beyond its province; and, owing to the close connection which existed between the clergy and the people, they were generally regarded as the assertors of liberty and of the right of private judgment in opposition to despotism." The indirect effects of Leo's action were even more important than the obvious ones. The division which ensued between Italy, resisting iconoclasm under the Pope's authority, and the imperial power made the Emperor decide to transfer to the patriarch of Constantinople the jurisdiction over Sicily and Calabria, leaving to the Pope that over the exarchate of Ravenna which still nominally obeyed the Cæsar. The meaning of this is thus expressed by Professor Bury. "The effect of this act of Leo, which went far to decide the mediæval history of Southern Italy, was to bring the boundary between the ecclesiastical dominions of New Rome and Old Rome into coincidence with the boundary between the Greek and the Latin nationalities. In other words, it laid the basis of the distinction between the Greek and the Latin Churches. The only part of the Empire in which the Pope now possessed authority was the exarchate, including Rome, Ravenna and Venice. The geographical position of Naples, intermediate between Rome and the extremities of Italy, determined that its sympathies should be drawn in two directions; in religious matters it inclined towards Old Rome, in political matters it was tenacious of its loyalty to New Rome."[13] But this was not all. An immense immigration of persecuted monks and priests as well as lay folk practically recolonised much of Southern Italy. Constantine Copronymus was far more eager than his father to push the iconoclastic campaign. In 761 he began a deliberate and bitter persecution of those who opposed him. Already, under Leo the Isaurian, the virgin Theodosia had been martyred. Her festival is still kept on May 29, and the church raised to her memory still stands transformed into a mosque just within the Aya Kapou, on the Golden Horn. Many whom the Greek Church still commemorates were now slain and others tortured. Constantine was equally hostile to monks, and he was as bitter against his creatures whom he suspected as against those who openly disputed his will. The patriarch whom he had set up fell into disgrace in spite of his support of iconoclasm. He was degraded in S. Sophia, carried round the Hippodrome sitting backwards on an ass, and at last beheaded as a traitor.