constantine, the Pope, immediately set up six pictures, representing the six general councils, in the porch of St. Peter's, and called a council at Rome, which denounced the Emperor as an apostate. Bardanes was dethroned by a revolution, but his successor, Leo, soon took up the quarrel. In A.D. 726, he issued an imperial edict commanding the removal of all images from the churches and forbidding all image worship, save only those representing the crucifixion of Christ. Pope Gregory I. excommunicated the Emperor, and insurrections broke out all over the empire in consequence; the Emperor retorted by calling a council at Constantinople, which deposed the bishop of that city for his leanings towards image worship, and put a supporter of the Emperor in his place. The contest was carried on by Constantine, who succeeded his father, Leo, in A.D. 741, and who, in A.D. 754, called a council, at Constantinople--recognised by the Greek Church as the seventh general council--which condemned the use and worship of images. Leo IV. (A.D. 775) issued penal laws against image worshippers, but he was poisoned by Irene, his wife, in A.D. 780, and she entered into an alliance with Pope Adrian, so that the Iconoduli became triumphant in their turn. While this controversy raged, a second arose as to the procession of the Holy Ghost. The creed of Constantinople (see ante, p. 434) ran--"I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the